Texas Prison Bid'ness

On Monday, the Grayson County Commissioners met for their usual Monday hearing in which they discussed their downtown Sherman jail. Last year the jail was the topic of a heated controversy revolving around whether or not the facility should be privatized.

The county eventually dropped the idea of privatization and doing anything to the facility until now. Hale-Mills, a Houston-based construction company that specializes in building jails, is no stranger to constructing facilities surrounded in controversy. Most notably, MTC's tent-based Willacy County Detention Center that has been surrounded in controversy, and Hardin, Montana's never-used Two Rivers Detention Center that left the city broke after Corplan Corrections advisers encouraged the construction of the facility based on the perceived success in Willacy County.

While Hale-Mills has nothing to do with how or if the facility is privatately managed, I find it interesting because Grayson County is in a similar position as Hardin was. From reading the minutes of yesterday's meeting, however, it seems as though Grayson County is not considering a private operator at this time, but rather remodeling the existing facility instead of constructing an entirely new private facility. Hale-Mills was present at the hearing, and presented three options to the commissioners to consider:

1. Upgrade the existing facility and electronic control systems to bring the facility into compliance with the state Jail Commission for an estimated cost of $4.5 million dollars. 
2. To include option one and reconfigure the sallyport, intake and processing areas by adding onto the back of the building at a cost of $9.2- $9.75 million dollars.
3. To include options one and two and the expansion within the city block to add 337 additional beds to the existing 239 beds for a total of 576 beds at a cost of $18.5 to  $19.25 million dollars.

It appears that option three is the choice most likely to be presented in the form of a bond vote to Grayson County citizens, according to a report by local Sherman news. Let's hope that if this option does go to a vote it will be more comprehensive than their last attempt and that it will not leave room for a private operator. We will keep you informed of any official decisions made by Grayson County commissioners.

Yesterday, Kathleen reported that detention center protests have spread from big protests outside T. Don Hutto and civil disobedience at CCA’s Houston Processing Center to a 75-person strong rally in front of the Willacy County Processing Center in Raymondville.

The 2,000-bed ICE detention center, operated by MTC, first drew headlines when it was announced that it would be built in only 90 days and would consist of a series of windowless Kevlar pods. The project then drew fire from Willacy County Attorney Juan Guerra who warned county officials that they couldn’t spend excess project funds on other county projects, as they had planned.

MTC’s Processing Center is by no means the first private prison or prison scandal to engulf Raymondville. Already home to a 1,000-bed private state prison, a 500-bed private federal jail, and a 96-bed county jail, the county is known, even by county leaders, as Prisonville.

As the Texas Observer has reported, Willacy County had already experienced trouble with a previous private prison project. In 2005, two Willacy County Commissioners and one Webb County Commissioner plead guilty to crimes in a bribery case related to prison development in Willacy.  According to the Associated Press ("Webb official sentenced to prison," Nov. 24, 2006) "money was given in exchange for favorable votes on contracts to design, build or manage a 500-bed facility in Raymondville that opened in 2003."  That prison is now operated by MTC and the project involved prison developers Hale-Mills and Corplan.

And, in 2006, a jury rewarded $47.5 million in a lawsuit against the Wackenhut Corporation to the family of a prisoner who was beaten to death in 2001. Wackenhut (now known as the GEO Group) was operating the prison when the prisoner was beaten to death by other prisoners in what the lawsuit contended was a "...pattern and practice of allowing beatings and fights between inmates for money." Since the lawsuit, Corrections Corporation of America has taken over operation of that private prison.

Even though this latest private prison for ICE is made up of temporary structures, its impact on Raymondville's legacy of private prison scandals will be long term.