Recently in Corrections Category

Source: The Associated Press

Two managers at a private Arizona prison that houses inmates from Hawaii quit the facility with complaints of poor management, inadequate facilities and lack of staffing.

Two days after the managers abruptly left their jobs, staff members at the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy inadvertently opened security doors Aug. 3, releasing seven inmates from their cells.

...... They didn't tell Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America, which runs the Saguaro facility, why they were leaving.

........In the e-mails, Stokes said upper management at the facility spies on staff, controls all communication with the outside and degrades inmates.

Source: Galen Scott, Weatherford Democrat (TX), August 13, 2007 06:13 pm

In a 4-1 vote Monday, the Parker County Commissioners Court approved a five-year contract with private jail management company CiviGenics.

...... Precinct 4 Commissioner Jim Webster cast the lone vote of opposition.

........ “My feeling on this is that privatization is not the answer for government problems, and I think we need to find that answer within ourselves,” he said. “I disagree with the conclusions that have been drawn up, but I feel like I will be outvoted, and that’s fine. Because that is what we are able to have in a democracy where one person can speak his piece.”

Source: MyFox Dallas (TX), Last Edited: Tuesday, 14 Aug 2007, 6:22 AM CDT

A private prison facility was on lockdown early Tuesday as authorities investigated a disturbance that erupted when hundreds of inmates refused to leave the recreation yard.

Two employees of Corrections Corp. of America's Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility were treated on site for minor injuries during the Monday night disturbance, spokesperson Louise Grant said.

Source: By Jeff Golimowski and Whitney Stewart, CNSNews.com. August 07, 2007

If you were given 30 days to find a new place to live, could you do it easily? What if every available apartment and house in town was already taken? Multiply this conundrum by 1,200. Now you know how the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) felt last year.

"We had contracts last year in Texas and we got 30-days notice we had to take back 1,200 inmates," said ADOC spokesperson Katie Decker.

........ Some states are satisfied with their private-prison operations. But, increasingly, many states are looking for ways to avoid sending their prisoners out of state or into private prisons in order to keep them in state-run facilities.

"We can do it faster, better, and cheaper," said Decker. "We're in the people business. They're in the profit business."

.......... Free market advocates hailed the move as a way to spur competition and efficiencies in what, until then, had been an exclusively governmental function.

.........But public employee unions and many corrections officials viewed the move to private prisons skeptically. They argued that private prisons would cut corners to raise profits and hurt rehabilitation efforts.

Source: By SOLOMON MOORE, New York Times, July 31, 2007

...... The number of inmates shipped out of Arizona would be even larger, but plans for additional transfers to Indiana had to be called off in April after 500 inmates from Arizona rioted at a privately run prison in New Castle, Ind., in part because of complaints about the long distance. Two correctional officers and five inmates were injured in the two-hour incident. Officials there assigned blame to poorly trained guards, many of whom were hired just days before the transfers.

Ms. Schriro said the riot showed how desperate the situation had become. The state’s overcrowding worsened, she said, after two private prisons in Texas now run by the GEO Group, canceled Arizona’s contract and instead signed more lucrative deals with federal corrections agencies.

....... State corrections officials and prison industry executives say that prison companies are an attractive alternative when cash-strapped state governments need additional prison space faster than they can build it. Private prisons can also provide political cover to elected officials seeking to avoid charges of coddling criminals and spending large sums on prison construction.

Source: By JENNIFER LaFLEUR, The Dallas Morning News (TX), Sunday, July 29, 2007

Associated Marine Institutes has been cited as a model youth rehabilitation program, but the nonprofit has been hit with more than a dozen lawsuits nationwide and has lost contracts in two states. In Texas, AMI runs two very different programs for TYC.

Its Rio Grande Marine Institute in Los Fresnos in South Texas was designed for troubled youths to receive marine and wilderness training, and perform community service. In 1999, the Texas House of Representatives called AMI's work at the institute "of the utmost importance for the future of the youth of this state."

But the facility, which AMI opened in 1986, had the second highest rate of abuse allegations among private contractors in Texas in 2006. And reviews by TYC monitors from 2000 to early 2007 revealed multiple cases where the institute failed to live up to its promise of "structured and supervised activities" for at least 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Source: By HOLLY BECKA, The Dallas Morning News

The Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, run by the GEO Group Inc., is Texas' largest private juvenile prison and has had the highest rate of alleged abuse among TYC's contractors over the last seven years.

Related article from the Dallas Morning News: Texas' youth jail operators have troubled histories / TYC contractors housing inmates have lost contracts, closed doors elsewhere

Source: By Rachael Joyner, South Florida Sun-Sentinel (FL), July 20, 2007

Palm Beach Gardens A former security guard claims he was harassed by a co-worker because of his religion, and then fired for complaining about it.

...... "This is a case of religious discrimination because [the co-worker] used words like 'terrorist' and 'Guantanamo,'" said Altaf Ali, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national group that defends the civil rights of Muslims in America.

........ The council held a news conference Thursday to present Amar's case against his former employer, Wackenhut Corp., a private security and investigation business. Amar asked the company for a formal apology and a full investigation of his harassment complaints but got neither, he said.

Source: Pat Schneider, Capital Times (WI), 7/19/2007

Tomas Contreras, a Madison businessman held for 81 days earlier this year when he tried to re-enter the United States, is working to expose the cruelties, including a two-week stay in an isolation chamber, that he said he was subjected to at privately run detention centers in Texas.

...... At the Laredo Processing Center in Laredo, run by Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America, a national prison services giant, Contreras said he was placed in a large dormitory with 80 or more men from around the world.

Source: By Kevin Daytonm, Honolulu Advertiser (HI), Wednesday, July 18, 2007

For the second time in two years, improper actions by a corrections worker caused cell doors to unexpectedly open in a Mainland prison where Hawai'i inmates were supposed to be kept separated, triggering violence that injured a Hawai'i convict, prison officials said.

In the first incident at a Mississippi prison in 2005, Hawai'i convict Ronnie Lonoaea, 34, was beaten so severely that he suffered brain damage and is now confined to a wheelchair. Lonoaea's family sued the Hawai'i prison system and Corrections Corp. of America last week in connection with the case.