In 2018, 40-year-old Wade Jones was arrested in Michigan for shoplifting several bottles of alcohol. At his court appearance two weeks later, he clocked a BAC of 0.159, nearly double the limit for driving.
Jones was sentenced to five days in jail. Shortly after being booked into Kent County Correctional Facility, he began to suffer acute alcohol withdrawal, reported Prison Legal News. The next day it was worse, as he banged on the door while appearing to hallucinate, among other signs of delirium tremens. He had stopped drinking water, a nurse noted, and kept stripping off his clothing.
But for days, medical staff—overseen by Corizon Health, one of the largest prison health providers in the country—failed to provide treatment.
After a few days, as Jones’s symptoms worsened, he was transferred to a special medical unit in the jail. He needed oxygen, but the oxygen tank wasn’t working. A nurse couldn’t resuscitate him because the defibrillator’s battery was low. Jones was eventually taken to a hospital emergency room, where he died.
Jones’s family sued Corizon for violating his constitutional protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and in 2022 a jury ruled that the company must pay his estate $6.4 million.
“It’s called the ‘Texas two-step,’ and it’s so blatantly in order to not pay folks.”
Jones’s lawsuit was one of hundreds of medical malpractice lawsuits against Corizon. But as victims and their families awaited payment, the company made other plans. Executives moved liabilities, such as settlement payments, to a new company, Tehum Care Services—which then declared bankruptcy, further stalling payouts. They then created another new company, YesCare, which provided services until this May, when it too declared bankruptcy.
“It’s called the ‘Texas two-step,’” Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks the private prison industry, told Filter, “and it’s so blatantly in order to not pay folks.”
Tylek observed that “Tehum” bears a striking resemblance to the Hebrew word for “abyss”—an apt symbol of the moral depravity on display.
YesCare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a $307 million jury verdict against the company in Michigan. The case stemmed from the denial of a simple medical procedure that might have spared a detainee under Corizon’s care two years of pain and misery.
Kohchise Jackson suffered from a perforated intestine. Instead of getting the procedure that would have fixed the problem, he was forced to live with a defective colonoscopy bag for two years. Feces seeped into his bladder and urine. He was in severe pain and suffered abuse from other men who were not happy to be in close quarters with a leaking colonoscopy bag.
The cost of the operation was a little over $900. The company refused to greenlight the procedure. “It was a horrible experience for me,” Jackson, 44, told Local 4. “Shame on you,” he added, “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”
“A lot of people who should be compensated for harm, it’s unclear what’s going to happen to them.”
YesCare’s efforts to evade responsibility to wronged patients have thrown the industry into turmoil, according to Tylek, with the verdict bound to be challenged in courts. A potential liquidation of the company’s assets will leave huge gaps in health care services in prisons and jails.
“Everyone is nervous. Prisons and jails have to provide health care. They don’t know if they’ll have to shift to other providers and to who,” Tylek said.
Adding to the chaos, other private prison health care providers have also recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to evade lawsuits. Wellpath filed for bankruptcy in 2024, claiming the company could not sustain medical malpractice payouts. Armor Correctional Health filed that same year.
The first group most harshly impacted are people on the inside, Tylek noted, who already face dangerous, substandard care.
“They weren’t paying people for a while, so people weren’t showing up for work,” she said of YesCare. The company is currently seeing if it can use some of its cash on hand, earmarked for creditors, for people to work through the bankruptcy, she added, but it’s unclear how much and for how long.
Once again left hanging are victims of prior neglect and abuse who are owed compensation for their suffering.
“A lot of people who should be compensated for harm, it’s unclear what’s going to happen to them,” Tylek said.
Whoever ends up replacing YesCare after all the disruption and litigation is not likely to be much better, she noted. It’s a constant in the industry. “They take money and then they don’t provide services. It’s what they do.”
Photograph via Picryl
