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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Every year, tens of thousands of Americans are arrested and transferred or extradited to another state where they face criminal charges. While some correctional and law enforcement agencies provide their own transportation, many others hire for-profit extradition companies to do the job for them. Without extensive training and often paid by the mile, drivers are incentivized to take longer routes, avoid stops and ignore authentic critical needs of their passengers, which has had dire consequences in some cases.

With me now is Alysia Santo. She's a reporter for the criminal justice focus, The Marshall Project News Organization, and has reported extensively on the topic of for-profit transportation companies. Her reporting along with others prompted a federal inquiry, which we'll get into. We also have Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of a non-profit advocacy group Worth Rises.

As many of you know by now, this segment is part of our series in partnership with The Greene Space and Worth Rises about the business side of the prison industry. We have these conversations Mondays usually to preview a Tuesday Greene Space panel on the same topic, they happen at 7:00 PM on Tuesdays and you can sign up for tomorrow night's on prison transportation by going to thegreenespace.org. Hi, Bianca, welcome back and, Alysia, welcome to WNYC.

Alysia Santo: Thanks for having me.

Bianca Tylek: Hi, Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Bianca, like many of these segments we do for people who haven't been touched by the legal system, transportation is not an aspect they tend to think about very much, but incarcerated people are moved around a lot, right? Give us some background.

Bianca Tylek: Absolutely. Yes, totally right. This is not an area that people spend a lot of time thinking when they think about the prison industry because we often think about what's happening behind the gates and the cinder block walls of the actual facilities. People are moving around quite a bit, often within days when they're moved between facilities in the federal system from one federal prison to another, and US Marshals on their own.

We also see a lot of extraditions. There's an estimated more than 500,000 extraditions that happen every year, and those are people being extradited from one jurisdiction to another to be adjudicated in a different jurisdiction. Those extraditions can be for a million different reasons, including things like not paying child support or some other type of fines and fees.

One of the stories that we raised in the report is the story of Joseph who was actually extradited from New York to Florida for the purpose of having left Florida. He'd already served all of his time in Florida, but he was New York-based and left the state too soon in the state's view. The state actually came, collected him in New York, and brought him back to Florida just to release him after a few months for no other violation other than just leaving the state.

We see these types of extraditions happening all over the country, and people spending weeks in vans, flying over our country at private patrol, essentially moving them about.

Brian Lehrer: Alysia, let me bring you into this. I see you've spent a lot of time investigating the world of private transport companies. Let our listeners know who some of the major players are, and since the whole point of this series "Punishment and Profit" is to look at the business side of the incarceration industry. What's the difference for passengers if they're moved by a private company, or a public government?

Alysia Santo: Well, there's really only one major player in the prison transportation industry, and that's Prison Transportation Services. They used to have some other large companies they competed with, but those companies have since been acquired for the transportation services. There's really no other major competition in the country for this type of service that they offer, I guess. You could--

Brian Lehrer: There's one other company name that I've seen, maybe they were required by PTS, that's TransCor America.

Alysia Santo: TransCor is an extradition-focused company. My investigation focused very specifically on companies that do extraditions. TransCor moves people between ICE facilities and move people between federal facilities, is not the type of thing where you're wanted in another state, and you're picked up and brought back to face charges far away from where you are. That's the focus of our investigations at The Marshall Project.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Why did you choose to focus on the transportation of prisoners from state to state? Give our listeners the headline of what you found. I realized there were so many details, but give our listeners the headline of what you found, and how it wound up in a federal inquiry.

Alysia Santo: Well, the prison transportation industry that focuses on extraditions basically pays-- These companies collect money based on per prisoner per mile. That can be anywhere from 75 cents to $1.50 per mile that a person is moved. The business model incentivizes a structure where these vans, usually their vans, zigzag around the entire country, trying to maximize the number of pickups and drop-offs they do. Because of that, people end up being on these vans for weeks at a time. That's the huge difference here with the extradition industry, is how long people end up on the vans for. They sleep--

Brian Lehrer: Weeks?

Alysia Santo: Yes. Not everyone ends up on there for weeks, but we had many examples of people who had been on there for weeks. That's because you might get picked up in one state and you need to be dropped off 10 states away and they just go along the way picking up and dropping off, and it's not based on who's been on there the longest, it's based on the most efficient route that they can take.

Not only that, usually there's two drivers, and rather than stopping at hotels, the drivers are instructed to continue driving while one of them sleeps in the passenger seat or in the van. Stops are very rare, the vans do not have beds, they don't have toilets, they don't have medical services. As you can imagine, bad things happen to people who have been on these vans, sometimes even just a couple of days, particularly when people have medical issues.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls in this segment. If it happens that we have any listeners out there right now who has ever been transported by prison transportation services, 646-435-7280. We can broaden it, too, if you were transported by TransCor America, or another prison transport service that wasn't even necessarily interstate but tell us your story if you think it's relevant to this segment, the private incarceration transportation industry, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280.

Were you able to stop and use the bathroom when you needed to? Did you not have a seatbelt? Were you seated next to someone who made you feel unsafe? If you were transported by one of these privately run, especially extradition or other prison transport companies, call in and tell us what that experience was like. 646-435-7280.

Alysia, according to the reporting on The Marshall Project site, these private companies have been involved in more than 50 crashes, 60 escapes, and 19 deaths since 2000. I know traffic crashes happen even outside the prison transportation sector, but maybe you can focus in on a few of those especially fatal incidents and tell us what happened, and if you think it was something that really reflects this industry in a bigger way. I'm seeing the name Steven Galack if I'm saying that right, and Johnny Smith, two cases you wrote about.

Alysia Santo: Sure. Steven Galack was the former owner of a home remodeling business and he was living in Florida in July 2012 when he was arrested on an out-of-state warrant for failing to pay child support. He was wanted in Butler County, Ohio, more than a thousand miles away. Butler County had outsourced its long-distance transport to Prisoner Transportation Services.

Galack was put on a van with about 10 other people crammed around him, handcuffed and shackled at the waist and ankles, and began the transport up to Ohio. The air conditioning on that van had faltered and Mr. Galack had grown delusional during the trip. According to depositions in a lawsuit his family filed, he was beaten by other people who were on board and one of them said at the direction of one of the officers and he died aboard that van. His body wasn't discovered until more than 70 miles after the beating apparently happened.

One of the things the Galack story really highlights is that there was a dispute over where he had died, which caused there to be a disagreement about which authority needed to investigate. He was found in Tennessee, but Tennessee officials said he must've died in Georgia so it had to be Georgia that would look into it, but then the Georgia Bureau of Investigation declined to follow up, then the federal government also didn't do an investigation so it wasn't looked at very carefully.

That's one of the things about this transportation industry is because they cross state lines and they're going all over the country, it's not always very apparent whose jurisdiction it is to look into these types of allegations and deaths. There was a lot of questions left about what happened to Mr. Galack during that ride.

Brian Lehrer: I see we have a caller who seems to have a relevant experience in his life, Dylan in Forked River, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Dylan, thank you for calling in.

Dylan: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What happened to you?

Dylan: I was a New Jersey resident and I was living in Michigan at the time and I had a warrant out of New Jersey, and was picked up in Michigan and was held until the transport got me. I was a type one diabetic at the time, insulin-dependent and they took me from Michigan and they zigzagged their way down to about mid-Florida. They had actually left me in Florida for two weeks. I was at a county jail in Florida before they had picked me up again and then brought me up the East Coast to New Jersey.

Those trips, yes, were 24 hours driving straight through. The only meals that we got, we stopped at a McDonald's and they would give you a dollar menu item and a glass of water. That was the only time that we got anything to eat, or I was able to-- I wasn't able to check my blood sugar on it. They did have insulin for me to take, but I didn't know what amount I was taking to correct what. It took about 24 days in total which is a 12-hour drive. I've done it several times from Michigan to New Jersey so it took almost an entire month for me to get 12 hours.

Brian Lehrer: That is quite a story. Do you think that any particular reform should come out of your experience?

Dylan: I think there should be a better holding system, maybe in the jail that you're picked up in until enough prisoners are prepared to be transported there because that was a [unintelligible 00:13:36] deal. I got to New Jersey and they released me, I wasn't even held. It was the most amount of time that I was held I was transported, and you're shackled in a metal bench seat in a very uncomfortable van with as many people as they could stuff in there. I think I was with eight.

Brian Lehrer: Dylan, thank you for sharing your story with us, we really appreciate it. Bianca, I see there is one federal law that regulates the correctional transportation industry, commonly known as Jenna's Act. Am I saying it right? Who was Jenna or Jeana? You tell me how to say that name based on the spelling. Who was Jenna and what does the law do, Bianca?

Bianca Tylek: It is actually Jenna's Law. Jenna was a victim of a crime from somebody who had escaped from a prison transport van. What Jenna's Law actually does is mostly focused on escape from prison transportation, more than it does actually about conditions on prison transportation.

One of the reasons that this is a federal law is because, as Alysia was explaining, these are often fans that are crossing state lines and they still fit within the jurisdiction of one particular state, will enter into the federal jurisdiction, but unfortunately it's the only law and thus there's little being done to protect folks who are being transported like Dylan.

Dylan's experience of being extradited to another jurisdiction, being released upon receipt is not atypical. Even the example that I gave earlier of Joseph, he's in our report and will be on the show tomorrow evening, he was actually delivered to Florida, sat in a Florida county jail for seven months until he saw a judge and the judge released him.

All of that trouble, that humiliation, and that trauma, that hurt happens, in large, in many cases, for no justice type purpose and instead for those to- to profit for those who are carrying them across the country. Brian, I'd love to quickly comment on the TransCor and some of the transportation in other areas, where we have a second.

Brian Lehrer: Good, do it now.

Bianca Tylek: Thanks. I think that we were talking a lot about extradition and extradition is obviously really, really important in terms of how much harm it's causing. These other corporations that you have mentioned, TransCor, there's also one called GEO Transport that are used largely as big federal contractors, used a lot within ICE detention to move people between ICE facilities, or to deport people, are all also really important.

TransCor is actually a subsidiary of one of the two largest private prison corporations, CoreCivic, and GEO Transport is a subsidiary of GEO Group, the other large private prison corporation. We see these mega private prison corporations extending their services so they can essentially own more of the continuum of custody.

Brian Lehrer: Alysia, I see that in your reporting, drivers you talked to defended themselves for not stopping the bus when someone was complaining about being sick, because they never know if they're being set up or if the passenger is faking so they can escape. What kind of training do these drivers receive and what's considered best practice?

Alysia Santo: In our reporting, we found that training for guards was quite minimal. Many had been military veterans, which was justification for why they needed less training. As we were told, they would have tutorial on how to use the handcuffs, how to use the pepper spray. They got a review of policies and paperwork, but they were largely left unprepared for the hazards of driving a van full of people all across the country for weeks at a time.

Escapes do happen. We were able to identify 60 between 2000 and 2016, but honestly a lot of the people who were employed by these companies that we spoke to express that they really wanted to be able to do more for the people in their custody, but were simply unable to due to the pressure they were under to keep the van moving without having to stop at a hospital if someone was feeling sick, without having to stop so people could use the bathroom, or without having to stop so that people could potentially stay overnight, which also has its own difficulties because they'd have to find a jail willing to take everyone on that van for the night into their custody.

Certainly, many officers had very problematic practices as lawsuits showed, but there was also a lot of people who did this job briefly and would basically quit and were absolutely disgusted by what they were being asked to do.

Brian Lehrer: I want to make sure to mention that for incarcerated women and gender non-conforming people, private transportation vans can present even more concerns. According to the reporting in the Marshall Project, over a dozen women have reported being sexually assaulted, some repeatedly by staff while in private transportation vans since 2000. Terrifying and outrageous, obviously.

Alysia, this is going to be our last question, but can you pick out any of those stories, and was there any justice or reform in those cases or what should there be?

Alysia Santo: Because, so often, the only justice that victims or their families have is lawsuits, there are many lawsuits about sexual assaults, but in recent years, there have been a couple of drivers that were prosecuted by the federal government for sexual assault. One was a man named James Ballinger, who worked for PTS and he was sentenced a couple of years ago for sexually assaulting a woman that he was transporting from Kentucky to New Mexico.

There was another case that was pretty big, a man named Eric Scott Kinley. He was also found guilty of assaulting two different women in his custody during two different transports, and also for knowingly possessing a firearm in furtherance of a 2017 sexual assault. The key thing here is these men were able to be in control of these women in a way that I say really defies any logic.

In addition, when women are put on these vans, there's just a plexiglass divider. That's usually the only thing separating the women from all of the men on the van. We just heard horrifying stories from women who were just really very scared for their lives while they were being transported.

Brian Lehrer: There is where we're going to have to leave it with Marshall Project reporter, Alysia Santo, and Worth Rises Executive Director, Bianca Tylek. You can hear more on this topic from both of them and others in tomorrow's Greene Space event at 7:00 PM, part of the Punishment and Profit weekly series that will go through early May. You can sign up by going to the greenespace.org for that seven o'clock tomorrow night Greene Space event. Alysia, thank you so much for joining us and, Bianca, talk to you next week.

Alysia Santo: Thank you so much.

Bianca Tylek: Thank you so much, Brian.

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