Texas Prison Bid'ness

As Kathleen pointed out yesterday, this Saturday will see another vigil at Correction Corporation of America’s T. Don Hutto family detention center in Taylor, Texas.

It will be the first in number of upcoming protests against private detention centers in Texas. A list has been posted by our friends at the Texas Civil Rights Review.

Saturday, October 6: Val Verde County's GEO Detention Center protest. Texas Jail Project, Grassroots Leadership, and Freedom Ambassadors are collaborating on a protest against the notorious Val Verde County GEO facility.

Friday & Saturday, October 12-13: Raymondville Walk II. The Raymondville tent prison camp is the most repugnant of all prison camps. We will conduct a walk from Harlingen on Friday the 12th and Saturday the 13th...and hold a vigil midday on the 13th.

Sunday - Tuesday, October 14-16. Hutto Walk III. The most flagrant of all prisons in America. Innocent children are victims of a government without a conscience. We will conduct a walk from the Hutto family prison camp in Taylor, Texas on Sunday, October 14-and arrive at the County Commissioners Court in Georgetown on the 16th. We will then support the local residents of Williamson County as they challenge the County Commissioners that signed and renewed the contracts and leases to imprison innocent children.

LULAC National and the Cesar Chavez Legacy Foundation are collaborating with Freedom Ambassadors with these walks and vigils.

Texas Prison Bid’ness will be at many of these demonstrations and will send reports.

The San Antonio Express-News had a revealing story yesterday reporting that John Reynolds, long-time campaign manager and friend to indicted now ex-Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez, pleaded guilty to one count of felony theft in conjunction with his role in the Premier Management bribery scandal.

According to the article, Reynolds

"told Premier to pay the equivalent of 1 percent of commissary sales to Lopez's campaign fund and give three payments of $7,500 each that Reynolds said were donations to the Optimists, when, in fact, the money went into his own bank accounts.

Williamson testified that he called Reynolds this past spring, as the investigation was heating up, and asked him for receipts for the three $7,500 donations.

Williamson said there was dead silence until John Reynolds stated, 'You're killing me; you're killing me,' at which time Ian Williamson claimed it was then that he realized that John Reynolds had never delivered the donations," according to court documents.

At one point, Williamson stated, Reynolds demanded a consulting fee of $5,014. When Williamson asked why he shouldn't write a check for a round $5,000, he said Reynolds replied: "that $5,000 looked too funny."

Other filings by the district attorney's office have shown checks made out to Reynolds' accounts and signed by Michael LeBlanc, who is an owner of Premier along with his brother Patrick, and by Chris Burch, who replaced Williamson as Premier's CEO."

Sheriff Lopez recently pleaded no contest to receiving an inappropriate $10,000 trip to Costa Rica paid for by Premier. Premier ended their contract with the County after the scandal broke. As we’ve noted, Premier Management is owned by Pat and Michael LeBlanc, owners of private prison firm LCS Corrections.

As part of his guilty plea, Reynolds will be required to speak openly to investigators about all of the business dealings of Premier, the LeBlanc brothers, and LCS Corrections, amongst other companies he was involved in.

Our previous coverage on the Bexar County scandal:

A Closer Look at LCS Corrections

Premier Private Commissary Scandal Keeps Growing

Bexar County Sheriff Indicted

Private Commissary Contracts Lead to Corruption in Bexar County

And from Grits for Breakfast:

Bexar County Bribery Allegations Over Jail

The Taylor Daily Press has published a guest editorial from Jose Orta, who has been actively involved in the campaign to close down Correction Corporation of America's Hutto lockup:

Since I learned that T. Don Hutto had reopened and was imprisoning innocent children for profit, I, and many other concerned citizens from across the state and nation tried to bring media and public attention to T. Don Hutto by conducting vigils, marching, protesting and lobbying.

For over nine months, we did everything conceivable to bring attention to this flawed facility. It has been an exhaustive and extremely trying time. Read more...

As Bob has previously pointed out, many observers are noting that the settlement is a good first step, but not an adequate solution to the problems of Hutto.

Orta mentions the next vigil at Hutto will be this Saturday at 11 AM. Read more about it here.

There is also online talk of another possible "walk" against Hutto, scheduled for October. Read about it at Progressive Austin.

The Laredo Morning Times is reporting that local Univision reporter Wendolyn Morales has been nominated for a Texas Emmy for her work covering the case of Tomas Contreras.

As readers of Texas Prison Bid'ness might remember, Contreras is the longtime U.S. resident who detained while re-entering the country on a 18 year-old minor drug conviction. He was subsequently held for months at two Laredo detention centers run by Corrections Corporation of America and beaten when reporting poor conditions.

After Morales' report, U.S. representative Tammy Baldwin became involved in the case and Contreras was released soon after.

Congrats to Ms. Morales on this nomination and we wish you the best of luck covering stories of importance like this.