Recently in Corrections Category

Source: By Steve Schmid, San Diego Union Tribune (CA), November 19, 2006

...... Faced with packed prisons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is transferring inmates to out-of-state facilities for the first time. About 2,200 inmates, all volunteers, will be moved to private, medium-security prisons in four states, including the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona. The Schwarzenegger administration recently signed three-year contracts with the nation's two biggest, publicly traded private prison operators: Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group.

Source: Vic Vela, The Daily Record (CO), 11/4/2006

Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a three-part series on the prison industry.

As prison beds grow sparse and the number of inmates increases at a significant rate, the Colorado Department of Corrections has, in recent years, continued to search for ways of accommodating its desperate need to house offenders.

........ Meanwhile, the State Legislature, citing tighter budgets and constituencies who balk at the idea of prisons “in their backyards”, has not approved funding to alleviate the problem for DOC state-run facilities since it allocated certificates of deposit funds for the construction of the new Colorado State Penitentiary in 2002. However, construction has not even begun on that facility.

Part II: Being tough on crime a double-edged sword

Source: By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press (CA), Fri, Nov. 03, 2006

California is poised to start shipping inmates to other states as a way to relieve its overcrowded prisons after federal and state judges on Thursday rejected efforts to block the transfers.

....... Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month ordered the moves, which would send 2,260 inmates to privately run prisons in Arizona, Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Source: By Brian David, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA), Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Beaver County's flirtation with private jail management is over. The county commissioners yesterday announced that they had accepted a contract offer from the county jail guards, which will run through the end of 2010 and sideline a deal the commissioners made with the Massachusetts prison management firm CiviGenics Inc.

The guards will pay 1 percent of their base pay toward health care, give up some vacation, holiday and sick time, go without raises for this year and the next two and agreed to more management-friendly work rules in a deal the commissioners say will save $600,000 a year.

........ The guards have worked without a contract since Jan. 1, with the commissioners demanding enough concessions to match the offer CiviGenics made in the summer of 2005.

Source: By Don Thompson, ASSOCIATED PRESS (CA), Tue, Oct. 31, 2006

Two state employee unions sued Monday to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to ship more than 2,000 inmates to other states to ease crowding in the nation's largest state prison system. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation signed contracts this month to use private prisons in four states to house 2,260 medium-security inmates at a cost estimated at $51 million a year.

Source: By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN, Palm Beach Post (FL), Friday, October 27, 2006

The state has rejected the only private company that bid on the Palm Beach Regional Juvenile Detention Center. Blackhawk Inc., a security company based in Maryland, will not get the deal and the Department of Juvenile Justice plans to offer the contract again in an attempt to attract more offers.

Related editorial from the Palm Beach Post: End more than contract

....... Having learned that private companies want the job only if they can make more money under lowered standards, the department should can its privatization effort.

Source: By Andy Furillo, Sacramento Bee (CA), Saturday, October 21, 2006

The first transfers of California inmates to private, out-of-state prisons are scheduled to take place next month under two no-bid contracts the overstuffed Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation signed Friday. Under the deals worked out with the GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America, the state will move 2,260 inmates out of its jampacked prisons over the next 120 days to private institutions in Indiana, Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Source: The Associated Press (OK), October 12, 2006

HINTON, Okla. — The Oklahoma Department of Corrections will have to make other arrangements for about 800 inmates who are being evicted from a private prison, officials said Wednesday. Cornell Corrections, the private company that runs the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, has given the state 180 days to find new housing for the prisoners, spokesman Jerry Massie said.

.........State Corrections Director Justin Jones said last week the Hinton prison had been negotiating a better deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who offered a better rate. "You're dealing with a private business here, and they are in it to make money and answer to shareholders," Jones said. "Our mission is public safety, and the ideologies don't always line up."

Source: Manny Gonzales, Denver Post (CO), October 4, 2006

Female workers at a private prison in Crowley County were sexually harassed and then given dangerous assignments as retaliation for raising objections to their treatment, according to an EEOC lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.

....... The lawsuit names the prison's current owner, Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, one of the largest private-prison companies in the nation, and the previous owner, Edmond, Okla.-based Dominion Correctional Services, which owned the facility between December 2000 and January 2003.

Source: By Jim Ash, Tallahassee Democrat (FL), September 29, 2006

Two South Florida Democratic lawmakers turned up the heat this afternoon on the Florida Department of Corrections, demanding to know why it hasn't imposed fines on a controversial prison health contractor.

Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres and Sen. Walter ''Skip'' Campbell of Tamarac, who is running for attorney general, released a letter they sent Wednesday to DOC Secretary Jim McDonough demanding to know why Prison Health Services has not faced fines.