Briefs

• Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has been negotiating to sell seven of its prisons in order to reduce more than $1 billion in debt.
  
  In March, the company sold one of the seven, the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Spruce Pine, N.C., for $25 million to Correctional Properties Trust, which has an option to buy CCA’s Pamlico Correctional Facility in Bayboro. Because of staffing and medical problems — and escapes — North Carolina prison officials regained control of the two lock-ups last year.
  
  CCA expects to get $200 million by selling the seven facilities. The company has yet to reveal the other five sites.

• Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) vetoed a bill that would have guaranteed funding to two privately owned prisons to house inmates who may never set foot in them.
  
  Wackenhut Corrections Corporation and CCA operate the facilities in Marshall and Leflore counties, respectively. The state has built too many prisons and there aren’t enough prisoners to fill beds. By paying for "ghost" inmates, officials would be bailing out the private companies, which are having trouble turning a profit.
  
  Robert Johnson, commissioner of the state’s Department of Corrections, told The Commercial Appeal newspaper: "You wouldn’t expect the Mississippi legislature to be guaranteeing private enterprise a profit. We’ll be paying them for empty beds."

• A jury in Memphis, Tenn., awarded an inmate $235,000 in damages and issued a stern lecture to CCA, the company he filed suit against.
  
  Charles Roy Degan, who’s serving time in the West Tennessee Detention Facility, had to use nail clippers to extract wires that were holding his broken jaw shut. His jaw was to remain wired five to six weeks, but it stayed that way for two months until he took them out. The wires were in so long that they became embedded in his gums.
  
  In a letter to the prison privateer, jurors wrote: "The medical needs of those you serve is a right not to be forgotten, omitted, delayed or otherwise denied. This is a basic human right, as important as providing nourishment or shelter to those who are entrusted to your care."

• In March, the Georgia legislature rejected a bill that would have allowed some of the state’s private prisons to house out-of-state inmates.
  
  The measure was a hot topic of discussions among House members. Opponents said the inmates have higher escape rates and would bring more violence. In a story published in The Augusta Chronicle, Rep. Chuck Sims (D) said: "I don’t think the state of Georgia needs to pay for other people’s problems."
  
  Proponents of the bill explained that private prisons have boosted the economies of rural areas, to which Sims replied: "South Georgia today is fast becoming a penal colony and a trash dump. The only jobs our rural counties can get are penitentiaries and sanitation. A prison is not economic development."