Texas Prison Bid'ness

This story should be added to the always growing list of private prison scandals, Mineral Wells Index ("Teen Caught with pot near prison" August 25, 2008):

A 14-year-old male was taken into custody late Thursday night near the Corrections Corporation of America facility after they were notified of a “suspicious person” in the 700 block of Heintzelman Road.

According to police reports the youth attempted to send two footballs stuffed with marijuana and cell phones.

Yet another Idaho prisoner has committed suicide in a GEO Group prison in Texas, according to an article in the Times-News ("Inmate suicide could be second for prison program" August 21),

The state's Virtual Prison Program is only a year old and the Monday death of inmate Randall McCullough, 37, could be the second suicide involving the initiative outside of Idaho.

Idaho prison officials said Wednesday they're still investigating if McCullough committed suicide at a private contracted facility in Texas - Bill Clayton Detention Center run by the GEO Group Inc. - which is holding 371 inmates each at $51 per day under a contract that expires in July 2009.

The Virtual Prison Program started in July 2007, but the state started putting inmates in non-state owned facilities in October 2005, said Idaho Department of Correction Spokesman Jeff Ray.

Six state inmates have committed suicide since July 2006, not including McCullough, Ray said.

This death follows the tragic death of Scot Noble Payne a year ago at GEO's Dickens County Correctional Center. After Noble Payne's suicide, a subsequent investigation revealed squalid conditions and the Idaho Department of Corrections Health Director called the prison the worst facility he'd ever seen. Incredibly, and against our advice, Idaho didn't bring its prisoners back home, it moved them to other GEO prisons in the state.

Clearly, housing inmates thousands of miles away from family and a support network creates even more isolating conditions for prisoners and makes re-entry much more difficult. Simply put, it's bad public policy. McCullough family sums it better than I can in the Times-News article,

Some of McCullough's family members said they think Idaho should keep its inmates in the state.

IDOC has said building another with 1,500 beds could cost $191 million - not including staff, Ray said.

Family of Idaho inmates housed in other states can't visit them easily, said McCullough's grandmother, Nadine Smith, of Twin Falls. "He was in trouble, he was in prison, but we missed him and wanted to see him."

McCullough's sister, Laurie Williams, of Lynden, Wash., said she hadn't seen him in three years.

"I don't think (Virtual Prison Program) should exist," Williams said. "Idaho should step up to the plate and bring their prisoners home."

Prisoners are isolated even more when distanced from their families, said Williams. "That's all they have to look forward to. They have nothing else except the people in there ... That's damn lonely."

Texas should strongly consider a disallowing prison facilities from importating out-of-state prisoners.  We don't want to have to be writing a similar story about and Idaho inmate at a GEO Group Texas prison next summer.

The Texas House Corrections Committee will be holding an interim meeting tomorrow (Thursday, August 20th) to discuss several items. None are specifically about private prisons, but the conversation about Texas State Jails, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's prisons for felonies carrying a sentence of two years or less, should of interest to Texas Prison Bid'ness readers. Here's the information from the Committee's website:

COMMITTEE: Corrections
TIME & DATE: 9:00 AM, Thursday, August 21, 2008
PLACE: E2.016
CHAIR: Rep. Jerry Madden

The House Committee on Corrections will hear invited and public testimony
on the following interim charges:

1. Explore the use of technology practices that improve efficiency, safety, and coordination of criminal justice activities on the state, local, and county levels.

2. Consider new strategies for meeting prisoner reentry challenges in Texas, including the evaluation of programs with documented success. This review should include the availability of housing and occupational barriers.

3. Provide a comprehensive analysis and study of the Texas state jail system, including original intent for use, sentencing guidelines, and effectiveness. Develop suggestions for changes and improvements in the state jail system.

Scott Hensen over at Grits for Breakfast covers the hearings including a statement from Texas Criminal Justice Coalition about findings regarding prisoner re-entry programs that they will release at tomorrow's hearings.

Corrections Corporation of America has launched The CCA 360.com a website for the corporation to respond to critics. You'd think that a leading corporation in a billion dollar industry such as private prisons would be able to come up with something more catchy than "The CCA 360" for a website, but apparently not. The website is a response to ongoing criticism of the private prison industry generally and CCA's operations more specifically. According to a front-page post by CEO John Ferguson:

For people seeking the unfiltered, full 360-degree view of CCA, we have created this Web site - TheCCA360.com. This site provides greater detail about news coverage of CCA, including the publicized tragic death of an inmate in a CCA facility, and viewpoints we’ve shared with our customers and employees.

The website apparently was developted to take on criticism of the company's operations by non-governmental organizations and activists though Texas Prison Bid'ness has not yet made the company's hit-list! Our friend Alex Friedmann, the former CCA prisoner whose efforts seem to have de-railed the federal judicial nomination of former CCA chief counsel Gus Puryear has. The website also addresses critics of CCA's T. Don Hutto family detention center claiming, as ICE has in the past, that improvements at Hutto had nothing to do with public protests, a litigation settlement, or widespread media scrutiny.

As soon as CCA was selected to assist ICE with this pressing need, ICE and CCA began working together to renovate the facility to meet the needs of its new population. While extensive media coverage has implied that reforms were the result of litigation, ICE maintained a deliberate and systematic program for the development of the Hutto facility throughout the period of the contract. That contract and that development process are still ongoing.

I'm not sure that I believe that, seeing as none of the improvements to Hutto were apparently made before the facility was condemned in a series of protests and news articles starting in December 2006. Regardless, this new CCA website should give private prison opponents an interesting look into the company's public relations machine.