CoreCivic, owner of private prisons, has agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle attorneys’ claims that the company illegally recorded calls between the attorneys and their inmate clients, disrupting what the attorneys say should have been privileged calls. This settlement follows a previous $1.6 million settlement reached with inmates who had taken issue with the same instance of alleged call recording. CoreCivic is joined in the settlement by Securus Technologies, a phone and video chat provider that provides communications services to prisons and their inmates.

According to the attorneys and inmates, CoreCivic had recorded calls between attorneys and inmates at Leavenworth CoreCivic Detention Center, a maximum security federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan. The deal was approved by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. 

The Kansas City Star reports on the settlement, noting that the settlement includes more than 500 attorneys who allegedly had their calls recorded.

From the settlement fund, almost $1.3 has been allocated to cover attorney fees, meaning the representation for the attorneys who are plaintiffs in the Leavenworth Detention Center call recording class action lawsuit. Additionally, two class representatives will be given $25,000 each as incentive awards.

The remainder of the settlement fund will be divided between other Class Members. Attorneys in the Class are eligible for either $10,000 in compensation or $20,000 in compensation, depending what types of communication were recorded. The settlement allows those who had either in-person meetings or phone calls with clients either recorded or intercepted to collect up to $10,000 from the settlement. Those attorneys who had both in-person communication and phone calls with clients intercepted or recorded are eligible for up to $20,000 in compensation. 

If there are any unclaimed funds in the settlement fund, they will be donated to Legal Aid of Western Missouri and Kansas Legal Services, explains the Kansas City Star. 

Is the Settlement an Admission of Wrongdoing?

CoreCivic and Securus maintain that no wrongdoing was committed at Leavenworth Detention Center in the call recording instance. However, the companies agreed to settle with both attorneys and inmates in the interest of avoiding continued costs and risks associated with litigation.

Amanda Gilchrist, CoreCIvic’s Director of Public Affairs, told the Kansas City Star that “there was no wrongdoing on the part of our company or our professionals.” Securus echoed that sentiment, saying that there is “no evidence that Securus engaged in any wrongdoing here.”

According to Securus spokesperson Jade Trombetta, the phone numbers of the attorneys whose phone calls were supposedly recorded were not entered into the call recording system at all. The system would have recognized those communications as private if the numbers had been entered, he says.

Nonetheless, Trombetta went on to say that the company would be making improvements to the call system that would allow “incarcerated individuals and their attorneys even more clarity regarding the status of private or non-private calls” and said that the company is “troubled by any misuse of our technology, even if unintentional.”

Last year’s settlement reached with inmates over the same call recording issue was much smaller. In an earlier article, the Kansas City Star reported that a class of more than 500 current and former inmates at the Leavenworth Detention Center received $1.45 million in a settlement with CoreCivic and Securus — less than half of what the attorneys received in their settlement. 

However, per the terms of the Leavenworth Call Recording class action settlement, some detainees were eligible for up to $10,000, the lower end of potential payouts for attorneys in their later settlement. Of the total $1.45 million settlement established for inmates, CoreCivic agreed to pay $1.1 million and, and Securus would contribute the remaining $350,000.

Kansas reportedly has dealt with a number of issues regarding the recording of inmates’ calls, says the Kansas City Star. Reportedly, a federal judge had held the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas in contempt of court for repeatedly failing to cooperate during an investigation of prosecutors’ allegedly improper use of privileged calls in court cases. 

WTOP News explains that the judge found that the Attorney’s Office had failed to comply with the court’s instruction to preserve documents about their alleged call recording, as well as the recordings themselves that were supposedly wrongly gathered. The judge called the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s actions a “systematic practice of purposeful collection, retention, and exploitation of calls.”

Reportedly, this issue led to three sentences for federal crimes being done away with, and over 100 more inmates have asked for a similar decision to be made in their cases.