Briefs

• By passing an anti-terrorism bill, the House and the Senate provided a much-needed increase in the death benefits paid to survivors of public safety officers, including COs and emergency medical technicians. H.R. 2975 passed the House on Oct. 12; similar legislation, S. 1510, passed the Senate a day earlier. The final bill was signed into law on Oct. 26. Survivors of public safety officers will now receive $250,000 in benefits. The USA Patriot Act, as the bill is called, also gives law enforcement broad new powers to investigate and prosecute terrorists.

• Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has a hard time explaining the death of an inmate — a Honduran citizen — who suffered a series of unexplained ailments while incarcerated in a privately owned Tennessee prison. Marvin Borjas Diaz-Perez was unresponsive when discovered at the West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason. He had been there for two weeks. A Honduran official considers the death suspicious and plans to seek a full accounting from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. An anonymous tipster e-mailed The Commercial Appeal newspaper a day before Diaz-Perez was found, warning that he might be receiving inadequate medical treatment. The tipster then sent a second e-mail about 45 minutes after that, alleging a number of improprieties regarding the inmate’s treatment by CCA.

• Debt-laden CCA has sold its Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility in Las Vegas to the state of Nevada for $24.1 million. The Nashville-based prison operator said it would continue to manage the operation. Company officials said proceeds from the sale were used to pay down company debt — a goal CCA has pursued in 2001 by selling a number of facilities.

• Eight inmates and two employees at a medium-security private prison in Adelanto, Calif., were injured when a small riot broke out between 135 African-American and Hispanic inmates. A female sergeant with Maranatha Private Corrections LLC, which operates the men’s prison for the state, was hit in the head with a microwave oven and received 14 stitches. Another female sergeant was struck in the face. (Most inmates at the facility are "nonviolent" offenders and parole violators.)

• Tulsa (Okla.) County officials are looking into separate incidents in which two inmates were released from the county jail — managed by CCA — after posting bond on lesser charges. Both later showed up for court dates on their own. The county’s Criminal Justice Authority recently notified CCA that it was in breach of its contract to operate the jail because of erroneous releases in the past. To date, the company has not provided a remedy for those mistakes.