Texas Prison Bid'ness

I was able to see the new film The Visitor at a pre-screening in Austin a few weeks ago, and highly recommend it. It follows a college professor who befriends an immigrant couple only to find his friend detained at private prison, which seems modeled after the GEO Group's Queens, NY detention center, after being caught up in a minor incident with the police. It's a pretty realistic look at the detention system. Take a look at the trailer:

The film is screening in selected theatres across the country, including several Texas locations. Check in out. See this site for locations and showtimes.

A great new interactive site has been developed by Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh, students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, called The Business of Detention. Check out the trailer:

The site features interviews with yours truly and Texas Prison Bid'ness found Judy Greene. We'll feature more clips from the Business of Detention in the coming days, but please check out the website for more information on the rise of the private detention industry in Texas.

A great letter last week in the Fort Bend Star ("Sending Prisoners to Another Facility Disturbing," April 16, 2008) about the Ford Bend County Commission's decision to send county prisoners over 500 miles away to the Dickens County Correctional Center. According to the letter, authored by local resident Sue Ann Lorig (and referencing Texas Prison Bidness),

Although some of the Fort Bend County Commissioners find the location a joking matter, long-distance separation is not humorous to the families of inmates. When inmates are hundreds of miles away, few families can visit. Children especially suffer.

Children of incarcerated parents are at higher risk of incarceration themselves, and they exhibit many problems that accompany parental separation, especially (when) they can't even visit. For the inmates, family connections can mean the difference between future success and recidivism. Studies have shown that continued contact with family can reduce prisoner recidivism.

Certainly long-distance separation of prisoners from their families can have devastating impacts. Just last spring at the Dickens County Correctional Center, Idaho inmate Scot Noble Payne committed suicide after enduring what the AP later called "squalid" conditions. The Idaho Department of Corrections health director later called the facility the worst prison he'd ever seen and "beyond repair."

So, why would Fort Bend want to send their prisoners to a prison with this track record? Well, one answer might lie in the change of ownership - the GEO Group, who had operated the prison, handed over management to CiviGenics, another private prison corporation, in December.

But CiviGenics has had its own troubled history in Texas. As we've reported, a 21 year-old immigrant took his own life in CiviGenics Ector lock-up last month, and CiviGenics facilities in Texarkanas and Waco have both experienced sexual assault incidents at their facilities.

Our previous coverage of Dickens County Correctional Center:

• MSNBC Reports on "Squalid" Conditions at Dickens County Lock-up

• Family of Scot Noble Payne Sues GEO Over Dickens County Conditions

• Scandal Prompts Warden to Resign from GEO Prison

• CiviGenics Will Manage Troubled DCCC

Yesterday, there were a flurry of news stories about Tuesday's ICE-sponsored press tour at the T. Don Hutto family detention center. Nicole reported yesterday the favorable coverage that media outlets seemed to be providing Hutto in the wake of the tour.

Today, the media is far more critical of Hutto and the press tour. First, Lisa Falkenberg in the Houston Chronicle ("Imprisoned families: On the real tour," April 24, 2008) pens a terrific commentary taking on ICE's contention that the "family-friendly" additions to the facility would have happened without public scrutiny:

The family-friendly reforms come after more than a year of harsh media spotlight, tireless efforts by The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and a pile of lawsuits brought by the ACLU of Texas.

Yet, as immigration officials ushered reporters through the facility this week to show off their progress, one high-ranking ICE official tried to claim that the changes would have happened without the lawsuits.

"Everything that was included in that settlement was either done prior to the settlement, in progress during the settlement or contemplated prior to the settlement," Gary Mead, ICE's acting director for detention and removal, was quoted saying in an Associated Press story.

Mead is the same guy who told me early last year — when Hutto's fence was still rimmed in razor wire and immigrant kids were still issued uniforms, counted three times a day and subjected to substandard education and health care — that his agency had already made the former prison as homelike as it could.

"I think we've done a very good job of softening things to make it as family-friendly as we can," Mead told me in February 2007.

That doesn't sound like a reform-minded official intent on pushing for major changes.

Falkenberg speculates that Mead's comments "may be nothing more than public relations spin." She finishes her piece by criticizing plans for more "Hutto-like" detention centers as

a troubling prospect in and of itself, considering that ICE has been specifically instructed by Congressional appropriations committees to prioritize alternatives, such as effective, less-expensive electronic monitoring. But one can only hope the mistaken model of converting a former prison into a "homelike" environment won't be duplicated.

Falkenberg's story is followed by a blog entry at Daily Kos titled "Hutto No Model for Prison for Children" by Gouri Bhat of the ACLU. Bhat was one of the attorney who sued ICE on behalf of families detained at Hutto over the prison's conditions last year. The settlement from that lawsuit is one of the factors leading to bettering of conditions at the prison.

Bhat calls Mead's statement that the activism and lawsuit had nothing to do with the changes at Hutto "disingenuous at best." She goes on to say,

Other reported statements by Mead are still more disturbing — specifically, his assertion that Hutto will be a model for future family detention centers to be opened by the government. Clearly, ICE’s enthusiasm for detaining families is undiminished, despite Hutto’s $33.6 million annual price tag and numerous admonitions from Congress to explore less expensive alternatives to detention before locking up immigrant children. If more family detention centers are on the horizon, the ACLU’s Hutto settlement should serve as a useful model in many respects and a cautionary tale.

However, despite the hard-won reforms at Hutto, the facility — managed by a for-profit adult corrections company — is still fundamentally and structurally a prison. As such, Hutto is far from the best or most appropriate place to house infants, toddlers, children and teens who are detained with their parents. Julie Myers, ICE Assistant Secretary and Mead’s boss, appeared to recognize this when she told Congress in October 2007 that "the physical structure of Hutto — a former prison — will not be used as the model for future facilities." We hope in this case, the boss is right.

We'll keep you updated on more media from the Hutto press tour as it comes out.