Texas Prison Bid'ness

State Represenative, Kevin Bailey (D-Houston), requested an Attorney General (AG) opinion on whether it is legal for a sheriff to accept a fee for work with a private prison company, according to the Waco Tribune ("Texas House member asks state to rule on whether sheriff's pay from work with private detention company is legal," September 21).

Bailey currently chairs the House Committee on Urban Affairs. His AG requests comes after several private contract scandals surfaced. Over the last year, sheriffs in Bexar County and McLennan County have come under scrutiny.

McLennan County officials have rationalized why they believe the payments from private contractors are acceptable. According to an attorney that represents McLennan County, Sheriff Lynch receives a $12,000 salary supplement -- paid to the county from CivicGenics -- for administrative services associated with leasing the county's downtown jail to the private prison company.

Bailey's request asks for certain clarifications in current law.

“Although the sheriff may not actually be a shareholder of the private organization and hold a shareholder’s interest in the private organization, there can be no doubt that the sheriff would have a ‘financial interest’ in the private organizations’ contract with the county if the sheriff receives a sizable administrative fee after approving of the contract if the contract includes such an administrative fee to the sheriff,” Bailey wrote in his letter. “Thus, such an arrangement would violate the spirit and intent, if not the language of the law.”

There are over 256 counties in Texas. Each elects a sheriff that runs and manages the county jail. There is extremely limited oversight these sheriff's actions and their management of the jail. So, further clarification by the AG would be helpful. We will keep you posted on the AG's opinion.

For related coverage see the following posts:

• Private Commissary Contracts Lead to Corruption in Bexar County
  
  

• Bexar County Sheriff Indicted
  
  

• Grits Covers Jail Commissary Contract Scandal
  
  

• Sheriff’s Confidant Pleads Guilty in Bexar County/Premier Management Scandal
  
  

• Potter County Sheriff Bribed by Jail Commissary Manager

Via Grits for Breakfast, The Associated Press's Andrea Jackson has an excellent expose ("Idaho's out-of-state prison population grows," September 21) on the state of Idaho's "Virtual Prison Project," the practice of sending its inmates to out-of-state private prisons, including a number here in Texas. The results of sending prisoners thousands of miles away from family members, support networks, and attorneys has been, predictably, not good:

Drashner, convicted of repeat drunken driving, is one of three Idaho inmates who have died in the custody of private lockups in other states since March 2007. He was the first this year.

On Aug. 18, Twin Falls native Randall McCullough, 37, was found dead in his cell at the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas. McCullough was serving time for robbery and authorities believe he committed suicide.

State Department of Correction officials say he left a note, although autopsy results.

His family says he shouldn't have been in Texas at all.

Two of the three deaths in out-of-state private prisons were suicides occuring in GEO Group facilities in Texas. Scot Noble Payne died tragically in the GEO Group's Dickens County Correctional Center after complaining of squalid conditions at the facility. A subsequent report from the Idaho Department of Correction's Health Director called the prison the worst facility he'd ever seen. This summer, Randall McCullough took his own life after spending more than a year in solitary confinement at the Bill Clayton Detention Centerin Littlefield, Texas after a fight in which no criminal charges were filed. According to the story, conditions at Bill Clayton are fairly appalling:

During recent visits to the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas — where about 371 Idaho inmates are now held — state inspectors found there wasn't a legal aid staffer to give inmates access to courts, as required by the state contract. Virtual Prison monitors also agreed with Aragon's assessment of the facility.

"No programs are offered at the facility," a state official wrote in a recently redacted Idaho Virtual Prison report obtained by the Times-News. "Most jobs have to do with keeping the facility clean and appear to be less meaningful. This creates a shortage of productive time with the inmates.

"Overall, recreational activities are very sparse within the facility — Informal attempts have been made to encourage the facility to increase offender activities that would in the long run ease some of the boredom that IDOC inmates are experiencing," according to a Virtual Prison report.

The prison has since made improvements, the state said.

Only one inmate case manager worked at Bill Clayton during a recent state visit, but the facility did increase recreation time and implemented in-cell hobby craft programs, Virtual Prison reports show. Other inmate complaints center around the way they the were transported out of state.

Clearly, Idaho is making a mistake in sending prisoners to private prisons out-of-state. The state has options, including investing in drug treatment programs and alternatives to incarceration programs that might have a better success rate than sending folks to lock-ups across the country. As Kathleen reported last year here at Texas Prison Bid'ness, an enormous amount of Idaho's prison population is addicted to drugs or alcohol:

A more rational system would actually look first at whether or not these folks need to be incarcerated, and especially how many of them would benefit from drug treatment in the community. Both Montana and Idaho are stuffing their prisons with folks who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Idaho's Understanding Growth report from 2006 explained that over 85% of their offenders have substance abuse issues. Montana's in similar boat: they reported last fall that 93% of folks in pre-release have a substance abuse problem. Investments in treatment will get us more of the results we want, and stop the relentless swing of the "revolving door" on state prisons. But instead we get higher prison budgets and less money for drug treatment in and out of prison.

In addition to being poor policy on the part of Idaho's state lawmakers, it's also bewildering that the state of Texas, which has its share of private prison problems, would allow an out-of-state entity to continue to ship prisoners into the state. This especially true when at Texas agency, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, is charged with overseeing these facilities. It may be time for state lawmakers to revisit this policy. In the words of Randall McCullough's sister:

"Idaho should step up to the plate and bring their prisoners home," said his sister, Laurie Williams.

I'll be speaking at a forum this Wednesday in Georgetown on the T. Don Hutto detention center.  Here are the details:

Immigration Reform Effort sponsors this forum on the controversial T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Taylor, run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America.

Panelists include Barbara Hines, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at UT School of Law and co-counsel in the lawsuits challenging conditions at T. Don Hutto; Scott Medlock, Attorney; Prisoners' Rights Advocate in the Austin office for the Texas Civil Rights Project; Bob Libal, Texas Coordinator, Grassroots Leadership, which works to abolish for-profit private prisons; and Jose Orta, President, LULAC Council 4721, longtime Taylor resident and critic of T. Don Hutto.

Location: Georgetown Public Library, 402 W. 8th St.

Originally, the forum had been envisioned as a debate between critics of Hutto and public supporters of the prison, including representatives of Corrections Corporation of America, U.S. Representative John Carter, and Williamson County Judge Dan Gattis.  However, as the Austin Chronicle pointed out last week, supporters of the forum have chosen not to participate in the forum:

Immigration Reform Effort founder MaryEllen Kersch, former mayor of Georgetown, conceived the forum to allow the public to confront Hutto authorities. However, as Kersch told the Chronicle, a three-hour conversation with U.S. Rep. John Carter's aide, Jonas Miller, was futile. "Miller related that the congressman is completely supportive of Hutto in every aspect," Kersch said. Another lengthy meeting with WilCo Judge Dan Gattis offered hope. Though afraid of an "ambush," according to Kersch, Gattis "was still open to a discussion." Sweetening the pot, Kersch offered to scrap the "pro" and "con" format and screen audience questions. Still, no dice – Gattis would skip the forum and stand by ICE and CCA, whose officials sent apologies that they wouldn't attend.

photo: Matt Gossage
The GEO Group's Laredo Superjail, a 1,500 bed federal detention center that attracted opposition in Laredo and around the state, held it's grand opening Wednesday. As someone involved in the organizing against the prison, which will hold mostly immigrants being held under criminal immigration charges under the Orwellian-titled Operation Streamline, I was especially sad to see this prison open. 

I attended the opening, and have to admit it was even more surreal than I could have imagined - complete with a high school mariachi band singing in Spanish, a cake in the shape of the GEO Group's corporate logo, and a slew of new GEO Group prison guards (many of whom looked to be 18 or 19) wearing desert camo style uniforms.

GEO Group executives George Zoley and Wayne Calabrese mingled with local politicos, including Laredo mayor Raul Salinas and Webb County judge Danny Valdez, who apparently have forgotten their respective councils' rejection of GEO's "blood money" a little over a year ago.

The prison will hold pre-trial federal detainees for the U.S. Marshals - many of whom will be immigrants prosecuted for criminal violations under the program Operation Streamline. The facility was proposed back in 2003, and even before the official launch of Streamline, the U.S. Marshals' federal detention capacity was being pushed almost exclusively by expanded criminal prosecution of immigration violations (PDF), a departure from the old style of dealing with immigration issues in the immigration court system.

Simply put, this $100 million gift to the GEO Group comes because the government is holding border-crossers in criminal jail for 30-90 days before transporting them to deportation proceedings. What doesn't seem very "streamline" about this process?