Medicaid & Reentry Update

Highlighted Stories

Editor's Note

This week’s first highlighted article comes from NASHP/HARP and provides an overview of the current state of Medicaid and reentry. It touches on the bipartisan Consolidated Appropriations Acts of 2023 and 2024, which required states to provide Medicaid and CHIP services to youth returning home after incarceration, and it reviews the use of Section 1115 waivers for prerelease Medicaid services. The article surveys these legislative and regulatory developments in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, New Mexico, Kentucky, and California.

California is of particular interest. It was the first state to receive an 1115 waiver for reentry services in 2023 through California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM). CalAIM requires counties to provide structured prerelease services, Medi-Cal enrollment support, Enhanced Care Management, and behavioral health linkages. The California Health Care Foundation article offers an overview of CalAIM’s progress. What especially caught our attention was the way smaller counties, with fewer resources, are merging together to build joint reentry programs.

The next story, from Placer County, is ostensibly about the county switching from Wellpath to Correctional Healthcare Partners. But what really stands out, in relation to CalAIM, was the announcement that the county will implement a new electronic health record system with its new provider. From COCHS’ previous experience, what this likely means is that the EHR currently used in the jail cannot meet Medi-Cal billing requirements. Historically, jails have not billed insurance or Medicaid, and most EHRs built for correctional settings were never designed to generate a superbill. They generally track diagnoses through ICD-9 or ICD-10 codes and can function as little more than electronic problem lists. Critically, many do not track procedures, services, devices, or drugs through Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, which are essential for billing. Placer County’s announcement recalls a previous story from San Diego County in the March 17, 2026 Weekly Update, where the sheriff was asking county commissioners to allocate more money for a billing system in order to comply with CalAIM’s requirements.

To round out this Medicaid & Reentry update, California is now seeking a five-year renewal of the CalAIM demonstration. But CMS in 2026 is a very different agency from the one that approved CalAIM in 2023. As we noted in the March 17, 2026 Weekly Update, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced major Medicaid cuts and new work requirements, though it did preserve the possibility of a 90-day exemption for individuals after release. How any of this will affect California’s renewal is anyone’s guess. For CalAIM, this feels very much like a hold-your-breath moment.

States across the country have begun implementing the first-ever policies to support youth and young adults returning to communities from incarceration by strengthening access to screening and case management. These policies were established in two pieces of federal bipartisan legislation, the Consolidated Appropriations Acts of 2023 and 2024. In addition, 27 states and Washington, DC, are taking another opportunity Congress created through bipartisan legislation enacted in 2018: using Medicaid 1115 waivers to strengthen continuity of care by providing targeted pre-release services to adult Medicaid beneficiaries as they return from incarceration.

In 2023 CMS approved California's Section 1115 demonstration to provide a targeted set of Medicaid services to youth and adults in state prisons, county jails, and youth correctional facilities for up to 90 days prior to release. By providing reentry services to Medicaid-enrolled individuals who are incarcerated California aims to build a bridge to community-based care. All of California’s 31 state prisons and more than half of its counties have started their reentry programs. All other counties must have reentry programs in their jails by October. Yuba and Santa Clara counties were the first two counties to launch pre-release programs in October 2024. Sutter County followed in April 2025. Because Yuba and Sutter— adjacent counties in the Central Valley north of Sacramento — have limited resources, they merged their reentry programs into a single bi-county effort.

The Placer County Board of Supervisors today selected Correctional Healthcare Partners, Inc. to provide comprehensive inmate medical services at the county’s jail and juvenile detention facilities. The board also authorized the county executive officer to sign an agreement with CHP totaling $131.28 million, which will run from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2033. The seven-year contract also includes upgrades to the county’s electronic health records system to strengthen coordination with the Department of Health Care Services to ensure continuity of care upon reentry through the CalAIM Justice Involved Reentry Initiative.

On May 11, 2026, California submitted a request to renew for five years the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) section 1115 Medicaid demonstration for five years. This extension will enable the state to expand the reach and deepen the impact of key demonstration initiatives and launch new initiatives that align with CalAIM’s primary goals. Key initiatives, including Recovery Incentives (California’s contingency management program), Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, and Traditional Healers and Natural Helpers, were launched during the current CalAIM demonstration and have already shown promising results.

Follow Ups

YesCare/Tehum Care/Corizon

Editor's Comment: The first two articles on the YesCare/Tehum Care/Corizon bankruptcy, from Bloomberg Law and Filter, treat the company’s troubles as part of a larger crisis facing proprietary correctional healthcare vendors: mounting lawsuits, exclusion from contracts in some states, and, of course, bankruptcy. Taken together, these pressures raise broader questions about the viability of this model of healthcare that leaves correctional systems wondering whom they can realistically turn to for medical services.

The remaining articles in this Follow Up show the wide ripple effects of the YesCare bankruptcy, as one facility after another moves away from the company and toward various competitors. In Philadelphia, for example, YesCare had been the provider for three decades, dating back to its earlier incarnation as Prison Health Services (PHS), long before even the Corizon name. There, nurses reportedly went unpaid for weeks. According to the article, the city wired funds to YesCare so that medical staff could be paid, and a food drive was organized for those same workers. In Tallahassee, Florida, nurses were said to be struggling to pay rent and buy groceries. YesCare, it appears, has largely stopped communicating with its employees.

If you have not been following this story closely, a good place to start is last week’s YesCare/Tehum Care/Corizon Follow Up.

YesCare Corp.'s announcement that it will wind down has reignited concerns over the private prison healthcare business model, fraught with tort risk that leaves companies vulnerable to insolvency. The company’s bankruptcy is the second in three years for businesses built from the assets of Corizon Health Inc., once one of the largest for-profit providers. YesCare provided medical services to 20,000 incarcerated people daily before it missed payroll, lost contracts, and defaulted on a settlement. YesCare isn’t the only prison healthcare business to experience stress in recent years due to canceled contracts and personal injury claims. There was the bankruptcy of Armor Health Management LLC’s in 2023. The privately-owned provider operated in several states before losing most of its government contracts and accumulating $170 million in claims. It’s telling that YesCare hasn’t been able to secure a bankruptcy loan, which demonstrates that lenders perceive the business as risky. The success of such businesses in the industry depends on the quality of healthcare provided, and high numbers of complaints over poor care lead to lawsuits and governments refusing to renew contracts.

YesCare's efforts to evade responsibility to wronged patients have thrown the industry into turmoil. A potential liquidation of the company's assets would 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," said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks the private prison industry. 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 it could not sustain medical malpractice payouts. Armor Correctional Health filed that same year.

As shortages in healthcare workers continue impacting facilities across the country, workers at a Coxsackie Correctional Facility (NY) say YesCare has not paid them following the company’s recent bankruptcy. According to employees, workers were notified by YesCare on May 8 with a statement that said the following: “We recently received a $307 million adverse jury verdict in a professional liability matter in federal court in Michigan. After evaluating all available options, we have determined that a comprehensive financial restructuring through chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code is the right next step,” said YesCare. One week later, on May 15, which was payday, the employees were informed they weren’t going to get a paycheck.

The Orange County jail's medical vendor, YesCare, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 8, and some healthcare workers at the jail say they have no idea when their next paycheck will come after going weeks without pay. The Orange County jail has been using YesCare as its medical vendor since January 2025, after its previous vendor, Wellpath, filed for bankruptcy in 2024. YesCare, formerly known as Corizon, filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after facing hundreds of medical malpractice lawsuits.

Philadelphia struck a deal with a new healthcare provider, CFG, for the city's jails, replacing YesCare/Corizon, which went bankrupt earlier this month and left medical staff unpaid for weeks. The takeover by the South Jersey-based company marks the first time the city has changed jail healthcare providers in more than three decades — a period marked by mounting scrutiny of YesCare and its corporate predecessors, Prison Health Services and Corizon Health. The city's contract with YesCare was set to expire June 30. CFG Health had been scheduled to take over July 1, but YesCare's sudden financial collapse accelerated the timeline. The city also wired funds to YesCare to pay medical staff who continue to work inside its jails.

Medical staff at six Philadelphia correctional facilities have gone nearly a month without pay after their employer, YesCare, filed for bankruptcy, prompting the city to step in with emergency support. Workers at Riverside Correctional Facility and other sites say they have now missed two paychecks. City officials organized a food drive to assist the unpaid workers, distributing groceries and gift cards.

YesCare, which was hit with a $307.5 million verdict by a federal jury in Detroit in April, has filed for bankruptcy, casting doubt on whether a former Michigan inmate will ever collect on the massive award. CHS TX, Inc., doing business as YesCare, notified the U.S. District Court in Detroit on May 11 that the company and its affiliates had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 8 in Florida, records show.

Nurses working inside a Florida jail have gone weeks without a paycheck after their employer, YesCare, filed for bankruptcy. Staff at the Leon County Detention Facility in Tallahassee confirm they have not been paid since May 1, 2026. YesCare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 8, listing up to $500 million in liabilities, including roughly $9.7 million in unpaid wages and salaries owed to its workforce. The nurses, who provide medical care for inmates at the jail, are struggling to cover rent, utilities, and groceries while waiting for answers from a company that has largely stopped communicating with them. Sheriff's offices in Polk County, Florida, Louisville Metro Corrections, and Doña Ana County, New Mexico have terminated or moved off their YesCare contracts. In several cases, local governments have stepped in directly to pay healthcare workers out of their own budgets — because the alternative was leaving jails without medical coverage.

Texas Commission on Jail Standards

Editor's Comment: Back in the February 24, 2026 Weekly Update, we included an article from Texas on how Attorney General Ken Paxton had weakened the Sandra Bland Act, which requires the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to investigate deaths in county jails. Paxton took a very strict view of the law: deaths had to occur inside the jail itself. Under that interpretation, if a person is transported from jail to a hospital and dies there, the death does not have to be investigated by the commission—though the commission is not prohibited from doing so.

The article below from KERA News examines unreported deaths in Texas jails. In particular, it focuses on the death of an elderly woman who died at Parkland Hospital while still, in effect, in jail custody. Her death was not reported to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards because, on a technicality, the charges against her had been dropped after she suffered a life-altering neurological injury from a fall in the jail and was therefore no longer considered a detainee. The Dallas Morning News, expanding on this theme, reports that 23 deaths in Texas jails went unreported. And this comes even before the full effect of Ken Paxton’s narrow interpretation of the Sandra Bland Act—which could allow for even less scrutiny.

Diane Bailey turned 74-years old Feb. 2 — the same day she died while in jail custody at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas. Her death was not reported to a state oversight agency, apparently because of a technicality: she had suffered a life-altering neurological injury, and medical experts have determined that she was unlikely to improve. And the Dallas County Sheriff's Department did not report her death to the commission because her charges had been dropped, according to the state agency. Sheriff Marian Brown's office had not yet returned a call, email and text before publication.

Advocates and legal experts see a troubling trend, raising questions about how many jail-related fatalities are going unreported in Texas. Since 2023, the Texas Jail Project, a nonprofit that advocates for incarcerated people, has identified 23 unreported jail deaths across Texas, prompting most of them to be investigated later by state officials. Earlier this year, deaths in Texas jails came close to receiving even less scrutiny. On Feb. 12, Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion stating that third-party investigations are only required by law when deaths occur inside a jail — not when incarcerated people die in an ambulance or after being transferred to a hospital.

San Diego

Editor's Comment: As our subscribers know, San Diego often appears in the Follow Ups. The article below from the San Diego Union-Tribune reports on a recent suicide in the jail—the first in nearly three years. That gap might be described as an “improvement,” though it is difficult to associate that word to any suicide. Nor may this death be as anomalous as it first appears. A little over a year ago, we included an article again from the San Diego Union-Tribune in which Dr. Pablo Stewart warned against the jail’s policy of stripping and placing in safety cells those who express a desire to harm themselves. According to Stewart, the conditions in those cells are so harsh that many detained people are afraid to disclose suicidal thoughts.

The Sheriff’s Office confirmed this week the first suicide in a San Diego jail in nearly three years: a 34-year-old man with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who had previously tried to take his own life while in custody. The death raises questions about how San Diego County jails house and monitor people with severe mental illness, particularly those with a known history of suicide attempts while incarcerated. Parker’s death comes after years of scrutiny over suicide prevention measures inside county jails, which for years recorded some of the highest suicide rates among California’s large counties. A 2018 report by Disability Rights California examined what was then a growing number of jail suicides and urged the Sheriff’s Office to eliminate tie-off points inside cells that could be used in hanging attempts.

ICE

Medical Neglect

Americans inundated with images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents roughing up and killing people in public will not be surprised to learn that health conditions in immigration detention centers are abysmal. Largely shielded from public scrutiny, notoriously poor medical conditions in these facilities have deteriorated even further. These conditions, the wholly foreseeable result of inadequate staffing, violate international law and core principles of medical ethics. Since the federal government appears unwilling to improve the health care available to immigration detainees, states must step in to fill the gap.

GEO Group

The Trump administration has appointed former GEO Group executive David Venturella as the new acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), deepening concerns about the growing relationship between private prison companies and US immigration enforcement. The appointment comes as the administration aggressively expands detention and deportation operations across the United States.

Solitary Confinement

Far from being a "last resort," experts and detainees say solitary is the primary tool detention facilities use to manage mental health crises. Detainees and advocates stated that officers' practice of pepper-spraying detainees in crisis — including pepper-spraying people caught attempting suicide — also reflects detention centers' inability to adequately care for vulnerable people. Immigration detention isn't designed for people dealing with trauma and mental illness, and isolating those detainees is a "quick fix" that ignores their treatment needs and the harmful effects of confinement.

Angel Lemus-Linares, a 32-year-old migrant from El Salvador seeking political asylum, recalls ICE officers shoving him into a filthy, cramped solitary confinement cell and beating him after another detained individual attacked him while in ICE custody. He remained for seven consecutive days in what’s known as “el pozo”—the hole—at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center, a notorious, privately run facility in Taylor, Texas. “They beat me a lot,” Lemus-Linares said in a phone interview from inside Hutto. “They had left my ribs and sides all bruised.”

Suicide

Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19. His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness. He pleaded with his jailers in handwritten notes to arrange a conversation with her. "I feel in my heart that she's very worried about me," he wrote in Spanish. A guard collected the note and walked away. Within an hour, jail records show, he was found unconscious in his cell. An autopsy determined he killed himself. Suicides account for nearly a fifth of the 51 deaths in ICE custody since January 2025.

Arizona

Marana’s other hot-button development, the detention center, will also be on voters’ minds. The town’s leaders say they can do nothing to stop ICE from contracting with the private prison operator that owns the facility, which has sat empty since the state closed it in 2023. The firm, Utah-based Management and Training Corporation, said in a statement that its agreement with ICE is not yet final, but that it would focus on “operating the facility with high standards of safety, professionalism and dignity.” Activists have urged the town council to pass a resolution condemning the proposed detention center, just as Marana’s county, Pima, and neighboring cities have done. But town leaders have said that only would lead to more division.

Over the past week, GardaWorld Federal Services has ramped up its recruiting efforts for the operation of the warehouse detention center in Surprise, AZ. The company has published job postings for medical staff, security guards, transportation personnel, and operational support. This recruitment push marks a sharp increase in activity after a slow start on the contract awarded in early March, and it comes even as Arizona’s lawsuit against DHS alleging NEPA, APA, and INA violations remains unresolved.

California

A trio of bills steaming through the California Assembly would use the tax code to disincentivize private prison companies and other companies from taking federal contracts for immigration enforcement in the state. The bills are being driven by the California Legislature’s fierce interest in checking President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown. ICE expanded into a 700-bed GEO-run facility in Kern County in the Central Valley late last month, according to prior Bee reporting. CoreCivic and GEO representatives have not been visibly active lobbying against the bill.

Inspections by the California Department of Justice confirmed what people in immigration custody have been saying since President Donald Trump took office: Conditions at detention facilities have grown worse. A report published May 15 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta found that overcrowding in the state’s seven ICE facilities that were operating last year led to inadequate medical care, food and hygiene as well as excessive use of force from guards. Investigators said these issues violate ICE’s own detention standards.

At least 20 detainees have launched a hunger strike at Desert View Annex, an immigrant detention center in Adelanto, California, where about 400 people are being held. At a news conference, immigrant rights groups, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said the strikers were motivated by the detention center’s inadequate response to life-threatening health conditions among detainees, “decreasing portions of food” as commissary prices rise and “retaliation and suppression” against those who’ve spoken out against conditions inside.

New Jersey

On Day 2 of a hunger strike at Delaney Hall, the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey’s junior senator and a local congressman planned an emergency visit to investigate what detainees say are inhumane conditions. U.S. Sen. Andy Kim and Rep. Rob Menendez, Jr., both D-N.J., were slated to visit on the evening of Saturday, May 23, seeking a tour and a meeting with detainees. The planned visit comes one day after hundreds of people held inside the immigrant detention center said they would refuse food and work until their demands are met.

Compassionate Release

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that judges cannot order the early release of prisoners on the grounds that they would have received shorter sentences today following the enactment of a 2018 criminal justice reform law. The justices in a 6-3 ruling, opens new tab powered by the court's conservative majority upheld lower-court rulings against two Pennsylvania men convicted of armed robberies who ‌sought compassionate release based on the First Step Act, which Congress passed years after their sentencings.

As the United States prison population continues to age, the question of how society supports incarcerated individuals at the end of life has become increasingly urgent. With more than two million people behind bars, and sentencing practices that often ensure incarcerated people grow old and in many cases, die, within correctional facilities, the nation is confronting a human rights dilemma: Can incarcerated people expect a dignified death, and are existing compassionate release policies sufficient to ensure it?

Juveniles & Young Adults

Elizabeth Cauffman, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Psychology and Law, opened her presentation with a deceptively simple question: “if we know the human brain isn't fully developed until age 25, why do we treat 18-to-25-year-olds in jail the same as everyone else?” Cauffman has spent years studying adolescent brain development, and that science formed the backbone of the Road to Reentry project — a partnership with the Orange County Sheriff's Department that created a specialized housing unit at Lacy Jail for young men ages 18 to 25.

A federal judge has granted preliminary approval to a settlement ending a class-action lawsuit over solitary confinement of juveniles in North Carolina. The settlement would “heavily restrict” the North Carolina Department of Public Safety from confining juvenile detainees in their cells. The settlement affects “all pre-adjudication juveniles who are now or will be detained” at the state’s Cabarrus Juvenile Detention Center, according to a memorandum from lawyers representing the case’s two John Doe plaintiffs.

State Roundup

California

Under a California law enacted in 2018, defendants with qualifying mental health diagnoses can receive treatment instead of going to prison and have their records wiped clean if they finish. The process, is known as mental health diversion. Critics say that the law forces judges to grant diversion when they don’t think it’s appropriate; supporters say it appropriately defers to decisions by mental health experts. But now Assembly Bill 46 would change the rules for mental health diversion. It’s overwhelmingly supported by the state’s police unions and law enforcement leaders, see the current law as a dangerous loophole that lets violent offenders walk free. Public defenders and civil liberties organizations are fighting the bill, saying the 2018 law is working as intended and the changes would strip vulnerable people of the treatment they need.

The federal consent decree process for the Plumas County Correctional Facility has ended after 34 years, Sheriff Chad Hermann told the Plumas County Board of Supervisors. He delivered the news during the board’s May 5 meeting, when he also shared his department’s statistics for the month of April. The jail operated under a consent decree, Pederson v. County of Plumas, from 1992 until its termination May 1. It was entered as the result of a class action complaint filed in 1989 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. In that suit, detainees at the Plumas jail challenged the constitutionality of their conditions of confinement. The suit was brought by the Prisoner Rights Union.

Colorado

Colorado voters passed Amendment A, a ballot measure touted as an end to slavery in state prisons in 2018. The amendment eliminated the penal exception clause, which allowed the state to use forced labor in addition to incarceration as a punishment for crime. In 2022, the plaintiffs who brought a class action lawsuit, Mortis v. Polis, alleged that the Colorado Department of Corrections violated the amended state constitution by punishing incarcerated people who refused mandatory work programs. During the trial, David Lisac, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Corrections prison operations, testified that the department had neither changed its policies in response to the amendment nor attempted to ascertain whether the department was in compliance with the amendment. In February 2026, the court ruled that the department and Gov. Jared Polis violated the state constitution by forcing people to work. The ruling specified that use of force and isolation for failure to work were unconstitutional. On the other hand, the court dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims that withholding privileges or credits constituted involuntary servitude.

Connecticut

After paying out several million dollars in lawsuits and seeing scathing reports in recent years on the state of inmate medical and mental health care, a new law and new leadership will address some of the issues at Connecticut's Department of Correction healthcare system. The new law implements sweeping changes in the way the DOC handles inmate healthcare, including banning fees for medical care, prohibiting the denial of care based on the inability to pay fees, allowing inmates to file requests for medical treatment electronically, and creating a Correctional Medical and Health Commission that will draft a 10-year plan to improve health services for incarcerated individuals.

Interim DOC Commissioner Sharonda Carlos announced Monday that the DOC’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Byron Kennedy and Chief Operational Officer of Health and Addiction Treatment Robert Richeson have been moved to other duties, and the agency has created a new leadership role: executive director of inmate medical services, which will be filled by Dr. Craig Burns. The change in leadership comes as a new law implements sweeping changes in the way the DOC handles inmate healthcare, including banning fees for medical care, prohibiting the denial of care based on the inability to pay fees, allowing inmates to file requests for medical treatment electronically, and creating a Correctional Medical and Health Commission that will draft a 10-year plan to improve health services for incarcerated individuals.

The Connecticut Department of Correction announced a slate of reforms focused on improving the quality of healthcare for people who are incarcerated, including a new director of inmate medical services, a team to oversee the implementation of reforms and investments in technology advancements. News of the plans comes after a March 2026 report published by the state Correction Ombuds found “systemic deficiencies” in access to medical and mental healthcare faced by those in DOC custody. For two decades, University of Connecticut Health Center Health managed medical care for DOC. In 2018, DOC took back its own healthcare operations amid widespread reports of mismanagement by UConn, including lacking quality of care and denials for specialty services — concerns still being expressed today.

Indiana

The state of Indiana will pay over 1.2 million dollars to settle lawsuits over dangerous conditions at a state prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana recently finalized settlement agreements in a series of lawsuits against the Indiana Department of Correction. These lawsuits allege that incarcerated men at Miami Correctional Facility were held in solitary confinement under conditions of total or near-total darkness for extended periods of time, leading to both physical and psychological harm.

Kansas

The Shawnee County Department of Corrections plans to open a new facility designed to address inmates’ mental health. The department has seen up to 51% of its population facing serious mental challenges, according to Maj. Timothy Phelps, deputy director of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections. “There is a significant increase in the number of inmates who suffer from severe mental illness, and that isn’t going to change,” Phelps said. “So, what we have to do is change the way we approach management of this population because traditional correctional behaviors — or correctional controls — aren’t good for them.”

Maine

Weyrens, Kitner Woodward PLLC, and Frenkel & Frenkel LLP have filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine alleging that more than 60 Maine Department of Corrections employees and contractors subjected children at the Maine Youth Center to years of systemic constitutional violations throughout the 1990s. According to the complaint, State employees and contractors at the Maine Youth Center, now known as Long Creek Youth Development Center, subjected detained children, as young as 11 years old, to excessive and unreasonable force, sexual assault, solitary confinement, and deliberate indifference to substantial risks of serious harm.

Michigan

Two sudden deaths within days of each other at Michigan’s only women’s prison are intensifying scrutiny of medical care and conditions at the Huron Valley Correctional Facility, as attorneys allege chronic staffing shortages and failures in treatment. Conditions at the facility have been under scrutiny in recent months after state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky, D-Livonia, visited the prison in February. She told the House Oversight Committee that she saw black spots in the seams of the shower. The recent deaths come as Michigan lawmakers weigh legislation aimed at improving communication between prisons and families during medical emergencies.

Michigan Department of Corrections Director Heidi E. Washington and other department leaders have recently been on site at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the department said in a press release. MDOC said Washington and senior custody and medical staff are observing health care units and day-to-day operations to make sure procedures are being followed and a consistent standard of care is provided. The department said leadership has been speaking with incarcerated individuals and reviewing concerns.

Mississippi

This year, Mississippi’s state prison inmates are dying far younger than during the years of the past decade, according to a statistical analysis of data obtained from the Mississippi Department of Corrections as well as an online reports of state prison deaths, published obituaries and UCLA’s Law Behind Bars Data Project. The median age of death among MDOC inmates has fallen from 57 in 2015 to 51 this year, even as the prison population has gotten older, pushed by longer sentences and more restrictive parole. The number of incarcerated 60-year-olds in Mississippi has more than doubled in a decade.

Missouri

The St. Louis County health department director accused the county council of delaying approval of jail healthcare funding and warned the holdup could cost taxpayers. Dr. Kanika Cunningham, director of the St. Louis County Health Department, went public to pressure the county council to approve an additional $2.8 million to pay healthcare providers at the county justice center. The health department provides healthcare to all detainees in the county jail. Cunningham said that time is running out for the county council to provide funding for that care. At the start of the year, St. Louis County had a projected budget shortfall of $81 million.

New York

Shackling mentally ill people awaiting criminal arraignment has long been standard police procedure in New York City. The Police Department’s patrol guide instructs officers: “Do not remove handcuffs or leg restraints, unless requested by attending physician.” Such requests are almost never granted, legal service lawyers and psychiatrists say. The practice is being challenged in a suit at the State Court of Appeals. The suit argues that it is unnecessary for the police to shackle people in locked psychiatric wards because the wards are already set up to deal with potentially violent patients.

A former Cayuga County Jail inmate who alleged his constitutional rights were violated will receive $25,000 in a settlement with the county. Johann Bass filed the federal lawsuit in 2022. He named several defendants, including Cayuga County Sheriff Brian Schenck and employees at the jail, and accused them of violating his constitutional rights by delaying medical care and denying access to mental health care.

Inmates began reporting vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and headaches on May 25. Within two days, the number of sick had climbed into the hundreds, prompting a response from medical staff, county health officials, and emergency services personnel. Early suspicion pointed to norovirus but lab results identified Salmonella as the cause. Investigators are still working to pinpoint how the bacteria entered the facility. The probe involves coordination between the Broome County Sheriff's Office, the county health department, the New York State Department of Health, and Trinity Services Group, the company that handles food service at the jail.

North Carolina

Every 90 days during the last fiscal year, an average of 864 people receiving mental health services while incarcerated were released from North Carolina’s prisons. About 75 of them — every 90 days — had a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. North Carolina’s mental health system can be tough to navigate. Without a direct connection to care and support, staying stable in the community can be nearly impossible. Just 20 social workers at the Department of Adult Correction are responsible for providing aftercare planning for everyone who is on the prison system’s behavioral health caseload. Social workers also help eligible people apply for Medicaid up to 90 days before their projected release with the goal of it being active on the day they walk out the door. That gives people a way to pay for the care they need.

Pennsylvania

Due to the lack of oversight and accountability in prisons, incarcerated people are continuously mistreated without consequence. Technically, incarcerated people have a mechanism - the grievance process - to address issues in prisons. Instead of working to resolve grievances, the grievance procedure routinely dismisses them. Grievances are tossed out because they do not adhere to a list of rules, such as the requirement to submit a grievance on a particular-sized paper. Prison officials, who oversee the grievance procedure, are unenthusiastic, at best, about holding their own colleagues accountable

South Carolina

The Aiken County Sheriff’s Office and Rural Health Services are launching a new initiative they hope will change that. The program, called “Project Connect,” is a partnership between the Aiken County Detention Center and Rural Health Services designed to help incarcerated individuals transition back into the community with continued medical care already lined up before they walk out the door. Rural Health Services has operated in Aiken County for more than 50 years as a federally qualified health center providing primary and preventive healthcare services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. The sheriff’s office says Project Connect will specifically target inmates who face significant barriers after release, including those without insurance, transportation or established healthcare providers

Tennessee

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris announced plans to sign an executive order ending solitary confinement at the Shelby County Department of Corrections. Harris says he plans to switch to the United Nations Minimum Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners, or the Mandela Rules. This means prisoners at the facility on Mullins Station Road in Shelby Farms will not be allowed to stay in solitary confinement for more than 15 days. They will also have to have at least two hours outside of their cells.

Texas

A 29-year-old man held in the Harris County Jail died on May 21. Records maintained by the sheriff's office indicate this is the sixth in-custody death in Harris County since Jan. 1, with two reported in January and three more in April. The spike follows a year in which 20 people died in Harris County custody in 2025, double the 10 deaths recorded in 2024. Under Texas law the Texas Commission on Jail Standards must appoint an outside law-enforcement agency to investigate a death occurring in a county jail; that requirement is codified at the Texas Government Code.

A major expansion at Bexar County’s Applewhite Recovery Center is expected to begin ramping up operations after county officials identified prescription medication access as the key bottleneck preventing more than 100 eligible inmates from transferring out of the Bexar County Jail and into treatment last month. County commissioners on Tuesday approved up to $100,000 from the county’s opioid settlement funds as a last-resort safeguard for medication costs, formalizing part of a broader collaborative effort between University Health, the Bexar County Office of Criminal Justice, probation officials and the sheriff’s office aimed at accelerating transfers into treatment.

Vermont

Lawmakers have been considering a bill, S.193, that would create a facility to provide rehabilitative services to those in prison and giving the state grounds to lock up people who aren’t currently held in jail but who could pose a safety risk to others. But, with no real plan to build a new facility, lawmakers are debating if they should carve out a part of a state prison to provide clinical mental health and competency restoration services.

Correctional Healthcare Vendors

SymboCor

Baldwin County (AL) inmates needing medical care have been treated under an agreement with Infirmary Health for two decades, but that partnership is now ending. Last year, the county started working with a company called SymboCor to oversee inmate healthcare. The company coordinates all medical, dental and mental health services at the county jail and juvenile detention center. An Infirmary Health spokesperson said that North Baldwin Infirmary is disappointed to learn that the county is terminating the contract. The county’s current contract with Infirmary Health will officially end on June 20.