Texas Prison Bid'ness

GEO ProtesterThe GEO Group appears to be saying very little about last week's unprecedented indictment of the company for murder in the case of Gregorio de la Rosa at the company's former Willacy facility. According to an article in the Valley Morning Star ("Three count indictment accuses prison in murder," October 27),

Inmates killed de la Rosa, who was serving a six-month sentence for drug possession, on the prison grounds just four days before his scheduled release in April 2001. In 2006, a jury ordered the company pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment described as the largest jury award in Willacy County history.

A jury handed down the verdict against Wackenhut Corrections Corp., accused of negligence in de la Rosa's death. Ron Rodriguez, the attorney who represents de la Rosa's family, argued that inadequate inmate searches and short staffing led to the April 26, 2001 beating.

The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp. The GEO Group did not respond to a message requesting comment Monday afternoon.

Similar non-statements were made by GEO officials in last week's AP story and as we've reported, the indictment is one of a growing string of scandals happening in GEO Group's Texas prisons over the course of the last several years. Some of those incidents include:

1. In August, Idaho inmate Randall McCullough committed suicide at GEO's Bill Clayton lock-up in Littlefield, Texas. McCullough had been held in solitary confinement for over a year as administrative punishment for a fight that was not criminally prosecuted.

2. In May, WOAI reporter Brian Collister reported allegations of widespread sexual abuse of female immigrant detainees at the company's South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall. The allegations were verified by a number of former guards at the facility. The same Pearsall detention center was the subject of a lawsuit in September, 2007 alleging that a mentally disabled prisoner was proper denied medical care and generally mistreated.

3. The Texas Youth Commission shuttered GEO's Coke County Juvenile Correctional Center "filthy" and "unsafe" conditions including feces on walls and fire exits chained shut were found at the facility. In the wake of the scandal revelations that the TYC monitors at the facility were former GEO employees, State Senate John Whitmire called hearings on private prison oversight. GEO Group responded by sending in lobbyists, and substantially increased its lobbying expenditures in the state over the following months. Seven youths then sued the company over conditions at the facility.

4. The suicide of Idaho inmate Scot Noble Payne last spring at GEO's Dickens County Correctional Center lead to an investigation into the facility's operation. The Associated Press's expose on the prison described the facility as "squalid" while Idaho's Department of Corrections Director of Health Care called the prison the worst he's ever seen and "beyond repair." Noble Payne's family has subsequently sued GEO over conditions at the prison.

5. In November 2007, a former GEO Group guard has been indicted on federal civil rights
   charges for twice striking a federal detainee while employed at the Val Verde Correctional Center. The Val Verde Detention Center had been subjected to two well-publicized lawsuits in the past several years. In a 2005 suit, an employee reported that his superior displayed a hangman’s noose in his office and took pictures in his prison uniform donning KKK garb. The second lawsuit was brought by a civil rights organization on behalf of the family of LeTisha Tapia, a detainee who committed suicide after reporting that she had been sexually assaulted and denied medical care. GEO settled both suits. The settlement from the Tapia suit included a full-time county monitor to the prison.

6. This summer, Val Verde was again rocked after four inmates came down with a mysterious illness. Three of the inmates later died, but a state investigation could find nothing at the prison linking the prison to the illnesses.

7. In March 2008, a 20 year-old Val Verde GEO Group guard was indicted for smuggling marijuana into the correctional facility. Similar charges were filed against two other GEO Group jailers who attempted to smuggle liquor and contraband into the facility.

This is the first of a three-part report to Texas Prison Bid'ness based on research on the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility conducted by Grassroots Leadership. The Mineral Wells facility is a contract-facility under the jurisdiction of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. For more information, please contact Nick Hudson using our contact form.

After receiving a steady stream of reports about unsafe conditions at Corrections Corporation of America's Mineral Wells Unit, and a reader's report of a large disturbance at the facility in July, Grassroots Leadership filed an open records request for data on the 2,100-bed Pre-Parole Transfer Facility. This report documents the pattern of abuse and mistreatment suffered by prisoners at Mineral Wells that has been corroborated by multiple family members of people held at Mineral Wells.

We requested any documents referencing major uses of force, sexual assaults, riots, or criminal cases at the facility between January 1, 2006 and July 23rd of this year. The documents we received indicate that, between January 1, 2006 and July 23, 2008, the CCA-managed prison reported one sexual assault allegation, opened eight criminal cases involving sexual contact between guards or facility personnel and prisoners, recorded thirty-one major uses of force by officers at the facility, and detailed one large disturbance in August of 2007 involving 36 prisoners and 20 staff members that lasted almost four hours and ended only after CCA staff used chemical agents.

We weren't able to confirm through documents the large disturbance reported by one of our readers in July. TDCJ received our request on or around the day of the reported riot, though, and it's probable that the agency excluded it from disclosure based on the original date printed on our request. If we are able to confirm that the riot occurred, it would be the second large riot at the facility in less than a year. We're following up with further inquiry.

This will be a three-part report. Today, I'll be reporting on sexual assault and sexual contact data. Next Monday, we'll investigate use of force allegations at the facility. On November 10, we'll report on details of the August 2007 disturbance.

Reported Sexual Assault and Sexual Contact Between Guards and Prisoners at Mineral Wells

We were provided basic information on nine files referencing either sexual assault or sexual contact between Mineral Wells staff and prisoners at the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility between January 1, 2006 and July 28, 2008.

One criminal file we received regarded an allegation of sexual assault at the facility during the period of our request. We weren't provided with any information on how the case proceeded, but we will work to determine whether it resulted in any convictions. Below is a brief summary:

#06-2153 a case regarding allegations that a prisoner was sexually assaulted by four other prisoners every night for a period of about six months.

In addition to the criminal case above, we received information on eight criminal cases pertaining to sexual contact between guards or facility personnel and prisoners at Mineral Wells; the contact in all cases was ostensibly consensual, but sexual contact is understandably classified as a violation of the prisoners' civil rights punishable as a state jail felony in Texas. At least one of the cases referenced resulted in the prosecution of a staff member from the facility.

One of the eight reported sexual contact cases remains inexplicably open. An allegation of sexual contact was made in January of 2006, and the case file remains unresolved by the OIG almost three years later.

Two of the eight sexual contact cases, both from 2007, were declined for prosecution; they did not result in a conviction or deferred adjudication. The case files still contain information to support future reconsideration of criminal charges against employees, though.

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

COMMITTEE: Criminal Justice
TIME & DATE: 10:00 AM, Thursday, November 13, 2008
PLACE: E1.016 (Hearing Room)
CHAIR: Senator John Whitmire

The committee will meet to hear invited and public testimony for the following:

Interim Charge 1: Determine how private prisons are complying with state laws and how cost, safety, living conditions and rehabilitative services at private prisons compare with state-run facilities. Include an assessment of the staff turnover rates and compensation of private contractors when compared with state-operated facilities, and of the contract bidding processes used by the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Interim Charge 4: Monitor the implementation of the new and expanded programs provided to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) within the Fiscal Year 2008 and 2009 budget, and identify their impact on the criminal justice populations. Study security issues within TDCJ, including staffing issues, use of lock down procedures, the control and containment of infectious diseases and the introduction and control of contraband within the institutions. Review the use of career ladders for employees of TDCJ and issues surrounding the retention of professional corrections staff. Study the issues of independent oversight of TDCJ, including the use and effectiveness of the TDCJ ombudsman system. Provide recommendations for the reduction or elimination of barriers to an effective corrections system.

Interim Charge 9: Review the processes for re-entry of criminal offenders into communities. Identify barriers to the successful return to law-abiding behavior, including the absence of employment opportunities created by restriction on obtaining certain state occupational licenses.Provide recommendations for improvements to our current statutes governing this matter.

The title says it all.  From the Associated Press ("Private Prison Company Indicted for Texas Murder," Houston Chronicle, October 24),

A private prison company based in Florida has been indicted in the death of a Texas prisoner just days before his release.

The indictment released Thursday alleges The GEO Group let other inmates fatally beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. with padlocks stuffed into socks.

He died four days before his scheduled release from a facility in Raymondville on the southern tip of Texas.

A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a 2006 civil judgment. He died in 2001.

Calls to The GEO Group and the Willacy County District Attorney's Office were not immediately returned Friday. The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp.

It's extremely rare that a private corporation is indicted for murder in the United States.  We'll keep you posted on this very important story as we hear more.