New: A @PEstakeholder report details the private equity interests, legal gymnastics and controversial bankruptcy swirling behind @YesCareCorp, medical provider for Maryland prisons/Baltimore jails. The company is routinely sued by prisoners for shoddy care
thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim… Just this month, a prisoner at Eastern CI filed a lawsuit claiming that he had a mild stroke due to an ongoing heart rhythm condition and YesCare gave him 600-mg of Ibuprofen as treatment. The complaints of medical malpractice about YesCare are not hard to find.

Today, the @BaltimoreBanner published its second story on @OAGMaryland's dealings with Butler Snow LLP, a law firm that has defended prison systems across the Deep South, namely from lawsuits brought by civil rights groups like the ACLU and SPLC. A thread: thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim… Butler Snow attorneys entered their appearances in the decades-old class action against Baltimore jails last month, catching the ACLU off guard. The private lawyers surfaced as the state had been struggling to come into compliance with the 2016 settlement.
thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim…

New: @OAGMaryland has ratcheted up its defense of Baltimore's dysfunctional jail system, hiring a private attorney known for his lofty price tag (>$15M in Alabama) and going directly after the medical monitor, a marked change 6 years after the settlement.
thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim… The moves come as the state has admitted recently that it is backsliding and failing to meet its goals to come into compliance with the 2016 settlement in Duvall v. Hogan, a decades-old healthcare class action that predates when the state took over the jails in 1991.

Happening now: the first quarterly consent decree hearing since the departure of former police commissioner Michael Harrison, who was frequently lauded by Judge James Bredar. It's also the first hearing since @BaltimoreBanner reported on this: thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim… Judge Bredar says it will be a a "particularly substantive" hearing today, and will go over many topics, including stop-and-search. The Banner covered the status of that here: thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim…

NEW: In Baltimore jails, people in acute mental health crises are being held in confinement, medication goes unfilled, and electronic medical records are so buggy that detainees who are very much alive are being shown as "deceased."
thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim… The revelations come from two recent reports by the jail's court-ordered monitors. Nearly 6 months after Javarick Gantt was killed while being housed in a cell with an accused murderer, people with disabilities are still not being provided accommodations. thebaltimorebanner.com/community/crim…

DeSantis vaccine updates:
Florida should be getting more Pfizer, over 200K doses, if not this week, by next week. DeSantis says that should keep going up. After brief interruption from golf cart, DeSantis comments on J&J vaccine, again stresses that the vaccine is 100% effective against hospitalization and deaths, even if efficacy for infections is not as high as mRNA vax.

NEW:
A @JacksonHealth policy requiring a doctor's note to vaccinate those 55+ at risk for severe COVID in Miami-Dade will work against people on the fringes of healthcare access -- The same communities that have disproportionate risk factors, like obesity miamiherald.com/news/coronavir… “A lot of the people who are most in need of the vaccine at the age of 55 and may have weathered things like discrimination over time and may actually have similar outcomes to those 65 and older are going to be missed if they do not have a regular doctor,” - @zinzinator said.

BREAKING: Florida discovers 25 new COVID-19 cases. Last night was 16. Night before that was 8. Six new Miami cases. Nine new Broward cases.

THREAD: Florida prison labor dates back to the days of emancipation. Some things hardly change. Teams of incarcerated men — disproportionately black — have long been used to prop up Florida's rural economies. Our findings so far: gatehousenews.com/workforced/hom… For the last century, able-bodied state prisoners assigned to work squads have had two options: work for no pay, or go to confinement. And for those 100 years, they've had largely the same complaints: not enough food, corrupt and cruel guards, unsanitary living conditions...

Private companies are doing more business than ever in Florida state's prison system. This doesn’t usually work out well for inmates and their loved ones, who are bearing record-high costs associated with incarceration. (1/11) Inmate canteens were privatized in 2003. The DOC's dealings with Securus/JPay date back to 2005. But in recent years, contracts have expanded, and the FDC is bringing in more $ than ever from the commissions worked into them. (2/11) jacksonville.com/news/20180601/…