October 2008

From the Texas Senate Commitee on Criminal Justice's website,

That's an excellent question asked in an article by Mike Ward in Saturday's Austin American Statesman (Lawmakers demand that TYC cancel contract that pays for empty beds," October 19).

As a new controversy exploded over the Texas Youth Commission spending more than $1.26 million to lease prison beds that remained empty for three months, key lawmakers demanded Friday that the contract be cancelled.

Although top Youth Commission officials stopped short of agreeing to do so, they vowed never again to use taxpayer money to pay startup costs for a vendor — as they did for Youth Services International, the Florida-based company that runs the lockup in Eagle Lake that is still mostly empty.

Youth Commission spokesman Jim Hurley said 18 youths were moved into the lockup Friday — far fewer than the 119 needed to cover the $22,500-a-day cost to taxpayers under the contract.

He also said that the agency would not provide startup costs in the future.

The controversy erupted after the American-Statesman disclosed details of the contract, which was set up for taxpayers to pay for empty beds for three months to cover the company's startup costs — something other state agencies prohibit.

The company, which operates programs for troubled youths in at least seven states, previously ran the lockup under a contract with the Youth Commission that ended about two years ago, a state report showed.

This story is a few weeks old at this point, but it certainly is worth a mention.  Idaho, the state with the most out-of-state prisoners held in private lock-ups in Texas has decided to bring some of its inmates back to prisons within its borders.  According to the Associated Press ("Idaho brings 80 inmates back from Texas, Oklahoma," October 1),

For a decade, Idaho has been shipping some of its prisoners to out-of-state prisons, dealing with its ever-burgeoning inmate population by renting beds in faraway facilities.

But now some groups of prisoners are being brought back home. Idaho Department of Correction officials are crediting declining crime rates, improved oversight during probation, better community programs and increased communication between correction officials and the state's parole board.

The number of Idaho inmates has more than doubled since 1996, reaching a high of 7,467 in May. But in the months since then, the population has declined to 7,293 -- opening up enough space that 80 inmates housed in the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., and at Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, could be bused back to the Idaho State Correctional Institution near Boise. The inmates arrived Monday night.

Of course, shipping inmates over 1,000 miles away to a largely unregulated private prison system can create pretty gruesome consequences.  Idaho's "virtual prison program" and Texas' private prison system more generally came under scrutiny after the tragic suicide of Scot Noble Payne, who died at GEO's Dickens County Correctional Center in 2007. 

Citizens Opposed to the Prison Siting (COPS) turned out in mass on Tuesday to a provide testimony against MTC's proposed federal prison in Nacogdoches at a 30-minutes public hearing called by the County Commission. It certainly appears to me that COPS has provided a thorough set of arguments against building a prison in their community. According to the article in the Daily-Sentinal,