“Emotion is not going to solve this problem” are the words of the Roc Nation CEO in a new documentary, “Exposing Parchman.” The documentary is an in-depth critical analysis of human rights violations stemming from insufficient health care at the Mississippi State Prison facility, Parchman. It investigates a series of lawsuits against the prison and against Centurion, its primary health care services provider. Centurion is a subsidiary of Centene Corporation, a company that provides medical, mental, and dental care in correctional facilities.
One of those lawsuits, filed by Laura Wood in 2020, sought to compel the inspection of Centene’s books and records. Wood has been the owner of 344 Centene common stock shares since 2008. In her lawsuit she invoked her stockholder rights to inspect Centene’s books and to investigate potential breaches of fiduciary duties by the company’s board of directors.
In particular, Wood noted Centurion’s long history of failing to provide proper health care to the prison populations covered by its contracts, and how this failure has generated numerous lawsuits that have been resolved through financial settlements. She further claimed that Centene has taken no steps to develop any oversight over Centurion.
Her complaint also emphasizes a 2016 lawsuit against Centurion in which a woman alleged that prison staff forced her to give birth in a non-sterile environment without the care of a qualified obstetrician, wrapped her newborn baby in a dirty towel, and then cut his umbilical cord with a non-sterile object.
Wood’s centering her complaint as a potential breach of its fiduciary duties provides a powerful basis for prison health care reform. The breach of fiduciary duty is generally governed by state and federal statutes and by case law. The penalties for a breach of fiduciary duties include substantial monetary damages and the imposition of fines by regulatory authorities. In addition, there could be criminal consequences if the breach involves fraud or other criminal conduct.
Centene is far from being a one-man show juggling civil suits over inadequate prison healthcare services. The number of prison health care corporations dealing with similar litigation constitutes a veritable circus of violations. According to a 2023 analysis by National Public Radio, of the 5,00o people in the Federal Bureau of Prisons who died in the last decade, many died from lack of diagnosis or treatment of preventable diseases. In fact, more people in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ custody died of cancer than of any other cause from 2009 to 2020.
Suppose more stockholders like Laura Woods pursued legal action to compel corporations like Centurion to be better stewards of their investments, as well as better providers of health care? The consequences could motivate such corporations to create and implement safeguards in order to avoid civil, criminal, and financial liability.
Recently, the federal government has cast a critical eye on healthcare providers within prisons and jails – recognizing that this is a widespread national crisis that extends well beyond Centurion. In March 2022, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General audited the BOP’s contract with the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, which provides some of the medical services at Butner Federal Prison. The report found the BOP “did not have a reliable, consistent process in place to evaluate timeliness or quality of inmate healthcare.”
However, when it comes to health care the federal prison system is not under any federal oversight. In light of that fact, Senators Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Mike Braun, R-Ind. introduced a bill last fall called the Federal Prison Oversight Act. The bill would require the Office of Inspector General to conduct inspections of prisons and to establish an ombudsperson in the Justice Department.
The passage of this bill could counter a key pitfall identified by Laura Wood: confidential financial settlements have barred Centene’s own stockholders from knowing about its failures to provide adequate medical services. Thorough and consistent oversight by the federal government, accompanied by the to the reality of civil and criminal liability could raise standards and accountability for prison healthcare providers.
Indeed, Wood’s lawsuit demonstrates how pointing the needle of financial incentives at the pain point of civil and criminal liability, along with establishing robust federal oversight, can lead to better healthcare services in prisons. So while emotion alone is not going to solve this problem, lawsuits from stockholders like Laura Wood demonstrate how emotional, moral, and monetized compasses could help ensure that medical corporations provide sufficient services to the incarcerated persons entrusted to their care.