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Albert Sneed Correctional Facility
La Villa, Texas
Texson Management Group
April 17, 2000
Two inmates, one convicted of aggravated sexual assault and attempted capital
murder, the other a repeated burglar, climbed through an air vent and over a
fence to escape. They escaped from the private prison in Texas around 4:00
a.m. (Valley Morning Star, Rio Grande Valley, TX)
Angelina County Jail
Angelina County, Texas
CiviGenics (formerly run by Correctional Services
Corporation)
October 26, 2005 Lufkin Daily News
When Angelina County's old downtown jail re-opens for business next year,
it will be under familiar leadership. Bob Prince, marketing liaison for CiviGenics Texas, Inc., told Angelina County
commissioners that when the jail re-opens under CiviGenics
early next year it would be with Ken Stewart at the helm. Stewart served as
Angelina County's jail administrator. Stewart was also a vocal supporter of
the county's campaign to pass a $10.5 million bond that financed the
construction of the county's current jail located on Lufkin Avenue. According
to Stewart, the downtown jail was built in 1983 with the ability to hold 63
beds. A 1990 addition to the building increased the jail's inmate capacity by
48 beds to 111 total. Aware of Stewart's recent
retirement and his reputation in the business of jail administration, CiviGenics contacted Stewart to see if he could be lured
out of retirement, Prince said.
October 12, 2005 Lufkin Daily News
Angelina County commissioners on Tuesday approved the purchase of new
electronic touch-screen voting equipment, made possible by a grant of almost
$600,000 through the Help America Vote Act. Commissioners did not take action
on Tuesday's agenda item to approve a lease of the county's old jail facility
by CiviGenics, a private corrections firm that
operates facilities in 16 states, including eight locations in Texas. County
Sheriff Kent Henson asked that the commissioners table the contract approval
until he could review the wording on the document. "I want to make sure
the county doesn't get stuck with some things like we did the last
time," Henson said, referring to the previous corrections firm that
pulled out after leasing the old county jail facility for less than a year.
Commissioners approved tabling the agenda item and will likely consider it at
their Oct. 25 meeting. Bob Prince, CiviGenics'
government liaison for marketing, was on hand at Tuesday's meeting and told
commissioners if his company came on board, it would employ 27 workers and
pump more than $1 million into the local economy. Payroll alone would account
for about $700,000, he said. In addition, CiviGenics
plans to use a familiar face to serve as the facility's administrator in
naming Ken Stewart - who served in the same capacity for the county sheriff's
office before the new jail facility was built - to oversee operations.
November 10, 2004 KTRE
The old Angelina County jail is locking up. The county started leasing
the building about eight months ago to the Correctional Services Corporation
so dozens of undocumented immigrants could be housed there. The Immigration
and Naturalization Service can no longer afford that arrangement.
Avalon Dallas
Transition Center
Aug 3, 2017 fox4news
Dallas County halfway house racks up $22.9k tab in 911 calls
A for-profit transitional home in Dallas County for people getting out of
prison with no place to live is running quite a tab for the county. The
residents of the Avalon Dallas Transition Center have placed excessive 911
calls for medical help and have resulted in a tab that since last October has
not been paid. The transitional home is operated by Corrections Corporation
of America. It’s getting hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate from the
state but not paying what the county says it owes for emergency medical
service. Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is angry that a private
company providing a transition for people getting out of prison has not paid
its bill to the county for excessive 911 calls. “They owe us a quarter of a
million dollars, and my position is they're a for-profit corporation,” he
said. “We've met with them at least three or four times. The problem is they
are not moving. And, again, they are for profit.” Dallas County contracts
with the city of Hutchins to provide fire and EMS services to the
unincorporated areas in Southeast Dallas County. Each time an ambulance
responds to a call in the unincorporated areas, it costs Dallas County $450.
Documents obtained by FOX 4 show that from a ten month period from October
2016 through July 2017, there were 243 emergency calls made. The total cost
for the calls is $222,900. “That is a pretty high amount there that you know
we haven't been paid,” said Dallas County Fire Marshal Robert De Los Santos.
“We've dealt some correspondence with them, and we just haven’t received any
feedback from them.” De Los Santos says the unpaid price tag should make all
Dallas County residents sick. “Because that’s your taxpayer money, our
taxpayer money,” he said. “I live in Dallas County as well.” FOX 4 reached
out to the out-of-state managing director for comment. They promised to make
a response, but FOX 4 has yet to hear back.
Bartlett State Jail
Bartlett, Texas
CCA
Apr 30, 2017 tdtnews.com
Bartlett could see financial woes if jail closes
The city of Bartlett could face financial difficulties if the Bartlett
State Jail closes in September as proposed by the Texas Senate Finance
Committee. Closing the jail would save the state more than $24 million,
according to the workgroup discussions held by the Senate while working on is
biennium state budget. The state is hoping to cut $250 million from its
budget. Bartlett could lose about $528,000 annually in water and wastewater
revenue because the jail brings in about $40,000 monthly, Bartlett City
Attorney Elizabeth Elleson said. A joint committee
of the Senate and the Texas House will review the budget before it’s passed.
If closed, Bartlett inmates would be moved to other jails, the committee
report said. Elleson recommended that the Bartlett
City Council discuss the possible closing with state legislators and prepare
for the closure by making an economic development plan. The Sept. 1 proposed
closing is an issue that would “put the city in a bind for a few months,”
Mayor Pro tem Barbara Sandobal
said. “We’ll have to learn how to get a lot of things done and do it without
spending so much money,” she said. The jail has become a significant
contributor to Bartlett’s economy, Mayor James Grant said. Closing the jail
would reduce the demands on the city’s wastewater treatment plant, possibly
reducing the need to build a new plant — a move that would save Bartlett
thousands or possibly millions of dollars, Elleson
said. Officials said the city would be affected in several ways, including
the need to raise water and wastewater rates. The prison currently provides
almost 45 percent of the city’s water and wastewater revenue every month,
Grant said. The cost to provide the services is “relatively minimal,” he
said. Grant said the expense is less than 10 percent of the total resources
the city has. The city’s economy would be hit, officials said. Sales tax
collection will be reduced, and area residents who work at the jail might be
reassigned or laid off. Local business owners are concerned about the sharp
decline in revenue if the facility closes, Grant said. To bring Bartlett into
compliance with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and keep from
paying thousands of dollars in fines, the wastewater treatment plant needs
very expensive repairs and sludge cleanup work. Some of the problems came
from the state jail’s overload, but the problems won’t clear themselves up.
The city will have to pay for the repairs and look for grants and loans to
make that possible. Grant said the city’s problem with TCEQ is really about
the severe lack of maintenance and unqualified operators the city hired.
Invoices show that the city paid about $75,000 for water pumps for the state
jail, and that, plus other expenses stemming from the jail, is money that the
city won’t get back. The actual loss to the city that it must absorb and try
to find ways to recapture is actually about $675,000, Grant said. Grant said
that “the clock is still ticking and gaining momentum.” “The Council
majority’s idea that the facility will just be handed over to the city and
instantly converted into a strip mall by year’s end is sheer fantasy,” Grant
said. State Rep. Hugh Shine, R-Temple, was in the Legislature about 30 years
ago when the state was building jails because there was a large shortage of
beds, he said. “I heard presentations from communities on why they wanted
jails to be built there, and now the state is talking about closing jails,”
Shine said. Shine is aware that the Bartlett State Jail is a major industry
for the small town but, on the other side of things, he said he hopes that
means that recidivism is down and that law enforcement is very successful in
eradicating many of the criminal problems. Grant said his office is working
with state legislators to try to get everyone to understand the city’s
budgetary concerns and to identify options and possible alternatives to
closing the facility, he said. The 1,049-bed Bartlett jail, managed since
1995 by the Corrections Corp. of America, houses minimum to medium security
inmates. Jack Garner is the current warden and took the position in November.
More than 200 people work at the jail and, in addition to the revenue
provided through water and wastewater usage, the jail brings in about
$166,000 in local spending for goods and services, according to the jail’s
website. The jail housed 856 offenders on Tuesday, Jason Clark, director of
public information for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said. If the jail closes, the inmates would be transferred to other units that
have existing capacity, Clark said. Shine, the District 55 representative,
said he doesn’t know when the decision on the jail will be made. Although the
jail is in Williamson County, a different district from the one Shine covers,
he said closing it would affect Bell County because of the close proximity.
“Once it is revealed what the final decisions are, they will have a better
idea of the impact,” Shine said. “The economic impact is a little too early
to speculate.” Sen. Charles Schwertner, who
represents Williamson County and is a member of the Senate Finance Committee,
wasn’t available Friday for comment. Shine urged the community leaders to
anticipate what that impact could be and discuss that with the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice and their representatives, as well as county
officials. He also said that Bartlett’s leaders should look into future
prospects for the facility. “If they don’t put forth some effort, the last
thing they want is to be completely blindsided if they do lose it (the
jail),” Shine said.
April 30, 2011 Killeen Daily Herald
The largest private corporation operating prisons in the U.S. is suing the
city of Bartlett after the city threatened last week to shut off the water
supply to a state jail the company operates. Corrections Corporation of
America Inc. (CCA) was granted a temporary injunction Thursday, preventing
Bartlett from cutting off water and sewer to the 1,049-bed Bartlett State
Jail. CCA alleges the city has severely over-billed the company because of a
faulty water meter. Since December, CCA has disputed the amount the city has
charged for use of its water supply. According to court filings, CCA believes
Bartlett charged the company for 44 percent more water than was actually used
at the jail. The disputed water bills amount to $213,237. CCA claims it
requested hearings with city officials each time it disputed a bill, but was
rebuffed. The company also submitted checks to the city for water usage CCA
is not disputing; however, the city has not cashed those checks. In the
summer of 2010, jail officials became suspicious that the jail's water and
sewer bills were excessive, court documents state. CCA hired two experts to
examine water usage at the Bartlett State Jail. One expert confirmed the
suspicions of CCA officials by examining the jail's water tank. The expert,
Sutton G. Page, found that over a 24-hour period, the city's water meter
showed the jail used 68,595 gallons more than the amount he measured. A
second expert, an engineer named William Johansen, examined the city's water
meter. In an affidavit filed with the court, Johansen states that the water
meter is not working properly. The jail's low-flow meter was inoperable, so
Johansen measured it as 100 percent inaccurate. The high-flow meter made a
measurement error between 14.4 percent and 95 percent, Johansen stated.
"It is my opinion that the meters at the Bartlett, Texas, State Jail do
not function properly and cannot reliably account for the amount of water
flowing through the meters," he stated in court documents. According to
Bartlett's city charter, city officials must accept CCA's account of the water
bills. The charter places a time limit on water disputes. If city officials
do not meet with a water customer or respond to their complaints about a
disputed bill within a certain timeframe, the city is automatically
determined at fault. CCA claims city officials never attempted to meet with
jail officials regarding disputed bills. City officials could not be reached
for comment.
January 7, 2010 AP
A boil water notice has been issued for Bartlett where a shortage has led
to using an emergency well and portable toilets for a state jail. The
1,049-bed Bartlett State Jail ordered portable restrooms and 5,000 bottles of
water after briefly losing city service. Steve Owen with Corrections Corp. of
America says employees Wednesday occasionally shut off water so an onsite
tower could refill. Water levels in the city's two elevated storage tanks
have been declining. Officials suspect a pump malfunction. A backup well,
which failed an assessment less than two years ago, was brought online this
week after passing a bacterial test. Mayor Arthur White did not immediately
return a message Thursday from The Associated Press.
February 25, 2009 FOX 7
A former corrections employee, armed with a gun, had a central Texas jail
on full alert this morning. A swat team was called out to the Bartlett State
Jail around 11:00 Tuesday for a hostage situation. The standoff ended early
Wednesday morning, when a former employee of this jail was taken into
custody. A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice tells us
the woman confronted a current employee in the parking lot late last night.
Another employee came out to see what was going on, and the former employee
pulled out a gun and took the two men hostage, forcing them back into the
jail. That brought out the swat team and DPS, and the jail was locked down.
The hostages were in the jail's visitation area and were able to escape. At
that point, this was a standoff between the woman with the gun and the law
enforcement officers outside. By 1:25 this morning, the TDCJ spokesperson
tells us the woman was taken into custody and taken to the Williamson county
jail in Georgetown. This is a state jail under the authority of t-d-c-j, but
it's run by a private company called corrections corporation of America. The
woman accused of taking two employees hostages here is a former employee, who
stopped working here about a year ago.
January 8, 2002
Kyndall Dwight James, 22, who escaped from the
Bartlett State Jail in 2000, pleaded guilty Monday to charges of escape, a
second-degree felony, and unlawful use of a motor vehicle, a state jail
felony. James was sentenced to 20 years in prison. David Lee
Sanders, a second Bartlett inmate accused of escaping with James, will stand
trial today. (The Statesman)
August 28, 2000
Two convicted felons escape after breaking into the maintenance shop and
stealing a cutting tool to cut through the 12-foot perimeter fence.
They were caught the next day after a high speed car chase that ended with
the escapees' stolen truck tires being shot out. (Austin American-Statesman,
August 29, 2000)
Ben
Reid Community Correctional Facility
(AKA Southeast Texas Transitional Center)
Houston, Texas
GEO Group (bought Cornell Companies)
Oct 8, 2012 HoustonPress.com
The rapist of a 16-year-old girl is the latest sexual predator to slip
through the sieve that is the privately run Southeast Texas Transitional
Center. Thomas Lee Elkins, convicted of aggravated kidnapping and sexual
assault in 1991, absconded from the facility, 10950 Old Beaumont Highway,
October 5, according to reports. He's the sixth offender to float away from
Southeast in 24 months. Formerly known as the Ben A. Reid Community
Correctional Facility, Southeast is run by the Florida-based GEO Group,
which, despite its appalling track record in Texas and elsewhere, keeps
getting sweet state contracts. But hey, what's the big deal about losing a
child rapist or two, right? Elkins is 6-3, about 200 lbs., and has a "Fu
Manchu" mustache, which we're totally sure he hasn't shaved. We're also
sure GEO Group won't have to pay any sort of penalty for this escape. They
certainly weren't held accountable when another resident, Anthony Ray
Ferrell, took a stroll in October 2010 and wound up gunning down a Good
Samaritan who tried to stop Ferrell from stealing a woman's purse at a gas
station. Look, clearly the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has more
important things to do -- like monitor employees' Facebook use -- than make
sure its contractors, like, keep the public safe and stuff. Anyone want to
take bets on how long it'll be before another degenerate escapes?
April 6, 2012 Houston Press Blogs
A high-risk child rapist who hopped over his halfway house's barbed wire
fence Thursday night is the fifth sex offender to abscond from the privately
run Southeast Texas Transitional Center in 18 months. According to the
Houston Chronicle story linked above, authorities say Michael Elbert Young,
who might be "mentally unstable if not taking medication," removed
his electronic tracking monitor. He was "released from prison after
serving eight years for two aggravated assault convictions. Both were sex
related. He also served a 20-year term for sexual assault of a child and
attempted aggravated sexual assault." Oh, and he has a history of using
knives. Owned and operated by Florida-based GEO Group, the facility at 10950
Old Beaumont Highway was formerly known as the Ben A. Reid Community
Correctional Facility. Apparently, since GEO can't keep track of its
convicted sexual predators, it just figured changing the name would solve the
problem. After all, it's much cheaper than hiring a competent staff and
improving security. In October 2010, Anthony Ray Ferrell walked out of
Southeast Texas/Ben A. Reid, and was later charged with gunning down a Good
Samaritan who intervened when Ferrell allegedly tried to snatch a woman's
purse inside a gas station convenience store. A week before Ferrell strolled
off the grounds, Bruce McCain, convicted of two sexual assaults in 1986, fled
the facility. In December 2010, Arthur William Brown, who had served 31 years
for aggravated sexual assault of two women and a 16-year-old, did the same. A
month after that, sex offender Timothy Rosales Jr. absconded. Although some
of these folks were caught, the problem is, as we wrote earlier, the place is
like a freaking sieve, and GEO has a sweet contract with the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice: There's apparently no repercussion for escapes, and once
a resident absconds, it's no longer GEO's problem. All GEO personnel have to do is pick up a phone and notify real-life law
enforcement officers. Thanks, GEO. We certainly feel safer with y'all at the
wheel. And thanks, TDCJ, for continuing to do business with them.
January 25, 2011 KTRK
High risk, armed and dangerous are the words being used to describe a sex offender
who absconded from a Houston halfway house on Monday night. It's been nearly
24 hours since Timothy Rosales, Jr. disappeared from the halfway house and he
is no where to be found. The Texas Department of
Public Safety has since added him to it's Top 10
Most Wanted Fugitives list. Rosales was doing maintenance work in the lobby
of the Reid Center on Beaumont Highway around 6:15pm Monday when he bolted
through the front door, cut off his electronic monitoring device around his
ankle and fled. Rosales then did not report back to his parole officer and a
warrant was issued for his arrest. Across the street at Melba's Country
Kitchen, the owner and her staff had no idea he'd absconded until today.
Melba Barfield says she has no reservations being this close to a halfway
house where offenders can leave, so long as they have an approved schedule.
"I've been here nine years and I've had absolutely no problems from the
guys at the halfway house. I know that several have walked away but they
haven't stopped here to get my dollar," said Barfield.
January 25, 2011 Houston Press Blogs
Timothy Rosales Jr. is the first rapist of 2011 to escape from the privately
run Ben Reid halfway house, and the second to escape in a little over a
month. The 39-year-old sex offender fled from the Beaumont Highway facility
around 6:15 Monday night, according to the Department of Public Safety. He's
considered armed and dangerous. And, like Arthur William Brown, the rapist
who escaped in late December, he was able to remove his electronic monitoring
ankle bracelet. We wrote about the unsecured Reid facility, and its parent
company, the Florida-based GEO Group, in December. Two months before the
story ran, Anthony Ray Ferrell escaped from Reid and allegedly shot and
killed a 24-year-old good Samaritan who intervened in a gas station
purse-snatching. Another rapist split the Reid facility a few weeks before
Ferrell slipped out. Although the place is like a freaking sieve, there is
nothing in GEO's contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about
a maximum number of vicious sexual predators that can be let loose on the
public in a given amount of time. And once these monsters step off the Reid
premises, they're no longer GEO's problem: It is up to actual real-life law
enforcement officers to apprehend the escapees. All GEO personnel need to do
is pick up the phone and make a few calls once they realize an offender
hasn't returned on time. Needless to say, we're a little concerned about the
kind of people who are standing between the public and some armed asshole who
likes to rape 16-year-old kids. You know who doesn't need to worry? GEO's top
executives. Their salaries and benefits are secure. They will continue to
make money off the Reid facility. And besides, their families don't live
anywhere near the facility. So what in the world would they have to worry
about?
November 16, 2010 Houston Press
The man charged with killing a Good Samaritan during a purse-snatching is the
third person to escape the same state-contracted halfway house in the last 20
months. Anthony Ray Ferrell had fled a "halfway house in the 10900 block
of Beaumont Highway" in October, according to the Houston Chronicle. The
home in that block is the Ben A. Reid Community Correctional Facility, from which
sex offender Bruce McCain escaped in October 2010 and Richard Williamson
Griffin Jr. escaped in February 2009. (McCain was arrested in the Rio Grande
Valley three weeks after his escape). The home was operated by private prison
group Cornell Companies, which was bought by its main competitor, the
Florida-based GEO Group, last April. The facility "provides temporary
housing, monitoring and transitional services for 500 minimum-security adult
male offenders," according to Cornell Companies literature. Its
"security measures include 24-hour custodial supervision, 12-foot
perimeter fence, outdoor lighting, close circuit cameras, secure entrances
and frequent census checks." Cornell Companies/GEO also operate
Houston's Leidel Comprehensive Sanctions Center. In
2005, before GEO bought Cornell, a Leidel resident
who got a day-pass for church and never bothered to return; he fled to Fort
Worth, where he killed three men. Ferrell is accused of murdering Sam Irick at a Meyerland convenience store last week. Irick tried to intervene as Ferrell allegedly was robbing
a customer.
September 9, 2004 Houston Chronicle
Drug use by employees at a privately run halfway house for paroled felons led
to seven resignations this week after the facility's corporate owners called
for staffwide drug tests. The departure of the
seven workers — including administrators, security guards and caseworkers —
was the latest problem at the Ben Reid Community Correctional Facility, which
houses up to 500 felons in northeast Houston. The facility is operated by the
Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. The seven employees who resigned did so
after testing positive for drug use. In May, its director of employee
training, Roy Thomas, 50, was arrested after a police officer, acting on a
tip, searched his car and found 212 tablets of hydrocodone, an addictive
painkiller, and 123 tablets of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, police said.
Cornell fired the Ben Reid House's director and several high-level managers
last year, citing poor management and violations of numerous company
policies.
Bexar County Courthouse
Bexar, Texas
Champion National Security
June 06, 2001
Dissatisfied with current security contractor, Commissioners Court voted
unanimously Tuesday to hire its own civilian guards to man the entrances to
Bexar County's three courthouse facilities. Henry Martinez, deputy
chief of courthouse security for Sheriff Ralph Lopez, said the current
contractor, Champion National Security, was assessed more than $85,000 in
fines for guards showing up late and for other performance infractions that
occurred over a 16-month period that ended April 30. Commissioners also
voted to reject all bids received by the March 30 deadline to take over
security operations. Among the bidders were Champion, DSS Services, the
Wackenhut Corp. and Lobo Security. "You're going to have a
better-trained guard in the future than we've had in the past," said
County Judge Nelson Wolff, who last week met with Lopez and Commissioner Paul
Elizondo to iron out the details of the sheriff's proposal. "The
position of the judges, unanimously, is that it (courthouse security) needs
to be done by the Sheriff's Department," said 226th District Judge Sid Harle, who is serving as the county's criminal
administrative judge. (The San Antonio Express-News)
Bexar County Jail
Bexar County, Texas
Aramark, Premier Management Enterprise
May 13, 2009 KSAT
Most people can simply run out to the store when they need a jar of
peanut butter or a loaf of bread, but people behind bars are a captive
audience for such necessities, literally. Inmates at the Bexar County jail are allowed to buy simple things like ramen soup, soap and
candy bars at the jail commissary, run by Aramark, but now some wonder if
they're not being ripped off. "The prices are just outrageous and
ridiculous,” said one inmate. "I think they're outrageous,” said
another. “They're terrible." Abel Gallardo agrees. "Here we go
baby. Where are we going, HEB?" Gallardo said to his small child as he
pushed the child in a toy car near the home they share on the southside.
Gallardo is trying to raise two kids while his wife is in jail. He said the
jail commissary’s high prices make it hard on families to get by, because
money has to be spent behind bars. "They need to treat these ladies and
these guys right,” Gallardo said. “Yeah, they committed a crime, well they're
sitting in jail paying for it." In a comparison
shopping trip, the KSAT 12 Defenders found that a bar of Irish Spring
soap is $1.29 in the commissary, but $.75 at a store. Candy bars are $1.09 in
the commissary versus $.74 in the store. Chili is $3.59 in the commissary,
$1.45 at the store. A tuna pouch is $2.99 in the commissary, $.89 in the
store and the ramen soup is $.69 in the commissary, but only $.15 in the
store. "It's just straight highway robbery," said an inmate. But
the jail said prices here are in line with convenience store prices, not
grocery store prices, and that the county takes 35 percent of the profits
from commissary profits and puts the money back into inmate services.
March 12, 2008 Express News
A small plane crash Monday night killed a Louisiana businessman whose
private prison services company, Premier Management Enterprises, was at the
center of a public corruption investigation that last year forced the
resignation of Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez. Patrick LeBlanc, 53, died
with the pilot while trying to land in rough weather in Lafayette, La.,
according to a family friend and local press reports. LeBlanc and his
brother, Michael LeBlanc, co-owned Premier and LCS Corrections Services,
which build or service prisons in several states, including in three South
Texas counties. The brothers' company remains the subject of an ongoing FBI
investigation into "contracting irregularities," a bureau official
confirmed. "He had great integrity and honor, unlike what some of you
guys tried to do to him," said Ron Gomez, a close friend and partner in
a small weekly newspaper that published its first edition last week. Gomez
said LeBlanc went into the news business as a response to negative publicity
about his company's role in a Bexar County corruption probe that caused him
to lose a race last fall for state legislative office. Premier Management
Enterprises, which has operated jail commissaries in Texas, was at the center
of a Bexar County district attorney's investigation involving a foreign
vacation gift to Lopez and cash payments to the sheriff's top aide, John
Reynolds, before, during and after the company was given commissary
contracts. The LeBlanc brothers have repeatedly denied all wrongdoing and
have not been indicted or formally accused of any crime related to the Bexar
County jail commissary contract. But Lopez resigned and pleaded guilty to
reduced misdemeanor charges for accepting a Costa Rica golf vacation from the
LeBlancs, while Reynolds last month was sentenced
to 10 years for demanding thousands of dollars in "consulting fees"
and charitable donations from Premier. The FBI took over from state
authorities, and over the last several months, agents have interviewed Lopez
and Reynolds as part of their respective plea deals. FBI Special Agent Erik Vasys said the bureau was well aware of LeBlanc's death
but declined to discuss whether the tragedy might affect the investigation.
December 4, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
A Bexar County judge has agreed to dismiss a libel lawsuit brought against
the San Antonio Express-News by Premier Management Enterprises, a
Louisiana-based company that formerly ran Bexar County Jail's commissaries.
In the lawsuit, filed in February 2006 against Hearst Newspaper Partnership,
the San Antonio Express-News and reporter Elizabeth Allen, Premier's
principals, Patrick and Michael LeBlanc and Ian Williamson, claimed the
newspaper published two stories and one editorial containing “false and
misleading statements” accusing them of conduct that was “unethical,
incompetent and, in some cases, illegal.” On Thursday, Judge David Berchelmann of the 37th District Court signed an order
after both parties agreed to dismiss the suit with prejudice, meaning it
cannot be brought again. As part of the agreement, the newspaper acknowledged
three errors that ran in Allen's stories and in a subsequent editorial in
December 2005: LCS Correction Services is not Premier's parent company.
Michael LeBlanc had no past legal problems at the time the articles were
printed. Charges against Patrick LeBlanc, Michael LeBlanc's brother, in
connection with a charitable bingo operation on an American Indian
reservation were dismissed. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later
affirmed the dismissal. Since Allen's stories, Premier has phased out its
commissary operations at the jail. Former longtime Sheriff Ralph Lopez
resigned in August as part of an agreement with prosecutors regarding his
dealings with Premier. It included that Lopez plead no contest to three
misdemeanor charges, and pay a $10,000 fine, resulting from an
all-expenses-paid golfing and fishing trip to Costa Rica that Premier gave
him in August 2005. Lopez's plea deal also shielded his wife, Nancy, from any
potential state charges. Lopez's longtime campaign manager and friend, John
Reynolds, also pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft related to his
dealings with the company. Reynolds was Lopez's appointee to the Benevolent
Fund board, which awarded and oversaw the commissary contract. According to
court documents, Reynolds told Premier to contribute to Lopez's campaign and
give charitable donations through Reynolds in exchange for operating the
commissary. Premier attorneys have insisted that there was no wrongdoing in
the way the company landed the contract. Reynolds is awaiting sentencing.
November 8, 2007 Caller-Times
A new commissary company started this week in Kleberg County Jail after
Premier Management Enterprises and the county mutually ended Premier's
contract. Premier was investigated in Bexar County for buying a trip to Costa
Rica for former Sheriff Ralph Lopez. Lopez resigned and pleaded no contest to
three charges related to the trip. Premier, based in Lafayette, La., also
operated in Kleberg County since former Sheriff Tony Gonzalez signed the
contract in fall 2004. Sheriff Ed Mata said last month he wanted to end
Premier's contract because of the Bexar investigation and because of
performance issues. Keefe Commissary Network, based in St. Louis, began
providing commissary services Monday to the Kleberg County Jail. The one-year
contract gives the county 24 percent of net sales, defined as gross sales
minus non-commissioned items such as stamps. Keefe was chosen over Swanson
Sales Corp., which said in a proposal it could offer up to 30.25 percent of
net sales. Commissaries, which supply snacks and some toiletries, are
considered privileges for inmates. Texas law gives sheriffs sole discretion
over the contracts. A county's proceeds must be spent on items or activities
that contribute to inmates' well-being, such as education, libraries, writing
materials, clothing and hygiene items, according to state law. Kleberg Chief
Deputy Willie Vera said Keefe offered the better overall package despite the
lower commission. Some items will be marked up to make up part of the
difference. Plus, the company offered a one-year contract, while Swanson
initially wanted five, then agreed to three, Vera said. Premier had signed a
five-year contract with Gonzalez, and Vera said the current sheriff isn't
willing to sign such a long contract. "We have a year to evaluate this
company," Vera said. "If he needs to go out and search for another
company the door is still open." Keefe also recently began service to
the Nueces County Jail, making it easier for the company to add Kingsville to
its routes, Vera said. Keefe made the transition smoothly and the Kleberg
County Jail was never without commissary services, he said. Premier ran the
Nueces County Jail commissary under a contract signed by former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez until Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin
terminated the agreement after taking office in January, citing performance
issues. Keefe gives Nueces County a commission of 39 percent of net sales.
Mata and Kaelin have said their staffs told them
their predecessors, Gonzalez of Kleberg County and Olivarez of Nueces County,
went on that trip to Costa Rica in August 2005. Neither Mata nor Kaelin has documentation corroborating the reports.
Gonzalez left office in 2004 after losing an election to Mata, and Olivarez
resigned in January 2006 to run for county judge. Gonzalez and Olivarez have
not responded to requests for interviews. Premier's principals, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, also own LCS Correctional Services, which is building a private
prison to house federal inmates near Robstown.
October 1, 2007 Caller-Times
Two local sheriffs are distancing themselves from their predecessors'
decisions to award jail commissary contracts to a company involved in a
criminal investigation in Bexar County. Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata said
last week officials are researching ways to end that county's five-year
agreement with the company, Premier Management Enterprises. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin gave Premier a 30-day
termination notice on Jan. 24, after taking office. Former Bexar County
Sheriff Ralph Lopez resigned and pleaded no contest to accepting a trip to
Costa Rica from the principals of Premier. The Lafayette, La., based company
runs the county jail commissary. Neither Kaelin nor
Mata has documentation corroborating what their staffs have told them -- that
their predecessors, Larry Olivarez of Nueces County and Tony Gonzalez of
Kleberg County, went on that August 2005 trip. Neither Gonzalez nor Olivarez
has responded to requests for comment. There is no known investigation in
Nueces or Kleberg counties. "At this point no case has been submitted to
me," Kleberg County District Attorney John Hubert said. "If
something is submitted to me, I take every case on its own merits. I don't
have any information other than what I've read in the papers and -- no
offense to anybody -- that's not really evidence." Nueces County
District Attorney Carlos Valdez was out of the office late last week, and the
Bexar County District Attorney's Office did not respond. The FBI would not
comment. Olivarez signed a contract with Premier five months after the Costa
Rica trip involving the former Bexar County sheriff. Gonzalez signed a
contract in September 2004. Premier's principals, Patrick and Michael
LeBlanc, also own LCS Correctional Services, which is building a private
prison to house federal inmates near Robstown. A receptionist at Premier
referred all questions to the company's chief executive officer, Chris Burch,
who did not respond. An attorney for the company, Tonya Webber of Corpus
Christi, said her clients have not been commenting because of the open
investigation in Bexar County. She said she would check with her clients for
comment on the local contracts but did not respond after that. Kaelin and Mata both cited performance issues with
Premier as reasons for terminating the contract. Mata said the Bexar
investigation also played a part. "What I'm trying to do is just protect
this county," Mata said. "I'm not trying to pass any judgment if
something was done wrong." Kaelin said his
decision was based solely on Premier's performance. He met with Premier
officials about complaints before ending the agreement, according to
correspondence the Caller-Times obtained under the Texas Public Information
Act. Kaelin and Premier also tangled over payments.
A new contract, with Keefe Supply, also is potentially more lucrative for the
county. The Premier contract gave the county $130,000 or 31 percent of net
sales, whichever was greater. The new contract gives a minimum of 39 percent
with the possibility of 41 percent after the first year. Texas law gives
sheriffs sole discretion over commissary contracts. Commissaries supply
snacks, such as chips, candy bars and soda, as well as certain toiletries,
for inmates. Friends and family put money in an inmate's account to spend on
commissary items. A county's proceeds must be used for commissary staff,
social needs of inmates (such as education or counseling), libraries, writing
materials, clothing, hygiene items or other programs that contribute to
inmates' well-being, according to state law. Kaelin
said he uses commissary profits to buy newspaper subscriptions, televisions
and uniforms. Kaelin said inmates frequently
complained about Premier's service. Under that system, inmates would order
items to be packed into bags, shipped from San Antonio and handed out the
next day. Kaelin said his office received numerous
complaints about items being damaged or wrong. Keefe stores items at the
Nueces County Jail McKenzie Annex and brings items around on a cart twice a
week so inmates can choose and receive items immediately, Kaelin
said. Premier's accounting system also allowed inmates to buy on credit, and
as a result some inmates would leave custody owing money to Nueces County, Kaelin said. Keefe's system charges inmates' accounts
directly by scanning a bracelet inmates wear. An inmate can't buy items
unless there is enough money in the account.
September 25, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
The longtime campaign manager and friend of resigned Bexar County Sheriff
Ralph Lopez pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft Tuesday that could
bring him up to a decade in prison and a $10,000 fine. John Reynolds' plea
stemmed from his demands that Premier Management Enterprises give charitable
donations, campaign contributions and other money "so you can take care
of us," in exchange for contracts to operate the jail and jail annex
commissaries, which were under the control of Lopez. According to the plea
deal, Reynolds ended up diverting the Premier money — $32,000 — for his
personal use. 'You're killing me' -- Premier's Texas point man at one time
was Ian Williamson, who no longer works for the company. Now a cooperating
witness, Williamson told Bexar County investigators that Reynolds "asked
for certain things" in exchange for awarding Premier the commissary
business. Specifically, Reynolds told Premier to pay the equivalent of 1
percent of commissary sales to Lopez's campaign fund and give three payments
of $7,500 each that Reynolds said were donations to the Optimists, when, in
fact, the money went into his own bank accounts. Williamson testified that he
called Reynolds this past spring, as the investigation was heating up, and
asked him for receipts for the three $7,500 donations. "Williamson said
there was dead silence until John Reynolds stated, 'You're killing me; you're
killing me,' at which time Ian Williamson claimed it was then that he
realized that John Reynolds had never delivered the donations,"
according to court documents. At one point, Williamson stated, Reynolds
demanded a consulting fee of $5,014. When Williamson asked why he shouldn't
write a check for a round $5,000, he said Reynolds
replied: "that $5,000 looked too funny." Other filings by the
district attorney's office have shown checks made out to Reynolds' accounts
and signed by Michael LeBlanc, who is an owner of Premier along with his
brother Patrick, and by Chris Burch, who replaced Williamson as Premier's
CEO. Burch said in a recent interview that he believed Reynolds'
representations that the checks were for legitimate charities. Premier's
lawyers have denied any wrongdoing. After the scandal broke, Premier mutually
agreed with the Sheriff's Office to prematurely end its Bexar County
commissary contracts. Recently, Lopez pleaded no contest to taking a gift
from Premier — an all-expense paid trip to Costa Rica for golf and fishing.
He was forced to resign and fined $10,000; his interim replacement, Roland Tafolla, was sworn in last week. Lopez claims he was
ignorant of how Reynolds was running his campaign finances. By pleading
guilty to third-degree theft, Reynolds will be going to prison, First
Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said.
Under the parole rules, the 10-year sentence would make him eligible for
early release in 2.5 years. That is much less than the potential sentence he
could have faced had he been indicted. District Attorney Susan Reed's office
had threatened to indict Reynolds as a repeat offender because of Reynolds'
previous conviction for falsifying a furniture damage claim while he was in
the military. That would have made Reynolds' minimum sentence 15 years, the
Express-News confirmed. Reynolds entered his plea before 399th District Judge
Juanita Vasquez-Gardner on Tuesday afternoon and was released on a $10,000
bond. As part of his plea, Reynolds will have to tell all he knows to federal
authorities before his Jan. 4 sentencing as part of an FBI investigation that
may — or may not — continue for some time. "The investigation is very
fluid at the moment and to comment on the direction just wouldn't be prudent
right now," said Special Agent Erik Vasys, a
spokesman for the San Antonio-based FBI office. Goals met -- Reynolds' plea
effectively brings to a close Reed's public corruption investigation of the
lucrative jail commissary contracts, granted in 2005 and 2006 by the board of
the Benevolent Fund that was controlled by Lopez and chaired by Reynolds.
"Our goal was to go after the public officials that we believe engaged
in wrongdoing," Herberg said. "And with
John Reynolds' and the sheriff's plea, we believe we've accomplished our
goal." Also caught in the investigation was the ex-sheriff's wife, Nancy
Lopez, who kept her own close ties to Reynolds and whose signatures were
found on thousands of dollars worth of campaign
checks that Reynolds allegedly deposited into his private accounts. She was
given immunity from state prosecution. Reynolds will be required to talk with
federal investigators about "all transactions. This includes but is not
limited to, all of his experiences, whether illegal or not, with the Bexar
County Sheriff's Office, the BCSO Benevolent Fund, Michael LeBlanc, Patrick
LeBlanc, Premier Management Enterprises, LCS, Louisiana Corrections Systems,
and affiliated persons and entities," states a letter from Reed to
Reynolds' lawyer, outlining the plea deal. Louisiana-based Premier and the
prison-building company called LCS Corrections Inc., which is also owned in
part by Michael and Patrick LeBlanc, operate in five South Texas counties,
Louisiana and Alabama. Lopez and Reynolds weren't the only one to benefit
from their ties to Premier. The Express-News has reported that Premier also
gave a contract for temporary staffing to John E. Curran III, who, like
Reynolds, is a friend of Lopez's and a member of the Bexar County Benevolent
Fund board. Premier gave Curran the staffing business after he'd voted to
give Premier an initial commissary contract. He later recused himself from
further votes about Premier. In summer 2006, Reynolds, in a desperate attempt
to cover up the real reason he'd taken money from Premier, handed out
envelopes full of cash to his friends, purportedly college scholarships for
their children. District attorney investigators said Reynolds concocted the
Optimists scholarships as a disguise. One of the students whose parent
received the $7,500 told investigators "he did not know the name of the
organization that awarded him the scholarship money, he didn't know about an
organization named Optimist, nor does he know what the word 'optimist'
means." In fact, Reynolds' affiliation with the Optimists had ended
years earlier, investigators found.
September 8, 2007 The Advocate
This week’s conviction of a San Antonio area sheriff for his involvement
in a bribery and money laundering scheme has ties to a Lafayette company
owned by a candidate for the state House of Representatives. Pat LeBlanc and
his brother, Michael, own Premier Management Enterprise. Bexar County
prosecutors say now-resigned Sheriff Ralph Lopez and his long-time campaign
manager John Reynolds received money and a golf and fishing trip to Costa
Rica in exchange for awarding Premier Management the contract to run the
county jail’s commissary. LeBlanc, a Republican, qualified Thursday to run
for the District 43 seat being vacated by Ernie Alexander, R-Lafayette.
LeBlanc said Friday that he is cooperating with investigators and as such
cannot comment on the specifics of the case. But LeBlanc said he is confident
in his and his company’s integrity. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” LeBlanc
said. “We’re caught up in something that’s a lot bigger than us.” Lopez and
his wife, Nancy, pleaded no contest Monday to charges of receiving an
improper gift, failing to file the proper disclosures, and tampering with a
government record. According to the couple’s plea deal, they will be required
to cooperate with both local, state and federal authorities in the ongoing
investigation. Affidavits attached to search warrants in the case allege that
in April 2005, Reynolds began lobbying the sheriff’s office Benevolent Fund
board — which at the time ran the commissary operations — in an attempt to
have the board award the commissary contract for the jail annex to Premier
Management on a trial basis. Reynolds sat on the board at the time. In June
2005, a board member intended to present the board an analysis that showed
there would be a decrease in profits if the contract were agreed to,
according to the affidavit. Lopez, the board chairman and the skeptical board
member sent a letter to Premier Management in July 2005 telling the company
the board would not be awarding it the contract, the affidavit says. Soon
thereafter, the chairman resigned from the board and Reynolds took over as
chairman. Reynolds then called a special meeting on a date when he knew two
objecting board members would be out of town; and at that meeting, Reynolds
gave Premier Management the contract, according to the affidavit. Twelve days
later, Lopez and Reynolds attended an all-expense paid golf and fishing trip
to Costa Rica, hosted by Premier Management, according to the affidavit. A person investigators believe to be an Alabama state
senator also attended. In October 2005, the contract was formally signed. One
month later, Premier Management gave a $5,000 check to “Systems Analysts,”
which prosecutors say was a shell business controlled by Reynolds. In January
2006, Premier Management gave $7,500 to the “Optimist Club Scholarship Fund,”
which prosecutors say is a sham nonprofit controlled by Reynolds. Another
$7,500 check to Optimist followed on May 11, 2006, according to the
affidavit. Two weeks later, despite an analysis by the board’s accountant
that showed the commissary profits had decreased, the board voted to extend the
contract to the entire jail, not just the annex operations, the affidavit
says. In total, prosecutors allege, Premier Management or Michael LeBlanc
gave Reynolds’ organizations more than $32,000, which Reynolds then turned
into cash and deposited into his personal bank account. Pat LeBlanc said the
contracts his company signs with state and federal officials require a great
deal of disclosure, including the requirement that his company’s books be
open for review at a moment’s notice by those agencies. “I’m proud to say I
have passed muster,” LeBlanc said. “There’s probably no candidate in
Louisiana that gets more scrutiny.” LeBlanc said he and his brother started
the commissary business as a satellite business to serve their own prisons,
before deciding to branch off to serve other facilities. It’s not a large
part of the overall business, LeBlanc said. “I would never ever risk my
integrity over selling candy bars and potato chips,” LeBlanc said. LeBlanc
said that most voters see the issue as he sees it, as a “smear campaign.” He
said most Lafayette media outlets were tipped off on the San Antonio
prosecutions within a two-and-a-half hour period. “It’s politics as usual,”
LeBlanc said. “It’s the nature of the game. It’s a blood sport. People will
use every little piece of leverage they can.”
September 9, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez and some of his friends weren't the only
ones in South Texas who enjoyed the benefits of helping Premier Management
Enterprises secure lucrative jail commissary contracts, according to
interviews and records examined by the San Antonio Express-News. Like Lopez,
the sheriffs of two other counties awarded contracts to the Louisiana jail
services company, and either they or their associates reaped financial
benefits. Those sheriffs, now out of office, also boasted to their staffs
about going on a golf and fishing trip to Costa Rica with Premier officials,
the same trip that last week forced Lopez to resign. Here in Kleberg County,
then-Sheriff Tony Gonzalez, a close friend of Lopez, gave Premier a contract
to run his jail commissary when he was in office in 2004 and has been paid by
the company for consulting work of an unknown nature. "I've done some
consulting for them here and there," Gonzalez told the Express-News
during a brief interview at his ranch-style home on the outskirts of
Kingsville, declining to elaborate. "I'm just down here keeping my nose
clean." In Nueces County, one associate of former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez, another Lopez friend, reaped rewards after helping Premier win a
jail commissary contract there in 2005. The associate, a commercial real
estate broker who was appointed by the sheriff to an ad hoc committee that
awarded the contract, later earned a commission from the sale of 56 acres
where LCS Corrections Services Inc., another company owned in part by
Premier's principals, is building a private detention center, the
Express-News has learned. In addition, the former sheriff's chief deputy won
political backing from LCS when he ran as a candidate to replace Olivarez,
who had stepped down to run for county judge. Premier, which has come up
repeatedly in an ongoing public corruption investigation in Bexar County for
doing favors for influential people in a position to help the company, has
denied any wrongdoing. That investigation, so far, has narrowly targeted only
individuals in Bexar County, such as Lopez and his longtime campaign manager,
John Reynolds, and Reynolds' financial relationship with the sheriff's wife.
Lopez, Reynolds and at least one of their associates helped Premier land the
local jail food commissary contract in 2005. As part of an immunity deal with
Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, the sheriff resigned, effective
Sept. 19, and pleaded no contest Tuesday to three misdemeanor charges, two of
which were related to the Costa Rica golf outing he accepted from Premier.
The deal protected him from further state prosecution; his wife wasn't
indicted. Reynolds, who played a key role in awarding the contract to Premier,
is suspected by Reed of bribery, extortion, theft, money laundering and
campaign finance violations. He also went on the Costa Rica trip and received
checks totaling more than $30,000 from Premier and one of its owners for
consulting and donations to fake charities Reynolds set up. An associate of
both Reynolds and the sheriff, John E. Curran, voted with Reynolds on a jail
board to give Premier the commissary contract, then won a contract himself
from Premier to provide temporary workers for the operation. Largely
unexamined is the broader picture of how Premier, its owners, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, and LCS conducted a business expansion with local government
partners throughout South Texas. A closer look at some of those operations
reveals similarities in conduct with local officials that have drawn none of
the law enforcement or media scrutiny seen in Bexar County. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who succeeded Olivarez, is
among those who have been watching the news from San Antonio with keen interest
because LCS is about to open an 800-bed prison in his county. So far, no law
enforcement agency has contacted him, Kaelin said.
Close relationships -- LeBlanc-run companies Premier and LCS operate
jail-related businesses in five South Texas counties. The first started in
Brooks County in 2000. They have embarked on an aggressive expansion in
recent years that has capitalized on tighter federal immigration control
policies. In addition to the work at Bexar County Jail, the companies also
operate jails, commissaries or full-scale prisons in Brooks, Kleberg, Hidalgo
and Nueces counties. They also run four jails in the LeBlancs'
home state of Louisiana and one in Alabama. Current Texas law makes sheriffs
key gatekeepers for contracts such as those sought by Premier and to a
certain extent by the prison-building LCS. Under current law, Texas sheriffs
have almost unchecked authority to contract management of their commissaries
with no competitive bidding. County commissioners must approve deals to build
private prisons but often keep their sheriffs closely in the loop as resident
overseers and advisers. Premier, LCS or sometimes both arrived in counties
served by sheriffs who maintained close personal relationships with one
another and with Bexar County's Lopez, according to interviews with personnel
in several offices. Lopez's office calendar for the past few years shows he
often traveled to visit Kleberg's Gonzalez on weekends for golfing and that
Gonzalez traveled to San Antonio. The calendar also shows a number of trips
to visit Olivarez in Corpus Christi, where he still lives in a house near a
golf course. At the Kleberg County Sheriff's Office, Gonzalez's former
staffers say the three were often joined in golfing and hunting outings by
other sheriffs and elected officials in counties where Premier or LCS are
doing business today. Among them was Balde Lozano
of Brooks County, who did not return three calls for this story. "He
kept a close-knit circle of friends," said Yvonne Barbour, Gonzalez's
former office administrator. "I know Tony was a big golfer." Those
relationships would later prove mutually beneficial for the Louisiana
companies and the sheriffs or their friends. Gonzalez, for instance, used his
relationships in Nueces County to help Premier and LCS gain entrance there.
Assistant Deputy Chief Peter B. Peralta, who worked in the office when LSC
first began courting county business, remembered that it was Gonzalez who
made the introductions. Later, Gonzalez approved giving Premier a food
commissary contract for his jail during his final weeks in office. At some
point either before or after Gonzalez left office in late 2004, he accepted
private consulting work from Premier's owners, he and a company official
acknowledged. When Gonzalez transferred the commissary contract to Premier,
two lifelong Kingsville residents, brothers who run a small local grocery,
felt the pain. Betos Community Grocery had held the
contract since the 1970s and had come to rely on the modest commissary
revenue as competition from large grocery stores cut into Betos'
bottom line. They were told they should only bid for the contract if they had
a sophisticated computer system. "We didn't even get one computer until
last year," said Juan Garza, who co-owns the grocery with his brother
Albert and supported Gonzalez's last failed re-election bid. "It
hurt." It remains unclear what kind of consulting work Gonzalez did for
the company or when it started. But former five-term Brooks County Judge Joe
B. Garcia recalled one occasion — after Gonzalez lost his election — that he
came calling, apparently after hearing that Garcia had begun agitating for
Brooks County to renegotiate better terms from its LCS detention center
contract. It was during this time that Gonzalez phoned Garcia wanting to meet
for lunch and talk about local LCS operations. "I've known Tony for a
while. But I didn't want to talk to him about my contract with LCS,"
Garcia said. Garcia remembered another story he found disturbing, when
Michael LeBlanc himself showed up at his office, accompanied by the man
Garcia had just beaten in the election. That LeBlanc would travel to South
Texas was not unusual; he often has personally tended to his business
affairs. But Garcia said what he heard made him feel uncomfortable.
"They said if I had a campaign debt, they would contribute to my
campaign," Garcia said. He said he told them he had no campaign debt to
pay off and wouldn't have accepted the offer even if he did. "A lot of
people try to do those type of things," Garcia said. "I've always
been the type who, hey, I've worked hard for my education. I don't have fancy
cars, no ranches." Attorneys for LCS and Premier have declined all
requests for interviews regarding the ongoing investigation in Bexar County
or for this report. Last year, the LeBlancs sued
the Express-News, alleging they were libeled in articles the paper published
in late 2005. The lawsuit is pending. But Chris Burch, chief executive
officer of Premier, acknowledged that Gonzalez had done some consulting work
for the company under an arrangement with a predecessor, Ian Williamson, who
is no longer with the company. Burch said he was not privy to any details
about that work. Gonzalez still may be working for the company as a paid
consultant, Burch said. "I do know he has done some consulting work, but
I'm not the one who put this together." Benefits and campaign -- Like
Gonzalez, then-Nueces County Sheriff Olivarez helped Premier land a
commissary deal in his jail during his final days in office in late 2005. He
then quit, as required, to run for county judge. During his time as sheriff,
LCS had a "pass through" contract with Nueces to refer federal
prisoners to its other Texas facilities, and it advanced a proposal to build
the 800-bed detention center, now nearing completion. The project is expected
to generate $800,000 for the county in inmate transfer payments, plus
$350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. The Express-News has learned an ally of
Olivarez benefited financially from LCS' effort to build the detention center
— after helping the sheriff give the jail commissary contract to Premier.
Corpus Christi commercial real estate broker and developer Tim Clower served in late 2005 on an ad hoc selection
committee the sheriff appointed to examine bids for the commissary management
job, according to the office of Kaelin, the current
sheriff. In February 2006, several months after Clower
voted for the commissary contract, he brokered a real estate purchase of 56.6
acres on behalf of LCS for the $20 million detention center. The property's
seller, Patricia Ann Bernsen, said Clower's company
approached her and brokered the purchase of her farmland for $4,000 an acre,
or $225,000. "He did get a commission, that's for sure," Bernsen
said, declining to say how much. "It was a good commission." On
average, commercial real estate agents earn between 6 percent and 10 percent,
according to one South Texas commercial real estate broker. At the time of
the sale, the 2006 sheriff's primary race was heating up. Clower
co-signed for a $20,000 campaign loan to Olivarez's former chief deputy,
Jimmy Rodriguez, whose opponent at the time was publicly criticizing him for
helping bring LCS to town. LCS went to Rodriguez's aid by lambasting his
opponent. At one point in the campaign, LCS went public with a threat to halt
construction of its detention center if Rodriguez did not win the Democratic
primary. "We're not going to work with or for someone who doesn't
respect our company," Michael LeBlanc was quoted in the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times as saying about Rodriguez's opponent. "If Mr. (Pete)
Alvarez wins, we're out of Nueces County — plain and simple," LeBlanc
said. Rodriguez won the primary but lost the general election. Last week, he
insisted that he was paying off the $20,000 bank loan he said Clower co-signed. "He's been a friend for a long
time," Olivarez's former chief deputy said of Clower.
"He had a long history with the department before we even got
there." Clower did not return repeated calls
seeking comment about the loan or his commission on the LCS land purchase.
Traveling together -- The Express-News could not substantiate or refute
comments from those in the Sheriff's Office that Olivarez, while he was
sheriff, went on the same Costa Rica trip in August 2005 with Lopez, Reynolds
and Premier officials. Olivarez did not return numerous phone calls or
respond to a message left during a visit to his home. Kaelin
said Olivarez boasted of the Costa Rica trip and a separate hunting trip to
employees who remain on staff. Kleberg's Gonzalez, while in office, also told
some of his staff of going on the same Costa Rica trip, said Kleberg Sheriff
Ed Mata, who beat Gonzalez in the 2004 election. Mata conceded that he can't
prove the story, but he wondered why no one has investigated as in Bexar
County. Gonzalez, during the recent interview at his home near Kingsville,
was asked several times if he would deny going on the trip. He declined each
time. The Costa Rica trip was not the only reputed benefit Kaelin heard about in regard to Olivarez. Shortly after
taking office, Kaelin said, a staff person phoned
him to report that Olivarez had appeared with a small group of businesspeople
seeking to tour the detention center project. Kaelin
said he was told that Olivarez had represented himself as an "unpaid
spokesperson for LCS." Kaelin called LCS
officials to inquire as to whether Olivarez might have been hired to run the
detention center, a prospect Kaelin worried would
undermine his office's working relationship with it. But he was told Olivarez
had no known connection to the company or employment prospects. Bexar Sheriff
Lopez's office calendar indicates he planned to attend the detention center
groundbreaking with Olivarez on Feb. 23, 2006, after Olivarez had left office
to run, unsuccessfully it turned out, for judge. Today, Olivarez works as a
manager for the Corpus Christi branch of CGT Law Group International,
according to a woman who answered the phone there. Richard Harbison, a vice
president in charge of LCS' Texas operations, is certain that Olivarez has had
no financial relationship with LCS. As he was preparing to take his own
vacation to Costa Rica, Harbison also said by phone that he was unaware of
any paid trips involving sheriffs in Texas and the LeBlancs.
Burch, of Premier, said he was not working for the company at the time of the
August 2005 trip. In Bexar County, where the public corruption investigation
has been in high gear lately, District Attorney Susan Reed has said she is
mainly interested in prosecuting local individuals such as Reynolds, whom she
called "rotten fruit." None of Premier's San Antonio offices have
been searched, Reed acknowledged. "I'm not finished, so I'm not ready to
make any definitive determination yet" about Premier, she said. The FBI
and Texas Rangers, which have been involved in the Bexar County
investigation, aren't commenting. Patrick LeBlanc, who last week formally
became a candidate for the Louisiana Legislature, is running in part on a
message that he will fight against political corruption that "robs us of
our confidence in government." Last week, he told the Lafayette Advocate
that he has been cooperating with investigators in Bexar County but couldn't
elaborate. "We haven't done anything wrong," he told the newspaper.
"I would never, ever risk my integrity over selling candy bars and
potato chips."
September 1, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
With an indictment hanging over his head, Sheriff Ralph Lopez resigned Friday
in a deal struck with prosecutors that guarantees him no jail time in
exchange for a no contest plea and $10,000 fine, a source familiar with the
negotiations told the San Antonio Express-News. Lopez's brief resignation
letter marked the end of his 15-year reign as Bexar County sheriff. The
letter was faxed to District Attorney Susan Reed at 5:36 p.m., following what
the Express-News confirmed were ongoing negotiations about resolving his
criminal case. Lopez faces misdemeanor charges stemming from an investigation
into a jail commissary contract awarded to a Louisiana private jail services
company called Premier Management Enterprises. "I, Rafael Lopez, hereby
resign my position as Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, effective at 5:00 p.m.
on August 31, 2007," Lopez's resignation letter said. Reed turned the
resignation letter over to Commissioners Court, whose members plan to meet
Tuesday to begin choosing a successor. A new sheriff could be named by Sept.
19. The resignation was the product of a deal Lopez and his attorneys struck
with Reed's office, a source familiar with the agreement confirmed. Under the
undisclosed terms, Lopez agreed to plead no contest to all three
misdemeanors, and to pay a $10,000 fine. A review by the Express-News of the
court's records Friday showed no plea agreement was filed, and judges who
could have formalized the deal had left the building by the time Lopez's
resignation was made public. Sources familiar with the negotiations, however,
confirmed the sheriff will formalize the proposed deal in front of a judge,
possibly as early as next week. Reed declined to comment. So did Lopez's
lawyer, Mike McCrum: "I cannot comment about anything regarding his
pending case," he said. After formally resigning, Lopez retreated to the
privacy of his Leon Valley home, which raided last week by investigators, and
did not answer calls from the media. Through other officials, he requested to
be left alone. County Commissioner Paul Elizondo said Lopez may issue a
public statement in the coming days. The indictments against Lopez, issued
just as the statute of limitations was about to expire, are part of a broader
ongoing investigation into just how Premier Management Enterprises came to
win the jail commissary contract. Lopez faces three misdemeanor counts:
accepting a gift, accepting an "honorarium," and failing to
disclose the gift and honorarium in his finance reports to the county. The
alleged gifts were in the form of a golfing and fishing trip to Costa Rica in
August 2005, at a time when Premier's contract was in jeopardy. Key questions
remain unanswered. Chief among them is whether Lopez or his wife, Nancy
Lopez, still might be subject to charges in the public corruption
investigation. She has been named as a suspect in bribery, money laundering
and campaign finance law violations. Also unknown is whether Lopez and his
wife will become cooperating witnesses against others who have been named as
suspects or who have been called before the grand jury. The grand jury's term
was extended until late September. "The sheriff clearly wants to spend
more time with his family, and he's confident that his department is being
left in capable hands," said McCrum, who declined to comment on Nancy
Lopez's status or any possible deal involving Lopez himself. "He's proud
of the Bexar County Sheriff's Office and that it is in capable hands. Because
of a lot of different factors, he's decided to resign to spend more time with
his family." County officials called a news conference late Friday
afternoon to announce the resignation. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff
described a calm, professional interaction with the sheriff during which
Lopez disclosed his intention to resign. Wolff said he didn't ask Lopez any
questions. "He did say he's going to take some time with his family and
wanted some privacy," Wolff said, later adding: "The last two or
three weeks have obviously been difficult. I think at least I feel relieved
in the sense that it's come to a conclusion, and we now know a timeline in
which we will take action. It's never good when any elected official has
legal problems." Elizondo and Commissioner Tommy Adkisson
also expressed regret. "It is sad for a person who came in with great
aplomb and reception ... to come to this juncture," Adkisson
said. "I had a very good relationship with the sheriff, and I always
really respected him," Elizondo said. "He's had an outstanding
career in law enforcement and he's done a lot to modernize and upgrade the
Sheriff's Office during his career. It's sad that it comes to this
juncture." Wolff said he had no successor in mind for Lopez. Sheriff's
Deputy Al Damiani, president of the Bexar County Sheriffs
Deputy Law Enforcement Officer's Organization, long considered a Lopez ally,
expressed dismay over the resignation. The union, known as LEO, has had its
records subpoenaed, along with some of its top members, and long has retained
longtime Lopez campaign manager John Reynolds as a political consultant. The
investigation into the jail commissary contract also has encompassed
Reynolds, who served on the nonprofit board. "If this hadn't have come
up, they would have been naming buildings after Ralph Lopez," Damiani
said. "He took our organization from the dark ages to a situation where
we're a viable modern law enforcement organization." Damiani, who only
recently became LEO's president, said he has ordered a full 10-year audit of
the organization's books that will focus on any dealings involving Reynolds.
He also urged Commissioner's Court to appoint an interim sheriff who knows
the department well and isn't currently a declared candidate for the office.
He said the office has been in "absolute turmoil." "We want
someone who can stabilize things and get us back to the business of serving
the public," Damiani said. Premier took over management of the jail food
commissary contract at the urging of Lopez, who used close associates on a
nonprofit corporate board overseeing the jail commissary to push the contract
through when a majority of other board members were prepared to vote it down.
Through their attorneys, Ralph and Nancy Lopez and Reynolds have denied any
wrongdoing.
August 15, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez was indicted Thursday on three
misdemeanor criminal charges related to benefits he allegedly took from a
jail contractor, but the four-term officeholder avoided the indignity of
getting booked into his own jail. The indictments accused Lopez of accepting
and failing to report a gift and an "honorarium" — both involving
the same 2005 all-expenses paid golfing/fishing trip to Costa Rica — from a
company he helped get the contract to run his jail's food commissaries. In
particular, the indictments allege that he solicited and accepted food,
lodging, transportation and entertainment, including golfing and fishing,
from two officials of Louisiana-based Premier Management Enterprises, which
now runs the commissaries. One indictment labels the trip as a gift to a
public servant; the other an "honorarium," or informal payment,
that "was in consideration for services that the defendant would not
have been requested to provide but for defendant's official position and
duties." The third charges that he failed to report the gift on his
personal financial disclosure form. Lopez remains in office, as allowed by
law for an official under indictment, but if found guilty, Lopez would be
automatically disqualified for service and could end up behind bars. Despite
warrants issued for his arrest Thursday, Lopez never had to join his
prisoners. After reporting to a judge, he was allowed to remain free on a
personal recognizance bond. The charges are the first to surface as part of a
wider-ranging public corruption probe that District Attorney Susan Reed said
focuses on the relationship between Premier, Lopez, his longtime campaign
manager John Reynolds, members of a nonprofit board the sheriff set up and
appointed to run the jail commissaries, and others. Attorneys for Premier did
not respond to requests for comment Thursday. After testifying under subpoena
for 45 minutes before the grand jury Thursday morning, Lopez said, "I've
done nothing wrong." A Democrat who recently announced he would run for
re-election next year, Lopez called the 18-month investigation by Republican
Reed "a political witch hunt." Jason Davis, one of Lopez's
attorneys, said, "We are looking forward to our day in court." In
previous interviews, Lopez has acknowledged accepting the trip to Costa Rica
for an undisclosed business purpose, a kind of favor to friends, but has
insisted it had no bearing on his decision to help Premier take over the jail
commissaries. He maintains he has never received any form of payment from
Premier for his help. Reed characterized the indictment of Lopez as merely a
stepping-stone in an investigation that is far from over, involving the FBI
and Texas Rangers. She said the misdemeanor indictments against Lopez were
presented Thursday only because the legal time limit for filing such charges
would have ended on Monday. Reed dismissed the sheriff's accusation that the
investigation was political, noting that it began long before Lopez declared
he would run for re-election. "That is a fairly typical response from
any politician who has been indicted. In fact, I can't remember anyone not
claiming that," she said. "The sheriff has run for office before
and I have kept my distance. I didn't even support the candidates who were
running. I made no public endorsements. I felt I needed to work with him.
He's the sheriff." The charges against Lopez fall short of more
penalty-heavy public corruption or bribery, which challenge prosecutors to
present evidence that meets a more stringent standard. Instead, the two
charges characterizing the trip as a payment or benefit, if proved, each
carry up to a year in prison, a $4,000 fine, or both. A third charge accusing
Lopez of failing to report it as required on financial disclosure statements
carries a penalty of up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. Jail business
-- The sheriff's Costa Rica trip came at a time when Premier's prospects of
getting the jail business was in jeopardy, and he wasn't the only one who
benefited from a relationship with the company. Until the fall of 2005, the
county's two jail commissaries were being run and managed directly by the
sheriff's office through the nonprofit Benevolent Fund. By most accounts, the
commissaries were run efficiently and had some $2 million a year in revenue.
But starting earlier in 2005, the sheriff began pushing hard for his
appointed board members to hand over management to Premier, on grounds that a
private company could run the commissaries more professionally. Premier's
principals were brothers Michael LeBlanc and Patrick LeBlanc, as well as CEO
Ian Williamson. But some of Lopez's own staff and appointed Benevolent Fund
board members strongly objected to the change. A background check turned up
information about Premier that was generally critical of the company and
cited specific examples where another company run by the LeBlancs,
a private prison firm, had faced legal challenges to their operations. A
majority of board members were prepared to vote against the project. Even
Lopez momentarily withdrew his support, but he was soon pushing for it again.
A key meeting that broke the logjam occurred in August 2005, when Reynolds
became chairman of the board and pushed the Premier contract forward, minutes
show. In a recent court filing seeking to force Reynolds to give up
handwriting samples, the district attorney's office accused him of accepting
more than $27,000 in unreported "donations" to "shell"
charities and "consulting" fees from Premier during the time that
Reynolds was also helping the company win the jail commissary business as a
sheriff-appointed member of the Benevolent Fund board. He is a target of the
investigation, subpoenaed at least three times by the grand jury. Neither
Reynolds nor his attorney has returned phone calls. He has invoked the Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination all three times. It was also later
that month, from Aug. 20-23, that Lopez accompanied Michael LeBlanc and Ian
Williamson to Costa Rica, according to the sheriff's calendar and the
indictments. Investigators have interviewed a number of other current and
former Benevolent Fund board members. Among them is John E. Curran III, a
longtime political and business associate of both the sheriff and Reynolds.
The Express-News reported July 29 that Curran runs a temporary worker company
that got a contract to staff Premier's commissary operations after he helped
the Louisiana company overcome Benevolent Fund board opposition to gain a
footing at the jail during the summer of 2005. Curran said he fully disclosed
his contract, worth an estimated $15,000 annually, to the sheriff and fellow
board members and abstained from further voting as a board member on Premier
business.
August 11, 2007 The Independent
A Lafayette company headed by brothers Michael and Patrick Leblanc has
turned up in the middle of a public corruption investigation centered on the
Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in west Texas. Sheriff Ralph Lopez was recently
indicted on three misdemeanor charges related to unreported benefits he
received from the Leblancs’ company, Premier
Management Enterprise. Lopez took an all-expenses-paid golfing/fishing trip
to Costa Rica with the Leblancs, at a time when
Premier was vying for a lucrative contract to run the county jail’s
commissary stores. Court filings also show that one of the sheriff’s close
associates, John Reynolds, appears to have laundered money from Premier into
his own personal bank account, through a fraudulent charity scholarship
organization named Optimists. “We were duped,” says Pat Leblanc. “I really
don’t know the whole length and breadth of the story, but I can tell you
this: If somebody played funny with our money, I want to prosecute them to
the end of the world.” Leblanc, who is a candidate for District 43 state
representative, also distanced himself from the company, which he says is
primarily run by his brother and another associate, Ian Williamson. Michael
Leblanc says he is working closely with investigators and anticipates the
entire issue should soon be resolved. “Unfortunately, we didn’t know who this
guy was,” he says, referring to Reynolds. “Shame on us.” While it appears
Premier is unlikely to face any charges from the investigation, the
circumstances surrounding its contract with the Bexar County jail have
certainly created a perception of quid pro quo. The district attorney has
labeled Lopez’s golf trip as an honorarium that “was in consideration for
services that the defendant would not have been requested to provide but for
defendant’s official position and duties.” Lopez began pushing to farm out
the county jail’s commissaries to Premier in 2005. Initially the idea met
resistance from the board of the “Benevolent Fund” — a nonprofit Lopez had
set up to manage the commissaries several years ago. One board member, Amadeo
Ortiz — who now is running against Lopez for sheriff — commissioned a
background report that was critical of Premier and another Leblanc company.
After Ortiz resigned, the issue came up again. The board approved moving
ahead with a six-month trial contract with Premier in August 2005. The vote
came at a special meeting held while two board members were out of town.
Reynolds was elected chairman of the board at the same meeting. A few weeks
after that meeting, the Leblancs took both Lopez
and Reynolds on the trip to Costa Rica. Sheriff Lopez has stated the trip,
which John Reynolds also attended, was a private conference unrelated to any
county business. Pat Leblanc says the conference addressed security issues
related to one of the Leblancs’ private prisons in
Alabama. In addition to Premier, the Leblancs own
LCS Prisons, the fifth largest prison system in the U.S. with facilities
across the Gulf Coast region. “In our jail business, we hold conferences with
various law enforcement agencies to discuss security and issues having to do
with operation. That was the basis of the trip,” says Pat Leblanc. He adds
the business also “routinely entertains clients. We take them fishing and we
take them golfing,” he says. “That’s business culture; everybody in the
business world does that. All the service companies here do it.” Premier
signed its six-month contract with the Benevolent Fund’s board in October
2005, and in the months following made a total of $27,500 in contributions to
charities now known to be controlled by Reynolds. The district attorney’s
office has bank records showing that Reynolds transferred the funds into his
personal account. Reynolds is yet to be called before a grand jury. For his
part, Sheriff Lopez, a Democrat, has maintained that he is the victim of a “political
witch hunt” by the Republican district attorney. Premier’s Texas-based
attorney, Tonya Webber, issued the following statement on behalf of her
clients: “Neither PME nor any of its employees or principals has engaged in
any misconduct. While both the company and the Leblancs
typically make charitable and political contributions they had every reason
to believe that any such charities were legitimate and that all contributions
or benefits were reported by the recipients as required by law.” Pat Leblanc
says that in hindsight, his company was too trusting of the Brexar County officials. “We’re out of towners,” he says.
“We’re not from that area. We went in, we sold our service; they wanted us to
do the commissary service. We operate a good, clean business and to think
that we might have been taken advantage of in that regard just turns my
stomach.”
July 29, 2007 San Antonio News-Express
In the summer of 2005, a determined effort by Bexar County Sheriff Ralph
Lopez to privatize the county jail commissary stores — which generated some
$2 million a year in gross sales — was on the verge of foundering. In Texas,
elected sheriffs enjoy wide leeway and independence in managing and operating
county jails, including the jail commissary, where inmates can purchase
everything from snacks to toiletries. But Lopez had met strong resistance
from several board members of a nonprofit "Benevolent Fund"
corporation that he had established several years earlier to run the
commissaries. They saw no good reason to contract out the operation to a
private vendor of Lopez's choice, Premier Management Enterprises, or any
other business. The deal seemed all but dead when Premier's fortunes took an
abrupt turn for the better. Some board members, including the chairman who
staunchly opposed the deal, resigned. The new leaders of the board along with
a new member, all allies of Lopez, would push the Premier contract through
the rough patch. Within weeks of the contract approval by the sheriff's
Benevolent Fund board in August 2005, Lopez, an avid golfer known to travel
the country playing at elite resorts, was visiting Costa Rica, where he spent
time on the greens with Premier officials at the expense of Premier's
principal owners, Patrick and Michael LeBlanc. Later, less than a month after
the contract was officially inked, board Chairman John Reynolds was allegedly
depositing the first of four checks totaling $27,500 from Premier into
accounts named for charities that were "shells" and
"fronts," according to court documents filed by a district attorney
investigator. And within four months, board Vice Chairman John E. Curran III
was preparing to cut his own financial side deal with Premier. Curran's
temporary worker company, PersoNet, now provides
the very commissary employees that Premier uses to carry out the contract
Curran helped along as vice chairman. In a recent interview, Curran said his
own ongoing business with Premier, based in Louisiana, to supply the jail
commissaries with about a dozen temporary workers is worth between $12,000
and $15,000 a year to him. Curran said he did nothing criminally or ethically
wrong, and that he verbally disclosed the relationship with Premier to the
sheriff and abstained on relevant votes once his company had Premier's
business in April 2006. "I had the sheriff's permission prior to doing
any business with Premier, and I asked the board's permission. Both granted
it," Curran said. "I wanted to be sure there was no conflict of
interest. I did not want anyone to find out in the newspaper, or any other
way, that one of my clients was Premier." The sheriff did not reply to
several telephone messages last week. Neither Reynolds nor his attorney
returned messages requesting comment for this article. Even if no laws were
broken, disclosures about Premier's generosity toward elected and appointed
officials who have helped it win lucrative contracts have left — at the least
— a public perception of wrongdoing in how the sheriff and his allies conduct
business. "Ugh," Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff groaned when told
of Premier's arrangement with Curran's company. "This thing's worse than
it already has been. This is not good at all. Nothing about it looks good.
Whether you've violated a criminal act or an ethics issue, or neither, it's
still not appropriate behavior. It looks bad." District Attorney Susan
Reed's public corruption investigators, joined by the FBI and the Texas
Rangers, are conducting interviews and have sought grand jury subpoenas
regarding Reynolds. On several occasions, he's invoked his Fifth Amendment
right against self-incrimination in response to subpoenas, according to court
documents. First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg
said his office would not discuss the investigation. Curran acknowledged that
investigators have questioned him about PersoNet's
relationship with Premier. Asked if he had ever shared any of the Premier
revenue with Reynolds or anyone else, Curran replied: "I'm not sharing
my revenue with anyone but my kids. My staff is not donating to anybody.
There's just nothing there." One of Premier's attorneys, Tonya Webber of
Corpus Christi, wrote in an e-mail reply, in part, that: "Temp-to-hire
services are a prudent business practice. This was an arms-length transaction
documented in writing with an experienced temp-to-hire company." Webber
said she wasn't at liberty to respond to specific e-mailed questions, such as
why Premier chose a Benevolent Fund board member's company, rather than more
than a dozen other area licensed temp worker companies. Created in 2002 by
Lopez, the Benevolent Fund appears to be the only one that exists in the
state for the purpose of running a jail commissary. Sheriffs in other
counties have contracted the job directly with private companies in line with
state laws that allow them to do so without competitive bidding. Because of
the Benevolent Fund's unique existence and function, said Lauri Saathoff, a
spokeswoman for the Texas attorney general's office, the question of how the
state's conflict of interest law might apply has never come up. "We don't
have any previous attorney general's opinions for a board like this,"
Saathoff said in response to an Express-News request. Three-way alliance --
Curran's ties to the sheriff and Reynolds date to the late 1990s when Curran
worked as a senior analyst in the Bexar County Personnel Division. Close
alliances were built among the three over the years, each assuming positions
of potential benefit to the others. Lopez and Reynolds have known each other
for at least 15 years; Lopez has hired Reynolds as his campaign manager for
years and once made Reynolds his chief of staff. Curran began serving on
various boards alongside Reynolds, doing business with a deputies' union
considered aligned with Lopez, and working on the sheriff's campaigns that
Reynolds managed. While Reynolds was chairman of the West San Antonio Chamber
of Commerce, which he helped found, Curran was treasurer. Reynolds also
nominated Curran in 2004 for appointment to the Alamo Workforce Development
board, one of 28 such boards across the state that spend Texas Workforce
Commission funds to help the unemployed find work. Curran and Reynolds also
share a connection through the Bexar County Sheriff's Deputies Law
Enforcement Organization's union. The fact that LEO routinely hires Reynolds
as its paid lobbyist has led to the perception among some deputies that Lopez
wields some influence over the organization. LEO also has given consulting
contracts to Curran to conduct salary surveys the union uses to justify pay
raise requests, he said. And Lopez's wife, Nancy, served at one time with
Reynolds on a now-defunct nonprofit fundraising arm of LEO. Curran, for his
part, said he has donated PersoNet's "time and
energy" to man phone banks soliciting past Lopez election campaign
contributors and will again for the sheriff's 2008 re-election campaign. When
Lopez founded the Benevolent Fund, Curran was among the first whom the
sheriff asked to serve on it. The alliance between Curran, Reynolds and the
sheriff would come into play at a critical moment during the summer of 2005,
in ways that would yield fruit for more than just Premier. Opposition to
proposed contract -- Starting in early 2005, when commissary revenues were
approaching record highs of $2 million under Benevolent Fund board
management, Lopez began pushing for Premier to run the jail annex commissary,
the smaller of two, on a six-month trial basis. If that worked out, the
contract would be expanded to the main jail commissary. Rather than contract
out the commissary at first, Lopez had opted to set up a Benevolent Fund with
a seven-member board to do the job in-house. He has authority to nominate and
appoint members. Lopez said last month that he later wanted to switch to
Premier because the commissary operations were outgrowing the limited expertise
of board members and it was time for professional management. "None of
us had experience," Lopez said. "Running a jail is not just putting
guys in jail. It's detention ministries; it's banking and other services.
It's all comprehensive." Some of the sheriff's subordinates on the board
immediately opposed the change. But the endeavor did not run into serious
trouble until the eve of a scheduled board vote on the pilot contract June
22, 2005. The chairman at the time, Deputy Chief Amadeo Ortiz, released the
results of a background investigation of Premier that he had quietly
commissioned from the Houston law firm McFall, Sherwood & Breitbeil. The report was generally critical of Premier
and cited specific examples where another company in which the LeBlancs also were shareholders, LCS Corrections Services
Inc., had faced legal challenges to their operations. The background report —
and a financial analysis projecting an initial revenue loss of $103,790 if
Premier took over — raised sufficient concern for Reynolds to table the
Premier contract that day, according to meeting minutes and two former board
members. Ortiz, who resigned from the board shortly after that meeting and is
running for sheriff against Lopez, said he believes he knows why. "It
would have failed a vote at that time," said Ortiz, guessing the board
would have voted 4-2 against Premier. "My fellow board members didn't
like the contract because there was nothing wrong with the way the commissary
was being run." Even the sheriff momentarily wavered in his support for
Premier because of the background report. But Lopez was soon pushing again.
And in the sheriff's corner, Ortiz and another board member said, were the
only two who had supported the proposal all along and who would go on to
break the stalemate: Curran and Reynolds, "the two Johns," as Ortiz
and other board members sometimes referred to them. Doing 'business with
friends' -- On Aug. 9, 2005, Reynolds and Curran called a special meeting.
Ortiz had by then resigned, and the two other board members were out of town,
at least one of whom was firmly opposed. Reynolds and Curran were joined by
Dr. Bert Cecconi, a 71-year-old dentist and
occasional candidate for local political office who had recently been added
to the board. Only weeks earlier Reynolds has asked him to join the board as
a favor to the sheriff, Cecconi recalled in an
interview last week. He said he'd gotten to know Reynolds and Lopez over the
years at Saturday morning community breakfast meetings downtown. The three,
enough for a quorum, elected Reynolds the new board chairman and Curran the
new vice chairman. Lopez put in a brief but rare appearance at the meeting.
Then, according to meeting minutes, the trio "approved and unanimously
recommends implementation immediately" of the Premier annex commissary
tryout program. Curran acknowledged the purpose of that Aug. 9 special
meeting. "That meeting was called to help get things going
forward," he said. "We were just trying to coordinate it to get
things up and going." Cecconi, who described
himself as a "passive member" of the board, said he served for just
four meetings, dropping off shortly after signing the Premier contract. Cecconi was given to believe the Premier deal was a
routine matter requiring little scrutiny. "To me, I thought it was like
a machine with Cokes coming out of it or something. I didn't know it was a
major deal," Cecconi said last week about
transferring the $2 million a year jail commissary operations to Premier.
"I probably just said, 'OK.' I didn't give it much thought, for better
or for worse." Later that month, from Aug. 20-23, the sheriff, who
frequently played golf with Premier's owners, traveled to Costa Rica, his
office calendar shows. Lopez recalled last month that the LeBlancs
paid all of his expenses to Costa Rica for an
undisclosed business trip, unrelated to county affairs, that included tee
time. Lopez still refuses to fully disclose the business purpose of the trip,
only that it involved a favor to his Premier friends, a foreign ambassador
and a senator, neither of whom he would name in deference to a
confidentiality agreement he said he struck with all involved. He also said
he was not paid. "The LeBlanc people paid for the Costa Rica trip,"
the sheriff said. "I was over there carrying my resume with me for
credibility for part of the trip." From August on, Lopez and Premier
would encounter no more dissent. After several resignations, the board, under
the guidance of Chairman Reynolds and Vice Chairman Curran, would
reconstitute itself with new members who would continue clearing the path for
Premier's pilot six-month contract. On Oct. 19, 2005, Cecconi,
as board secretary, signed the contract with Premier for the pilot program, a
copy of the agreement shows. A short time later, Cecconi
dropped off the board. He told the Express-News his dental practice had
gotten too busy. About three weeks after the contract was signed, Premier
wrote a $5,014 check for "consulting" to Systems Analysts Inc.,
described as Reynolds' "alter ego," according to allegations by
district attorney investigators. Three more Premier checks, totaling another
$22,500, to Reynolds-controlled accounts would follow, according to court
filings. Webber, Premier's attorney, said last month when asked about the
checks that there is no evidence of Premier being connected to any alleged
wrongdoing. Curran's firm gets hired Once Premier had its signed the pilot
contract, Curran said a company official asked him for advice about staffing
the limited operation. Premier was going to need only four of its own
workers. Curran said he offered to let Premier conduct interviews in the
offices of PersoNet, free of charge, as a favor. As
vice chairman, Curran continued to consider and discuss Premier's status
until about February 2006, by which time the tryout period was more than half
over, and it was clear to board members that Premier would secure a five-year
contract to run both jail commissaries. Curran confirmed that was about when
Premier first broached the topic of his company getting paid to provide
commissary workers for the anticipated expansion. He said he tried to refer
the business elsewhere but that the company insisted on PersoNet.
"They said, 'We need employees,'" Curran recalled. "I
recommended a couple of different avenues for them because I am in the
business, and they chose not to follow those, so ..." While there are a
dozen licensed temporary staffing companies in the greater San Antonio area,
Curran said Premier preferred to do business with him because "I guess
it's all networking. You like to do business with friends." During the
February 2006 board meeting, minutes show, Reynolds disclosed Curran's
pending business relationship with Premier. The sheriff, Reynolds announced,
had requested that Curran's company "bid" on work to supply Premier
with workers. Curran's fellow board members then approved a motion that he
recuse himself "from voting on matters that may create a conflict of
interest with the (Benevolent) Fund's activities," according to the
minutes. When the time came for the Benevolent Fund to extend the contract in
April 2006, Curran abstained. PersoNet had penned
its deal with Premier. Once Premier had all the commissary business, the
Benevolent Fund no longer needed to employ the 13 commissary workers. Some
were laid off; others were encouraged to reapply to Premier for their old
jobs, at substantially lower pay and with no benefits, according to two
former employees. PersoNet handled the initial
reapplication process, bringing some of the old commissary employees into PersoNet's fold as temporary workers. It also became the
equivalent of Premier's human resources department, outsourced. Curran said
he hopes his company grows with Premier, which has contracts elsewhere in
South Texas. "We want them to do well, both as a board member and as a
client," Curran said. "Their success — just like all my other
clients' success is — if I can help them be more successful, then I'm
successful. "That's business."
Bexar
County Secure Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center
Bexar County, Texas
Children’s Comprehensive Services/CCS
October, 1998
On October 21, three male inmates kicked open a rear gate and escaped. Less
than a week later, another inmate escaped through an unlocked front gate.
(San Antonio Express-News, November 11, 1998)
Big
Spring Complex
Big Spring, Texas
GEO Group (bought Cornell)
Mar
16, 2016 thenation.com
Family Sues Private-Prison Operator Over Deaths at Immigrant-Only
Facilities
An investigation found dozens of questionable deaths related to cost
cutting in privatized federal prisons. The family of Nestor Garay, a federal prisoner, filed a wrongful death lawsuit
on March 4 alleging that private prison operators negligently left inmates in
the care of underqualified medical workers who failed to respond properly to a
medical emergency. This article was reported in partnership with the
Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, with support from the Puffin
Foundation. Garay was 41 when he died on June 28,
2014, shackled to his bed in Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, Texas. The
cause, according to the neurologist who examined him there, was a stroke he’d
suffered two days earlier and 40 miles away, in Big Spring Correctional
Center. The facility is operated by the Geo Group and its medical
subcontractor, Correct Care Solutions (CCS). Garay’s
story was the subject of a Nation investigation on medical neglect in federal
contract prisons, reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund and
Reveal News. Garay suffered the stroke in a 10-man
cell in the 3,500-bed prison, one of 11 federal facilities that house only
noncitizens. His cellmates were startled awake at around 1:30 a.m. on June 26
by the sounds of his pained moans. When they found Garay
unresponsive, nearly falling off of his top bunk, and covered in sweat and
urine, they called for help. But the only medical staff member on duty that
night was a licensed vocational nurse, or LVN, whose licensure required only
one year of training. In most settings, LVNs typically serve as support staff
for more highly trained registered nurses or medical doctors. The LVN phoned
a physician’s assistant who was on call for a consult; rather than order Garay to be delivered to an emergency room, the PA
ordered a dose of antiseizure meds and had Garay
returned to his cell until morning. When the morning nurse found Garay on a mattress on the floor of a cell at 6:15 a.m.,
his face was drooping and his right arm was contracted. It was only then,
roughly five hours after Garay’s cellmates first
reported the stroke, that he was ordered to an ER. It took another hour
before Garay was finally on the way to the
hospital. The Midland neurologist said that for ischemic strokes, the window
for intervention is typically three hours; after the long delay, he said,
treatment “was pretty futile.” In the family’s lawsuit, Garay’s
parents, Indalecio and Alvara
Garay, who have lived for decades in California’s
Napa Valley, allege that their son’s “life threatening conditions were left
untreated.” “The nurses on staff were severely undertrained and were not
equipped to recognize, diagnose, or treat patients with serious illnesses or
conditions,” the complaint reads. Geo Group and CCS said they would not
comment on pending litigation. But Big Spring’s own mortality review faulted
both the LVN and the PA for failing to alert the clinical director when Garay’s condition did not improve. The review found that
the PA “did not respond correctly to the initial report from nursing
describing new onset of presumed seizure of a previously healthy 41 year old
male.” It also found that neither diagnosis nor treatment was “appropriate
and timely.” Big Spring, like the other 10 contract prisons that the Federal
Bureau of Prisons uses to hold noncitizens, is not an immigration detention
center, but a federal prison for low-security inmates. The segregated,
private prisons operate under less strenuous rules than the rest of the
bureau’s facilities. Garay is one of at least 137
men who have died while incarcerated in privately run Bureau of Prisons
facilities. Medical records obtained through a federal open-records lawsuit
revealed systemic shortcomings in their medical care. Doctors who reviewed
103 of the medical files agreed that in 25 cases, including Garay’s, substandard medical care likely contributed to
prisoners’ premature deaths. The reviewers repeatedly found evidence that the
private contractors operating these facilities—Geo Group, Corrections
Corporation of America, and Management and Training Corporation—and medical
subcontractors have used low-trained medical workers like LVNs to fill
positions that in Bureau of Prisons–operated facilities would be staffed by
more highly trained registered nurses. The prison contractors are not bound
by the bureau’s staffing plans. Garay had been
sentenced to a five-year term for selling drugs near his parents’ home in
Napa. Like nearly every other prisoner held in Big Spring, he probably would
have faced deportation to Mexico after completing his sentence. But he died
just one year into his sentence. “We don’t want prisoners who are still in
the prison to be mistreated anymore,” Indalecio Garay said after filing the lawsuit. “We don’t want
others to suffer. We want them to pay for the damage they’ve done.”
Apr
17, 2015 kfyo.comTexas
Three were sentenced this week in connection to a prison smuggling ring at
the Big Spring Correctional Center (BSCC) including one employee, the second
in as many weeks sentenced for smuggling contraband to inmates. Eva Bermea, a recreational specialist at the BSCC, was found
guilty of smuggling tobacco and creatine to inmate Jonas Cruz, 34, who was
selling the products to other inmates. Bermea, 42,
was sentenced to three years probation, eight
months of which she will be under house arrest. Cruz had two years added to
his 17 year methamphetamine distribution sentence to be served concurrently.
Cruz and Bermea pleaded guilty to bribery of public
officials and aiding and abetting. The third party, Kami Nicole Bennet, 32,
who assisted the operation by receiving money from Cruz’s brother and
packaging the contraband, was sentenced to one year probation after pleading
guilty to misprision of a felony and superseding information. Big Spring
Correctional Center is contracted to a private corporation, The GEO Group,
Inc., through the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Calls made to both the Federal
Bureau of Prisons and The GEO Group have not been returned.
Feb
13, 2015 newswest9.com
BIG SPRING - Families who have loved ones locked up at the Big Spring
Correctional Facility are speaking out. They claim the inmates are not
getting proper medical care. This comes on the heels of an investigation by
the American Civil Liberties Union who looked into five private prisons in
the state. Texas has five private prisons, all of which detain undocumented
immigrants. Two are in West Texas: Big Spring and Reeves County. Marcy
Torres's father is in the Big Spring facility. She says he needs medications
daily for his liver disease. "When he goes to the doctor [at the
facility], he has to tell them what he's there for because basically they
don't know. They're changing doctors so many times, they don't have the
staff," Torres said. On Tuesday, Attorney William McBride filed a
lawsuit against the Willacy County Private Prison after allegations of
maltreatment against the immigrants detained there. He says he plans to
expand his efforts to all five private prisons in Texas. "He's just told
me that if anything happens, for me to look further into it because he's not
getting the care he's supposed to," Torres said. An inmate at the Big
Spring Correctional Center claims he needs medications as well but hasn't
received any since he arrived over nine months ago. "We need to demand
medicine. The flu is going around and they don't give us any medications
because we have to buy them, but we can't afford them," the inmate said.
"They don't clean our underwear. We get used underwear even with blood
stains on them. You can just imagine," he added. The inmate claims the
bathrooms never get fixed. He also says he knows prison food isn't supposed
to be the best, but when they do eat well is when inspectors are coming.
"They tell the guards in advance when they're coming. So they get up
early and fix the maintenance and fix every little detail in the prison for that
day. They give us better food, they check if we're alright. They give us
chicken. But after the inspection, everything goes back to barbaric
conditions," the inmate said. "The abuse from the employees is
terrible. They humiliate us. They say they're gonna deport us because we
don't have rights," he added. NewsWest 9
reached out to the company who owns the Big Spring and Reeves County
facilities, The GEO Group. They said in a statement, "Our company has
had a long-standing public-private partnership with the Federal government
that dates back to the mid-1980s. GEO's facilities provide high quality
services in safe, secure and humane residential environments, and our company
strongly refutes allegations to the contrary. Our facilities adhere to strict
contractual requirements and standards set by the Federal government and
federal agencies employ several full-time, on-site contract monitors who have
a physical presence at each of GEO's facilities. Additionally, GEO's
facilities provide office space for federal personnel, immigration attorneys,
immigration court judges, non-governmental organizations and other
constituent groups who have access to each facility. All of GEO's facilities
are audited and inspected by respective federal agencies on a routine and
unannounced basis. GEO's facilities are also independently accredited by the
American Correctional Association (ACA), which is widely recognized as the
foremost independent detention accreditation agency in the United States.
During the most recent ACA accreditation audits, the Big Spring Correctional
Center and the Reeves County Detention Center received an average score in
excess of 99%."
November 9, 2010 NewsWest
9
An accidental shooting on Tuesday at the federal prison in Big Spring put an
inmate in the hospital. The shooting happened right before noon at the Flight
Line Prison, located at the airpark in Big Spring. According to medics, a
Hispanic man was accidentally shot by a gun in the upper arm. The wound was
not serious, but he was taken to Scenic Mountain Medical Center for a follow
up. He was alert and conscious while being transported. We still don't know
how the prisoner was shot. Details are limited at this time, but we've
learned the shooting is under investigation. NewsWest
9 has contacted the Geo Group, which currently runs the prison, and they have
not commented on the incident. NewsWest 9 will
continue to follow this story and will bring you the very latest information
when we get it.
September 14, 2008 Permian Basin 360
Questions remain unanswered concerning Friday night's prison riot in Big
Spring. Fires reportedly broke out in several buildings at the Big Spring
Correctional Center's FlightLine unit. Ambulances
were seen leaving the scene. Cornell Companies currently operates the site.
"All we do is establish a perimeter. That's all we do in these
instances. They handle all the security inside the fence," said Sgt.
Tony Everett of the Big Spring Police Department. The unit is specifically
for prisoners who commit immigration violations. At this time, Cornell
Companies has yet to respond to our calls.
September 13, 2008 NewsWest
9
Questions still remain unanswered after a prisoner fire and riot on Friday
night. Facility officials are being very cautious of what information is
being disclosed. Big Spring authorities rushed to the scene of a riot and
fire from the Flightline Correctional Center near
the Big Spring airport. The facility takes prisoners from the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Services, but since it is a privately owned
facility the plan for police was to secure a perimeter. "The only reason
we are here, our only purpose is if spills outside of the fenced
facility," Sergeant Tony Everett, with the Big Spring Police Department,
said. In total, about 15 police officers stayed outside managing traffic
while Big Spring firefighters went inside. "My understating is that may
be one or two buildings were on fire," Everett said. Several ambulances
left the scene towards Scenic Mountain Medical Center where family members were
advised not to disclose any information. But the mother of one of the injured
employee was thankful to hear her son was doing better. "I feel a whole
lot better, I feel relieved that he is O.K. Like I said earlier, I just left
it in the hands of God and he is the one who pulled me through," Inez Heins, Mother of a facility Employee, said. NewsWest 9 also received a couple of calls from relatives
who say that seven facility staff were injured and were treated for minor
injuries. According to officials from the correctional center the riot never
posed danger to the public.
September 13, 2008 KWES TV
State and local authorities have responded to a private prison near the
airport in Big Spring after an apparent riot. Big Spring Police responded to
the riot around 9:00p.m. Friday night, and quickly set up a perimeter around
the prison. There have unconfirmed reports of injuries, but a mother of an
injured guard tells NewsWest 9 that her son did
sustain injuries to the face. We were also told that three ambulances also
left the prison after the riot, which is run by Cornell Companies. Viewers
also reported seeing smoke coming from the prison, but our crew did not see
any smoke when they arrived to the scene. Sgt. Tony Everett with the Big
Spring Police Department did confirm that a fire was started in the prison
but it is now under control. Authorities tell NewsWest
9 that the situation has calmed down for the night. The prison handles INS
cases for the federal government. There have been no reports of inmates
escaping the prison at this time.
September 12, 2008 KOSA CBS 7
Emergency officials are currently responding to a fire at the Flightline Prison located at the Big Spring airport. CBS
7 News has confirmed that a riot broke out at the prison about 9:00 p.m.
Several ambulances were seen leaving the prison. Fire crews confirm there are
six to eight people who were injured and taken to the hospital. No word yet
on the severity of the injuries. According to Big Spring Police spokesperson
Tony Everett, the riot is under control and Big Spring police have set up a
perimeter around the facility. CBS 7's Greg Sherman was the first reporter on
the scene. He says thick black smoke was seen coming from the prison. The Flightline unit handles low-risk inmates who are
primarily incarcerated for immigration violations.
August 16, 2005 AP
Investigators want to know what started an inmate disturbance at a privately
run prison in West Texas that left five workers hurt. The assaults happened
at the Flightline Unit of the Big Spring
Correctional Center. Center spokeswoman Janice Bishop says one staffer
required hospital treatment, while the other four suffered minor injuries.
Bishop says the unit was slightly damaged in Saturday night's incident. No
inmates were injured. Bishop today declined to release further information
about the assaults. Big Spring police say the disturbance was contained
inside the prison. Texas troopers and the Howard County sheriff's department
also responded to the center run by the Houston-based Cornell Companies.
March 13, 2001
A Cornell Corrections inmate escaped over a fence late Sunday night but his
freedom was short lived. The inmate, 29-year-old Ernesto Soto-Olivarez
climbed over the fence at the Airpark unit around 9:30 p.m. Sunday and was
spotted by correctional officers who took after him on foot. He lost
the officers in the darkness and about 30 minutes later, he approached a
house in the 2600 block of Dow where he asked the resident to call for an
ambulance, saying he was suffering from chest pains. The resident called for
an ambulance and then, according to Big Spring Police Sgt. Roger Sweatt, the resident made another call to the police
station. "The inmate, without realizing it, had come to the
residence of an off-duty police officer," said Sweatt.
(Big Spring Herald, March 13, 2001)
Bill Clayton Detention Center
Littlefield, Texas
Southwestern Corrections (formerly run by GEO Group, formerly Correctional
Services Corporation, formerly run by Corrections Concepts)
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
Wanted:
Inmates and Investors Texas Lockups Go on the Block: July 19,
2011, Bond Buyer: Private prison bonding not panacea.
September 16, 2011 KCBD
After auctioning off the Bill Clayton Detention Center back in July, the
City of Littlefield thought they were free from the financial strains.
However, the private bidder has backed out of their $6 million offer. The
private buyer made the offer via telephone during the July auction. Thirty
days after the bid, the contract on the property was supposed to close.
However, the City received word that the deal had fallen through. "It
didn't happen and the reason it didn't happen was because the person who put
in the highest bid basically backed out on their bid and kind of put us in a
tailspin," City Manager Danny Davis said. After years of mismanagement
and broken contracts, the $11 million dollar detention center sat vacant. The
city was left to foot the bill, still owing more than $9 million on the
property. The city was certain the bid of $6 million would help close the gap
on their debt. The news of the bidder's change of heart is frustrating for
Davis. "With the detention center, nothing has happened easy. It's been
a struggle for us all along, so, in some ways, we were not that surprised
that we've got a continued struggle," Davis said. It was a struggle that
listing agent Jef Conn says he wasn't entirely
surprised by. "We always hope for the best and plan for the worst. It's
never the best when a contract falls out," Conn said. Conn says he is
working with the City of Littlefield to come up with a plan to get the
detention center sold. "There are some interested parties and we will be
working with them and the city of Littlefield to find the best possible
option and have them come in and buy the prison," Conn said. For Davis,
he is hopeful the detention center can be sold quickly to alleviate concerns
all across the board. "I'm retiring in two weeks, and I was very hopeful
that this would be one problem my successor wouldn't have to deal with,"
Davis said.
July 28, 2011 Dallas Morning News
A debt-ridden West Texas town auctioned off the empty prison at the source of
its money problems for $6 million Thursday morning. A private prison company
bought the Bill Clayton Detention Center from the city of Littlefield, whose
approximately 5,700 residents had barely been scraping by to pay the $9
million they still owed on the facility. The company placed their offer as a
confidential bidder and is requesting to remain that way until the 30-day
period for settling the sale is complete, according to Jef
Conn, a real estate specialist for Coldwell Banker Commercial Rick Canup Realtors. The five-pod facility was built in 2000
by hopeful city officials wanting to rake in revenue for the small
cotton-growing town. Instead, Littlefield was saddled with more than $9
million in debt once prisoners were pulled out and the private company
operating the center left. After the sale, Littlefield will only owe between
$3 million and $4 million on the facility, officials said.
July 27, 2011 American Independent
City officials in Littlefield have big hopes for tomorrow morning’s auction,
where a minimum bid of $5 million could be enough to buy your own little
slice of Panhandle heaven: the 383-bed Bill Clayton Detention Center. It’s
being billed as a “turn-key medium security detention center,” a 383-bed
bargain with slick promotions courtesy the Williams and Williams Worldwide
Real Estate Auction house. The 11-year-old prison was refurbished in 2005,
and looks great in the slideshows and teaser trailers produced for the
auction. (Here’s a longer video tour, but scroll down for a look at the best
one, a “Battlestar Galactica” inspired tour, all quick cuts and drums.) For
the City of Littlefield, though, the prison’s last couple years haven’t been
such a thrill ride. The town paid for the prison with a $10 million bond
issue, planning for a bright future with the Texas Youth Commission. But
after TYC pulled pulled its charges from the
facility in 2003, Littlefield’s credit rating suffered as the South
Florida-based private prison giant GEO Group shopped around the country for
inmates to fill its beds — first with Wyoming’s, then with Idaho’s Department
of Corrections. Idaho pulled its prisoners in 2008, GEO Group after them, and
the town’s been stuck with the empty prison it hasn’t finished paying for.
Now it’s raising taxes and fees on its 6,500 residents to make room for bond
payments. The empty prison is the driving force behind cuts to the city
budget this year, according to a City Manager’s message in the budget: The
budget for 2010-2011 has presented new challenges for us since the debt
payments for the Bill Clayton Detention Center (BCDC) have been pushed front
and center by the lack of a source of prisoners to provide a revenue stream
for those bond payments. Earlier this week, The Bond Buyer looked at the Bill
Clayton facility and a handful of others now sitting empty around Texas.
While many towns found ways to avoid leaving taxpayers on the hook if
operators left, that didn’t happen here: Like many of the speculative
detention centers built in sparsely populated counties, the Clayton facility
was meant to be an economic stimulus instead of an economic drain. But
Littlefield took the somewhat unusual step of pledging its full faith and
credit to the bonds. City officials were either on vacation or didn’t reply
to interview requests from the Independent. The advocacy group Grassroots
Leadership has made a case study of Bill Clayton, warning of the hidden
dangers private prisons can create for a town, and folks with the group say
Texas’ shrinking prison population doesn’t tell the half of the Littlefield
story. “This was like a soap opera,” said Grassroots Leadership executive
director Donna Red Wing, recalling a 2004 prison break police said was aided
by a pair of guards, and a 2008 suicide that sparked a suit against GEO Group
from the family of the inmate, alleging he’d been left in solitary for more
than a year. “You couldn’t make this stuff up, the stories are horrible,” Red
Wing said. “If you wrote that screenplay, they wouldn’t take it.” When the
Idaho DOC left the Clayton facility in 2008, state Correction Director Brent
Reinke said it was pulling out because of “an ongoing staffing issue,” the
Associated Press reported at the time, referring to an Idaho audit that found
guards had been falsifying reports of their inmate checks. “Littlefield is a
difficult place to have a facility. It’s a long way from an employment base,”
said Grassroots Leadership’s Bob Libal, who edits
the blog Texas Prison Bid’ness. Libal
said the Clayton facility was part of a much greater prison-building rush
around Texas that ended around 2007, followed by national searches for
inmates to fill them. The only growth lately, Libal
said, has been in facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A $35
million prison in Jones County was built by New Jersey-based Community
Education Centers last summer, and now sits empty, as local TV station KTXS
reported, “ready to bring nearly 200 jobs to the area.” In that case, the
county formed a Public Facility Corporation to help minimize the taxpayers’
liability — but Libal said it could still mean
trouble for the county because its credit rating is still tied to the prison
debt. In January, Littlefield officials hoped the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice would sign off on an application from Avalon Correctional Services to
operate the prison, but nothing came of it. Now the city just wants it off
the books, even at half of what they paid. NPR featured both the Clayton
facility and Jones County’s new prison back in March, before Littlefield had
announced its auction: “Too many times we’ve seen jails that have got into it
and tried to make it a profitable business to make money off of it and they
end up fallin’ on their face,” says Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the [Texas Commission on
Jail Standards]. The packages look sweet. A town gets a new detention center
without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator finances,
constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates pay off
the debt and generate extra revenue. The economic model works fine until they
can’t find inmates.
July 14, 2011 Willams
Auction
This is a unique opportunity to acquire a turn-key medium security detention
center in Littlefield, TX. New owners will benefit from support from the town
that built the facility, the area's low cost of living as well as a ready
local workforce. Conveying with the buildings on auction day are furniture,
linens, computers, kitchen supplies and other equipment used in the operation
of the facility. Located approximately 45 minutes northwest of Lubbock, it is
easily accessible from Highway 84, the Littlefield Municipal Airport, as well
as Preston Smith International Airport. The Bill Clayton Detention Center was
built in 2000 and updated in 2005. Standing on 30+/- acres, the center has
94,437+/- sq ft of space. It consists of five one-story air-conditioned
buildings constructed of concrete block with a brick veneer and pitch seamed
metal roofs. It has a capacity of 383 inmates in 5 housing pods, complete
with dayrooms and other amenities. The buildings are contained behind a
strengthened perimeter of double fences with an electronic shaker detection
system and eight video surveillance cameras. Approximately 10 acres are contained
within the fence. The facility also has a freestanding gymnasium, maintenance
shed, armory and parking lot. At the opening bid of $5 million, the cost per
bed is approximately $13,055!
May 19, 2011 Bradenton Herald
Fitch Ratings has taken the following action on Littlefield, Texas'
combination tax and revenue certificates of obligation (COs) during the
course of routine surveillance: --$1 million combination tax and revenue COs,
series 1997 affirmed at 'BB+'. -- The Rating Outlook is Negative. -- RATING
RATIONALE: --The 'BB+' rating and Negative Outlook reflect the ongoing
financial pressures resulting from Littlefield's challenges in servicing
outstanding debt issued for a now vacant detention center. The city tapped
reserve funds to help make the August 2010 debt service payments on the
series 2000 and 2001 COs (not rated by Fitch); $268,825 was used from the
combined reserves - that money has since been repaid and the reserves are
fully funded. No reserve funds were used to make February 2011 payments.
--Despite ongoing efforts to find a new tenant/operator, the city's detention
center remains empty. The city council recently entered into a contract with
an auction company to auction off the facility within 120 days. --Financial
resources to make debt service payments have been aided by the adoption in
fall 2010 of a debt service property tax and transfers from the city's two
economic development corporations' sales tax revenues; transfers from the
city's water and wastewater utility fund, which are secondary pledged
revenues for the Series 1997 COs, remain the main source of debt service
support. --General fund finances remain weak, with limited reserves. -- WHAT
COULD TRIGGER A DOWNGRADE A failed auction would maintain financial pressure
on the city, forcing it to continue with the current practice of cobbling
together debt service payment amounts from various sources; utility system
cash levels could decline and additional reserve fund draws could occur. --
SECURITY: The series 1997 COs are payable from and secured by a limited ad
valorem tax pledge against all taxable property in the city, plus surplus
revenues of the city's waterworks and sanitary sewer system. -- CREDIT
SUMMARY: The city has been unable to locate a new tenant and/or permanent operator
of its detention facility since the State of Idaho removed its prisoners in
January 2009 and the GEO Group terminated its operating agreement at the same
time. With no facility revenues to service the debt associated with the
facility, the city in subsequent months patched together payments from
various city sources, primarily available revenues of the water and
wastewater utility system. The city was current on its payments until August
2010, when legal questions surrounding the city's ability to use sales tax
revenues from its 4A economic development corporation delayed use of those
funds. The city used nearly $269,000 from the debt service reserves
associated with the series 2000 and 2001 COs issued for the detention center
to make the August 2010 payment on these COs. Since
then, the legal question regarding use of economic development corporation
sales tax revenues has been resolved favorably for the city and the debt
service reserves were fully replenished. Also, last fall the city council
established a debt service property tax for the first time, which is expected
to generate roughly $115,000 annually to help meet debt service requirements.
Finally, Littlefield voters last fall approved the creation of a second 4B
economic development corporation (also with sales tax collection authority),
and that corporation's sales tax receipts will supplement the revenue stream.
The combination of sales tax revenues and property tax revenues, a utility
system transfer and a loan of other city funds enabled the city to make the
February 2011 principal and interest payment on the detention center COs
without tapping the reserve funds. Acknowledging the difficulty in securing
new prisoners for the facility, the city recently executed a contract with a
national auction house which will put into motion the process of auctioning
off the detention facility within 120 days. Management reports that a $5
million reserve (minimum bid) will be included in the bid specifications.
While a sale at this price will not retire the $9.5 million outstanding in
related CO debt, it would enable the city to call a significant portion of
the COs, reduce the annual debt requirement correspondingly, and relieve the
current financial pressure measurably. Conversely, a failed auction will mean
the city continues with its current practice of piecing together city
revenues from various sources to meet debt payments - a challenging prospect
that will keep pressure very high. Financial flexibility remains limited. The
general fund balance is modest, with the city recording a $17,000 fund
balance at fiscal 2010 year-end, or less than 1% of expenditures and
transfers out. While the water and sewer fund maintains healthy liquidity and
has historically provided significant general fund and detention center fund
support, available surplus funds are expected to decline going forward as
excess revenues are used to continue support of the general fund. The new
debt service property tax and additional sales tax revenues help, but do not
eliminate the need for utility system support. Utility debt service support
was budgeted at more than $390,000 for fiscal 2011, or 50% of the $781,000
annual CO debt requirement. If the auction fails, reliance on utility system
transfers until the COs are retired does not appear feasible; an alternative
permanent solution would need to be devised. Littlefield, with a population
of nearly 6,400, is located approximately 35 miles northwest of Lubbock and
serves as the county seat for Lamb County. The area is primarily rural in nature,
with agriculture services, government, manufacturing, and trade as key
components of the county's economy. County unemployment rates have risen,
with a 7.6% posted for February 2011; however, the rate remains below the
statewide average of 8.2%. While there is moderate taxpayer concentration
among the top 10 taxpayers, there is generally a good mix of industries
within the list.
March 28, 2011 NPR
Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble by John Burnett The
country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States
— is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free
enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any
other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails
cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in
the prison business. It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west
Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The
charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would
provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas. For eight
years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners
to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract
inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal
surrounding the suicide of an inmate. Shortly afterward, the for-profit
operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison
jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since. A Hard Sell
"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City
Manager Danny Davis good-naturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour. For
sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security
fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and
five living pods. Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk
beds and stainless-steel furniture. "You can see the facility here.
[It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint,
it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale. For the
past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay
the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city. A
Resident Burden Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of
Littlefield? "Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well,
today that would probably be the case," Davis says. To avoid defaulting
on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer
fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still,
the city's bond rating has tanked. The village elders drinking coffee at the
White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.
"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in
their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have
to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they
left us... " "...Holdin' the bag!"
says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence. The
Declining Prison Population The same thing has happened to communities across
Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison
town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over. Some prisons are
struggling outside Texas, too. Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments
after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security
prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled
out its 700 inmates. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total
correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time
in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing
alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are
slashing budgets. The Texas legislature, looking for budget cuts, is
contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half
of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures
from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. "Too many times we've seen
jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to
make money off of it and they end up fallin' on
their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant
director of the commission. The packages look sweet. A town gets a new
detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator
finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates
pay off the debt and generate extra revenue. The economic model works fine
until they can't find inmates. In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million
to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today
because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than
half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now
decline to comment on it. Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who
opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the
deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds
sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take
their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success
of the facility." Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants —
James Parkey and Herb Bristow — declined repeated
requests for interviews. The Inmate Market Private prison companies insist
their future is sunny. A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about
the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases
highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across
the country. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong,
particularly for federal immigration detainees. New Jersey-based Community
Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across Texas,
issued a statement that "the current (jail) population fluctuation"
is cyclical. One of the places where CEC is cancelling its contract is Falls
County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition is losing money.
Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up jailbirds:
"If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate, we need to
charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those beds," he
said. Another place where they're desperate for inmates is Anson, the little
town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its no-dancing law. Today,
Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and an $8 million county
jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers made their money and
left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reneged on a contract to
fill the new prison with parole violators. The county's Public Facility
Corporation that borrowed the money to build the lockups owes $314,000 a
month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's worth of bond service
payments set aside before county officials start to sweat. "The market
has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two years. It's certainly a
different picture than when we started this project. And so we're continuing
to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin
says. Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to privatizing its jail. Two
years ago, the county was all set to build a $30 million, 750-bed behemoth
twice as big as was needed. But the public got queasy and county officials
ultimately scuttled the deal. "When you put the profit motive into a
private jail, by design, in order to increase your dollars, your revenues,
your profits, you need more folks in there and they need to stay
longer," says Bill Magers, mayor of the county
seat of Sherman, a leading opponent. When the supply of prison beds exceeds
the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries. The overcrowded Harris
County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms out about 1,000
prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other under-occupied
facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston. "It really is a
buyer's market right now, especially a county our size," says Capt.
Robin Kinetsky, who is in charge of inmate
processing for the Harris County Sheriffs
Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're
getting good deals." Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought
from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake
interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the
newest commodities of the volatile inmate market. Aarti Shahani contributed
to this NPR News investigation and report.
February 3, 2011 KCBD
While the Lubbock County Detention Center is filling up with inmates, other
counties are struggling to find an inmate. Taxpayers of those counties are
now being held prisoners by their own prisons as they're forced to pay the
price of empty facilities. About an hour from Lubbock, the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in Littlefield hasn't had a single inmate in the last two
years. "This was not built to house local inmates; it was built to house
inmates from other parts of the state or other parts of U.S. It was built to
bring economic development to the city of Littlefield," said Danny
Davis, Littlefield city manager. For a while it did bring money into
Littlefield, until the State of Idaho decided to remove its inmates from the
center when the economy tanked back in 2009. "Everybody was cutting back
it seemed, and it was very difficult to find other inmates from out of state
to come in and fill the facility," said Davis. Nearly 100 people lost
their job in the area, and with $9 million left to pay for the now empty
building, residents are stuck paying the price through increased taxes and
fees." Jokingly I've told people when I took this job I weighed a lot
more and had a lot more hair, so that's how I guess you can say how the
frustration level is. It has been a frustrating situation for the whole
community," said Davis. About two hours away Dickens County faces a
similar fate. Their contractor CEC didn't renew their contract with the
Dickens County Correctional Center. In mid-December the remaining inmates
were moved to Lubbock County's new facility, and nearly 120 jobs were lost -
huge hit to the small communities of Dickens County. "It cost money to
put people in jail. The state of the economy, the governments don't have as
much money. Our own state is cutting the budget, and there's one way to save
money…that's not to incarcerate them, and so that's why I believe our inmate
population is down," said Lesa Arnold, Dickens County Judge. So far
Dickens County hasn't had to increase taxes to foot the prison's one million
dollar bill each year, but that option might soon surface. "We need to
get this thing going within a year, and hopefully a whole lot sooner than
that before that issue comes up as to who's going to make those bond
payments," said Arnold. So how can Lubbock County fill its newly built
facility while these two and others around the U.S. are failing? It comes
down to why these facilities were built in the first place. Littlefield and
Dickens County didn't have an inmate population for the large prisons they
built; instead they were built to make a profit for the towns by contracting
out the prison cells to other parts of the state and U.S. Lubbock on the
other hand, needed the bigger facility. All 1,063 inmates currently in the
Lubbock County Detention Center are from Lubbock County, which means their
cells will constantly be filled with a local inmate population. The other
facilities are staying hopeful a new inmate population will come their way.
"I can't worry about why we have it because that's in the past. I can
only worry about what can we do with it now that we have it, and that's what
we work on every day," said Davis.
January 3, 2011 Avalanche-Journal
The city of Littlefield comes into 2011 hoping it will have a new tenant
renting the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a few months. The prison, which
closed in January 2009 after the Idaho Department of Corrections canceled a
contract with private operator GEO Group and moved its prisoners from
Littlefield to Oklahoma. Since then, the city has stretched itself
financially to keep making payments on revenue bonds it issues to build the
facility, which opened in 2000 as a juvenile detention center. The present
ray of hope comes with Avalon Correctional Services, which has applied to
TDCJ to operate an Intermediate Sanction Facility, which is a short-term
facility that houses offenders who violate terms of their community
supervision or paroles. The state issued a request for proposals in June, but
no decisions have been made yet. “It’s been on (TDCJ’s) agenda a couple of
times, but reading between the lines, it’s probably waiting until the state
gets a better handle on its budget,” said Danny Davis, Littlefield’s city
manager.
September 1, 2010 Smart Money
Owners of municipal bonds issued to pay for jails might not get to pass
Go--and could have trouble collecting interest payments as well. These tax
free bonds don't have a monopoly on defaults, but they're well represented
among failures and troubled issues among the more speculative classes of
municipal bonds. Data from Municipal Market Advisors reveals a slew of
tax-free bonds issued to fund construction of privately run prisons and
detention facilities in states from Texas to Rhode Island to Montana. The
most recent example is Littlefield, a West Texas town of about 6,500 people.
Located between the New Mexico border and Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock,
Littlefield had to dip into reserves to cover payments for about $1.2 in
bonds and other debt used to finance the Bill Clayton Detention Center. The
bonds were issued in 2000, but the expected revenue stream evaporated when, after
a prisoner suicide in 2008, the 310-bed private prison lost its contract to
house out-of-state inmates. In 2009, the Geo Group (GEO), formerly known as
Wackenhut Security, ended its operating agreement with the detention center,
leaving it unoccupied. In April, Fitch Ratings, which in 2009 lowered the
bonds to BB from BBB, affirmed a negative rating outlook. Littlefield city
manager Danny Davis says the city is scrambling to avoid default on the
$780,000 worth of annual payments and plans to cut police and fire service
while dramatically raising property taxes when the new fiscal year begins
Oct. 1. The property could be sold or could be taken over by the state,
though neither option is certain. "It's going to be difficult," he
says. "In the meantime, we're just trying to keep our heads above water
until we get to a solution." Bob Libal is the
Texas campaign coordinator for Grassroots Leadership, a lobbying group which
opposes for-profit prisons, and the editor of the blog Texas Prison Bid'ness. He says many small towns agree to build
"speculative prisons" to be run by private contractors using
municipal bond financing but that many of these projects in a post-Sept. 11
boom have had trouble. Libal criticizes the
development groups that get paid up front for building detention centers thus
saddling the bond-issuers (usually special public facilities corporations
created solely for those projects) with risky debt. "They go after a lot
of towns without a lot of sophistication and resources to do the due diligence,"
Libal says. "If they let the bonds go under,
it's very difficult for them to issue any more debt." Matt Fabian,
director of research at Municipal Market Advisors, cites similar bond woes in
Central Falls, R.I.; Hardin, Mont.; and Baker County, Fla., where about $105
million in total debt has run into trouble because the prison projects
haven't worked out as expected. "The incarceration rates drives
speculation," he says. "There's an idea that you can profit from
this prison trend." Investors in these increasingly-insecure jail bonds
have certainly had to assume more risk, even though they get higher yields.
The $99 million Central Falls Detention Facility bond issue of 2005 entered
technical default in 2009 when it drew on its reserves to make payments. The
bonds, issued at par with a yield of 7.25%, last traded at the end of 2009 at
85.3 cents to the dollar, with a yield of 8.69%. Municipal revenue bonds
issued in 2002 that funded the West Alabama Youth Services detention facility
defaulted in 2005. The bonds last traded in February at 9 cents to the dollar
with a yield of 73.6%. Fabian says some of the biggest private prison busts
are unlikely to have simple resolutions. A shopping center is easy to
repurpose; a detention center is not. "It's hard to restructure,"
he says. "Even the land underneath a prison isn't worth as much as it
was." Even with a resurgent effort by the private prison industry to use
their facilities to detain illegal immigrants and an attempt by the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to overhaul detention procedures,
problems persist. The Baker Correctional Development Corporation, created to
finance a correctional facility and immigration detention center west of
Jacksonville, Fla., dipped into reserves for its August payment to holders of
bonds issued in 2008. With those bonds trading last at 71.25 cents to the
dollar with a yield of 20.73%, investors looking to lock up their money
should probably seek less risky types of municipal bonds.
June 17, 2010 Courthouse News
A man claims a corrupt private prison company, The GEO Group, bribed the
government to get contracts and then abused inmates, including his father,
who died at the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, from
"grossly inhumane treatment, abuse, neglect, illegal and malicious
conditions of confinement." Daniel McCullough sued Texas-based GEO Group
and its top executives, all of Florida, and the warden of the jail where his
father, Randall, died on Aug. 18, 2008. In his complaint in Comal County
Court, Daniel McCullough says his father "was found dead after
supposedly being monitored by GEO and its personnel." The complaint
states: "McCullough's death was caused by specific breaches of duty by
the Defendants ... who engaged in grossly inhumane treatment, abuse, neglect,
illegal conditions of confinement, and subsequent coverup of
wrongdoings." McCullough claims that "GEO and its personnel were
found to have fabricated evidence, including practicing 'pencil whipping,' a
policy and practice of GEO to destroy and fabricate log books and other
relevant evidence." He claims that GEO and its officers "personally
engage in efforts to illegally influence public officials in Austin, Texas
and in the Texas counties where the GEO prisons are located, including
Laredo, Webb County, Texas. Their goal is to conceal, deflect, hide or
exculpate themselves and their company from all forms of personal civil or
criminal liability, censure, detriment, or punishment in order to procure and
continue their lucrative contracts at the expense of the inmates' and their
families' suffering. They and their company, GEO, engage in a pattern and
practice of abuse, neglect, public corruption, and cover up." McCullough
claims that GEO and its officers "have a history of illegally
neglecting, manipulating, and abusing inmates, and then covering up their
wrongful and illegal conduct." He claims these abuses include
"making illegal payments to governmental entities in exchange for
contracts and permits; ... destruction of evidence and lying to state
investigators; and misrepresentations to state and governmental entities
regarding conditions inside their facilities." He seeks damages of $595
million - GEO's net worth - for gross negligence, breach of duty, wrongful
death, and pain and suffering. He is represented by Ronald Rodriguez of
Laredo.
April 14, 2010 Business Wire
Fitch Ratings takes the following rating action on Littlefield, Texas'
(the city) as part of its continuous surveillance effort; --Approximately
$1.2 million in outstanding combination tax and revenue certificates of
obligation (COs), series 1997 rated 'BB.' The Rating Outlook remains
Negative. RATING RATIONALE: --The majority of the city's outstanding debt is
for a detention center (not rated by Fitch), which had been self-supporting
from detention center operations. However, both detention center prisoners
and the private operator left the facility in 2009, and despite the city's
active efforts to locate prisoners or sell the facility, the detention center
remains vacant. --The lack of a debt service tax levy has resulted in
considerable operating pressure. --A fully funded debt service reserve
remains in place, with the February 2010 principal and interest payment made
from available funds, primarily excess water and sewer system revenues.
Officials plan to make the next interest payment in August 2010 from
available funds as well, although there is a possibility debt service reserve
funds may be needed. --General fund reserves are minimal; however, the water
and sewer fund maintained about $800,000 in unrestricted net assets for the
close of fiscal 2009. The city is considering making future detention center
debt service payments from a combination of budget reductions, available city
funds, and the imposition of an interest and sinking fund tax beginning in
fiscal 2011. --The city's tax base has shown moderate annual growth, and
county unemployment rates, although higher than a year ago, remain below the
state and nation. Proximity to the Lubbock metropolitan area offers
additional employment opportunities for residents.
August 24, 2009 Ad Hoc News
Fitch Ratings has downgraded to 'BB' from 'BBB-' the rating on Littlefield,
TX's (the city) outstanding $1.3 million combination tax and revenue
certificates of obligation (COs), series 1997, and removed the ratings from
Rating Watch Negative. The CO's constitute a general obligation of the city,
payable from ad valorem taxes limited to $2.50 per $100 taxable assessed
valuation (TAV). Additionally, the COs are secured by a pledge of surplus
water and sewer revenues. The Rating Outlook is Negative. The downgrade
reflects events related to the operation of the city's detention center
facility, which accounts for the majority of outstanding debt (which was not
rated by Fitch but is on parity with the series 1997 bonds). To the surprise
of city officials, Idaho announced their plans to leave the Littlefield
facility in January 2009, citing the need to consolidate all of its
out-of-state prisoners into a larger facility in Oklahoma. In addition, the
detention center's private operator, the Geo Group, unexpectedly announced
termination of their agreement to manage the facility effective January 2009.
The move to leave Littlefield by the Geo Group is significant, given that the
established private operator had made sizable equity investments in the
detention center reportedly totaling approximately $2 million. In the past,
the ability of the Geo Group to quickly replace prisoners with little
disruption in operations, as well as their investment in the Littlefield
detention center were cited as credit strengths. On Dec. 9, 2008, Fitch
placed the series 1997 bonds on Rating Watch Negative, reflecting the city's
active pursuit of various alternatives to remedy the situation and possibly
resolve it within the next several months. Funds to repay debt service on
detention center COs through August 2010 had been identified through
available city funds as well as a debt service reserve fund. The city
indicated to Fitch in May 2009 that it was in negotiations with another
established jail operator (the operator) to assume management of the
Littlefield facility and that the operator was attempting to secure an
agreement with a federal agency to house prisoners. Resolution or near resolution
of this agreement was expected by August 2009. However, the operator has yet
to secure a prisoner agreement and the timing for resolution remains
uncertain. The downgrade to 'BB' reflects the uncertainty as to when and if
the city can secure an operator for the detention center as well as the
city's limited financial resources to repay the detention center debt. While
the city continues to pursue an agreement with the operator (and other
private companies in the event negotiations with the operator break down),
the Negative Outlook reflects the potential financial hardship placed on the
city if a long-term viable solution is not found. Although the detention
center COs are also secured by an ad valorem tax pledge, the city levies a
property tax for operations only. Officials report that the 2010 proposed
budget does not include any property tax levy for debt service, but the city
is investigating funding alternatives for future detention center debt
service. In order to fully support the detention center COs, the ad valorem
tax rate would have to double, which is not politically feasible.
December 13, 2008 Lubbock On-line
GEO Group Inc. says it has canceled its contract with the city of
Littlefield and plans to terminate 74 employees at the Bill Clayton Detention
Center effective Jan. 5 The Boca Raton-based Fla. company gave official
notice last month, filing a mass layoff Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act
letter with the city in accordance with federal law. The letter was obtained
by The Avalanche-Journal. Under the law, an organization terminating 50 or
more employees must give at least 60 days notice.
GEO's decision was made shortly after it learned its own contract had been
canceled with the Idaho Department of Corrections, which according to the Times-News
in Twin Falls, Idaho, cited prisoner safety concerns. IDOC had contracted
with the for-profit corporation to house 300 of its inmates in the one-time
youth detention facility owned by the city. Some of those inmates, according
to the Times-News, will be transferred to the North Fork Corrections Facility
in Sayer, Okla., which is operated by Corrections Corp. of America. "We
understand the gravity of the situation and the citizens' concerns, but we
are working hard toward a solution," said Danny Davis, Littlefield city
manager, who was informed about GEO's decision on Nov. 7. He said the city
has since hired Woodlands-based Carlisle & Associates, a municipal
consultant, which has been brought on board to sell the 372-bed prison.
Littlefield, which issued revenue bonds to construct the facility as part of
an economic development strategy, still owes $10 million. However, Davis
said, the city had already set aside a year's worth of bond payments as a
precautionary measure when it made the decision to build. "We have
enough to make at least the next three payments," adding the city should
not have to tap those reserve funds until August. Danny Soliz,
director of business services for WorkForce
Solutions South Plains - the area's largest job placement/training
organization - said he met with Littlefield prison guards during 12 hours of
informational sessions Wednesday. "We'll be doing everything we can to
help them," he said. Soliz said many of the
workers told him they have no intention of leaving Littlefield, while others
showed interest in applying for jobs at the new Lubbock County Jail and the
Montford Psychiatric Unit operated by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice. Soliz said WorkForce
brought in an expert from Fort Worth to assist workers in filing for
unemployment benefits. Davis said the city is working on a number of
scenarios involving filling the facility with inmates from other areas on a
temporary basis. "We've also talked with a number of people who are
interested in buying it. There are a lot of entities out there looking for
beds, but it takes time for these solutions to transpire," he said.
December 9, 2008 Yahoo
Fitch Ratings has placed the 'BBB-' rating on Littlefield, TX's (the
city) outstanding $1.4 million combination tax and revenue certificates of
obligation (COs), series 1997 on Rating Watch Negative. The CO's constitute a
general obligation of the city, payable from ad valorem taxes limited to
$2.50 per $100 taxable assessed valuation (TAV). Additionally, the COs are
secured by a pledge of surplus water and sewer revenues. The Negative Watch
reflects recent events related to the operation of the city's detention
center facility, which accounts for the majority of outstanding debt.
Officials are pursuing various alternatives to remedy the situation, with
possible resolution within the next several months. Funds to repay debt
service on detention center COs (which were not rated by Fitch) over the next
one to two years have been identified through available city funds as well as
a debt service reserve fund. However, failure to develop a viable long-term
solution within the near term will have a negative impact on the rating.
Detention center operations support approximately $1.4 million in outstanding
2000 COs and $9.0 million in outstanding 2001 COs issued for the construction
of the facility. The detention center has a history of difficulties,
beginning with construction delays and the subsequent loss of Texas Youth
Commission (TYC) prisoners in 2003 and State of Wyoming prisoners in 2006.
Detention center operations began to stabilize with the near immediate
replacement of the State of Idaho prisoners in the facility. The city's
contract with Idaho was scheduled to expire in July 2009, with negotiations
for contract renewal planned for January 2009. However, to the surprise of
city officials, Idaho recently announced their plans to leave the Littlefield
facility in January 2009, citing the need to consolidate all of its
out-of-state prisoners into a larger facility in Oklahoma. In addition, the
detention center's private operator, the Geo Group unexpectedly announced
termination of their agreement to manage the facility effective January 2009.
The move to leave Littlefield by the Geo Group is significant, given that the
established private operator had made sizable equity investments in the
detention center reportedly totaling approximately $2 million. In the past,
the ability of the Geo Group to quickly replace prisoners with little
disruption in operations as well as their investment in the Littlefield
detention center were cited as credit strengths. In response to the sudden
loss of both prisoners and operators, city officials are investigating
various options. According to the city, a number of other jail operators have
expressed interest in managing the Littlefield facility. In addition,
officials are considering selling the facility and retiring the outstanding
debt. Officials have expressed the need to resolve this issue quickly and
hope to have additional information within the next several months. In the
interim, officials report that sufficient funds are on hand to make the Feb.
1 debt service payment, with the subsequent payments made from other
resources, including the water and sewer fund as well as the debt service
reserve fund. Prior to fiscal 2006, the detention center fund required
transfers primarily from the water and sewer fund to meet operating and debt
service needs. Since that time, detention center net revenues have been
sufficient to cover its debt, providing 1.1 times (x) coverage in fiscal
2007. The water and sewer fund, which supports the remainder of the city's
general obligation debt, continues to record positive results and for fiscal
2007, net revenues were $1.4 million, providing more than 3x coverage on water
and sewer related CO debt service. In addition, the series 2000 and 2001 CO
sales included provisions for a fully funded debt service reserve fund.
Although the city utilized the reserve fund to meet debt service requirements
in 2001 due to the delay in opening as well as the moratorium on TYC
transfers to the detention center, officials report that the reserve is
currently fully funded and has not been utilized since 2001 to meet debt
service needs. For fiscal 2007, the restricted reserve stood at $1.1 million
compared to fiscal 2007 debt service of approximately $780,000. Although the
detention COs are also secured by an ad valorem tax pledge, the city levies a
property tax for operations only. Officials report that they are considering
levying a property tax to partially support the detention center COs. However, in order to fully support the detention
center COs, the tax rate would have to double, which is not feasible given
political realities. Littlefield, with a population of 6,500, is located
approximately 35 miles northwest of Lubbock and serves as the county seat for
Lamb County. The area is primarily rural in nature, with agriculture
services, government, manufacturing, and trade as key components of the
county's economy. The city's population and TAV had been flat until recently;
for fiscal 2008 the city's tax base increased nearly 5% due to the
construction of several commercial projects as well as residential
development. While there is moderate taxpayer concentration among the top 10
taxpayers, there is generally a good mix of industries within the list.
General fund finances have stabilized over the past several years,
benefitting from the recent imposition of a 0.25% increase in the sales tax
rate as well as tax base growth. Debt ratios are very low given the level of
non-property tax support for outstanding COs although payout is slow. Fitch
issued an exposure draft on July 31, 2008 proposing a recalibration of
tax-supported and water/sewer revenue bond ratings which, if adopted, may
result in an upward revision of this rating (see Fitch research 'Exposure
Draft: Reassessment of the Municipal Ratings Framework'.) At this time, Fitch
is deferring its final determination on municipal recalibration. Fitch will
continue to monitor market and credit conditions, and plans to revisit the
recalibration in first quarter-2009.
November 14, 2008 Magic Valley
Times-News
Families of two Idaho inmates who apparently killed themselves in lockups
run by private prison company GEO Group Inc., pleaded Thursday with Texas
state senators to bar out-of-state prisoners from the Lone Star State. The
Idaho Department of Correction has housed more than 300 prisoners at GEO-run
Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, but recently announced
plans to move them to the private North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre,
Okla. The move follows allegations that GEO falsified reports and
short-staffed the Texas facility where Idaho inmate Randall McCullough, 37,
died. Families of Idaho inmates spoke Thursday at a Texas state Senate
hearing in Austin, Texas. The hearing, which dealt with general oversight of
the Texas prison system and did not result in specific action, was webcast
live over the Internet. Among those testifying was lawyer Ronald Rodriguez,
who represents McCullough's family as well as that of Idaho inmate Scott
Noble Payne, 43, who killed himself last year at another GEO-run prison in
Dickens, Texas. "Idaho prisoners need to be in Idaho where they have
access to their court - Where they have access to their families,"
Rodriguez on Thursday told the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.
Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, spoke to Texas lawmakers last year and again
on Thursday. "It seems that no lessons were learned," Noble said.
"If changes had been placed - Randall would not have been so desperate
to take his own life, as my son did." Texas Sen. John Whitmire,
D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, questioned
why the "little" state of Idaho recently decided to pull its
prisoners from Geo-run Bill Clayton. "Should we be following their
lead?" he asked. But a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official
told Whitmire that Texas inmates aren't held at Bill Clayton, and warned
against painting private prisons in Texas with a broad brush. Inmate
McCullough's sister, Laurie Williams, told Texas senators that they should do
a review of all private prisons in their state - including GEO competitor
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Idaho prisoners are to be taken to
CCA-run North Fork in Oklahoma, where another Idaho inmate, David Drashner, was allegedly murdered in June. IDOC's decision
to move prisoners from one privately run lockup to another out-of-state
facility concerns Williams, as well as Drashner's
wife, Pam Drashner, who have said they want Idaho
to stop shipping away its inmates. Idaho doesn't have enough room for all its
prisoners, and sending them out-of-state has been widely unpopular. Williams
also wants to talk to Idaho lawmakers, she said. "We should be addressing
the Idaho Senate," said Williams, after Thursday's hearing in Texas.
"This is Idaho sending its inmates out of state whether it's Texas that
takes them or Oklahoma and that's what we have to have stopped." GEO
made $4.9 million in annual operating revenues off its contract with Idaho to
manage prisoners at Bill Clayton. GEO officials said shareholders won't lose
out from Idaho's withdrawal because of an expanding contract with the state
of Indiana.
November 9, 2008 Magic Valley
Times-News
Private prison company GEO Group Inc. isn't lamenting the loss of a
multimillion dollar contract with Idaho to manage more than 300 inmates at a
Texas lock-up owned by the city of Littlefield. Idaho was only 1 percent of
Baca Raton-based GEO's business, according to a 2007 annual report from the
company. "The discontinuation of GEO's contract with the Idaho DOC will
have no material impact on GEO's previously issued pro forma earnings
guidance for the fourth quarter of 2008," according to a GEO press
release Friday. GEO made $4.9 million in annual operating revenues off its
contract with Idaho to manage state inmates in Texas, and the company
announced Friday that revenue won't be lost because it's expanding a contract
with the state of Indiana. "GEO expects the discontinuation of its
contract with the Idaho DOC to be more than offset by the 420-bed contract
expansion with the Indiana DOC," according to the press release. Idaho
Department of Correction officials told the Associated Press Thursday it was
pulling out of the contract with GEO and cited inmate safety risks at the
Bill Clayton Detention Center, which is owned by the city of Littlefield.
GEO, however, claims Idaho pulled out of the contract for a different reason
than inmate safety or staffing levels. GEO officials said Friday that Idaho
ended the contract because the state wants to consolidate all its
out-of-state prisoners into one private facility. "We understand the
decision by the state of Idaho to consolidate its out-of-state inmate
population into one large-scale facility," said GEO Chief Executive
Officer George Zoley in the press release.
"The consolidation effort has led to the discontinuation of our
out-of-state inmate contract with the Idaho Department of Correction at the
Bill Clayton Detention Center." IDOC officials told the Times-News
Friday that staffing at Bill Clayton and consolidation efforts were both
factors in its decision to cancel the contract with GEO. IDOC didn't reply to
the Times-News when asked which factor may have weighed more heavily. The
pull-out announced Thursday by IDOC came after a two-month-old audit showed
GEO guards weren't checking on inmates enough. GEO is also terminating its
contract with the city of Littlefield to run Bill Clayton, which it has
operated since 2005, the company announced Friday. GEO decided not to manage
Bill Clayton anymore in Littlefield, a town populated by about 6,500 people,
"due to financial underperformance and lack of economies of scale,"
according to the Friday press release. The first formal IDOC audit of Bill
Clayton dated Sept. 3 followed an apparent suicide of Idaho inmate Randall
McCullough, 37, of Twin Falls in August. IDOC had been monitoring the
facility at least two weeks out of every month since last fall, an IDOC
official said. IDOC's original two-year contract with GEO signed in 2006
could have ended on July 20, 2008. IDOC extended it a year until July 20,
2009, but now says all inmates will be out of Texas by January and moved to
the Northfork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla.
- run by GEO competitor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which
holds hundreds of other out-of-state Idaho inmates.
November 7, 2008 The Olympian
Idaho Department of Correction officials still don't know the cause of
death for an inmate who apparently committed suicide in a private Texas
prison in August. But what they do know is disturbing: The prison was so
understaffed that the warden himself was working the midnight shift at the
Bill Clayton Detention Center on Aug. 17, the night Randall McCullough died.
A state investigation found that regularly scheduled checks on inmates either
weren't done or were done incorrectly, and there was no effective check done
on McCullough from the time he turned in his dinner tray at 5:45 p.m. to the
time his body - already cold and stiff - was found just after midnight. Log
books from that night are inaccurate, according to the investigation, and the
videotape from the prison's security system shows neither the correct date
nor the arrival of emergency workers, prompting Idaho investigators to
speculate that it might not be the tape from that night at all. "You can
see where the train wreck is coming, can't you?" state Department of
Correction Chief Investigator Jim Loucks told The Associated Press in an
interview Thursday. Department officials this week announced they're
terminating the state's multimillion dollar contract with The GEO Group, the
for-profit private prison company that runs the Bill Clayton Detention
Center. Within 60 days, the roughly 300 Idaho prisoners there will be
transferred to the Correction Corp. of America-run North Fork Correctional
Institution in Sayre, Okla. The inmates have been housed out of state because
of overcrowding in Idaho prisons. As of Oct. 1, Idaho had nearly 7,300 total
inmates. The staff at the Bill Clayton center - from then-warden Arthur
Anderson down to the correctional officers - didn't follow prison policy or
respond properly to McCullough's death, according to documents obtained by
The AP from the Idaho Department of Correction through public records
requests. Pablo Paez, spokesman for The GEO Group,
has not returned repeated phone calls from The AP. The GEO Group Vice
President Amber Martin said she couldn't comment on the documents or Idaho's
decision to end the contract. McCullough was found dead in his cell by
Anderson at about 12:15 a.m., according to the state's investigation. Two
letters were found in his cell as well - one to his sister, Laurie Williams,
and another addressed to Anderson and the Idaho Department of Correction.
"To hom it may concern," the misspelled,
handwritten letter read. "I'v been puting this off for long anuff.
I can't set here and slowly die. Sorry for the
inconvenience." The apparent suicide surprised those who knew
McCullough, according to the investigation. The inmate, who was serving time
on a robbery charge, was within a few months of an expected parole hearing
and apparently believed he would be sent back to Idaho sometime around the
end of the year, pending a cell opening in the state's overcrowded system.
McCullough had been in segregation for several months at the Texas facility
after he was accused of assaulting a staff member. The prison, located in the
tiny town of Littlefield, Texas, competes for employees with nearby oil
fields, which often pay more than residents can make working as a
correctional officer, Loucks said. That contributed to the chronic
understaffing. Around the time McCullough died, prison employees were working
as much as 20 hours of overtime every week, and often resorted to calling in
sick just to get some time off, Loucks said. On the night of Aug. 17, 2008,
five people didn't make it in to work - leaving the prison with just 10
correctional officers for the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, below the
state-mandated minimum of 12, and well below the 15 officers generally
scheduled, according to the report. To deal with the shortage, the shift
supervisor persuaded two dayshift employees to stay until 10 p.m., and got
two employees scheduled for the next day to come in four hours early, at 2
a.m. But that still left the prison short two officers from 10 p.m. on Aug.
17 to 2 a.m. on Aug. 18, Loucks said. That's when Warden Anderson and Chief
of Security Dennis Blevins agreed to come in to work those middle-of-the
night hours. The short-staffing led to a few bad habits at the prison,
according to the report. Officers often committed a practice known as
"pencil-whipping," filling out the log books to show they had made
security checks on the inmates every 20 minutes, even if the checks hadn't
been done. It also meant that the prison was often without a utility officer,
an employee charged with fueling the vehicles, emptying the trash and doing
other non-guard duties. Because the segregation unit had fewer inmates than
other areas, the correctional officer guarding the unit was generally pulled
away from his duties to take care of the utility officer chores, Loucks said.
That happened the night of Aug. 17, he said, and as a result no one noticed
that McCullough was unmoving and unresponsive until 12:18 a.m., when Warden
Anderson walked by the cell. Anderson radioed for help when he noticed
McCullough wasn't responding to knocking on the cell door. Medical personnel
came within four minutes, but didn't bring the necessary equipment to treat an
unresponsive patient and so had to go back to another part of the prison to
get it, according to the report. Staffers began CPR, but didn't move
McCullough's body from the bed to the floor, where they would have had a
firmer surface and more effective chest compressions, investigators found.
Prison officials didn't call 911 for 15 minutes, according to the report, but
Anderson reportedly told investigators that was because he was trying to
notify enough other employees so they could safely unlock McCullough's door
and go into the cell. McCullough was dead and apparently had been for some
time - his body was cold to the touch, according to the report. Prison
officials immediately suspected that McCullough might have overdosed on
medication, and his body was sent for toxicology tests and an autopsy. Those
tests have been completed, but the Texas coroner's report has not yet been
finished, so Idaho Department of Correction officials still don't know just
how or why McCullough died. But one thing is clear: Idaho prisoners will be
removed from Bill Clayton. State Correction Department chief Brent Reinke
notes the state prison system is expanding, with roughly 600 more beds to be
added next year. Reinke hopes that will provide enough room to bring all the
out-of-state prisoners home. "It's a real unfortunate situation - it
always is," Reinke said. "But there's no question that Idaho
inmates are much better to manage in Idaho."
November 6, 2008 AP
The Idaho Department of Correction has terminated its contract with private
prison company The GEO Group and will move the roughly 305 Idaho inmates
currently housed at a GEO-run facility in Texas to a private prison in
Oklahoma. Correction Director Brent Reinke notified GEO officials Thursday in
a letter. Reinke said the company's chronic understaffing at the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, put Idaho offenders' safety at risk.
An Idaho Department of Correction audit found that guards routinely falsified
reports to show they were checking on offenders regularly — even though they
were sometimes away from their posts for hours at a time. "I hope you
understand how seriously we're taking not only the report but the safety of
our inmates," Reinke told The Associated Press on Thursday. "They
have an ongoing staffing issue that doesn't appear to be able to be
solved." The contract will end Jan. 5. Reinke said the department wanted
to pull the inmates out immediately, but state attorneys found there wasn't
enough cause to allow the state to break free of the contract without a
60-day warning period. In the meantime, Reinke said, Idaho correction
officials have been sent to the Texas prison to help with staffing for the
next two months. GEO will be responsible for transferring the inmates to the
North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayer, Okla., which is run by Corrections
Corp. of America. GEO will cover the cost of the move, Reinke said, but Idaho
will have to pay $58 per day per inmate in Oklahoma, compared to $51 per day
at Bill Clayton. Amber Martin, vice president for The GEO Group, of Florida,
said she couldn't comment on the audit or on Idaho's decision to end the
contract. She referred calls to the company spokesman, Pablo Paez, who could not immediately be reached by the AP. As
of Oct. 1, Idaho had nearly 7,300 total inmates. The Bill Clayton audit
describes the latest in a series of problems that Idaho has had with shipping
inmates out of state. Overcrowding at home forced the state to move hundreds
of inmates to a prison in Minnesota in 2005, but space constraints soon
uprooted them again, this time to a GEO-run facility in Newton, Texas. There,
guard abuse and prisoner unrest forced another move to two new GEO
facilities: 125 Idaho inmates went to the Dickens County Correctional Center
in Spur, Texas, while 304 went to Bill Clayton in Littlefield. Conditions at
Dickens were left largely unmonitored by Idaho, at least until inmate Scott
Noble Payne committed suicide after complaining of the filthy conditions
there. Idaho investigators looking into Payne's death detailed the poor
conditions and a lack of inmate treatment programs, and the inmates were
moved again. That's when the Idaho Department of Correction created the
Virtual Prisons Program, designed to improve oversight of Idaho inmates
housed in contract beds both in and out of state. The extent of the Bill
Clayton facility understaffing was discovered after Idaho launched an
investigation into the apparent suicide of inmate Randall McCullough in
August. During that investigation, guards at the prison said they were often
pulled away from their regular posts to handle other duties — including
taking out the garbage, refueling vehicles or checking the perimeter fence —
and that it was common practice to fill out the logs as if the required
checks of inmates were being completed as scheduled, said Jim Loucks, chief
investigator for the Idaho Department of Correction. For instance, Loucks
said, correction officers were supposed to check on inmates in the
administrative segregation unit every 30 minutes. But sometimes they were
away from the unit for hours at a time, he said. The investigation into
McCullough's death is not yet complete, department officials said. The audit
also found several other problems at Bill Clayton. The auditor found that
"the facility entrance is a very relaxed checkpoint," prompting
concerns that cell phones, marijuana and other contraband could be smuggled
past security. In addition, the prison averages a 30 percent vacancy rate in
security staff jobs, according to the audit. Though it was still able to meet
the one-staffer-for-every-48-prisoners ratio set out by Texas law, employees
were regularly expected to work long hours of overtime and non-security
staffers sometimes were used to provide security supervision, according to
the audit. "Based on a review of payroll reports, there are significant
concerns with security staff working excessive amounts of overtime for long
periods of time," the auditors wrote. "This can lead to compromised
facility security practices and increased safety issues." When the audit
was done, there were 29 security staff vacancies, according to the report.
That meant each security staff person who was eligible for overtime worked an
average of 21 hours of overtime a week. That extra expense was borne by GEO,
not by Idaho taxpayers, said Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff
Ray. The state's contract with GEO also required that at least half of the
eligible inmates be given jobs with at least 50 hours of work a month.
According to the facility's inmate payroll report, only 35 out of 371
offenders were without jobs. But closer inspection showed that the prison
often had several inmates assigned to the same job. In one instance, nine
inmates were assigned to clean showers in one unit of the prison — which only
had nine shower stalls. So although each was responsible for cleaning just
one shower stall, the nine inmates were all claiming 7- and 8-hour work days,
five days a week. GEO is responsible for covering the cost of those wages,
Ray said. "While the contract percentage requirement is met, the
facility cannot demonstrate the actual hours claimed by offenders are spent
in a meaningful, skill-learning job activity," the auditors wrote.
Auditors also found that too few inmates were enrolled in high school diploma
equivalency and work force readiness classes.
October 1, 2008 AP
For a decade, Idaho has been shipping some of its prisoners to
out-of-state prisons, dealing with its ever-burgeoning inmate population by
renting beds in faraway facilities. But now some groups of prisoners are
being brought back home. Idaho Department of Correction officials are
crediting declining crime rates, improved oversight during probation, better
community programs and increased communication between correction officials
and the state's parole board. The number of Idaho inmates has more than
doubled since 1996, reaching a high of 7,467 in May. But in the months since
then, the population has declined to 7,293 -- opening up enough space that 80
inmates housed in the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., and
at Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, could be bused back
to the Idaho State Correctional Institution near Boise. The inmates arrived
Monday night. Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke hailed
their arrival as one of the benefits the system was reaping after years of
work. "It's more about having the right inmates at the right place at
the right time," Reinke said. "People are communicating better and
we're working together better than we were in the past."
September 21, 2008 Times-News
Pam Drashner visited her husband every weekend
in prison, until she was turned away one day because he wasn't there. He had
been quietly transferred from Boise to a private prison in Sayre, Okla. She
never saw him again. In July, she went to the Post Office to pick up his
ashes, mailed home in a box. He died of a traumatic brain injury in Oklahoma,
allegedly assaulted by another inmate. David Drashner
was one of hundreds of male inmates Idaho authorities have sent to private
prisons in other states. About 10 percent of Idaho's inmates are now
out-of-state. The Department of Correction say they want to bring them all
home, they simply have no place to put them. Drashner,
who was 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, and was the first this year. On Aug. 18, Twin Falls native Randall
McCullough, 37, apparently killed himself at the Bill Clayton Detention
Center in Littlefield, Texas. McCullough, serving time for robbery, was found
dead in his cell. IDOC officials say he left a note, though autopsy results
are pending. His family says he shouldn't have been in Texas at all.
"Idaho should step up to the plate and bring their prisoners home,"
said his sister, Laurie Williams. Out of Idaho -- Idaho
has so many prisoners scattered around the country that the IDOC last year
developed the Virtual Prison Program, assigning 12 officers to monitor the
distant prisons. In 2007 Idaho sent 429 inmates to Texas and Oklahoma. This
year; more than 700 - and by one estimate it could soon hit 1,000. But
officials say they don't know exactly how many inmates may hit the road in
coming months. The number may actually fall due to an unexpected drop in
total prisoner head-count, a turnabout attributed to a drop in sentencings,
increased paroles and better success rates for probationers. The state will
also have about 1,300 more beds in Idaho, thanks to additions at existing
prisons. State officials say bringing inmates back is a priority. "If
there was any way to not have inmates out-of-state it would be far, far better,"
said IDOC Director Brent Reinke, a former Twin Falls County commissioner,
noting higher costs to the state and inconvenience to inmate families. Still,
there's no end in sight for virtual prisons, which have few fans in state
government. "I do think sending inmates out-of-state is
counter-productive," said Rep. Nicole LeFavour,
D-Boise, a member of the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee.
LeFavour favors treatment facilities over prisons.
"We try to make it (sending inmates out-of-state) a last resort, but I
don't think we're doing enough." Even lawmakers who favor buying more
cells would like to avoid virtual lockups. "It's more productive to be
in-state," said Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee,
who said he would support a new Idaho prison modeled after the state-owned
but privately run Idaho Correctional Center (ICC). "We don't want to
stay out-of-state unless we have to ��- It's undesirable." A decade of movement --
Idaho has shipped inmates elsewhere for more than a decade, though in some
years they were all brought home when beds became available at four of
Idaho's state prisons. The 1,500-bed ICC - a state-owned lockup built and run
by CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) - also opened in 2000. But that
wasn't enough: "It will be years before a substantial increase in prison
capacity will allow IDOC to bring inmates back," the agency said in
April. In 2005, former IDOC director Tom Beauclair
warned lawmakers that "if we delay building the next prison, we'll have
to remain out-of-state longer with more inmates," according to an IDOC
press release. That year inmates were taken to a Minnesota prison operated by
CCA, where Idaho paid $5 per inmate, per day more than it costs to keep inmates
in its own prisons. "This move creates burdens for our state fiscally,
and can harden our prison system, but it's what we must do," IDOC said
at the time. "Our ability to stretch the system is over." Attempts
to add to that system have largely failed. Earlier this year Gov. C.L.
"Butch" Otter asked lawmakers for $191 million in bond authority to
buy a new 1,500-bed lockup. The Legislature rejected his request, but did
approve those 1,300 new beds at existing facilities. Reinke said IDOC won't
ask for a new prison when the next Legislative session convenes in January.
With a slow economy and a drop in inmate numbers, it's not the time to push
for a new prison, he said. Still, recent projections for IDOC show that
without more prison beds here, 43 percent of all Idaho inmates could be sent
out-of-state in 2017. "It's a lot of money to go out-of-state," Darrington said. Different cultures -- One of eight
prisons in Idaho is run by a private company, as are those housing Idaho
inmates in Texas and Oklahoma. The Bill Clayton Detention Center in Texas is
operated by the Geo Group Inc., which is managing or developing 64 lockups in
the U.S., Australia and South Africa. The North-Fork Correctional Facility in
Oklahoma is owned and operated by CCA, which also has the contract to run the
Idaho Correction Center. CCA houses almost 75,000 inmates and detainees in 66
facilities under various state and federal contracts. Critics of private
prisons say the operators boost profits by skimping on programs, staff, and
services. Idaho authorities acknowledge the prisons make money, but consider
them well-run. "Private prisons are just that - business run,"
Idaho Virtual Prison Program Warden Randy Blades told the Times-News.
"It doesn't mean out-of-sight, or out-of-mind." Yet even Reinke
added that "I think there's a difference. Do we want there to be?
No." The Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations
(APCTO) says on its Web site that its members "deliver reduced costs,
high quality, and enhanced accountability." Falling short? Thomas
Aragon, a convicted thief from Nampa, was shipped to three different Texas
prisons in two years. He said prisons there did little to rehabilitate him,
though he's up for parole next year. "I'm a five-time felon, all grand theft
and possession of stolen property," said Aragon, by telephone from the
ICC. "Apparently I have a problem and need to find out why I steal. The
judge said I needed counseling and that I'd get it, and I have yet to get
any." State officials said virtual prisons have a different culture, but
are adapting to Idaho standards. "We're taking the footprint of Idaho
and putting it into facilities out-of-state," Blades said. Aragon, 39,
says more programs are available in Idaho compared to the Texas facilities where
he was. Like Aragon, almost 70 percent of Idaho inmates sent to prison in
2006 and 2007 were recidivists - repeat IDOC offenders - according agency
annual reports. GEO and CCA referred questions about recidivism to APCTO,
which says only that its members reduce the rate of growth of public
spending. Aragon said there weren't enough case-workers, teachers, programs,
recreational activities and jobs in Texas. Comparisons between public and
private prisons are made difficult because private companies didn't readily
offer numbers for profits, recidivism, salaries and inmate-officer ratios.
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: "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 have grown from the way they have been sent to the prisons.
Inmates describe a horrific bus ride from Idaho to Oklahoma in April in
complaints collected by the American Civil Liberties Union in Boise. The
inmates say they endured painful and injurious wrist and ankle shackling,
dangerous driving, infrequent access to an unsanitary restroom and
dehydration during the almost 30-hour trip. "We're still receiving a lot
of complaints, some of them are based on retaliatory transfers," said
ACLU lawyer Lea Cooper. IDOC officials acknowledge that they have also
received complaints about access to restrooms during the long bus rides, but
they maintain that most of the inmates want to go out-of-state. Many are sex
offenders who prefer the anonymity associated with being out-of-state, they
said. Unanswered questions -- Three deaths of Idaho interstate inmates in 18
months have left families concerned that even more prisoners will come home
in ashes. "We're very disturbed about...the rate of Idaho prisoner
deaths for out-of-state inmates," Cooper said. It was the razor-blade
suicide of sex-offender Scott Noble Payne, 43, in March 2007 at a Geo lockup
in Dickens, Texas that caught the attention of state officials. Noble's death
prompted Idaho to pull all its inmates from the Geo prison. State officials
found the facility was in terrible condition, but they continue to work with
Geo, which houses 371 Idaho inmates in Littlefield, Texas, where McCullough
apparently killed himself. Noble allegedly escaped before he was caught and
killed himself. Inmate Aragon said he as there, and that Noble was hog-tied
and groaned in pain while guards warned other inmates they would face the
same if they tried to escape. Private prison operators don't have to tell
governments everything about the deaths at facilities they run. The state
isn't allowed access to Geo's mortality and morbidity reports under terms of
a contract. Idaho sent additional inmates to the Corrections Corporation of
America-run Oklahoma prison after Drashner's
husband died in June. IDOC officials said an Idaho official was inspecting
the facility when he was found. IDOC has offered few details about the death.
"The murder happened in Oklahoma," said IDOC spokesman Jeff Ray,
adding it will be up to Oklahoma authorities to charge. Drashner
said her husband had a pending civil case in Idaho and shouldn't have been
shipped out-of-state. She says Idaho and Oklahoma authorities told her David
was assaulted by another inmate after he verbally defended an officer at the
Oklahoma prison. Officers realized something was wrong when he didn't stand
up for a count, Drashner said. "He was
healthy. He wouldn't have been killed over here," she said.
August 28, 2008 Times-News
An Idaho prison inmate held at a private facility in Texas through the
state's Virtual Prison Program was in solitary confinement for more than a
year when he apparently killed himself, authorities have confirmed. Idaho
Department of Correction is still investigating the cause and manner of death
for the inmate, Randall McCullough, 37, who was found unresponsive Aug. 18 in
his cell, which measured 7.5 feet, by 12 feet, by 8 feet, said Idaho
Department of Correction Spokesman Jeff Ray. McCullough had been segregated
from other inmates since Dec. 13, 2007, after he allegedly assaulted a staff
member at the Bill Clayton Detention Center run by Geo Group Inc., said Ray.
He apparently wasn't criminally charged for that alleged assault in Texas.
"It's our understanding that the prosecutor in Texas had not made a
decision on whether or not to file charges," said Ray. "The staff
assault occurred in Texas and would be considered a Texas crime. IDOC would
not have a direct connection to it." Authorities at Geo Group's Bill
Clayton Detention Center directed all questions from the Times-News on Wednesday
back to the Idaho Department of Corrections. McCullough was in prison for a
2001 Twin Falls County robbery conviction. He had a criminal record involving
charges of escape, forgery, controlled substance possession, grand theft,
burglary, resisting arrest, and driving violations, according to court
records. Imposing inmate segregation for one to two years as a result of an
assault on a guard would not be uncommon, and wardens at out-of-state
facilities holding Idaho inmates can decide if an inmate is put in
segregation, said Ray. Inmates in segregation eat meals in their cells and
can shower once every 72 hours. Toilets are in cells and McCullough had a
television, said Ray. Lights at the Texas facility are on 24 hours a day, Ray
said, adding that some facilities in Idaho dim lights at sleeping times.
August 21, 2008 The Times News
The state's Virtual Prison Program is only a year old and the Monday
death of inmate Randall McCullough, 37, could be the second suicide involving
the initiative outside of Idaho. Idaho prison officials said Wednesday
they're still investigating if McCullough committed suicide at a private
contracted facility in Texas - Bill Clayton Detention Center run by the GEO
Group Inc. - which is holding 371 inmates each at $51 per day under a
contract that expires in July 2009. The Virtual Prison Program started in
July 2007, but the state started putting inmates in non-state owned
facilities in October 2005, said Idaho Department of Correction Spokesman
Jeff Ray. Six state inmates have committed suicide since July 2006, not
including McCullough, Ray said.
December 11, 2007 AP
Inmates from Idaho housed at a private West Texas detention facility could
face new charges following an attack on a female guard. The woman was
attacked about 7:30 p.m. Monday after she apparently tried to take tobacco
away from at least two of the inmates at the Bill Clayton Detention Center,
Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff Ray said. The woman suffered
non-life threatening injuries, he said. Afterward, as many as 15 inmates
refused to return to their cells and additional officers were called in to
help, Ray said. The inmates then agreed to return to their cells, he said.
Officials with the Littlefield police department, which is investigating the
incident, did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday. A deputy warden
with the Idaho agency is on his way to Littlefield to investigate, a release
from that department said. Those involved in the attack could face charges,
and inmates who refused to return to their cells will likely face
disciplinary sanctions, the release said. The prison is operated by The GEO
Group Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based company that owns or operates 68
facilities worldwide. "We will be working cooperatively with the Idaho
Department of Correction as they conduct their investigation," said
Pablo Paez, a GEO spokesman. A lack of space in
Idaho prisons brought hundreds of inmates to Texas in early 2006. They were
first housed here at a GEO facility in Newton in East Texas. They were moved
to Littlefield in August 2006 after allegations of abuse by guards prompted
an investigation. Three employees at Newton's facility were disciplined as a
result of the investigation.
July 31, 2007 Idaho Statesman
Idaho's Department of Correction has created a new position to manage Idaho's
roughly 2,400 inmates in private, out-of-state prisons and county jail beds.
Randy Blades, who has been the warden at the Idaho State Correctional
Institution south of Boise, will monitor the 500-plus inmates, now in three
Texas prisons managed by the Geo Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla. He will also
monitor the 240 inmates soon to be transferred from Idaho to a private prison
in Oklahoma, and the inmates in county jail beds across the state. Correction
Director Brent Reinke created the position after disclosing that conditions
at one of those prisons were so bad that inmates will be moved elsewhere.
Inmates at the Dickens County Correctional Center are being moved to the Bill
Clayton Detention Center after an inmate suicide at Dickens revealed filthy
living conditions and poorly trained and unprofessional staff. “Times have
changed and we simply need to get in front on this issue,” Reinke said in a
statement. “We must be proactive. We need to make sure inmates are being
treated adequately and taxpayers are getting what they are paying for.”
October 24, 2006 Yahoo.com
Fitch downgrades the rating on Littlefield, TX's (the city) outstanding
$1.6 million combination tax and revenue certificates of obligation (COs),
series 1997 to 'BB+' from 'BBB+.' The Rating Outlook is Stable. The downgrade
primarily reflects the city's significantly weakened financial position. The
general fund balance has been at minimal levels for the past several years,
while the detention center fund, which supports the bulk of the city's
general obligation debt, is in a deficit unrestricted net asset position,
created by the pull-out of Texas Youth Commission (TYC) prisoners in 2003.
Some signs of financial improvement are evident, and projected fiscal 2006
results are expected to show a moderate increase in general fund reserve
levels as well as a small operating surplus in the detention center fund.
Further, the detention center is now fully occupied. Nevertheless, financial
stabilization has not been achieved, and the city remains highly dependent on
housing outside prisoners to meet operational and debt service requirements
of the detention center. Detention center operations, which experienced
problems at the onset primarily due to construction delays, were again
negatively impacted by the loss of all TYC prisoners in 2003. While TYC
offenders were subsequently replaced with state of Wyoming prisoners, the
impact on finances was severe and continued through fiscal 2005, evidenced by
a $351,000 unrestricted net asset deficit recorded in the detention center
fund. In addition, the detention center fund had to rely on support from
other funds, most notably a sizable transfer from the water and sewer fund in
fiscal 2004, to meet operational and debt service needs. The contract to
house Wyoming prisoners was terminated in 2006, and subsequently a new
contract with the state of Idaho was implemented. For 2006, officials report
that no outside financial support was required and that a $30,000 operating
surplus is expected. However, the large deficit will likely remain for sometime and the historical movement of prisoners in and
out of the Littlefield facility demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining
long-term prisoner contracts. If the city had to levy an interest and sinking
fund tax to meet detention center related debt obligations, officials
estimate that the overall tax rate would have to double over the current
operations and maintenance tax rate, which Fitch believes would be extremely
difficult to impose.
September 17, 2004 Star-Tribune
Four Texans have been jailed on charges of assisting two Wyoming inmates in
escaping from the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, last
week. Three of the Texans worked as guards at the prison, Littlefield Police
Chief Bill McMinn said. Arrested and charged with permitting and facilitating
the escape of a convicted felon were Roy Sosa and Yvonne Delagarza, who both
worked as guards at the detention center. They were being held in the Lamb
County Jail on $50,000 bond each and face two to 20 years in prison if
convicted. Delagarza's brother, Robert Sandoval, and Tammy Harper, another
prison guard, also have been charged in the incident with hindering the
apprehension of a felon, a crime that carries a one- to 10-year prison
sentence. They were also in jail on $50,000 bonds. McMinn said the motive for
the escape appears to be that the women guards, Harper and Delagarza, were in
love with the inmates.
September 16, 2004 Houston Chronicle
Four of the five federal inmates who escaped from a Frio County private
prison last month remained at large Thursday, but officials said they've
nabbed two people who helped the escapees vanish into a protective underworld
of prison-gang sympathizers. Held on charges of instigating or aiding a
federal escape are Randy Folsom, 42, and Debra Ayala, 44, both of San
Antonio. U.S. Marshals Service officials, who arrested them Wednesday, said
Folsom drove as many as four of the "Frio Five" escapees from the
Pearsall lockup Aug. 6. The five inmates exited the private prison in
daylight through cuts in the chain-link fencing of the recreation yard. Investigators also
are trying to determine whether prison personnel aided in the escape.
September 11, 2004 Casper Star
Tribune
Two Wyoming inmates were back in custody Friday, after escaping from a Texas
detention center the night before. Michael Solis and Jeremiah Zupko apparently cut through a fence to escape from the
Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas.
September 10, 2004 KCDB
Littlefield police arrested five people involved in a prison break at the
Bill Clayton Detention Center, a private facility in Littlefield. So far,
their investigation has led them to believe two female prison guards, Iyvonne Delagarza and Tammy Harper, may be involved.
Janet Simmons' daughter works at the prison with one of the women who is
suspected. At around 9:30 Thursday night, 35-year-old Michael Solis and
22-year-old Jeremiah Zupko cut their way through
two layers of fence and razor wire using some kind of cutting tool. Police
say they are investigating how the inmates got the tool. Police have not
figured out a motive for the prison break and why these two female guards
would have reason to help them. The inmates initially were serving time
for selling methemphetamines and heroin in Wyoming.
August 26, 2003
As the deadline nears for the Texas Commission for Youth to leave the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, interest in the facility continues
to heat up. TCY intends to vacate the premises by Sept. 1, transferring
juvenile residents to other TCY facilities. Corrections Concepts Inc.,
a faith-based organization headquartered in Dallas, devoted about five hours
last week to meet with Littlefield city officials and tour the facility.
"At this point we're considering some of the things they talked
about," City Manager Danny Davis said Monday. The two entities
plan to meet again in September. "They're going to try to have
facilities for males, females, juveniles and geriatrics," Davis said.
"Ours would be more likely ... adult males." Financial terms
were not discussed, he said. "We did tell them what it would take
to make our facility cash (needs)," Davis said. Corrections
Concepts would use the facility for a Christian-based prison program. The
organization is in the final stage of starting a similar facility in Coleman
that will likely house state and federal prisoners. "This is
falling in line with President Bush's faith-based initiatives," Davis
said. He added that the community of Littlefield is "really
interested" in faith-based programs for the detention center.
"We're interested in seeing men's lives changed," said Bill
Robinson, chairman of trustees of Corrections Concepts. Under the
program, men in their final 12 to 24 months of their prison terms, regardless
of their offenses, could be transferred to the facility. There they would
receive Christian-based transition training. If Corrections Concepts
were to use the Littlefield facility, about $1.5 million in capital improvements
would be made in constructing a work center, Robinson said. Those funds would
come from a "number of sources," he said. Private industry
would be allowed to set up shop in the medium-security facility and hire
inmates at prevailing wage rates. (Lubbock Online)
Bi-State Jail/Bowie County Detention Center
Bowie County, Texas
Correctional
Medical Services, CiviGenics
Nov
20, 2020 texarkanagazette.com
Lawyer
adds motion in jail lawsuit | Complaint alleges management firm allowed
destruction of video evidence
TEXARKANA,
Texas — A motion in a civil lawsuit against LaSalle Corrections alleges the
private jail management company intentionally allowed video evidence to be
destroyed in violation of the law. Texarkana lawyer David Carter filed suit
on behalf of William Scott Jones in 2019. The complaint alleges Jones was
beaten and denied medical treatment in the jail after being arrested the
night of July 17, 2018, by Texarkana, Texas, police for a class C
misdemeanor, "walking in the roadway." Such misdemeanor offenses
are punishable by a fine only and do not result in jail time if there is a
conviction. Speeding is a class C misdemeanor. When Jones was released from
jail the afternoon of July 19, 2018, he was wheeled out in a restraint chair
by jail staff. Jones spent the next month as a patient in Wadley Regional
Medical Center where he underwent surgery for his damaged colon. He was
diagnosed with acute renal failure, severe dehydration, "ischemic
colitis caused by blunt force trauma," multiple facial and rib
fractures, sepsis, pneumonia, blood clots and other maladies related to a
delay in receiving treatment, according to the complaint. He must now wear an
ostomy bag because of the damage to his colon and his medical expenses to
date total more than $1 million. Carter filed a motion Thursday asking the
court to enter a default judgment against LaSalle and Warden James McCormick
for "spoliation of evidence." Spoliation occurs when a party
intentionally hides, alters or destroys evidence.
LaSalle's lawyer, Paul Miller of Texarkana, did not respond to a request for
comment Thursday. At issue in the motion is video footage which is constantly
recording via fixed cameras throughout the jail. Other than some footage of
Jones during the booking process the night of July 17, 2018, video which
might have shown how Jones was injured is lost. Jones has no memory of his
time in the jail. Carter also complains that jail employees profess no
knowledge of what happened to Jones. "No one in our case has or will
testify as to the beating of Jones. Multiple correctional and medical
staffers have been deposed. A communal case of amnesia concerning plaintiff
has swept through the jail," the motion states. The video footage would
have hopefully provided evidence of what happened to Jones. "They
essentially destroyed the video footage by failing to download and preserve
it before it was overwritten and therefore permanently lost," the motion
states. "Even worse, defendants also failed to preserve the footage
despite receiving a preservation letter while the footage was still available
on the jail's digital video recorders." The motion alleges that
LaSalle's own policies dictate that the footage should have been downloaded
and preserved because Jones suffered serious injury and was being transported
to a hospital immediately upon his release from custody. Carter sent a
certified letter directly to McCormick seven days after Jones' release that
included an open records and preservation of video request. "We further
ask for appropriate steps to be taken to preserve all of the requested
materials, including video footage, and that no records related to William
Scott Jones' confinement are destroyed," the motion quotes the letter to
McCormick. The motion notes that fixed camera footage remains available for
at least 14 days and up to 30 days before it is overwritten. Carter argues
that McCormick and LaSalle staff in Bowie County knew of the need for video
footage to be preserved when an inmate is seriously injured or dies in
custody. "The beating of William Jones was neither LaSalle's nor
McCormick's first rodeo. These defendants are well aware
that fixed camera footage from the jail has been known to bolster
inmate claims of inappropriate uses of force and inadequate medical
care," the motion states. "It was clear that there was a strong
whiff of impending litigation on the breeze." The motion points to the
cases of Michael Sabbie and Morgan Angerbauer, both of whom died in the jail in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Video footage in those cases was
critical in showing excessive force used on Sabbie
and a lack of medical care for Angerbauer, a
diabetic who died after being denied medical care. Carter represented Sabbie and Angerbauer and
McCormick was warden when both deaths occurred. According to the motion,
federal law provides several remedies when there is a failure to preserve
electronically stored information in anticipation of litigation. If the court
finds that LaSalle intended to deprive Jones the footage so it couldn't be
used against the company in a lawsuit, the court can assume the lost
information was unfavorable to LaSalle, instruct a jury that it must presume
the information was unfavorable to LaSalle or dismiss the case and enter a
default judgment against LaSalle and in favor of Jones. Carter asks that if
the court declines to enter a default judgment, "it should, at a
minimum, instruct the jury that it may or must presume the missing camera
footage is unfavorable to the target defendants. It should also impose stiff
monetary sanctions on the target defendants and award Jones his attorney's
fees and costs for bringing the spoliation to the court's attention."
The case is currently scheduled for a jury trial in January before U.S.
District Judge Robert Schroeder III in the Texarkana Division of the Eastern
District of Texas.
Sep
17, 2020 cbslocal.com
Family
Sues Private Jail Company For Texas Woman’s Death
DALLAS
(CBSDFW.COM/AP) – The family of a woman who died after being held in an East
Texas jail last year filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the company that runs
the facility, claiming the staff neglected her care and ignored her pleas for
help as her health deteriorated and she went blind. Holly Barlow-Austin’s
husband and mother filed the lawsuit in federal court against Bowie County,
LaSalle Corrections, and several of the company’s employees at the jail in
Texarkana. They say LaSalle, which runs jails and immigration detention
facilities in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia, violated
Barlow-Austin’s rights and caused her death. Police in Texarkana, a city that
straddles the Texas’ northeastern border with Arkansas, arrested
Barlow-Austin in April of 2019 for a parole violation. The 46-year-old died
two months later at a hospital — one in a string of deaths that have led to
lawsuits and investigations of LaSalle’s operations. “What happened to Holly
was not an isolated incident,” said Erik Heipt, a
Seattle-based lawyer who’s representing
Barlow-Austin’s family and has brought other cases against LaSalle. “She is
just the latest victim of a corporate culture that sees inmates as dollar
signs and puts profits over people’s lives.” The company, a Texarkana law
firm that has represented it in past cases and Bowie County’s top official
did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. Barlow-Austin
arrived at the Bi-State Jail with serious health conditions, including HIV,
but normal vital signs and full mobility, according to the suit’s description
of her medical records. She allegedly left “blind, emaciated, and barely able
to move.” The lawsuit claims that LaSalle guards and medical staff neglected
her heath care, falsified records to cover their failure to check on her and
ignored obvious signs that her condition was worsening. It says they didn’t provide her prescribed medication, deprived her of
food and water, and only took her to the hospital after it was too late.
After not getting some of her medication for days, Barlow-Austin began
experiencing headaches and dizziness, according to the suit, and tests showed
her immune system was failing. Her condition continued to worsen and by
mid-May she was placed on “medical observation.” The lawsuit describes hours
of surveillance video of Barlow-Austin in her cell, growing sicker, writhing
in pain and calling for help. By June, Barlow-Austin
was so weak and blind that she allegedly struggled to reach and find the food
and water guards slid through a slot in her cell door. The lawsuit states
that she began soiling herself and took on the appearance of a “starving
prisoner of war.” Despite this, over a period of days guards and medical
staff didn’t check on her or, when they did, ignored
her calls for help and water, according to the suit. It says staff falsified
observation logs — something state inspectors also found last year in another
case. A nurse finally checked Barlow-Austin’s vitals on the night of June 10,
and she was taken to the hospital the next morning after medical staff found
her pupils no longer reacted to light, the lawsuit states. LaSalle never told
Barlow-Austin’s family that she was in the hospital, according to the court
complaint, and, after they found out from the sheriff, tried to stop them
from visiting her. According to the lawsuit, Barlow-Austin died of sepsis,
meningitis, HIV/AIDS and accelerated hypertension on
June 17. Her death came two months after LaSalle reached an undisclosed
settlement with the family of a man who died at the Bi-State Jail in 2015.
That lawsuit, which was also brought by Heipt,
claimed LaSalle employees deprived Michael Sabbie
of medications and treatment for his heart disease, diabetes
and other medical conditions.
Dec
19, 2019 wfaa.com
For-profit
jail company could face sanctions pending outcome of next surprise inspection.
The Bowie County jail, run by LaSalle Corrections, has failed 7 inspections
since 2015.
AUSTIN,
Texas — State regulators are threatening to reduce the number of prisoners
that an embattled private, for-profit company can house in its Bi-State jail
in Texarkana after its most recent failed annual inspection. The jail run by
LaSalle Corrections has failed three annual inspections and four special
inspections since 2015. At the Texas Commission on Jail Standards meeting in
November, commissioners unanimously approved a recommendation that the jail’s
capacity be reduced by about 50 beds if it does not pass a re-inspection by
Jan. 1. On Tuesday, LaSalle notified the state that it was ready for a
re-inspection. Regulators said they would schedule an unannounced visit
before the end of the month. If the jail fails again, LaSalle executives
would have to appear at the board’s February meeting and face the possibility
of the bed count being reduced further. “We continue to deal with some of the
same issues year after year after year,” Brandon Wood, executive director of
the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, told LaSalle executives during a
commission meeting last month in Austin. “You are able to fix them for a
period of time and then by the time the next annual inspection occurs we see
the same issues again.” LaSalle officials were forced to appear at the
commission’s November meeting as a result of a new law that requires private
jail operators to appear before the jail commission whenever they fail an inspection.
Lawmakers created the requirement following a WFAA investigation that exposed
significant problems in the way the company runs its jails in Texas. In its
most recent annual inspection in October, regulators found that the Texarkana
jail wasn’t properly documenting the distribution of medications, and that
guards were not checking on prisoners as required. The company failed a
special inspection in August after regulators found that jail checks were not
conducted in a case involving a suicide. It failed another special inspection
involving the death of Holly Austin after regulators found medications were
not properly dispensed or documented. Jay Eason, the company’s director of
operations, told commissioners that guards would be disciplined for not
making checks and that if the company discovered that guards had falsified
documents indicating checks had been done, they would be terminated. “We’re
going to step up our game on these checks,” Eason told commissioners. Guards
falsifying jail checks is not a new problem for LaSalle. A WFAA investigation
found that in several prisoner deaths, checks were not properly performed
even though paperwork said they were. Former jailers told WFAA that LaSalle
often has too few guards on each shift to watch all the prisoners in order to
save on salary costs. Eason also told commissioners that he planned to meet
with the jail’s nursing staff to ensure they understand the importance of
making sure prisoners get medical attention when they need it. “It’s going to
be all hands on deck,” he told commissioners. “We’re
going to get these issues resolved. The staff are going to know that if
they’re not doing their job, they are going to be held accountable.” Jail
commissioners seemed skeptical about Eason’s assurances, however. “What is
concerning to me is that these are routine things that need to be carried out
every day at the jail,” said Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, the commission’s vice-chair. “These are the type
of things that are … not complicated.” “We are struggling with the checks and
getting employees to take those checks seriously today and getting their
checks done … in a timely manner,” Eason told the commission. Wood told Eason
that if it did not fix its staffing shortages, the commission would limit the
number of prisoners its facility could hold. That means the company would
have fewer beds for not only county prisoners, but also federal inmates –
which bring in significantly more revenue. “I understand the needs of the
federal government, but we need to take care of our own first,” Wood said. It
marks the second time that the Texas jail commission has threatened to reduce
the number of jail beds at one of LaSalle’s facilities to force the company
to follow the rules. Earlier this year, one of LaSalle’s jails near Waco failed
two special inspections and an annual inspection in five months. After the
state jail commission said it would reduce the number of beds LaSalle could
use there, the company decided that it no longer wanted to operate that jail.
The McLennan County sheriff’s department has since taken over the operation
of the facility. Since 2015, four prisoners have died inside in the LaSalle’s
Bi-State jail in Texarkana. Jailers in each of the four cases falsely claimed
to have conducted checks on the inmates when they actually
had not done them. In 2015, Michael Sabbie,
a diabetic with asthma and heart problems, repeatedly told nurses he was
having trouble breathing. Guards pepper-sprayed him as he screamed, "I
can't breathe." Sabbie, 35, was found dead of
a heart attack on his cell floor. In 2016, 20-year-old Morgan Angerbauer, also a diabetic, died from a lack of insulin
in her cell. Jailers and a nurse ignored her as she screamed for help for
hours. A nurse was convicted for her role in Angerbauer’s
death. In March, 59-year-old Franklin Greathouse was found dead in his cell.
Earlier that day, he had complained he was having a seizure, but jail
officials wrote this in a report to the state: “Greathouse was responsive and
able to walk to his own cell...dispelling his claim of seizure.” In July,
48-year-old Michael Rodden was found hanging by socks tied together.
Jun 27, 2018 texarkanagazette.com
Suit moves forward for family of man who died in local jail
A federal civil lawsuit stemming from the July 2015 in-custody death of a
man in Texarkana's Bi-State Justice Building jail is moving forward. Michael Sabbie, 35, was found dead in his cell shortly after 6
a.m. on July 22, 2015. He had been arrested by Texarkana, Ark., police and
booked into the jail on a misdemeanor charge the afternoon of July 19, 2015,
following a verbal argument with his wife, according to a complaint filed in
May 2017 on behalf of Sabbie's family in the
Texarkana Division of the Eastern District of Texas. Upon intake, Sabbie told jail staff he suffered from asthma, heart
disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Despite his medical conditions and
his need for medications to treat them, Sabbie
allegedly was given no drugs during his incarceration. Also, nursing staff
failed to conduct even routine monitoring of his blood pressure and blood
sugar, even though such testing was ordered by the intake nurse, the
complaint states. Sabbie repeatedly showed and
complained of symptoms of severe medical distress, which should have moved
jail personnel to take him to a hospital but allegedly were ignored,
according to the complaint. Sabbie allegedly told
nursing staff he was short of breath and "unable to breathe while lying
down" at 3:30 a.m. July 20, 2015. A jail nurse noted that his blood
oxygen level was down about 8 percent from the day before and that his heart
rate was significantly higher, but jail workers allegedly failed to conduct
even basic tests that might have illuminated his dire need for treatment,
according to the complaint. Nursing staff allegedly continued to ignore Sabbie's constant breathing complaints, and officers
reportedly wrote him up July 20, 2015, for faking illness and breathing
problems. Sabbie's worsening condition was allegedly
obvious to court staff at a hearing July 21, 2015, and the judge offered to
let Sabbie sit during the proceeding. About 4:15
p.m. the same day, jail cameras recorded Sabbie
speaking to a correctional officer while holding a tissue to his face and leaning
against a wall. In the recording, Sabbie briefly
moves out of the camera's view, and the next images depict officers piling on
top of Sabbie while one sprays him in the face with
a chemical agent as he is pinned beneath them and unable to move. Sabbie repeatedly states, "I can't breathe, I can't
breathe," as officers threaten him according to a recording from a
hand-held camera with audio. After being placed in a shower, where he appears
to momentarily collapse, Sabbie is thrown into his
cell. He is discovered dead the following day by officers who open the door
after Sabbie fails to respond to their commands to
pull up his pants. U.S. Magistrate Judge Caroline Craven denied a motion to
dismiss in a report and recommendations issued Nov. 6. The complaint, filed
on behalf of Sabbie's estate and individual family
members by Erik Heipt and Edwin Budge of Seattle
and Texarkana lawyers Matt Soyars and Bruce Flint,
names LaSalle Corrections, a private jail management company; Bowie County,
Texas; Texarkana, Ark.; and a number of individual LaSalle employees as
defendants. On Monday, Budge and Heipt filed a
motion asking the court to break the trial down into two phases. The first
phase of trial will deal with what happened in the jail and whether any of
the defendants should be found liable for Sabbie's
death and/or guilty of violating his civil rights. If a jury finds that one
or more of the defendants is liable, the jury would decide in the first phase
the amount of damages that should be awarded for Sabbie's
pre-death pain and suffering and whether, and in what amount, punitive
damages should be awarded. Should the jury find none of the defendants liable
for Sabbie's demise, the trial would end. But if
the jury determines there is liabilty, then a
second phase to determine the amount of damages each of the individual
defendants should receive will commence, under the plaintiffs' lawyers'
proposal. The motion argues that the two-phase trial is a good idea because
it would make the testimony of members of Sabbie's
family, including his children, unnecessary if no liability is found, shorten
the trial's length and avoid the possibility that prejudicial or emotional
testimony could taint the jury's findings concerning liability. "First,
bifurcation would be vastly more efficient because the many first-phase
witnesses have no information relevant to second-phase issues—and vice versa.
In other words, there is a distinct separation between the witnesses who
would be called in the first and second phases. The eight individual
plaintiffs (Mr. Sabbie's four minor children, his
widow, and his three siblings) as well as several dozen supporting damages
witnesses have no information concerning first-phase issues of liability,
cause of death, pre-death pain and suffering, or punitive damages," the
motion states. The defense is expected to present evidence at trial that
might cast Sabbie in a bad light and testimony from
members of Sabbie's family could lead a juror to
feel sympathy. The motion argues that "prejudicial" testimony would
be primarily presented in the second phase, eliminating the risk that it
could influence the jury's findings in the damages phase. The bifurcated
trial could also mean less time sitting around for witnesses. The case is
scheduled for jury selection and trial in April 2019 before U.S. District
Judge Robert Schroeder III in Texarkana's downtown federal building.
Texas, GEO (2), Central Texas Detention Facility
Oct 6, 2016 carbonated.tv
‘I Can't Breathe’: Father Of Four Begged For Help Before Dying In Jail
Michael Sabbie pleaded for water and told
prison guards he couldn't breathe as they wrestled, gassed and showered him
hours before his death. A video from a private prison on the
Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana border revealed the disturbing circumstances around
the death of a 35-year-old black inmate. The Texarkana man died last year in
July, but the Huffington Post released the footage online on Wednesday.
Michael Sabbie, father of four, was found dead in
his cell at the Bi-State Jail three days after the police arrested him on
misdemeanor and domestic assault charges. When he had appeared in the court
earlier, he said he was spitting blood and needed to go to a hospital. A
judge had set his bail at $2,500. The graphic video shows how the
correctional officers violently subdued him and ignored his pleas for medical
aid in the hours before his death. In fact, they flung him to the ground,
piled on top of him, pepper-sprayed him in the face and took no notice as Sabbie screamed, “I can’t breathe.” The surveillance
footage shows the victim leaning against a wall when guard at the jail, run
by a private company called LaSalle Corrections, threw him to the ground.
Five officers attacked Sabbie as he began begging
for help. A sixth joined the group and
pepper-sprayed Sabbie, accusing him of resisting
them. “Get your hands behind your back or you’ll get it again!” a guard
yelled as the others joined in and picked up Sabbie,
propping him against a wall outside a nurse’s office. “I can’t breathe, sir,”
the inmate responded. “Please, please. I got pneumonia.” He continued to beg
for water as a nurse examined him, claiming his symptoms were normal for
someone who had been hit with the stinging chemical. Meanwhile, Sabbie continued panting and saying “Please, please” as
the officers dragged him to a shower to wash him off and then threw him on
the ground in his cell, closing the door. The man died 14 hours later of
“natural” causes. “If you just looked at the cause of death, you would think
that Michael died of some sort of hypertensive heart condition, and that may
be true,” Erik J. Heipt, one of the attorneys
representing the Sabbie family, told the Huffington
Post. “But if we didn’t have a video, we’d never know that he had been
begging for help due to his shortness of breath and inability to breathe.
We’d never know that he said ‘I can’t breathe’ 19 times in the nine minutes
that we hear in that video.” Medical examiners linked Sabbie’s
death to “hypertensive arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” However, his
family believes he died from a treatable and recognizable ailment known as
pulmonary edema – which means excess fluid in the lungs due to a heart
condition. “We often find that someone’s death is characterized as ‘natural
causes’ ? maybe it was cancer, maybe it was heart
disease,” said David C. Fathi, the director of the
ACLU’s National Prison Project. “But if you look at the medical record, you
often find egregious neglect and denial of care. If someone dies of cancer
that went totally untreated, is that death from natural causes?” The
authorities said Sabbie’s wife, Teresa, reported
that her husband threatened her during a fight over money shortly before his
arrest. The man did not plead guilty to the charges. His wife called his
death “a tragedy that should never have happened.” “I can’t put into words
how devastated my children and I are after the loss of Michael,” said the
wife. “He was my backbone and best friend. My children lost a wonderful
father who wanted the best for his family. A piece of our heart is gone, and
I pray to God for justice.” Earlier this year, the Department of Justice
decided not to pursue charges against any of the officers involved despite
the inhumane treatment displayed in the video.
Jul
25, 2015 ktbs.com
FBI to investigate Texarkana inmate's death
The
FBI will take over the investigation into the death of an inmate found dead
this week in his cell at the Bi-State Jail in Texarkana. Michael Sabbie, 35, was found unresponsive on Wednesday morning.
He was the only person in the cell, said Texarkana, Ark., police, who
initially arrested Sabbie and have been
investigating the case. The jail is operated by LaSalle Corrections
Corporation for local government. An autopsy was performed at the State Crime
Lab in Little Rock. Police did not provide specifics about why they asked the
FBI to take over the case. Police Chief Bob Harrison on Thursday asked the
FBI to take over the investigation. Sabbie had been
in jail on domestic assault charges.
Nov
19 2012 KTBS
New
Bowie County Jail Management is giving back the keys. bowie county officials
are now working on plans for future management of the bowie county
correctional center and the bi- state jail. k-t-b-s three's julie parr has more. Community Education Centers notified
the sheriff's department that they will not being renewing their contract to
run the two facilities. Their contract will expire in 90 days. cec, formerly known as civigenics,
has operated the bowie county correctional center and bi-state jail since
2001. there are currently 136 employees in both facilities. One thing I'm
going to do is demand that anybody that comes in and takes over our jail
hires the employees that we have in place for as much as possible if not 100 percent . sheriff james prince
says he's also looking for the most cost effective
way to run the two jails. he says they could hire another private company or
the sheriff's office could run the facilities. another option could be to
move bowie county inmates out of the bi-state jail. We just have to determine
how much we're spending in the Bi-State versus what it would cost us to
construct the things need to comply with jail standards in the annex. In a
prepared statement .. the New Jersey company said
they've enjoyed their working relationship with Bowie County .. but did not say why they've chosen not to renew their
contract. Julie Parr, KTBS 3 News. both facilities can hold up to 900 hundred
inmates. they currently have about 400. here's more about the company. both
facilities can hold up to 900 hundred inmates. they currently have about 400.
here's more about the company. community education centers operates
halfway homes, prisons and "re- entry centers" in 17 states. since
this summer, bowie county authorities have been investigating numerous
complaints at the bowie county correctional center ..
including a guard-assisted escape, a lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct .. and a guard assault on a prisoner. sheriff officials
say the company's leaving will not effect
those investigations. the miller county sheriff's office will soon provide
inmate meals instd of using a food service company.
sheriff's officials say that recipe will save the county about 30-thousand
dollars a year. the miller county quorum court has already approved the plan.
the sheriff's office must meet state and federal guidelines that require a
daily diet of 18-hundred calories for inmates. the current contractor is
tiger correctional services in jonesboro, arkansas. two arkansas men are
arrested during a drug bust at an ashdown business.
October 3, 2009 Texarkana Gazette
A federal lawsuit filed by the family of a one-armed, toothless man who
managed to hang himself with a suicide suit while an inmate in the Bowie
County jail annex, has been settled. Because of a confidentiality agreement,
neither the plaintiff nor the defendants are talking about the terms of the
arrangement. The family of Robert Bruce Williams filed the suit in April
2007. Named as defendants are Bowie County, Sheriff James Prince, Civigenics Inc., which manages the jail, Correctional
Medical Services, which serves the medical needs of Bowie County inmates, and
several...
May 15, 2009 Texarkana Gazette
A former Bowie County jail guard was indicted last week by a grand jury.
Amber Hinds, 20, “turned around and went back to her car when she realized
her supervisor intended to search employees that day as they came to work,”
according to a probable cause affidavit. Officials with the jail, which is
run by Civigenics, contacted the Bowie County
Sheriff’s Office about Hinds’ conduct, the affidavit said.
May 14, 2008 Texarkana Gazette
A man who smuggled marijuana into the Bowie County Correctional Center
while working as a guard there pleaded guilty Monday and received a 10-year
term of probation. Marquise Dushun Hunt, 21, had
been working as a correctional officer for CiviGenics
for about two months when he was caught bringing three sandwich bags full of
marijuana into the jail. CiviGenics is a private
company that contracts with Bowie County to run the jail. A confidential
informant alerted jail officials to the marijuana in Hunt’s possession on
March 1, 2007. He was indicted by a grand jury Jan. 3.
March 1, 2007 KPXJ 21
He worked in the jail and now a Bowie County Correctional Center officer has
found himself behind bars. Bowie County sheriff's investigators say 20-year
old Marquise Hunt of Texarkana, Texas is charged with introducing a
prohibited substance into a correctional facility. Officers found three bags
of marijuana in Hunt's possession. For two months, Hunt worked for Civigenics, which operates the jail. His bond has been
set at $100,000.
January 24, 2007 Texarkana Gazette
A correctional officer at the Bowie County Correctional Center annex has been
arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle marijuana, tobacco and cigars into
the jail. Bowie County Sheriff’s Office investigators said James Porter, 18,
was booked on charges of bringing prohibited substances into a correctional
facility. Porter has also been fired. Porter’s supervisor saw him acting
nervously as he entered the jail Sunday afternoon, said Capt. Larry Parker.
The supervisor searched Porter and found the marijuana, tobacco and cigars
wrapped in three bundles. He was arrested on charges of bringing prohibited
substances into a jail and booked into the Bi-State Justice Building Jail on
a $40,000 bail. The charge is a third-degree felony. Parker said besides
drugs and weapons, it is illegal to take into a jail money, alcohol, cell
phones and tobacco. He said Porter had worked for Civigenics,
the company that operates the jail, for about four months
August 19, 2006 Texarkana Gazette
A professional tax preparer has been sentenced to three years
probation for her conviction of conspiracy to file false tax claims
against the U.S. government. Colleen D. Jordan, 44, of Texarkana, Texas, had
originally pleaded innocent to the charges in federal court in Texarkana,
Texas. She later changed her plea and was recently sentenced by U.S. District
Judge David Folsom. In addition to a three year sentence, Jordan must also
pay a $1,000 fine. Jordan was charged on Jan. 10 by a federal grand jury in
Tyler with one count of conspiracy to file false IRS claims, 12 counts of
filing false IRS claims, and 12 counts of possession of authentication
features with intent to defraud the United States. The other charges were
dropped after her sentencing. She had been employed by the Arkansas
Department of Correction since 1999 but was fired by ADC in 2003. Civigenics, a private contractor that now runs the jail,
hired her in December 2003.
January 23, 2006 Texarkana Gazette
A former Bi-State Justice Building jailer and a tax preparer have been
indicted on 25 federal counts that they used inmates’ Social Security numbers
to get more than $50,000 in tax refunds for themselves. Janice F. Koontz, 30,
of Texarkana, Ark., and Colleen D. Jordan, 44, of Texarkana, Texas, have both
pleaded not guilty to the charges in federal court in Texarkana, Texas. They
were each charged by a federal grand jury in Tyler on Jan. 10 with one count
of conspiracy to file false IRS claims, 12 counts of filing false IRS claims,
and 12 counts of possession of authentication features with intent to defraud
the United States. Jordan, according to the indictment, was a professional
tax preparer. Koontz was a jailer at the BJB jail and a security officer at
Smith-Keys Village Apartments. She was employed by the Arkansas Department of
Correction since 1999 but was fired by ADC in 2003. Civigenics,
a private contractor that now runs the jail, hired her in December 2003.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Bryant alleges that Koontz obtained names,
Social Security numbers and other means to identify inmates incarcerated in
the BJB. She worked for Smith-Keys from 2000 to 2002. Bryant alleges that
Koontz also gained access to the security office of the apartments and
obtained names and means of identifying the tenants without the knowledge of
the housing authority or the residents. Jordan allegedly worked with Koontz
to create W-2 forms using the names and Social Security numbers of the
inmates and residents. Forms were allegedly electronically filed with the IRS
in 2003 using information gathered since 2000. The women allegedly divided up
more than $50,000 in fraudulent tax refunds.
December 30, 2005 Baxter Bulletin
An inmate at the Bi-State Jail died early Wednesday after having a fight with
another inmate at the jail, authorities say. Texarkana Police Department
spokesman Chris Rankin said Damien Wheeler, 23, of Texarkana, Ark., was
involved in a fight with another inmate, Nathaniel Cleveland, 19, of Texarkana,
Texas, between 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. Rankin said police don't know
why the inmates were fighting. "The details are still pretty sketchy as
far as what was going on in the jail," Rankin said Thursday. "All
we know is they were involved in a fight, they were separated, and at some
point this guy went downhill extremely fast and died." Wheeler, who was
checked by a jail nurse after the fight, was found unresponsive several hours
later, Rankin said. Wheeler was taken to Wadley Regional Medical Center at 5
a.m. Wednesday and was pronounced dead, he said.
June
23, 2005 Texarkana Gazette
Even though Bowie County recently made what appears to be a lucrative deal to
hold some 325 state inmates, the county will actually collect less than a
quarter of the income. Last week, the county's Commissioners Court
approved a contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in which
the county agrees to lease 325 of its Correctional Center spaces to hold the
state inmates. The contract calls for the state to pay the county $39
per inmate, per day, which in a year's time would amount to about
$4,626,000. However, since the county no longer employs jailers, more
than 75 percent (roughly $3,479,000) of that income will have to go to Civigenics, a private security firm, which the county
hired in November 2001 to operate and maintain the jail annex near Union
Station in downtown Texarkana. Although the county would get the remaining 25
percent of the annual income, amounting to about $1,163,000, Bowie County Auditor
William Tye said much of that money will be easily
swallowed up by residual state inmate medical and meal expenses.
April 24, 2005 TylerPaper.com
Smith County inmates have been moved from the Bowie County Detention
Center to other facilities operated by the CiviGenics
firm, because the Bowie County facility failed its most recent inspection,
county officials announced. On Monday, Smith County commissioners are
scheduled to consider interlocal agreements with Falls and Limestone counties
to house male and female prisoners. "Those agreements are really just
routine in nature," County Judge Becky Dempsey said. "We had to
enter into an agreement with Bowie County when we began shipping our
prisoners there, even though the jail there is operated by the private
company." The changes will come at no charge to Smith County, she adds.
"The terms are exactly the same, according to information the sheriff
gave us," she said. "And Bowie County took care of the expenses
involved in moving our prisoners to the other counties."
March 21, 2005 Texarkana Gazette
A Bowie County Detention Center inmate from Grayson County, Texas, had about
five minutes of freedom Sunday morning before he was recaptured. Warden Larry
Johns said the inmate was being escorted by an officer in the sally port area
about 10 a.m. The garage type door was being opened to allow officers to
bring food into the detention center from the Bi-State Justice Center,
located about a block away in downtown Texarkana, Texas. Johns said the
inmate, who is serving time for public intoxication from Grayson County,
broke away from the officer and slid under the garage door. Two other
officers and the supervisor started chasing the inmate at 10:02 a.m. At 10:07
a.m. the inmate was recaptured. Johns declined to release the name of the
inmate since it was misdemeanor.
February 26, 2005 Texarkana Gazette
A former CiviGenics jailer has been arrested for
allegedly having sex with a female inmate inside an office at the Bi-State
jail, an official said. Steven Bradley Grisham, 35, of DeKalb, Texas, was
arrested Friday on charges of violating the civil rights of a person in
custody and sexual activity with a person in custody, said Bowie County
Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy James Manning.
October 15, 2004 Texarkana Gazette
Several employees have lost their jobs as Bi-State jail and Bowie County
Correctional Center strengthen security after the recent escape of a capital
murder suspect. CiviGenics Inc., a Massachussetts-based company, has operated both jails
since January. "We have made some leadership changes ... it's an
opportunity to fine-tune," said Jim Shaw, regional director for Civigenics Inc. The escape of Henry, 28, and two other
inmates has also prompted CiviGenics to evaluate
security and make some other changes. There have been two other escapes from
Bi-State jail since CiviGenics took over
operations.
October 14, 2004 KTBS
An internal investigation at the Bi-State Jail in Texarkana has led to both
physical changes in the jail facility and changes in the security system. The investigation was
prompted by last month's escape of three inmates. Officials with Civigenics, which operates the jail, won't comment
specifically on the physical changes for security reasons, but tell us they
did find vulnerabilities in the jail system and that their investigation
isn't over.
September 29, 2004 Texarkana Gazette
A capital murder suspect, who escaped Tuesday morning from the Bi-State Justice
Building jail with two other inmates, remained at large late Tuesday despite
an intense manhunt by local law enforcement. The search for Torrence Henry, 28, of Hope, Ark., was expected to
continue overnight. Henry escaped with two
other Bi-State inmates sometime before 4 a.m. Tuesday, said Bi-State Jail
Warden Bob Page. Henry is considered extremely dangerous. Medical
staff noticed one of the pod's inmates was missing about 4 a.m., Page said.
The staff then searched the pod's shower area and found that the escapees had
apparently torn a hole in the shower's plaster ceiling and escaped through
the ventilation system. They made their way to an electric control room and
eventually down the stairwell of one of the building's interior fire escapes.
On Tuesday afternoon, the mother of one of the suspects who was apprehended
spoke out about her frustration with the Bi-State jail. She said her son had
escaped before, and that apparently no changes have been made to improve
security. "I was very relieved he didn't get very far. Even though he
was wrong to do that (escape), I feel like they are giving him rope to hang
himself with by not keeping him in a secure environment," she said.
"I know he would be safer in jail than out running around."
September 28, 2004 Texarkana Gazette
Bowie County will have to absorb about $390,000 in Bi-State Justice Building
expenses but property taxes will not have to be increased as a result. The county is paying
the extra amount for having to extend its contract with Civigenics
Inc. Specifically, the county incurred the added expense when the Arkansas
Department of Correction decided at the end of last year to withdraw its
jailers from having to guard Bi-State inmates.
July 23, 2002
Sixteen jailers at Bowie County Correctional Center will be laid off this
week, according to Warden Robert Page. CiviGenics
Texas, Inc., sent letters to the affected officers last week. Their
positions will be eliminated as of Friday due to "a decline in the
inmate population," Page said. The 488-bed facility nudged between
the Bi-State Justice Center and the railroad yard in downtown Texarkana was
housing 245 inmates as of Monday afternoon, Page said. (The Texarkana
Gazette)
B.M. Moore
Correctional Center
Overton, Texas
MTC (Formerly run by CCA)
November 24, 2005 Disability
Compliance Bulletin
A corrections officer sued her former employer, Corrections Corp. of America,
claiming it failed to accommodate her disability after a work-related
vehicular accident. (Cole v. Corrections Corp. of America, No. 05-cv-00411
(E.D. Texas complaint filed 10/31/05).) The case was originally filed in the
District Court of Rusk County, Texas, where it was case number 2005-450. The
lawsuit, which alleges violations of Title I of the ADA and Texas state law,
seeks back pay, compensation for emotional pain, inconvenience and mental
anguish, court costs and attorney's fees. Cole, a corrections office at the B.M. Moore Correctional Center in Overton,
Texas, was injured in a vehicular accident during the scope of her employment.
The accident, which occurred in July 2004, left her with wrist, back, hip and
leg injuries. The complaint charges that over the next year, Cole was
repeatedly discriminated against on the basis of her disability, and
classified in a manner that would deprive her of opportunities for
advancement.
Bradshaw
State Jail
Henderson, Texas
Jun
26, 2020 news-journal.com
State
to idle Bradshaw State Jail in Henderson; more than 200 workers will be laid
off
The
company that runs Bradshaw State Jail in Henderson plans to lay off 229
employees as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will idle the prison on
Aug. 31 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Management & Training Corp. made
the announcement in a letter dated Monday to the Texas Workforce Commission
to comply with the U.S. Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act. The TDCJ
website shows the facility has 266 employees. The letter, signed by Christina
Pignateli, labor and employment counsel based at
MTC corporate headquarters in Centerville, Utah, cited an effort by the TDCJ
to change how it moves and brings in inmates to reduce exposure to the
COVID-19 pandemic. "This has resulted in a nearly 25% decline in inmate
population," Pignatelli wrote. "MTC expects this decline in
population to continue. Moreover, due to COVID-19 the educational programming
has been limited." Pignatelli was unavailable for comment Thursday.
“Based on these multiple unforeseeable business circumstances, MTC was unable
to give full notice of the reduction in force to 23 employees,” she wrote.
“These employees will be permanently laid off effective July 3, 2020. The
remaining staff will be laid off effective August 31, 2020.” John Clary,
executive director of the Henderson Economic Development Corp., said he met
Thursday morning with MTC representatives to discuss the difference between
idling and shutting down the prison. "The main thing to know is the
state is idling the plant, which is very different from closing the
plant." Clary said. Clary said the prison population in Texas and
throughout the nation is declining. He said inmates at Bradshaw State Jail
serve short sentences for nonviolent crimes. MTC took over operations at
Bradshaw in September 2017 after CoreCivic lost its
bid for renewal.
Feb 16, 2018
setexasrecord.com
Visitor alleges Corecivic Inc.'s negligence
caused fall at Bradshaw State Jail
TYLER – A Long Branch woman alleges she fell in the visitor's restroom at
a jail facility because of water on the floor. Charmayne Jett filed a complaint
on Jan. 31 in the Tyler Division of the Eastern District of Texas against Corecivic Inc., formerly known as Corrections Corp. of
America, alleging negligence. According to the complaint, the plaintiff
alleges that on May 13, 2016, she was injured while at the defendant’s
building located at the Bradshaw State Jail facility when she slipped and
fell in water that had accumulated on the visitor's restroom floor. She
alleges she suffered pain, mental anguish, impairment, medical expenses and
lost earning capacity because of the incident. The plaintiff holds Corecivic Inc. responsible because the defendant
allegedly negligently allowed individuals traverse the property with a known
unreasonably dangerous condition and failed to take appropriate precautions
or warnings to prevent harm to such individuals. The plaintiff requests a
trial by jury and seeks damages within the jurisdictional limits of the
court, pre- and post-judgment interest, costs of court and such other and
further relief, both general and special. She is represented by Marc C.
Mayfield of Mayfield Law Office in Longview.
CCA (formerly run by Management and Training Corporation)
Jul
11, 2017 news-journal.com
MTC to take over Bradshaw State Jail after 13-year company loses bid
UPDATE: The private prison company that operates the East Texas Treatment
Facility in Henderson plans to hire a majority of the 192 employees at
another company that lost a bid to renew a contract for operating the
Bradshaw State Jail, also in Henderson. Issa Arnita, spokesman at the
corporate headquarters of Management & Training Corp. in Centerville,
Utah, said in a statement current employees of CoreCivic
“will not have the first right of refusal, however as I mentioned we plan to
rehire the majority of employees and will work to find a good fit for them.”
Arnita said MTC will hire approximately 240 employees after taking over the
Bradshaw State Jail Sept. 1 while explaining MTC will operate food services
at the jail. A subcontractor currently provides the service. MTC will take
over operations of the jail because the Texas Board of Criminal Justice
reported June 30 that it awarded a contract for two years, with renewal
options, to the company. CoreCivic, formerly known
as Corrections Corporation of America, held the contract since Jan. 16, 2004,
according to Jason Clark, public information director at the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice. Because CoreCivic lost its bid
for renewal, it sent a WARN letter dated July 3 notifying the Texas Workforce
Commission that it “must lay off its employees” at the Bradshaw Jail
beginning midnight Aug. 31. “There are 192 employees who will be affected by CoreCivic’s cession of operations at this facility,”
states the letter from Andrea Cooper, senior director for human resources compliance
at corporate headquarters in Nashville. “We have enclosed a list of affected
positions, to include job titles and totals for each job classification.
Please note there are no applicable bumping rights for the employees.” Cooper
and other CoreCivic officials were unavailable for
comment Monday. Cooper sent the letter to comply with the Worker Adjustment
and Retraining Notification Act, which requires employers planning major
layoffs to give two months of notice to the workforce commission. Upon notice
of any mass layoffs or plant closings in Texas, workforce commission
agencies, including Workforce Solutions East Texas, can act quickly to
provide Rapid Response Services and minimize the effect to local economies by
helping employees to transition to new employment, according to commission
spokeswoman Lisa Givens. Services include crisis counseling, financial
planning assistance, stress/change management, résumé and application
preparation, job search help, labor market and career information, and interview
preparation, she has said. Meanwhile, MTC will expand its presence in
Henderson by taking over the Bradshaw State Jail, which Clark said houses
about 225 inmates incarcerated by state offenses such as drug and property
crimes. MTC has 424 employees at the East Texas Treatment Facility at 900
Industrial Drive in Henderson, according to a company fact sheet. It has a
capacity of 2,320 inmates who take a variety of educational, vocational and
substance abuse and life-skills courses that MTC says are designed to prepare
them to re-enter society.
June 16, 2009 Tyler Morning Telegraph
A prison guard at the Bradshaw State Jail has been arrested after it was
alleged she performed sexual acts on a male prisoner and gave him money. Rusk
County Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Bob Richardson arraigned Hether Nicole Bargsley, 32,
last Friday on the charges of violations of civil rights of a person in
custody by sexual contact and prohibitive substance in a correctional
facility. According to court documents, Bargsley
allegedly performed a sexual act with a male Bradshaw State Jail inmate on
April 25 in a doorway to one of the prison's dormitories. As the
investigation continued, Bargsley told officials
she did in fact perform the sex act and added she also had given the inmate
$200 in currency at different times. The court documents state the offender
involved has corroborated Bargsley's story. The
violation of civil rights is a state jail felony and the prohibitive
substance charge is a third-degree felony. Richardson set the woman's bonds
at $7,500 and $10,000 respectively. Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections
Corporation of America, which runs the private facility, said Bargsley was hired as a guard on Sept. 22, 2008, and was
terminated June 11. Owen said he could not discuss the specifics of the case
citing an ongoing investigation.
January 23, 2008 Longview
News-Journal
An inmate at Bradshaw State Jail in Henderson was found dead in his cell
this past week, a Texas Department of Corrections spokesman said. Gregory
Cole, 30, was discovered hanging by a bed sheet from the light fixture in his
cell at about 11 a.m. Jan. 15, said Jason Clark. Jail personnel performed
emergency care on Cole, and he was taken to a hospital. He was pronounced
dead at 11:30 a.m. In June 2006, Cole was sentenced to 10 years in state jail
for possession and intent to deliver a controlled substance in McLennan
County, Clark said. The spokesman did not know where Cole lived. Clark said
investigators with the attorney general's office were notified of the death.
He said the attorney general's office always is notified when an inmate dies.
A call to the AG's office was not returned Tuesday.
November 25, 2003
Private prison-management corporations and their employees may be sued under §[1983 by a prisoner who has suffered a constitutional
injury. FACTS: Billy Rosborough is a prisoner in
the Bradshaw State Jail, a Texas prison owned and operated by defendant
Management and Training Corp., a private prison-management corporation.
Defendant Chris Shirley is a corrections officer employed by MTC at the jail.
Rosborough sued MTC and Shirley under 42 U.S.C.
§[1983 alleging that he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in
violation of the Eighth Amendment when Shirley maliciously slammed a door on Rosborough's fingers, severing two fingertips. Rosborough also alleges that Shirley displayed deliberate
indifference to Rosborough's resulting serious
medical condition. In addition, Rosborough alleges
that MTC is liable under 42 U.S.C. §[1983 for its
improper training and supervision of Shirley. Rosborough
supplemented his federal action with state-law negligence claims. The
district court sua sponte dismissed Rosborough's action on the ground that Shirley was an
employee of MTC rather than an employee of the State of Texas and, therefore,
was not acting under color of state law for purposes of suit under 42 U.S.C.
§[1983. The court dismissed the supplemental state-law claims but did not
address MTC's potential liability for failing to train Shirley. Rosborough appeals. HOLDING: Reversed and remanded.
"To state a claim under §[1983, a plaintiff must allege the violation of
a right secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and must
show that the alleged deprivation was committed by a person acting under
color of state law." West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42 [1988]. At issue here
is the "under color of state law" requirement. The district court
assumed that this requirement prevented a person in private employ from being
sued under §[1983. The Supreme Court, however, has
held that "[t]o act"under color' of law
does not require that the accused be an officer of the state." Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144 [1970].
Under the Supreme Court's "public function" test, a private entity
acts under color of state law "when that entity performs a function
which is traditionally the exclusive province of the state." Wong v.
Stripling, 881 F.2d 200 [5th Cir. 1989]. The Supreme Court has explained that
"when private individuals or groups are endowed by t
he State with powers or functions governmental in nature, they become
agencies or instrumentalities of the State and subject to its constitutional
limitations." Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296 [1966]. Thus, the
Supreme Court has found private actors to be susceptible to suit under §[1983. Relevant to this case, the Supreme Court has
suggested -- though it has not actually held -- that state prisoners might
bring suit under §[1983 against privately-owned correctional facilities. In
Skelton v. Pri-Cor Inc., 963 F.2d 100 [6th Cir.
1991], the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, relying on these Supreme Court
precedents, held that a private company administering a state corrections
facility could be sued under §[1983. The Sixth Circuit found determinative
the fact that the corporation was "performing a public function
traditionally reserved to the state." The court reasoned that "the
power exercised by [the private prison-management company] is possessed by
virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed
with the authority of state law.'" Moreover it
found that "'[t]here is a sufficiently close nexus between the State and
the challenged action of [the corporation] so that the action of the latter
may be fairly treated as that of the State itself.' Thus, according to the
Sixth Circuit, the private corporation "acted under color of law for
purposes of §[1983." District courts within
this circuit have similarly held that private prison-management companies and
their employees are subject to §[1983 liability
because they are performing a government function traditionally reserved to
the state. The court agrees with the Sixth Circuit and with those district
courts that have found that private prison-management corporations and their
employees may be sued under §[1983 by a prisoner who has suffered a
constitutional injury. Clearly, confinement of wrongdoers -- though sometimes
delegated to private entities -- is a fundamentally governmental function.
These corporations and their employees are therefore subject to limitations
imposed by the Eighth Amendment. The court finds that the district court
erred in dismissing Rosborough's §[1983
claim. (Texas Lawyer)
Brazoria County Jail
Brazoria, Texas
Capitol Corrections Resources
November 30, 2005 The Facts
Brazoria County Pct. 2 Commissioner Jim Clawson announced Tuesday he won't
seek re-election next year, opting for retirement after four terms. Clawson
said he had few regrets about his tenure, but wishes he could have stopped
the county from entering a contract with a private prison company to house
out-of-state prisoners from Missouri. Clawson voted against the project at
every stage, predicting it would turn out badly for the county because there
was no guarantee it wouldn't end up with maximum security inmates, despite
assurances to the contrary, he said. That, in fact, is exactly what happened,
leading to the 1996 shakedown, which was caught on videotape. The county
ended up settling a lawsuit brought by inmates for $2.2 million. As Clawson
predicted, the jail never became the revenue-generating machine officials
hoped it would.
January 1, 2000
A record $2.2 million class-action lawsuit reached between inmates and
CCR. Suit stemmed from videos made of guards abusing inmates.
March 2, 1997
Video tape made of Missouri inmates being abused.
September 18, 1996
Video tape made of Missouri inmates being abused.
Bridgeport Correctional Center
Bridgeport, Texas
MTC (former run by GEO Group)
June 27, 2010 Wise County Messenger
A new management company will take over the Bridgeport Correctional
Center beginning Aug. 31. The 520-bed facility has been managed by GEO Group
Inc., since the center opened in August 1989. GEO was reawarded
a three-year contract from Sept. 1, 2005, and also had two, one-year
renewals. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice conducted a competitive
bid process, and Management & Training Corp. won the seven-year bid.
"There's a technical review of the bid and a financial review of the
bid," said Jason Clark, public information officer for the TDCJ. Clark
said that the reviews are done separately by different committees. "They
score those reviews and compile the scores and a recommendation is made to
the TDCJ."
June
28, 2005 Wise County Messenger
The Office of the Inspector General will investigate the death of an inmate
who was housed at the Corrections Corporation of America in Bridgeport. Julia Martinez, 29, collapsed Wednesday
afternoon and was pronounced dead a short time later at Wise Regional Health
System. Warden Gwen Bowers said
Martinez reportedly collapsed in the facility’s outdoor exercise area.
Paramedics were called and transported Martinez to WRHS.
June 7, 2005 Wise County
Messenger
The Rev. Gil Pansza and an official with The
Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth met with officials of the Bridgeport
Correctional Center Wednesday to discuss Pansza’s
dismissal as a volunteer from the men’s division of the center, but Pansza said he remains barred from the facility. “They
didn’t invite me back,” said Pansza, pastor of St.
John’s Catholic Church in Bridgeport and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary in Decatur. Pansza and Ralph McCloud, division
director of the Social Justice Ministry of the diocese, said they met with
senior warden Priscella Miles, assistant warden
Bobby Thompson and chaplain Phillip Yoder at the center. Pansza
said Yoder told him a couple of weeks ago that his services were no longer
necessary at the center, which Pansza had been
visiting since February. Miles said in a previous story that Pansza was barred because of his demeanor and because the
prison feared a security issue could occur with Catholic prisoners. On
Wednesday, Pansza said the entire group met for
almost an hour, and then Miles and McCloud met privately for a half-hour. “Warden
Miles was interested in better understanding what our concerns were, and I
think she was pretty patient in listening to what I had to say,” Pansza said. “She gave an opportunity for the chaplain to
say what his views were and then to warden Thompson as to what his views
were. Her concern is that there’s an allegation of discrimination. I pointed
out that that allegation was not by the church. And she mentioned that the
allegation really came from the community. On prison officials’ concerns
about security issues, Pansza said Thompson
mentioned that he was concerned about “offender manipulation.” Pansza said officials were concerned that he would tell
the offenders that the institution was not giving him access to prisoners,
and that “the offenders would be quite upset about that and maybe that would
become a security issue.” “I guess I can understand that,” Pansza said. “That’s certainly not something I would want
to do. But I can understand his concern.” Yet Pansza
said Thursday that he’s confused about Thompson’s justification on the matter
of security concerns. On the day Thompson told Pansza
that he supported Yoder’s decision to bar Pansza
from the prison, the subject of security concerns was never broached, Pansza said. Pansza said he
thinks that issue emerged after the fact. Pansza
said one offender in segregation asked to see his priest but was denied
access. Pansza said Yoder told him that the warden
said the prison was ready to transfer him to another unit.
June 2, 2005 Wise County Messenger
A Wise County priest says he has been barred from performing church
services or visiting with offenders at the men’s division of the Bridgeport
Correctional Center. The Rev. Gil Pansza, pastor of
St. John’s Catholic Church in Bridgeport and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary in Decatur, said he doesn’t know why he has been prevented from
celebrating Mass or talking with prisoners. Priscella
Miles, senior warden at the prison, said Tuesday that Pansza
has been barred from the prison, but that she is open to talking with him.
She said she talked with him last week and hopes to hear from him again this
week. Pansza said problems emerged three weeks ago,
after he saw another church service advertised on flyers on two bulletin
boards at the facility. He asked Chaplain Phillip Yoder whether Catholic
Masses could be advertised on flyers on 12 bulletin boards at the prison. He
said he also asked whether Thursday Mass could be placed on the monthly
religious service calendar. The Mass was later advertised on a corrected
calendar, Pansza said. Pansza
said he and Yoder discussed church postings on bulletin boards. Yoder agreed
to allow the posting of the Catholic service flyers. About a week later,
before Pansza’s next Mass, Pansza
said he visited with Yoder, who was upset about their previous meeting and
said he thought Pansza had questioned his
integrity. After some discussion on the bulletin boards and prisoner
visitation – Pansza said he apologized to Yoder if
he offended him and that he was just trying to ensure Catholic Masses receive
the same treatment as others – Yoder told Pansza
that he was a guest in the facility and that he was under his supervision. Pansza said understood prison rules but told him that he
would not “tolerate disparate treatment” from Yoder’s office or anyone else,
meaning that he didn’t accept what he thought was Yoder’s office promoting
one church service over another. “I guess he didn’t like that,” Pansza said. Pansza said Yoder
then told him that his services were no longer necessary at the prison, Pansza said. Miles said The GEO Group Inc. – which
contracts with the state to manage the Bridgeport unit – and the Bridgeport
Correctional Center support all religions.
Bridgeport Pre-Parole and Transfer
Facility
Bridgeport, Texas
Corrections Corporation of America
June 28, 2005
The Office of the Inspector General will investigate the death of an inmate
who was housed at the Corrections Corporation of America in Bridgeport. Julia Martinez, 29, collapsed Wednesday
afternoon and was pronounced dead a short time later at Wise Regional Health
System. Warden Gwen Bowers said
Martinez reportedly collapsed in the facility’s outdoor exercise area.
Paramedics were called and transported Martinez to WRHS.
Brooks
County Detention Center
Falfurrias, Texas
GEO
Jan 6, 2018 krgv.com
Inmates at Brooks Co. Detention Center Request Heating System Repairs
NEAR FALFURRIAS – Conditions at a federal immigration facility in
Falfurrias are improving. The Brooks County Sheriff’s Office says heaters are
back up and running. Inmates at that facility say the air conditioner was on
and they had no heat during the recent cold snap. We reached out to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to the sheriff's office to find out
what was happening. The facility is in Brooks County and is operated by the
GEO Group. It's a private sector facility that houses federal inmates from
ICE and the U.S. Marshal’s Office. Inmates we spoke with say they had to look
for ways to stay warm due to a lack of heaters. “People are walking around
with boxes on their heads, socks on their arms just trying to keep themselves
warm. We don't have no sweaters,” said an inmate. Brooks County Sheriff Benny
Martinez confirms the heaters were not working. He said contractors were
recently brought in to make repairs. Martinez says since then, the cells are
being maintained at 72 degrees Fahrenheit and above. Some inmates refused to
eat since walking to the cafeteria further exposes them to the elements. ICE
says they cannot substantiate the inmate claims of a hunger strike. They told
CHANNEL 5 NEWS they will now monitor the situation. We also reached out to
the GEO Group and the U.S. Marshal’s Office. The U.S. Marshal’s office sent
the following statement, which reads in part: "The U.S. Marshals Service
was made aware this [Thursday] morning that the heating unit at the Brooks
County Detention Center had malfunctioned Wednesday night, causing discomfort
to the inmates and staff at the facility. During the outage, inmates were
issued double blankets to keep them warm while the unit was being repaired.
The heating unit has been fixed. Some inmates had expressed grievances about
the temperatures by refusing to eat breakfast Wednesday morning. The facility
confirms all inmates are safe and eating their issued meals."
October 30, 2012 Caller Times
FALFURRIAS — A Corpus Christi jury
returned a verdict Wednesday siding with the widow of a man who died in
January 2009 at the Brooks County Detention Center in Falfurrias. The federal
jury decided unanimously to award $2.25 million to the widow of 42-year-old
Mario Garcia, who died of a seizure while on suicide watch at the center.
Garcia's family contends he was denied prescribed medications while at the
facility, which led to his death 12 days after being brought there. His
condition began to quickly deteriorate after being jailed, though he was
never sent to a physician or a hospital, according to the family's counsel.
Garcia left behind a wife and a 10-year-old son. Kathy Snapka,
lead counsel for the Garcia family, called the death preventable and said
facility staff disregarded his condition. Snapka
said the family hopes the verdict in Garcia v. Niderhauser
will send a message to other facilities that they will be held accountable
for neglect. "Monica Garcia's objective was to speak for Mario to ensure
that no other person is denied the right to receive medical attention," Snapka said. Attorneys for LCS Corrections, which owns
Brooks County Detention Center, were not immediately available for comment
Wednesday. Both sides await the ruling of U.S. District Judge Randy Crane,
who has as much as 30 days to make a judgment.
July 8, 2011 KZTV 10
On New Year's Eve 2008 Mario Garcia pled guilty to 2 charges of submitting
fraudulent bids to the government to win contracts at the Corpus Christi Army
Depot. U-S District Judge Janice Graham Jack ordered Garcia be taken into
custody until sentencing. Garcia was brought to the Brooks County Detention
Center and placed on suicide watch. He was there when he died January 12th,
2009. His family is suing the jail and some of it's officials. Kathy Snapka
represents Garcia's family. "It is our allegation that the prison
disregarded his very, very serious medical condition and that's why days
after he was sent to Brooks County he died," she said. Snapka says the case has flipped between district and
federal courts, but now a February trial date has been set in Mc Allen where
U.S. District Judge Randy Crane sits. "He's aware that the matter's been
on file for a significant length of time. And I think that he wants the case
moved along," Snapka told Action Ten News.
According to the lawsuit, Garcia had a known seizure disorder and was on
medication for it. And that he suffered from seizures and headaches while in
jail. It also says jail officials 'breached their duty of care to Garcia by
failing to care for his medical needs. The Brooks County Death Certificate
lists Garcia's cause of death as seizure disorder. The Nueces County medical
examiner's autopsy says the same thing. The defendants in the case are LCS
Correction Services, which owns the jail, former jail warden Miguel Niderhauser, and Dr. Michael Pendleton, former head of
the jail's medical staff. On Janaury 23rd 2009,
just days after Garcia's death, we reported that LCS President Dick Harbison
told us Niderhauser resigned and Pendleton's
contract was terminated. Attorneys for all defendants told us by phone today
that they couldn't comment on a pending case, but that their clients plan to
vigorously defend themselves.
July 23, 2009 Caller Times
The family of a man who died in a privately run prison in Brooks County
has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging he was denied medical
treatment. Mario Alberto Garcia, 42, was awaiting sentencing at LCS-Brooks
County on charges of bid-rigging at the Corpus Christi Army Depot when he was
found dead in January. Garcia suffered from a seizure disorder and was
prescribed medication to treat it. The lawsuit claims he was denied access to
medication, despite warnings from family members about his condition. An
autopsy by the Nueces County medical examiner found that Garcia died of the
seizure disorder. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. It names prison
owner LCS Correction Services, the prison’s former warden and former doctor
as defendants. The prison typically houses inmates facing immigration
charges. Representatives of the doctor and prison did not return calls for
comment. Garcia had pleaded guilty to submitting inflated bids for office
equipment. Along with those bids, he submitted lower bids from his own
company. In most situations, defendants facing white-collar crimes remain
free while awaiting sentencing. But a federal judge, concerned over Garcia’s
mental status, ordered him to the Brooks County facility on suicide watch.
Garcia could have been sentenced to as long as 10 years in prison, but was
likely to receive only a few months under federal sentencing guidelines.
January 14, 2009 Caller Times
An inmate awaiting sentencing on charges of rigging bids on federal contracts
was found dead Monday at the Brooks County Detention Center in Falfurrias,
and Texas Rangers are investigating how the death occurred. The circumstances
are unclear. The Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office performed an autopsy
Tuesday but has not released a cause of death. The inmate, Mario Alberto
Garcia, 42, had been placed on suicide watch at a court appearance. Garcia
pleaded guilty Dec. 31 to submitting fictitious, inflated bids to supply
office equipment at the Corpus Christi Army Depot. He submitted the fake bids
along with his company's lower bid to win contracts. Under normal
circumstances, a white-collar defendant like Garcia would remain free while
awaiting sentencing, but U.S. District Judge Janice Graham Jack ordered him
into custody over concerns that Garcia would take his life, said Garcia's
criminal defense attorney, Keith Gould. A physician at the facility removed
Garcia from suicide watch Jan. 8. He died Monday, said Al Lujan, deputy U.S.
marshal. As part of his agreement to plead guilty, a third count of lying to
U.S. Army investigators was dismissed. Prosecutors say Garcia also faxed
phony bids in July 2007. He was not prosecuted for those incidents. Juan
Reyna, an attorney representing Garcia's family, said Garcia had a medical
condition. Reyna, who declined to identify the condition, said Garcia's
family knew of it and warned jail officials about it. "The family had
some major concerns with respect to medical treatment Mr. Garcia was
receiving," Reyna said. "The family made it very clear regarding
medical treatment." Reyna said he has requested the facility preserve
several categories of records relating to Garcia. The private facility is run
by LCS Corrections Services of Lafayette, La., and is typically used to house
illegal immigrants. Gary Copes, general manager for LCS, said a Texas Ranger
visited the facility Wednesday as part of the investigation. Copes declined
further discussion.
September 15, 2004 Caller-Times
The manhunt for an escaped prisoner continued Tuesday as officers combed the
area surrounding the Brooks County Detention Center with dogs, on horseback
and by helicopter, Sheriff Balde Lozano said. On Monday, Elias
Ramirez Martinez, 20, of Veracruz, Mexico, escaped from the privately owned
holding center. Inmates were being moved from an eating area just before 7
p.m. when Martinez made his getaway, jumping a 10-foot electric fence, Lozano
said. It was the facility's first breakout since September 2002, when two
inmates escaped through the detention center's ceiling. Measures have been
taken since then to prevent similar escapes. Ceilings were enclosed with
heavy mesh and the electrical fence was installed, Lozano said. It was not
known if the fence was activated when Martinez jumped it.
September 29, 2002
Falfurrias residents reacted with fear and worry after learning that two
inmates escaped form the privately owned Brooks County Detention Center early
Saturday. The two men, Juan Guerra and Steven Torres, were being held
at the facility prior to their trials. Guerra, a Mexican national, had been
charged with murder and Torres was arrested for a parole violation- an
alleged robbery. The two men were missing during an inmate headcount at
7 a.m. after they had been present for a similar count at 3 a.m., said
Patrick LeBlanc, president of the Louisiana-based LCS Corrections Services
Inc., the company that oversees the operations of the detention
facility. "I don't think it was whim ,"
he said. "I think they studied and analyzed and searched for the
scene and unfortunately they found it." The two men kicked through
a security ceiling that was welded shut, LeBlanc said. Then, they
climbed into the ceiling and got into a mechanical chase that the facility's
pipes run through- similar to the escape in the movie "Shawshank
Redemption," he said. The chase leads to a door locked form the
outside that opens on the detention center grounds, he said. There, the
two men, wearing detention-center issued orange uniforms with white T-shirts,
scaled two double fences, each topped with three lines of razor wire.
Investigators found a blood trail, LeBlanc said. As the search gout
under way, residents learned of the news by word of mouth. About half a
dozen people called KPSO-Radio 106.3 news director Steve Cantu to express
their concerns. "A lot of people are worried," he said.
"These are not some of the nicest people out there." LeBlanc
said the detention center does not have a procedure to alert area residents
of an escape, instead turning over the information to local law enforcement
to get the word out. (Caller-Times)
Burnet County Jail, Texas
Southwestern Correctional
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
March 13, 2012 Daily Tribune
The escape of a man from the Burnet County Jail has grown into a family
affair with the arrest of the inmate's brother on charges the sibling tried
to help the suspected jailbird fly the coop. The news March 13 followed an
earlier report from sheriff's deputies that the brothers' mother also was
arrested a few days ago in the case. Louis Arce IV, 29, of Burnet was charged
March 12 with hindering apprehension or prosecution of a known felon. He
remained in the jail pending the setting of a bond. Deputies arrested Arce's
59-year-old mother Francis Ybarra March 10 on the same charges. She posted a
$10,000 bond and was released from jail March 11. The accusations in both
cases stem from the escape of Johnny Angel Ybarra, 40, from the
public-private jail March 1. He was recaptured about three hours later.
According to an arrest affidavit by sheriff's Investigator Bo Boshears, Arce told Texas Rangers assisting with the case
he helped Ybarra after the escape by taking him from their mother's home on
Pierce Street to a relative's place at the nearby Green Acres Apartments.
Ybarra, who is serving a life sentence on three felony charges including burglary
of a habitation with intent to commit a sexual offense, disappeared from a
handicap cell sometime from 12:50 a.m.-3:30 a.m., deputies said. Jailers
discovered a hole had been knocked through a cinder block wall under a sink
in Ybarra's cell using the rail from a toilet. The convicted felon hung
towels over the sink to cover his escape route and even rolled up blankets
under his bed sheet to make it look like somebody was sleeping there. Ybarra
made his way to the roof, slipped through razor wire and dropped to the
ground, deputies said.
March 13, 2012 Daily Tribune
The mother of an accused jail escapee landed behind bars in the same
facility after deputies charged her with trying to get her son out of Texas.
Francis Ybarra, 59, is charged with hindering the apprehension or prosecution
of a known felon, Burnet County Sheriff W.T Smith said. She was released
March 11 from the Burnet County Jail after posting a $10,000 bond. The case
stems from the March 1 escape of Johnny Angel Ybarra, 40, from the public-private
jail after he received a life sentence on three felony charges including
burglary of a habitation with intent to commit a sexual offense. An arrest
affidavit by sheriff's Investigator Bo Boshears
stated after the son escaped from jail, the mother was trying to help him get
out of Burnet and to a relative's home in Colorado. But before the duo could
carry out the plan, officers captured the inmate at the Green Acres
Apartments. According to the investigators, sometime from 12:50 a.m.-3:30
a.m. March 1, Ybarra disappeared from his cell. A hole had been knocked into
a cinderblock wall under a sink using the railing from the toilet in the
handicap cell. The escape route was hidden by towels hanging to dry on the
sink. A rolled-up blanket under the sheets made it look like someone was in
the bed. Reaching the roof, the inmate slipped through razor wire and dropped
to the ground.
March 5, 2012 Daily Tribune
The Burnet County Jail has flunked a state inspection that found design flaws
in the wake of an escape March 1 by an inmate who chiseled a hole in the
wall. The state report says the private-public jail, which opened with 587
beds in April 2009 at a cost of $23 million, is "non-compliant"
with security standards. "It means something is wrong," County Judge
Donna Klaeger said March 5. The Burnet County
Sheriff's Office supervises the jail, which is operated by the private firm
LaSalle Southwest Corrections. Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspectors
recently found "deficiencies" in the network of concrete blocks and
reinforcement bars that support walls near cells for handicapped inmates,
Executive Director Adan Munoz said. It is in one of the handicapped cells
that Johnny Angel Ybarra, 40, removed a rail by a toilet and chiseled away at
cinder blocks under a sink until he created an escape route, investigators
said. He hid his handiwork by hanging towels to dry over the sink and
replacing the rail before guards noticed it was missing, they added.
"Those cells are unpopulated now," Klaeger
said. Hale Mills Construction built the jail at 900 County Lane three years
ago. County Commissioner Bill Neve said he plans to meet Hale Mills builders
March 6 at the jail, along with Sheriff W.T. Smith and LaSalle officials.
"We are going to talk about construction issues related to the
jail," Neve added. Also, the commissioners plan to hear a jail security
update during the meeting March 13, Klaeger said.
Neither Smith nor LaSalle officials could be reached for comment March 5.
October 20, 2009 KXAN
New razor wire that measures more than 4 feet tall and nearly 3 feet wide is
coiled around the metal roof and down the sides of the new Burnet County
Jail. The $90,000 security measure was recently added to the 7-month-old
facility to stop another inmate from sneaking out. Authorities are still
searching for a man who made his getaway during recreation time back in
August. On a surprise visit last Thursday, jail inspectors found concerns
inside after questioning two female inmates. One was pregnant and said she
was not given proper medication. Another mental health patient said she was
not given her medication either, so inspectors checked her medical chart.
"There were certain medications that needed to be prescribed for her
that had not been given to her, and that's obviously not in compliance with
jail standards," said Adan Munoz, executive director of the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards . "They get excellent care here," said
Tammy Manning, the Burnet County Jail medical supervisor. Manning was out of
town during the inspection but normally sees the inmate who she said had been
refusing to show up to appointments after they were scheduled. The situation
had not been documented on her medical chart that state inspectors reviewed.
"We do have room for improvement in our documentation," said
Manning. "And our actional plan we put into place Friday was to improve
our documentation so this will not happen again." One of the female
inmates also said they were not getting recreation time everyday.
"We went on to check the recreation log to see if their concerns were
valid," said Munoz. "We couldn't even find a recreation log."
Burnet County Jail Warden Bruce Armstrong admits there was a breakdown there,
too. "We run rec everyday," said
Armstrong. "And the officer calls in the count to the central control
officer whose suppose to be logging the count down
on how many offenders went to rec, and they were neglecting to document the
count." Armstrong said it has been taken care of, but the state said
there is one more requirement the county has yet to comply with. The state
does not have the jail's operational plan, which covers everything from what
to do in case of a fire to how to administer health care. "The fact that
it's been open since April and still not within our agency certainly gives us
great concern," said Munoz. The county told the state they were working
on it. Munoz sent written notification of the deficiencies to the county and
Southwest Corrections, the company who manages the jail. They have 30 days to
comply.
September 3, 2009 Burnet Bulletin
Only four months after opening its doors to the public with tours,
speeches and a ribbon cutting, the Burnet County Jail has been cited by the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards for a different kind of open house:
Improper supervision of inmates after a prisoner escaped Sunday night and
fled past nearby residential neighborhoods and to freedom. The controversial
privately run jail – a facility that many nearby residents unsuccessfully
fought during its development – now is officially deemed noncompliant with
Texas jail standards, confirmed Adan Munoz, a former sheriff who serves as
executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. An inspector
from the commission visited the jail and found inadequate its procedures for checking
prisoners, Munoz said. Meanwhile, the jailer responsible for supervising
prisoners into and out of a recreation yard has resigned, and two other
correctional officers at the jail face disciplinary action that could mean
suspension or termination as a result of the escape of Nuana
Antonio Fuentes-Sanchez, confirmed Billy McConnell, co-owner of the private
jail management firm. Fuentes-Sanchez, 23, a day laborer and native of El
Salvador, was arrested in connection with a violent robbery of a Burnet County
couple in April. Being noncompliant doesn't mean the jail is in danger of
being shut down. It means Southwestern Correctional LLC, the private company
hired by the county to manage the jail, has 30 days to report how it will
satisfactorily resolve the issues, Munoz said. Currently, 37 of the 247
county jails regulated by the TCJS are noncompliant with the standards, which
could be for a range of minor to major issues, such as inoperable toilet
facilities, malfunctioning intercom systems or inadequate staffing, Munoz
said. The Burnet County Jail’s issues fall under the heading of “supervision
of inmates,” a key section of the 600 standards regulated by the commission.
Munoz said “The best way to describe it is a lack of diligence, a lack of
professionalism,” Munoz said.
November 19, 2007
This Monday, concerned Burnet County residents will hold a public meeting
with Burnet County Commissioners to discuss their opposition to a proposed
500-bed private detention center. The meeting will take place Monday, November
19th, at Old Courthouse on the square in Burnet at 7:00pm. Burnet County
residents are concerned that the proposed jail will be operated by a
Louisiana-based for-profit private prison corporation, that out-of-county
prisoners will shipped to the prison, and that Burnet County has taken steps
to float revenue bonds to pay for the prison, which could endanger the
county's future bond rating, without a public vote. Private prison
corporations have a track record that include human rights abuses, lawsuits,
higher rates of violence, and financial mismanagement. Research shows that
prison construction has no positive economic impact on communities. Counties
that finance private prison construction have been held liable for abuses
that take place in the prisons.
Central Texas Detention Facility
San Antonio, Texas
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
Jan 16, 2019 ksat.com
Bexar County to Federal Government: County jail doesn't have room for
federal detainees
SAN ANTONIO - Hundreds of detainees are housed at the Central Detention
Facility in downtown San Antonio. A sign in front may say GEO Group but
that's not who owns the building. The county does. GEO is a private company
that runs the jail in the 200 block of Laredo Street for the federal government.
The county says the arrangement doesn't make financial sense anymore.
"This was going to be problematic for Bexar County taxpayers,"
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said. It's why County Commissioners
passed a resolution Tuesday to start the process of ending that contract with
GEO. The county has been working to ensure that the University of Texas in
San Antonio has the room to expand in the downtown area. Another resolution
passed in October of 2018 shows just that. But the detention facility is in
the way. Sheriff Salazar said a deal was made several years ago, saying that
when this transition began, those federal detainees would be moved into the
county jail. That deal was made when the county jail had more room but now
Salazar said they are maxed out at an average of 4200 inmates. "In doing
the math and knowing 'OK, that was done when the jail population was down'
(but) here now that it is up, here what is it going to cost me now? I'm going
to lose bed space," Salazar said. Had the detainees been moved to the
county jail, Sheriff Salazar said some of the current county inmates would
have needed to be sent to other jails outside the county and the building
itself would have needed to be reconstructed. "It would've been about
$10 million for construction cost plus about $10 million a year to house out
those inmates elsewhere," Salazar said. The question now remains. Where
will the federal detainees be held? "I don't mind helping find the
solution, I can't be the solution though," Salazar said. The federal
government said it is working to find placement for the detainees. It is
still unclear when the contract between the county and GEO expires but the
county says it has time to figure it all out.
Sep
29, 2018 expressnews.com
Ex-jail employee gets 40 months for trying to smuggle drugs inside
A former employee of a San Antonio jail that houses federal pretrial
inmates has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for trying to smuggle drugs
to prisoners. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery handed
the sentence on Thursday to Ray Alexander Barr, 30, who worked in the kitchen
of the 600-bed Central Texas Detention Facility, which is run by
Florida-based The GEO Group. Barr pleaded guilty last year to attempting to
provide contraband to prisoners. He admitted that on Dec. 27, 2016, he agreed
to smuggle alcohol and crystal methampetamine into
the jail in exchange for money. FBI agents arrested Barr immediately after he
accepted payment but before he could smuggle in the contraband. “This was out
of character for Mr. Barr,” said his lawyer, Derek Hilley.
“After his arrest, Mr. Barr took the bull by the horns and pursued every
opportunity to better himself. He obtained a great job where he could provide
for his children and contribute to society. ... He looks forward to putting
this behind him.” The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service conducted a joint
investigation of Barr and other guards at the jail who also have since
pleaded guilty for similar contraband crimes. “The men and women in law
enforcement and detention are held to a higher standard in our judicial
system and our community,” said U.S. Marshal Susan Pamerleau.
The “sentence sends a strong message that this violation of trust will not be
tolerated.” Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI in San Antonio,
added: “The FBI is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to
ensure employees of correctional facilities who abuse their authority and
violate their positions of trust for their own personal benefit are held
accountable.”
Sep 20, 2018 ksat.com
Ex-GEO guard, boyfriend sentenced to federal prison in drug sting
SAN ANTONIO - A former guard of a private federal detention facility was
sentenced Wednesday to 57 months in federal prison for agreeing to provide
crystal methamphetamine to an inmate, federal officials said. Abigail Jolynn Abrego, 28, was also sentenced to supervised release for
three years after completing her prison term. Abrego's
55–year–old boyfriend, Leonard Belmares, was
sentenced to 46 months in federal prison followed by three years of
supervised release. The two pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of
attempting to provide contraband in prison. Federal officials said the pair
met with an undercover agent on November 2017 and agreed to smuggle methamphetamine
into the Central Texas Detention Facility, run by the private prison company
GEO, and give it to an inmate in exchange for $1,500. The defendants also
admitted to working together on at least three previous occasions to smuggle
drugs and/or contraband into the facility in exchange for money, federal
officials said. Abrego and Belmares
were ordered by a federal judge to surrender on or before Nov. 30 to begin
serving their prison terms.
Sep 19, 2018 ksat.com
Guards illegally
used disability placards, plates to park in front of detention facility
SAN ANTONIO - An undercover
investigation by the KSAT 12 Defenders showed corrections officers at a
downtown detention facility used disability placards and disabled veteran
license plates belonging to other people to park as close to the building as
possible. The investigation also showed that while guards parked in spots
directly in front of the Central Texas Detention Facility, located in the 200
block of South Laredo Street, people on oxygen and people using canes and
other mobility devices were forced to park in lots farther west of downtown.
The facility, which holds inmates in federal custody and is run by a private
corrections company called the GEO Group, is located between Public Safety
Headquarters and the Bexar County Justice Center. "It's a severe lack of
consideration for fellow human beings," Melanie Cawthon, executive
director of disABILITYsa, said after reviewing the
footage. Cawthon said her nonprofit tries to educate, advance and engage
individuals with disabilities. "By parking in accessible parking, it
protects them from being hit by another vehicle, from having a heart attack
because they are not supposed to walk far or even just the exhaustion of
having a physical or mobility disability," said Cawthon, who added that
accessible parking is a safety issue, not a convenience issue. One GEO guard,
identified through public records as JoAnn Campa, was repeatedly seen parking
a Camaro with disabled veteran license plates in metered spots for up to 10
hours per day. The Camaro was left August 29 in a front-row metered spot as
Campa traveled off-site. She was later dropped off by a sport utility vehicle
registered to her husband, and the vehicle followed Campa as she left for the
day. Days later, during an unplanned interview, Campa admitted the plates
belong to her husband. "If we would just have common decency and common
courtesy," said Cawthon. State law allows vehicles with disabled
veterans plates to park in accessible spots for an unlimited period as long as the vehicle is driven by the veteran or the
veteran is being transported in it. The use of the plates extends to the
spouse of the veteran only after the veteran has passed away and as long as
the spouse remains unmarried. An Austin-based disability advocate said via
email that despite this law, Texas courts have traditionally extended the
parking privileges to family members. "There are laws in place, but they
are not enforced," said Cawthon. A second guard, identified through public
records as Mario Castillo and coincidentally also driving a late-model
Camaro, was captured on camera in August and September repeatedly using a
disability placard to park in front of the detention facility. On days when
no metered spots were available at the start of his afternoon shift, Castillo
was seen parking in the nearby Bexar County parking garage, then walking
without issues while carrying an equipment belt and backpack. Castillo, when
approached for an unplanned interview, admitted the placard belongs to his
mother-in-law. "On those days, I was assisting my mother-in-law,"
said Castillo, who added that he dropped her off before driving to work. When
asked if it was fair that people with disabilities were forced to park
farther away while Castillo took a spot up front, he apologized.
"Courtesy-wise, there's no reason for him to take up an accessible
parking spot," said Cawthon. "Our community needs to work together
and solve this issue for our fellow citizens who have disabilities." "Our
company believes that parking laws and regulations should be observed and
complied with. The parking spaces in question are public and are not within
our company's control or monitoring," GEO Group Executive Vice President
Pablo Paez said via email this month. Paez declined a request for an on-camera interview and
did not respond to a follow-up email asking if Campa and Castillo would be
disciplined. Center City Development and Operations Department Director John
Jacks, whose department handles parking enforcement, released the following
statement: Our Parking Enforcement Officers do not have the authority to
question whether or not an individual is disabled. According to City
ordinance, individuals who have been issued a disabled permit, placard or
plate by the state may park in City-owned parking facilities or on-street
parking meters without paying a fee. A Bexar County information technology
employee was also seen using a disability placard to park in front of the
detention facility. The employee expressed remorse and said he improperly
used the placard because of a lack of parking downtown, according to a county
spokeswoman. The employee is now using a park and ride bus service to commute
to work, the spokeswoman said. Cawthon encouraged anyone wanting to raise
awareness about accessibility parking issues to download the Parking Mobility
app. The app allows users to report disabled parking abuse. Cawthon said
while Bexar County remains in the data-gathering stage, other communities
like Hays County and Travis County have gotten on board with the app and more
than 50,000 citations have been issued since the app was launched. Two bills
that would have made it more difficult for drivers to use specialty license
plates and accessible parking placards as illegal instruments failed to get
passed during the last legislative session.
Jun 27, 2018 kens5.com
Federal lawsuit alleges serious abuse at detention center
Disturbing allegations have been made in a federal lawsuit filed in San
Antonio. A medical student claims he has permanent injuries from what his
lawyer calls torturous treatment at the local GEO Group federal detention
center downtown. Sina Moghtader,
who came to this country from Iran when he was small, said of his treatment,
"It was a nightmarish event that I don't wish upon anyone." Moghtader said he was a medical school graduate on his
way to a surgical residency when a bad reaction to medication led to him
being jailed on charges of threatening federal employees. His attorneys said
he had an unexpected reaction when his doctors changed his prescribed
medication. Lead attorney Randall Kallinen said,
"The things that he suffered are akin to torture." Moghtader’s law team said he was denied bail and held for
one year at the local GEO Group detention facility on South Laredo Street. Kallinen said Moghtader’s
criminal defense attorney was able to prove that his behavior was due to
medication issues and he was cleared of all charges. "The judge found
him not guilty," he said. The lawsuit claims while he was at the GEO
facility, Moghtader was beaten by inmates, his nose
and teeth were broken and he has permanent hearing loss on his left side.
“They left this ear infection untreated to the point at which it started
bleeding," Remington Alessi, who also represents Moghtader,
said. "It got particularly bad and they didn't give him antibiotics to
treat it for a couple of months and at that point the infection had
progressed to the point that he permanently lost hearing.” "Furthermore,
they labeled Sina a terrorist, maybe because he is
of Iranian descent," Kallinen said. "So
he then was subjected to prisoners stealing his food, for example, and the
guards did nothing, because of Iranian background, so he lost 75 pounds while
in the prison." Kallinen said even though he
has practiced civil rights law for years, this case stands out. “This is one
of the most egregious cases I have ever seen," he said. "Guards,
doctors, everybody was treating Sina extremely
poorly and we say is that one of the reasons why is that he is of Iranian
descent." The federal suit also claims Moghtader
was denied medical treatment and medications. The lawsuit asks for damages
and changes in the way GEO Group does business. "I want this facility to
treat people right and not abuse their power,” Moghtader
said. The legal team expects to wait one to two years to see results, but
they said it will be time well invested for themselves and for everyone still
locked in this facility. “We want justice for Sina,
but also for anyone who has the unfortunate circumstance to find themselves
in a GEO run prison," Kallinen said. Moghtader said he credits his early challenges in Iran
with his ability to move forward with his life and medical career. “I was
born in a different country and I learned if I were to live, I needed to
fight back and stand up and keep on,” Moghtader
said. “I don't like people who are in power to abuse the people beneath them.
This is a big deal for me.” Nobody at the local GEO Group facility is
authorized to speak to the media. The Houston headquarters office was
contacted by telephone and email, but no response has been provided.
Jun
14, 2017 ksat.com
Former prison guard sentenced for inmate sex
SAN ANTONIO - A former prison guard was sentenced Tuesday for having sex
with an inmate at a private prison in downtown San Antonio. Barbara Jean
Goodwin, 35, was sentenced to five months imprisonment to be followed by five
months home confinement. She also was ordered to serve a two-year
supervised-release term and register as a sex offender, federal officials said
in a news release. Goodwin pleaded guilty in March to one count of sexual
abuse of a ward. Goodwin admitted that from February 2016 to August 2016, she
engaged in sexual acts with a federal prisoner who at the time was under her
custodial, supervisory or disciplinary authority at the Central Texas
Detention Facility–G.E.O., officials said. She was ordered to surrender in
July to start her prison term.
Mar 15, 2017 sacurrent.com
Guard at San Antonio Detention Center Admits to Sexually Abusing Inmate
According to testimony from her victim and other detainees, Barbara Jean
Goodwin — a guard at the Central Texas Detention Facility — forcibly
performed oral sex on a male inmate over 30 times over a six-month period.
Only after reporting her abuse through a hotline set up under the federal
Prisoner Rape Elimination Act (and a separate rape crisis hotline), did the
feds get involved, according to documents obtained by the Express-News. While
the detention facility she worked at is a federal holding pen, both for undocumented
immigrants and federal prisoners, Goodwin was employed by a private prison
contractor called GEO Group. Goodwin is just one of dozens of GEO staffers
who've been accused of sexually abusing immigrant detainees and prisoners in
Texas. She remains free on bond until her June sentencing trial.
Jan 22, 2017 kvia.com
2 guards at private immigrant detention center indicted
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Two ex-guards at a
private immigrant detention center in San Antonio have been indicted - one
accused of having sex with a detainee and the other accused of providing
contraband drugs and alcohol to inmates. Both worked at the Central Texas
Detention Facility, which The GEO Group operates in San Antonio for U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The federal grand jury in San Antonio
indicted 35-year-old Barbara Jean Goodwin of San Antonio, accusing her of
having sex with a federal inmate between February and August 2016. If
convicted, she could get up to 15 years in prison. The grand jury also
accused 28-year-old Ray Alexander Barr of San Antonio of providing
methamphetamine and alcohol to inmates on Dec. 27. If convicted, he could get
up to 20 years in prison.
Apr
21, 2015 mysanantonio.com
SAN ANTONIO -- A stabbing between two inmates Monday afternoon at a private
prison facility in San Antonio has left one person with life-threatening
injuries, authorities said. A spokesman with the Bexar County Sheriff's
Office said Monday that one inmate stabbed another around 3:45 p.m. Monday at
the jail, located in the 200 block of S. Laredo St., and that the victim was
taken to San Antonio Military Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.
No further information was immediately available. The Central Texas Detention
Facility is a private jail run by The Geo Group. According to its website,
the facility has a capacity for 688 people, and houses male and female U.S.
Marshal Service prisoners and U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement
detainees.
June 11,
2012 San Antonio Express-News
Relatives of an inmate who hanged himself at the privately run Central Texas
Detention Facility have sued Florida-based The GEO Group and its warden,
alleging the federal prisoner was able to kill himself because he was wrongly
taken off suicide watch in December 2011. The lawsuit claims warden James Coapland was negligent in watching over Darrell Clayton
Delany, 31, and that The GEO Group is liable for the acts of its employees.
The operators of the jail, located in downtown San Antonio, deny the
allegations of the suit, which seeks unspecified damages. Delany was sent to
the jail by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons because he had been unable to meet the
conditions required of him to serve his sentence on drug smuggling charges at
a halfway house, said a court affidavit from Brett Bement,
who preceded Coapland as warden at the jail. Bement's affidavit said that, on the morning of Dec. 29,
2011 — the day Delany was to be released from the lockup — he was found
hanging in his cell by bed linens and was later pronounced dead at a San
Antonio hospital. He had been on suicide watch before the incident but had
signed a “no-self-harm” agreement and was removed from suicide watch two days
before his suicide, Bement's affidavit said. The
affidavit, filed by lawyers for Coapland, tries to
deflect blame from Coapland, who was the jail's
assistant warden at the time. The affidavit said Coapland
did not have the authority to remove inmates from suicide watch, but does not
specify who authorized Delany's removal from suicide watch. Inmates have
frequently complained to federal judges about conditions at the lockup. And
the suit comes as police in Atascosa County arrested Jack Shane McNeal, a
former guard at that lockup, on Thursday on theft charges unrelated to the
Delany incident. McNeal was out on bond, facing federal charges that he
helped members of the Texas Mexican Mafia smuggle cell phones and heroin and
marijuana into the jail.
February
10, 2012 San Antonio Express-News
Two members of the Texas Mexican Mafia pleaded guilty Thursday to charges
that they got cellphones and drugs smuggled into a federal jail with help
from a guard. Paul “Polo” Hernandez and Jesse C. “Chuy”
Guerra also pleaded guilty to an extortion and drug-possession charge for
their roles in the gang's enforcement of a 10-percent “street tax” on other
drug dealers in San Antonio. Guerra's cousin Fernando “Klan” Delgado also
pleaded guilty Thursday to a heroin-possession charge. The three were among
12 snared in November 2010 by the San Antonio Police Department and the U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Three of the 12 pleaded
guilty last year and were sentenced to prison. Hernandez's plea deal said he
made several phone calls while awaiting trial on drug-related charges at the
Central Texas Detention Facility, a federal jail in San Antonio run by
Florida-based The GEO Group. In the calls, Hernandez directed his wife to
find heroin and a gun he had hidden on his property that police missed when
they raided the couple's home, the plea deal said. Hernandez also asked his
wife to contact another Texas Mexican Mafia member to let him know that
Hernandez had identified three “snitches” who cooperated with police, the
plea deal said. One of the three was later found murdered, the deal said.
Hernandez and Guerra also admitted that they had four cell phones — three
were found on Guerra and one on Hernandez — and small amounts of marijuana
and heroin in the lockup, according to deputy U.S. Marshal Eric De Los Santos.
Three people were charged in the smuggling and await trial, including former
GEO employee Jack Shane McNeal, inmate Antonio Molina-Ortega and Marisol
Reyna Mermella, records show.
March
21, 2011 San Antonio Express-News
The parents of an inmate who died last year from a heroin overdose at a
privately run federal jail in downtown San Antonio have sued the operator,
alleging guards may have smuggled the drugs in and provided them to the
prisoner. The suit filed by Albert and Sandra Gomez, which was moved from
state court to federal court last week, states that their son, Albert Gomez
Jr., died May 19 from a heroin overdose while he was held at one of the more
secure parts of the Central Texas Detention Facility. The 685-bed facility is
owned by Bexar County, but has been managed for years by the Boca Raton,
Fla.-based GEO Group Inc., which has a contract with the county and the U.S.
Marshals Service to house federal pretrial inmates there. The suit names GEO
and a female guard, listed as “Jane Doe 1,” as defendants. The suit alleges
guards are improperly trained to handle people with drug addictions and can
freely participate in “black market sale of drugs to prisoners.” One of the
Gomez couple's lawyers, Matt Wymer, said he has
been informed that a criminal investigation has been launched, but the
Marshals Service declined comment because the matter is in litigation. The
GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment, but denied the
allegations in a court-filed response.
May 21,
2010 KENS 5
A federal inmate has died while in custody. Guards found the 25-year-old dead
in his cell early Wednesday morning. His family wants to know what went
wrong. Federal authorities arrested Albert Martin Gomez Jr. On January 20. He
was accused of making and passing fake $100 bills. He and a co-defendant were
charged in a counterfeit-money ring. Gomez was released, but was back at a
federal holding facility in March, awaiting sentencing. Around 6:30 a.m.
Wednesday guards found Gomez unresponsive. Sources say Gomez died from an apparent
drug overdose, but nobody is talking. Meanwhile, toxicology reports are
pending. Bexar County records show Gomez was also arrested in 2005 on an
assault charge. The autopsy was completed, but details aren't being released.
The central Texas detention facility where Gomez was being held is operated
by the GEO Group, Inc. A spokesperson had no comment on the death, only to
say it is under investigation.
November
23, 2007 American-Statesman
Sam Kambo can now hold his 4-year-old son, Seth,
something he couldn't do for a year while he was in a San Antonio prison
waiting for the legal system to sort out whether he should be deported. 'The
worst thing you can do to a useful person is to make him useless,' Kambo said On Thursday, the Austin resident celebrated
the first Thanksgiving since being released a month ago from a federal prison
in San Antonio. There he had waited for the legal system to sort out whether
he should be deported on government charges that he was involved in mass
murder in Sierra Leone, the West African country in which he grew up and
helped lead a bloodless coup in 1992 against the ruling party. After Kambo spent nearly a year awaiting his day in court —
while federal officials ignored two orders to release him on bail — an
immigration judge rejected the government's allegation that Kambo had participated in mass murder. The judge ordered
his release, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not comply
for five months, until another federal judge ordered him set free. Kambo's wife, Hanaan, cared for
their four children during that year, coordinated with the lawyer handling
her husband's case and survived on the charity of family and friends.
"We appreciate every day now. I appreciate every time I have a
day," Sam Kambo said Thursday, slicing a long
slender eggplant for a salad in the kitchen of his North Austin home. "I
really cherish this moment." Later, his brother, David, and mother,
Susan, stopped by, both of them having been granted status as legal residents
after they followed Sam to Austin. They did not talk about his fight with the
federal government. Six children played in a side room and occasionally ran
through the kitchen, where the adults moved about and chatted lightly,
spooning plates of food from the table in an informal pot luck style. The
first course was skewered beef cooked in peanut sauce and onions. Later came
a jambalaya-like dish of rice mixed with bits of beef, shrimp, carrots and
peas, accompanied by a salad, talapia fish and
sweet blue African potatoes. Hanaan Kambo did most of the cooking, but her husband rarely
left the kitchen. Sometimes, she says, when he is out of sight, she feels a
wave of anxiety come over her. "Maybe I'll be in the kitchen, and I just
have a moment, as if I'm reliving the time he was taken from us," she
said. Kambo was arrested in October 2006 at a
hearing that he thought would determine whether he became a permanent
resident of the United States. Instead, he was arrested and locked up in the
GEO Group private detention facility in San Antonio, where he shared a cell
the size of his kitchen with five other men and drank tap water from a basin
attached to the cell's group toilet.
September 2, 2005 San Antonio Express-News
Eight local residents, including two former jail guards, pleaded guilty
Thursday to participating in a bank-fraud conspiracy that netted between
$90,000 and $160,000. The scheme stretched from July 2003 to October 2004 and
involved opening 52 accounts at Bank of America branches and depositing
checks from a closed account or empty envelopes and quickly withdrawing cash
before bank officials caught on, court records noted. The case ensnared 12
defendants and is among the first brought to federal court by a U.S. Secret
Service-led task force formed in October 2004 to target identity-theft rings
and other organized financial crime rackets. Court documents allege Santos
Lopez III, 27, his girlfriend, Estella Ramirez, and Bruno Alejandro Jr., 40,
devised the scheme and managed the operation. Court records said the recruits
were given startup money by the organizers to open the accounts. The recruits
would then hand over personal identification numbers and ATM cards to Lopez
or Ramirez. Checks from a closed bank account would then be deposited through
automated tellers, and cash withdrawals would be made almost immediately,
according to the court documents. The court record showed recruits would be
given part of the proceeds, and Lopez and others spent much of the proceeds
on cocaine. Also pleading guilty Thursday were:
Alejandro Regino, Manuel Riojas, Jessica Guevara,
Belinda Contreras, Angelica Guerra and Lopez's ex-girlfriend, Sophia
Martinez, whom Lopez started a relationship with while she was a guard and he
was incarcerated in San Antonio. Officials said both Martinez and Guerra
worked at the jail, operated by the Florida-based GEO Group Inc., during the
conspiracy. Both were terminated.
February
16, 2005 Express-News
A former guard who admitted trying to smuggle methamphetamine into a private
downtown jail that holds federal inmates was sentenced Tuesday to 2 1/2 years
in prison. U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez allowed Lou Cindy Ford, 39,
to turn herself in to federal prison officials by June 3. Ford, who worked at
the old Central Texas Parole Violators Facility across the street from the
main police station, pleaded guilty last year to intending to distribute 50
grams to 500 grams of the drug. Ford 's plea agreement said she was
caught trying to deliver four ounces to an inmate in exchange for $800 during
an undercover sting July 27, 2003. Ford was arrested later that day after she
drove back to the jail, which is run by Florida-based GEO Group Inc.
February
2, 2005 KSAT
A 19-year-old guard at the GEO Central Texas Detention Facility in San
Antonio has been placed on unpaid leave following his arrest on drug and
alcohol charges. According to a San Antonio Police Department report, Manuel
Castillo was arrested early Tuesday after he allegedly smuggled drugs and
alcohol into the federal facility.
During Castillo's midnight break, he left in his vehicle and later
returned to the facility at 218 South Laredo carrying a clear bottle filled
with vodka, the report said. Police also found some cocaine concealed in a
sock and some tobacco tucked inside his belt line. Castillo, who was hired in
July 2004, is the fourth detention officer arrested for allegedly bringing
contraband into the facility in the past 2 ½ years.
December
20, 2004 Express-News
Two San Antonio women have admitted they helped deliver a car and money for a
jailbreak attempt by several inmates, including alleged members of the Texas
Mexican Mafia. Estella
Soto, 27, and Paula Soto, 23, have struck plea deals in which they've agreed
to plead guilty to conspiracy in an escape attempt from a privately run jail
downtown. Inside the lockup, which is run by The Geo Group Inc. of Florida,
Soto was to escape through a window along with alleged Mexican Mafia general
Jimmy Zavala, 35, reputed Mexican Mafia member Gerardo Sanchez, 31, and David
A. Straughn, 31.
November
5, 2004 Express-News
A guard at a privately run jail that holds federal prisoners was released on
bond Thursday after pleading not guilty to planning to smuggle heroin into
the lockup. A
federal grand jury indicted Juan Roberto Ortiz, 40, on Wednesday. Ortiz had worked
at the jail since November 2003 and has been placed on unpaid leave, said
Pablo Paez, spokesman for Florida-based GEO Group
Inc., which runs the jail.
November
1, 2004 Express-News
A guard at a privately run jail for federal inmates made his first court
appearance today on charges that he tried to smuggle heroin and cocaine into
the lockup. During an initial hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Primomo ordered Juan Roberto Ortiz held pending a bail
hearing on Thursday. Before
his arrest this weekend, Ortiz, 40, had worked at the Central Texas Parole
Violators Facility since November 2003, according to Pablo Paez, spokesman for The Geo Group, the Florida-based
company that runs the jail. Ortiz's arrest was
the latest for guards who worked at the jail. In the past year, Jessica Lee
Piña, 24, and David C. Higginbotham, 42, have gone to prison for trying to
smuggle drugs into the lockup. Lou Cindy Ford, 39, pleaded guilty in March to
intending to distribute 4 ounces of methamphetamine at the jail. She awaits
sentencing.
March 16, 2004
A former jail guard accused
of trying to smuggle methamphetamine into the Wackenhut detention facility
downtown has struck a plea deal. Lou Cindy Ford, 39, is scheduled to finalize
the agreement by pleading guilty today in federal court to intending to
distribute between 50 grams to 500 grams of meth. She faces five to 40 years
in prison. (San Antonio Express-News)
August
7, 2002
A jail guard who crashed a van carrying six prisoners into a downtown
lamppost earlier this week does not have a driver's license, state officials
said Tuesday. The van, operated by the private security firm Wackenhut
Corp., had just exited the feral courthouse parking lot shortly before 5 p.m.
Monday when the vehicle swerved toward the curb. Three inmates were
treated for "bruises and soreness" and sent back to their cells at
the privately operated Laredo Street lockup, said Al Pacheco, the Wackenhut
warden. Cited for driving without a license, the driver was likewise
treated and released at Christus Rosa Hospital. The wreck served as a
bloodless reminder of an earlier fiasco for the U.S. Marshals service, which
contracts with the Wackenhut and oversees federal prisoners awaiting trial in
the Western District of Texas. Two federal inmates died in April when a
prisoner transport operated by the private security firm CiviGenics
crashed en route from El Paso. Wackenhut's
Pacheco said he did not know how many times the driver, who started working
as a Wackenhut guard five months ago, had driven the daily transports to the
federal courthouse on East Durango Boulevard. (San Antonio
Express-News)
April 3, 2002
A jailer was arrested last week on charges that he accepted money and what he
believed to be heroin from an undercover agent, promising to take the illegal
drug inside the privately-owned federal correction facility where he
worked. David Higginbotham was arrested March 26 outside the Central
Texas Parole Violator Facility, a Wackenhut detention center located
downtown. (San Antonio Express-News)
Sept. 5, 1996
A week after a double murderer from Oklahoma escaped through a 6-inch window,
officials at Wackenhut Corrections Center say they are stepping up security
at the private jail. The escape of John Ray Davis, 21, prompted prison
management to decide to spend $20,000 on new doors and security locks and to
implement new procedures in the coming weeks, officials said. (Houston
Chronicle)
Children's Assessment
Center Foundation
Harris, Texas
January
16, 2002 Harris County Commissioners Court approved an agreement Tuesday
changing how the county and a nonprofit group run a renowned center for
sexually abused children. The new contract with the Children's Assessment
Center Foundation is the result of months of study, and officials said its
approval resolves problems that have dogged the program for the past year.
County Auditor Tommy Tompkins said last year the foundation owed the county
$1.5 million reimbursement for some expenses. Officials feared the center had
become distracted from that mission last year after Tompkins' discovery of
the $1.5 million debt and allegations that Ellen Cokinos,
the center's first director, was mismanaging the program. Cokinos
-- a county employee -- came under court scrutiny after employees, volunteers
and state and local officials accused her of falsifying reports on the number
of children served by the center, using employees for personal errands and
damaging relations between the CAC and partner agencies. Cokinos,
who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, resigned in May, saying her
departure was best for the program she helped build. The allegations led to
investigations by auditors and District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal. The
auditors helped tweak financial controls over the center, and prosecutors
said in November they found no indictable offenses. (Houston Chronicle)
Cleveland City
Council
Cleveland, Texas
Oct 24, 2015 yourhoustonnews.com
Cleveland City
Council rejects immigration detention center proposal
An immigration
detention facility proposed for the Cleveland area by Louisiana-based Emerald
Correctional Management LLC was rejected by Cleveland City Council Tuesday
night, Oct. 20. The vote was 2-2 with council members Otis Cohn and Carolyn
McWaters voting against it and Mike Penry and Delores Terry in favor of it.
Mayor Niki Coats cast a swing vote against the measure, which ultimately
decided its failure. The project has been met with some controversy, which
Coats addressed, saying there were as many speakers present for public
comments in this meeting as there were in the last meeting. More than 10
speakers showed up for public comments, all of them wishing to discuss the
project. The first speaker was Cleveland attorney Donny Haltom. “We don’t
want this place,” he said. “This is not the image we want.” Haltom further
commented that Emerald can move down the road away from Cleveland. “This is
going to be decided tonight,” he said. “Shut the door on them tonight and let
them know we don’t want [them].” Cleveland attorney Mollie Lambert followed
Haltom, speaking on the concerns from citizens of Tarkington. “This is our
city as much as it is to those who live in the city limits,” she said.
Lambert spoke on Emerald’s alleged track record, noting that currently the
company says it no longer needs financial backing from the city and believing
that it will eventually disappear. “I believe it’s going to either cost us
now or cost us later,” she said. Lambert concluded that the promise of 300 or
more jobs will not be fulfilled in her opinion and therefore will lead to 300
home foreclosures in the future should the city approve the project.
“Everybody knows that vampires don’t get to come into your house unless you
invite them,” she said. Lane Gulledge spoke after Lambert, speaking in part on
Emerald’s presence in the meeting as the company has already said they have
found financial backing from elsewhere, which Gulledge disagreed with because
he felt they wouldn’t be at the city council meeting if that were true.
“What’s at risk here? It’s our city,” he said. Other speakers followed,
including Sandra Burnett who feels the detention center has no place in
Cleveland and Jim Bloss who initially supported the
project but is now against it. However, Brad Browder, a member of the
Cleveland Economic Development Corporation, spoke in favor of the project.
“Jobs are in short supply in Cleveland,” he said. “This is a project that
could provide that.” Browder asked city council to consider the jobs when
they make their decision. Emerald’s General Council Hull Youngblood spoke
before the council, assuring them that they are not asking for any
participation on the city’s part. “Those issues are gone,” he said.
Youngblood explained that the detention center will have a 75 percent
occupancy guarantee with no families housed inside the building. He also told
city council that the project will be built even if that means it is not in
the Cleveland area. “We’d like to propose a facility here in Cleveland,” said
Youngblood. Emerald CEO Steve Afeman assured Cleveland
City Council of the benefits of a detention center and its function.
“It comes with a
guarantee of 10 years of occupancy,” he said. “It is a humane processing
center.” Afeman noted that the detention center has
the potential to create 300 or more jobs and if it wasn’t built in Cleveland
then it will be built in another area such as Conroe or Houston. “We think
it’s a good project,” said Afeman. “We hope you
consider it.” Councilman Mike Penry, who has expressed his support for the
project in other recent meetings, reaffirmed his belief that the facility is
good for Cleveland. “I think that this facility would bring jobs to our
city,” said Penry. “Somebody’s going to get it. Why shouldn’t Cleveland?”
Penry admits the city needed a hospital, restaurants and recreation for
children living in the city, but feels that won’t happen until the median
income for the city rises. Penry believes the detention center will help in
that regard. Commotion broke out from those gathered at the meeting with
Coats quieting down the crowd. Coats then gave his opinion on the matter,
admitting that this particular industry is reportedly prone to failure.
Councilmen Otis Cohn and Carolyn McWaters expressed similar concerns. “I just
can’t find anything good about it,” said Coats. “It’s very hard to wrap your
arm around something that fails so often.”
Cleveland Pre-Release Center
Cleveland, Texas
CCA
Sept. 3, 1998
Corrections Corporation of America is pulling out of the pre-release prison
here, citing a disagreement with the local school board over money owed in
lieu of taxes. CCA served officials notice this week to the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice that it will no longer manage the Cleveland
Pre-Release Center in Liberty County after Dec. 31, said company spokesperson
Laurie Shanblum. "It is the result of a
difference of opinion between CCA and the Cleveland Independent School
District regarding the annual amount of money to be paid in lieu of taxes to
the school district." School board president Walter Stovall said
CCA's announcement took him by surprise. The board, he said, was merely
enforcing CCA's tax obligation and was willing to listen to abatement
proposals. "It's terrible," County Commissioner Melvin Hunt
said. "Almost everybody is unhappy. The county and city have
been giving tax abatements to CCA for a long time." The trouble
between CCA and the Cleveland school district started in 1995 - more than
five years after the facility now valued at $13.2 million, was built to house
520 state inmates within two years of release. That year the school
district sued the for-profit corporation in federal court for reducing their
$180,000 annual tax payment by $100,000 without permission. Last month,
the school district's lawsuit against CCA was settled out of court, with CCA
agreeing to pay its outstanding debt of $300,000 plus interest. Both
the city and county have given CCA more than a 50 percent tax abatement since
1995, authorities said. (Houston Chronicle)
Coastal Bend Detention Center
Robstown, Texas
Louisiana Correctional Services
Mar
6, 2014 kiiitv.com
An
inmate death at a private jail facility near Robstown is raising questions. The
inmate was a recent graduate of the Navy flight school at Naval Air
Station-Corpus Christi. The death has been ruled a suicide, but the
investigation is now being questioned by the agency that oversees the LCS
facility. That law enforcement agency is the Nueces County Sheriff's Office,
whose detectives were turned away at LCS by U.S. Marshals. They were told
Texas Rangers would be conducting the investigation, and that, says Sheriff
Jim Kaelin, is not proper protocol. "The
private prison LCS is under our charge, and we're responsible for the things
that go on out there," Kaelin said.
"Meaning that the U.S. Marshals service mandate that we make sure that
we comply with rules, regulations and law." It was Saturday when Sheriff
Kaelin says he got a call from the LCS warden that
an inmate had attempted suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet, and that
the inmate was being transported to Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital. That
inmate has been identified as 26-year old Trevor Nash, a recent graduate of
the Navy's flight school at NAS-Corpus Christi. According to sources, Nash
was preparing to be transferred to helicopter training school when he was
arrested on charges of piracy. 3News contacted the U.S. Marshals out of
Houston in hopes of obtaining more information regarding the charges, and why
Texas Rangers and not the Nueces County Sheriff's Office are heading up the
investigation. We have yet to get a response. In the meantime, Sheriff Kaelin says he too is attempting to get some answers.
November 4, 2011 Record Star
Texas Commission on Jail Standards officials recently said the organization
is powerless to oversee any changes at the Coastal Bend Detention Center in
Robstown, after center officials decided to move out all of their county
prisoners. Adan Munoz Jr., Executive Director of the TCJS said he was
notified last week that LCS Corrections Services Inc., owners of the CBDC,
asked for the detention center to be pulled off the state's inspection rolls,
as they would no longer house county inmates.
July 12, 2011 Record Star
A Robstown detention center was recently found to be in non-compliance with
state guidelines following an inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards. Coastal Bend Detention Center, owned and operated by LCS
Corrections Services Inc., was visited May 20 by representatives with the
TCJS, during which an inspection was conducted. The results were posted on
the agency's Web site last month.
May 3, 2010 Caller-Times
State jail inspectors ruled that a Robstown private detention facility
doesn't meet state standards because it failed to report an inmate's death
and its warden and deputy warden lack jailers' licenses. The Coastal Bend
Detention Center was cited Monday for failing to report the death of a
prisoner, who died April 18, according to commission Director Adan Muñoz.
Michael Higgins, a former state trooper found guilty of stealing money from
Hispanic drivers, also died of an apparent heart attack April 29, while in
the facility. Officials with the prison were not immediately available for
comment. Discussions with the deputy warden and the chief of security of the
facility revealed that neither official knew of the requirement to notify the
state agency of the deaths in custody, Muñoz said. Jail commission Assistant
Director Shannon Herklotz told the men that their
lack of reporting was a non-compliance issue and would be handled accordingly
in a follow-up notice of non-compliance for failing to report the April 18
death. Herklotz determined that neither of the top
two prison managers had proper state licenses, a violation of state
standards. "Both the lack of the jailer licenses by the warden and
deputy warden, the lack of properly or entirely filling out the inmate
screening form, and failing to report the April 18, 2010, death in custody
within 24 hours as required will immediately result in a notice of
non-compliance with minimum jail standards for the Coastal Bend Detention
Center," Muñoz said. The facility is out of compliance for the second
time in a year.
February 1, 2010 Caller-Times
A private detention facility in Robstown has passed two surprise state
inspections since the accidental release of a convicted sex offender put its
compliance status at risk. The Coastal Bend Detention Center mistakenly
released Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from
Matamoros, Mexico, instead of Mario Estrada Antonio in November. Estrada
Antonio was supposed to be turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement for deportation. Estrada Martinez, who was being held for
illegally re-entering the U.S. and set for a hearing before U.S. District
Judge Janis Graham Jack, was deported instead. The accidental release wasn’t
a violation of state standards. But the Texas Commission on Jail Standards
deemed the facility, operated by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections, at
risk of falling out of state compliance and promised a series of surprise
inspections for 90 days, said Adan Muñoz, the jail commission’s executive
director. State inspector George Johnson conducted the first surprise visit
on the evening of Jan. 6, according to documents obtained by the Caller-Times
through a public information request. The inspection did not reveal any
non-compliance issues. But Johnson noted that of 118 officers, 85 were
working with temporary state jailer licenses. All must complete training and
pass a state-mandated jailer certification course within their first year of
employment.
December 29, 2009 WEAU
There will soon be a new jail boss in town and he comes with a couple
championship belts. Art Crews is the soon to be jail captain in Chippewa
County, formally known as the Blonde Bomber. As the Blonde Bomber, he took on
the likes of Ric Flair, Jesse “the Body” Ventura, Andre the Giant and, yes,
even Hulk Hogan back in the 1980's. Now, his biggest fear is Wisconsin’s cold
weather. "You're to be up here on Saturday?" Chippewa County
Sheriff Jim Kowalczyk asks his new jail captain on the phone. Kowalczyk is
looking forward to welcoming Crews up from Texas; he’s a man who comes with a
couple championship belts. "When I was in wrestling, I was in
corrections and I didn't know it,” Crews tells us with a laugh over the
phone. “In other words, you're dealing with people every single day and
wrestling has a lot of crowd psychology." Crews was in wrestling for a
decade all through the 80’s. He's been working at jails and prisons ever
since. Most recently as warden at Coastal Bend Detention Center, a private
prison in Texas. Crews said he resigned in August. Two weeks later local
newspaper reports show the prison failed an inspection. The Texas Commission
on Jail Standards told the Corpus Christi Caller Times it "borders
really close to complete incompetence." Crews said he knew it was bad
when he left. He says that's why he left. "I voiced my concerns to the
company that there were going to be issues not meeting standards and
compliances. They did not comply and I had no choice but to resign."
"He indicated they were undermanned, understaffed; he didn't have the
budget he needed that he thought he could run the facility to the best of his
ability."
December 18, 2009 Caller-Times
A private detention facility in Robstown faces frequent, unannounced
state inspections for 90 days after its inadvertent release of a convicted
sex offender. The Coastal Bend Detention Center did not violate state
standards when Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from
Matamoros, Mexico, mistakenly was released, but it is at risk of falling out
of state compliance after corrections officers did not follow release procedures,
according to a letter from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards obtained by
the Caller-Times through an open records request. In November, federal
authorities asked the prison run by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections to
release Mario Estrada Antonio to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for
deportation. Instead Estrada Martinez, who was awaiting sentencing for
illegal re-entry to the U.S., was released and deported. He was gone for
three weeks before LCS corrections staff figured out they released the wrong
prisoner. In Mexico, where both prisoners are from, the middle name serves as
last name, and the last name is the person’s maternal surname. “Certainly an
improperly released inmate is a liability to all parties involved,” Adan Muñoz,
the jail commission’s executive director, wrote in the letter. Prison Warden Elberto “Bert” Bravo said an investigation is ongoing and
focused on four employees. “We are trying to narrow it down to where it
happened,” Bravo said. “It was human error. The procedures we had in place,
they failed to follow the procedures.” No other county jail or private
correctional facility holding county or out-of-state inmates is at risk,
commission officials said. Being at risk means any member of the jail
commission staff may make frequent, unannounced visits to the facility during
the next 90 days. If no violations or noncompliance issues are noted, the
facility will be removed from the at-risk list. “No one from point A to point
Z ever verified his identity during several stages of release. By more than
one detention officer, all the way to ICE, his identity was never confirmed,”
Muñoz said Friday. Estrada Martinez had a prior conviction for a sexual
offense, according to U.S. marshals. He was convicted in Iowa for sexual
abuse and sentenced to 10 years in December 1999, according to court filings.
He was paroled in 2002. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack issued a
warrant for Estrada Martinez’s arrest when the mishap was made public. He has
not been rearrested.
December 11, 2009 Corpus Christi
Caller-Times
A convicted sex offender has been missing from a Robstown lockup since
Nov. 19, unknown to the prison’s officials until Thursday. Officials at the
Coastal Bend Detention Center discovered that they inadvertently released
Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from Matamoros, Mexico,
who most recently was arrested for illegal re-entry. He was being held at the
Robstown facility, owned by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections, awaiting
sentencing after pleading guilty to illegal re-entry to the U.S., a felony,
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said Friday afternoon. Federal
authorities asked the prison in November to release Estrada Martinez to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. Coastal Bend Detention
Center handed over Estrada Martinez. Federal authorities actually were
looking to deport Mario Estrada Antonio, according to the Texas Commission on
Jail Standards. In Mexico, where both men are from, the middle name serves as
last name, and the last name is the person’s maternal surname. “We really
want to leave the whole mix-up, specifically how it happened, to Coastal
Bend,” U.S. Marshals spokesman Carlos Alvarado said. “(I am talking about
this) just so the community knows there is not a sex offender running our
streets. He was deported and sent back. ICE deported him.” Estrada Martinez
had a prior conviction for a sexual offense, Alvarado said. He was convicted
in Iowa for sexual abuse and sentenced to 10 years in December 1999,
according to court filings. He was paroled in 2002. LCS Warden Elberto “Bert” Bravo did not return calls. LCS Vice
President of Operations Dick Harbison would not comment and referred comment
back to U.S. Marshals. The Houston-based Immigration and Customs
Enforcement-Detention and Removal division deported Estrada Martinez early
this week, said Fred Schroeder, assistant special agent in charge for the
local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. ICE spokesman Greg Palmer
said late Friday he would research what happened with Estrada Martinez and
comment next week. It doesn’t appear that Estrada Martinez escaped on
purpose, said Adan Muñoz, the jail commission’s executive director, after
reviewing LCS’s preliminary escape report. He was released. “What transpired
between the wrongly released inmate and the releasing officer is something
that LCS will have to investigate,” Muñoz said. “There is no overt action
shown by the mistakenly released inmate to indicate he made any statements to
the releasing officer that he was attempting to disguise who he was while
being released. “And why the receiving transport service did not verify the
inmate’s identity is also something that needs to be ascertained and
investigated,” Muñoz said. LCS contacted the jail commission within 24 hours
of the discovery, which is required by law. The company must submit a written
report detailing why and how the escape happened, Muñoz said. The release
counts as an escape and could pose problems for the prison, Muñoz said. In
mid-September, Coastal Bend Detention Center was cited by the jail standards
commission for 17 compliance issues, including failure to classify inmates or
to check for contraband, improper staff training, jailers without proper
state licensing and no tuberculosis screening plan.
September 21, 2009 Corpus Christi
Caller-Times
State jail inspectors have warned the owner of a private Robstown facility to
rectify 17 compliance issues immediately or face possible closure. The
Coastal Bend Detention Center was cited Monday for failing to classify
inmates, check for contraband, improper staff training, jailers without
proper state licensing and no tuberculosis screening plan, among other
issues. If the facility, owned by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections,
cannot correct its problems, especially the jailers’ licensing, then the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards could temporarily close it, commission
Director Adan Muñoz said. “I have to bring any remedial order before the
(jail) commission, but this borders really close to complete incompetence,”
he said. The jail opened in September 2008. Its first inmates arrived in
March. Jail warden Art Crews was replaced in August by Elberto
“Bert” Bravo, who also is warden at LCS’ detention facility in Hidalgo
County, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president of operations. The management
shake-up should help fix the jail’s problems, he said. “My people know
exactly what needs to be done,” Bravo said. “I know the report looks bad.
They say it is the worst they have ever seen. But honestly, we are going to
be OK. It’s just going to take me a little bit of time to do it.” The jail
will be in compliance by late October, he said. Within the past two weeks,
Bravo hired two deputy wardens with more than 60 years of combined
experience. He also laid off 26 jailers until they can get the correct state
licensing. He fired another 10 for not doing what they were told, he said.
The detention facility was overstaffed and reassigned some of its 175 staff
members to cover jailer positions, Bravo said. The facility has a capacity
for 1,056 inmates. When it was inspected last week it held 475, according to
state inspectors. Most are undocumented immigrants housed in Robstown through
a contract with federal agencies. Another 41 are inmates from Duval, Jim Wells
and Kleberg counties, where jails are overcrowded, according to the jail
standards commission. Compliance Issues-- The Coastal Bend Detention Center
in Robstown had 17 compliance issues after state inspectors reviewed the
facility last week. -- Inmate toilet and shower areas have insufficient
privacy shields -- Jailers are not being trained properly for fire drills --
Jailers are not being trained properly in the use of air packs -- No
documentation outlining generator testing or the transfer of the facility’s
electric load at least once a month -- Inmates were not classified correctly
-- Classification reviews were not conducted within 90 days of initial inmate
custody assessments -- Classification workers didn’t receive the required
four hours of training -- Internal classification audit logs were not kept --
No tuberculosis screening plan had been approved by the health department --
Twenty-four officers did not have a required jailer’s license or temporary
jailer’s license -- Hourly face-to-face prisoner checks were not performed --
The facility did not meet the state mandated 1-to-48 jailer-to-inmate ratio
-- Personnel did not conduct required contraband searches -- Disciplinary
hearings for minor inmate infractions were conducted by a single person
rather than a disciplinary board -- Jail did not respond to inmates with
grievances within 15 days or resolve issues within 60 days as required --
Inmates did not receive one hour of supervised physical education three days
per week as required -- A fire panel doesn’t show an inspection tag
March 7, 2009 Caller-Times
As federal prisoners began arriving at the privately owned LCS detention
facility in Robstown on Friday, a company official said employees who were
laid off in January have been rehired. In response to the influx of prisoners
into the 1,100-bed facility, which has sat empty since it opened in
September, the prison has called back some 40 employees who were laid off in
January, bringing the current number of employees up to 75, said Dick Harbison,
LCS vice president of operations. “It’s full steam ahead right now,” he said.
And beginning Monday, the company plans to hire another 80 employees with
starting pay at $11 an hour. The news comes a week after Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal and the U.S. Marshals agreed on a temporary
price tag for prisoner housing. LCS will get roughly $44 per prisoner per day
under the terms of an addendum to the contract already in place for housing
prisoners in Hidalgo County.
February 5, 2009 Record Star
With necessary paperwork stalled in Washington D.C., the Coastal Bend
Detention Center has yet to receive its first inmate, and recently laid off
or reassigned over half of its staff. The detention center, a private
facility owned by LCS Corrections Services, Inc. and located just south of
Robstown, held a grand opening ceremony in November and was expected to
receive its first inmates in early December. Arthur Crews Sr., the warden of
the Coastal Bend facility, said a final contract that requires the signature
of administrative personnel in the Washington D.C. branch of the U.S. Marshal
service has not been signed, delaying the facility's opening. While that
paperwork was filed months ago, Crews said the change in administration in
Washington D.C. has been largely to blame for the hold up. "That's
mainly due to the situation of the timing that's going on, with the
Democratic Party going in, the Republican Party coming out, department heads
not really knowing who's going to have what job and who's going to be replaced,"
Crews said. The facility initially hired 72 people in November, but that
number fell to 60 by early January, as individuals found work elsewhere or
relocated. Without any inmates, the facility is not bringing in revenue,
which led the company to make significant staffing changes two weeks ago.
During that process, six staff members were transferred to another LCS
facility in the area, 12 were hired by the Nueces County Sheriff's Department
and 16 were laid off. Those who were laid off primarily worked in the food
service or customer service departments, Crews said. Of the 26 staff members
still on the payroll at the Coastal Bend facility, most have seen their
weekly hours reduced as a cost-saving measure, Crews indicated. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin said last week the detention
center's loss was the county's gain, as the 12 individuals hired by the
county are already certified through the state as corrections officers and
will fill a significant staffing need. "It just so happens that we had
reached the point that we had vacancies where we could hire all they wanted
to send our way," Kaelin said. "It's
going to be a win-win for us and a win-win for LCS because it helps them
reduce their payroll." Although Crews could offer no timeline for when
the final paperwork might be completed, he said he has little doubt the
facility will be fully operational in the near future. "We don't know
how long this contract's going to take. It could be two weeks, it could be
two months or more. We just don't know," Crews said. "My
speculation, with 22 years in the correction business, is that with us having
1,100 beds, it's not going to sit here empty." And Crews said all the
employees laid off or reassigned have guaranteed jobs once the facility does
start housing prisoners. "I let them leave here, the ones we laid off,
and keep their ID badge and keep their uniforms," Crews said.
"That's the bond that I have with the employees, and they are going to
come back."
January 24, 2009 Caller-Times
LCS Corrections Services laid off half of its Robstown detention center
employees Friday because federal authorities have yet to transfer in
prisoners, but the company plans to offer jobs to some elsewhere. LCS, a
private Lafayette, La.-based prison company, expected to have a full house at
its 1,100-bed facility shortly after the prison opened in mid-November, but
the center remains empty after a contract with the federal government
stalled, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president of operations. Of the 35
correctional officers laid off, six will be offered positions at the LCS
detention facility in Brooks County, Harbison said. Short on correctional
officers, Nueces County Jail will offer jobs to 14 others, county officials
said. Fifteen temporarily will be left without jobs, Harbison said. To start
the intake of federal prisoners from agencies such as the U.S. Marshals
Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol, LCS
needs Nueces County to sign an agreement with marshals that will outline how
much the federal government will pay for housing their prisoners. Congress
also must pass a 2009 budget, which should occur when a continuing resolution
allowing the federal government to operate under its 2008 budget expires in
early March. The prison company intends to rehire the laid-off employees and
hire additional staff once prisoners start arriving, Harbison said. Nueces
County spent millions to clean up its jail's substandard conditions that led
to the June 2006 removal of federal prisoners. The federal inmates haven't returned.
County officials have been negotiating since January 2008 for a higher fee to
house them at the jail. The contract also will include fees for housing
federal prisoners at two LCS facilities. Because the federal government
doesn't deal with private detention contractors, LCS is dependent on a
"pass through" contract, where the county gets a share of fees
charged per prisoner for passing through overflow federal prisoners to the
company's private facilities in Hidalgo County and Robstown. Nueces County
Judge Loyd Neal said Friday that the county, the
U.S. Marshals Service and LCS are in agreement on new rates for the jail and
the LCS facilities. He wouldn't disclose the negotiated rates. The proposed
fees are awaiting review and approval from the Office of the Federal
Detention Trustee, which oversees federal detention programs. The county,
which received a $45.15 daily rate per prisoner prior to their removal from
the county jail, was seeking a raise to $61.49. County officials previously
have said that negotiations were stuck at about $53 a day per prisoner.
"The marshals and I have agreed on that rate. We have worked with LCS,
and they agree it is very favorable," Neal said. "We did this
several months ago, and we have been unable to get any kind of funding out of
the federal government. Until the new Congress and President (Barack) Obama
reach an agreement (on a budget) there is no money available for a new
arrangement for federal prisoners." The county receives $2 a day for
each prisoner sent to LCS' Hidalgo County facility, and LCS earns roughly
$43. A similar pass through deal is in the works for the Robstown facility
once the county and the federal government sign off on new rates. "The
minute we hear anything at all we will be contacting everybody to come back
to work," Harbison said.
January 23, 2009 KIII TV
A new private prison near Robstown hasn't even opened up yet, but already
some staff members have been laid off. The transition of power in Washington
is said to be the main reason for the holdup. The Coastal Bend Detention
Center is ready to go, but with no prisoners and no revenue, company
officials were forced to do this for the time being. The new private prison
in Robstown is ready for business. More than 1100 beds are made and waiting for
federal prisoners, but the transition of power in the presidency has caused
problems for the U.S. Marshal's Office to sign the contract and bring
prisoners to the facility. "So we don't have inmates at this time,"
said Art Crews, Prison Warden for the LCS Coastal Bend Detention Center.
"That's our revenue. Until we do, we can't hire the people back."
So the prison officials called a meeting for its employees. They announced
about 12 are being laid off, while another 48 are seeing their hours reduced.
"First time in my 22 years in the correction field in a warden position
having to tell them that and that hurts," Crews said. The private prison
did find jobs for about 15 guards at the Nueces and Kleberg County jail.
Coke County Juvenile Justice Center
Bronte, Texas
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
October 12, 2007 KRIS TV
The delayed discovery of squalid conditions at a privately run Texas Youth
Commission jail was "a human failure" and stronger oversight is
needed to prevent similar incidents, a key state senator said Friday.
"It was very simple that the monitors were not doing their job and there
was a human failure," said Sen. John Whitmire, head of the Senate
Criminal Justice Committee. "Who's monitoring the monitors?"
Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, called a committee hearing about a week after a
Coke County juvenile lockup in Bronte operated by The GEO Group, Inc., was
closed because of filthy conditions. A Texas Youth Commission ombudsman
discovered the conditions, even though the facility had passed previous
inspections by TYC monitors. The TYC system was rocked earlier this year by
allegations of rampant sexual and other physical abuse against juvenile
inmates in the system. The star witness at Friday's hearing on adult and
juvenile prison monitoring was Shirley Noble, who told how her son,
43-year-old Idaho inmate Scot Noble Payne, endured months of horrific
conditions then slit his own throat at a private Texas prison run by GEO
Group. "It seemed there was no end to the degradation he and other
prisoners were to endure with substandard facilities," Noble said. Her
son died March 4 in a private prison in Spur. Noble questioned why Idaho sent
its inmates to Texas and why the Florida-based GEO Group was allowed to keep
prisoners in what she described as "degrading and subhuman
conditions." "Please, please hold them accountable for all the
injuries and misery they have caused," Noble said. A spokesman for GEO
Group did not immediately return a telephone call from The Associated Press
to respond to comments made at the hearing. TYC Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope, who took over the youth agency earlier
this year, testified that she's putting more monitoring safeguards in place.
That includes sending executive staff members out to view the lockups,
something she said hadn't been done regularly in the past. "Because of
my concerns of what I saw in Coke County, I have implemented a blitz of every
facility, either the ones that we operate, that contract, district offices,
anything that has TYC affiliated with it," she said, adding that each
site will be visited by the end of October. Adan Munoz Jr., executive
director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said he has four
inspectors do annual inspections of the 267 facilities under his oversight.
He defended his agency's practice of giving two- to three-week notices about
inspection visits but said recently there have been more surprise
inspections. Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa,
D-McAllen, said privatizing prisons is an "easy way out." He said
he worries about the state continuing to contract with companies that have a
history of abuse. "It's a myth that the private sector does a better job
than government" in running prisons, Hinojosa said. "They're there
to make a profit and they'll cut corners, and they'll cut back on services
and they'll many times look the other way when abuse is taking place."
Because of Texas' size and high rate of locking up convicts, the state is in
the national spotlight for its dealings with private prison firms, said Sen.
Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "It puts a special burden on us," he said.
"If it needs to be improved, improve it, because everybody looks to
us." Noble was the panel's final witness. The room hushed as she told
the senators her family's emotional tale. Her son, a convicted sex offender,
was kept in solitary confinement for months with a wet floor, bloodstained
sheets and smelly towels. She said he wrote long, detailed letters to family
members in which he said the only way to escape the prison's harsh conditions
was to join his late grandfather in the spirit world. Noble said she begged
for psychological help for her son. She said he wasn't supposed to have been
given a razor, and she still wonders how he got the one he used to end his
life. "After he tried to unsuccessfully slash his wrists and ankles, he
knelt in the shower and cut his own throat," she said. "Surely only
a person in utter disillusionment and horrifying conditions would bring
themselves to this end."
October 12, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Three monitors fired by the Texas Youth Commission last week for failing
to report filthy and dangerous conditions at a privately run juvenile prison
in West Texas had previously worked for the company they oversaw. Two of the
quality assurance monitors were hired directly from caseworker positions with
The GEO Group Inc. at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, according to
their job applications. The monitoring unit's supervisor also briefly worked
for GEO at the youth prison near Bronte four years before being hired by TYC,
records show. A clerk who was fired had previous GEO employment as well. TYC
spokesman Jim Hurley said agency executives were unaware of the terminated
workers' ties to GEO before The Dallas Morning News filed an open-records
request this week. Officials said last week that they were concerned about
entanglements between TYC employees and the company they monitored. TYC's
inspector general has launched a criminal investigation of operations at the
Coke County prison, including the possibility of financial transactions
between GEO and TYC employees. GEO's relationship with the fired TYC monitors
is a likely topic at a hearing today of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee
in Austin. It is intended to examine GEO's operation of youth and adult
prisons in Texas. State Sen. John Whitmire, the panel's chairman, was angered
to learn from a reporter Thursday that TYC monitors had previously been
employed by GEO. "I think it's outrageous," the Houston Democrat
said. "It just confirms what many of us suspected – that there was too
close a relationship between the TYC employees and GEO employees." He
said the committee also would seek answers from the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice and county jail and juvenile probation officials about their
own monitoring of private corrections companies. "Anyone that confines
individuals in the state of Texas needs to make certain they know who their
monitors are – and that they go behind their monitors and literally monitor
their monitors," Mr. Whitmire said. Mr. Hurley said the prior employment
with GEO raised questions about whether the monitors had been objective in
their evaluations of the facility. "How do you monitor the
monitors?" he said. "We need a very good answer to that." For
years, quality assurance reports on the Coke County prison had been
overwhelmingly positive. Twice, TYC named it contract facility of the year.
"You have to worry about conflicts of interest," Mr. Hurley said
Thursday. "I'm not saying there is a conflict of interest. But there is
a perception." TYC Executive Director Dimitria
Pope fired four monitors at the Coke County prison and a clerk last week
after she and others toured the facility. It was in such deplorable
condition, Ms. Pope said, that she ordered the removal of all 197 inmates.
She also fired another employee at the Coke County facility who had not
worked for GEO, and two contract care supervisors at TYC's district office in
Fort Worth. The head of contract care at TYC's headquarters in Austin
resigned. Ms. Pope canceled TYC's $8 million contract with Florida-based GEO,
which had operated the Coke County facility since it opened in 1994. GEO
initially tried to reinstate the contract but, after criticism, said it
accepted the decision. The Coke County facility was the state's largest
private youth prison. It was the only Texas juvenile facility operated by
GEO, one of the nation's biggest private prison contractors. As a result of
the problems discovered at Coke County, Ms. Pope ordered a wholesale review
of the agency's contract care system. "Who the monitors are and where
they come from will be one of the issues that we're going to look at,"
Mr. Hurley said. TYC employs more than 40 quality assurance specialists and
supervisors, according to personnel records provided to The News. Some are
stationed at the facilities they monitor, several of which are in remote
rural areas. Mr. Hurley shied away from discussing what actions the agency
might undertake if it learns that other monitors had previous employment with
contractors they inspect. "What we need to do is make sure that first of
all, every one of these contracts is being monitored and that it's being
monitored correctly," he said. "If the remoteness is a problem, I
think that monitoring these contracts accurately will show us that," he
said. "We need to have a sort of evidence-based determination." The
Coke County prison is in a one-stoplight town about 30 miles north of San
Angelo. It was the town's second-largest employer after the school district.
One-third of the school district's $6 million budget is tied to programs at
the prison. Two of the fired TYC employees lived in Bronte. Valerie Jones,
former supervisor of the monitoring unit, has two children in the Bronte
schools. Patti Frazee, her clerk, is married to a member of the Bronte school
board. Ms. Jones, who worked for GEO as a chemical-dependency counselor from
October 1995 to July 1996, declined to comment Thursday. She was hired by TYC
as a quality assurance monitor in spring 2000, records show. Ms. Frazee,
reached at her home, said officials of the youth agency never raised any
questions about her previous employment with GEO. "There were not very
many jobs out here," she said. "Any time you could take a state
job, it was a better job for everybody because it paid more money. That's the
only reason. It was like a step up from GEO. That's the way everybody viewed
it." Ms. Frazee was paid $17,950 per year working as bookkeeper for GEO.
As a clerk for TYC, she earned $25,035. The two monitors hired directly from
GEO, Brian Lutz and David Roberson, earned $26,800 and $24,500 per year,
respectively. With TYC, Mr. Lutz was paid $33,945,while
Mr. Roberson received $37,393, agency records show. Several attempts to
locate Mr. Lutz for comment were unsuccessful. Mr. Roberson, reached at his
home in San Angelo, declined to be interviewed. Lisa Williamson worked as a
TYC quality assurance monitor at the Coke County facility from 1998 until
2004. She said she knew Mr. Roberson and Ms. Jones well. She described them
as honest, hard-working people devoted to their jobs. "There is not
anybody there who I wouldn't trust with my own children," said Ms.
Williamson, who now works as a juvenile probation officer in Young County.
Ms. Williamson said she had not worked for GEO. But she said she never saw
any of her colleagues who had worked for the company ignore any problems.
While she and the GEO warden, Brett Bement,
frequently tried to tell each other how to do their jobs, Ms. Williamson
said, she didn't feel pressured and didn't obey him. "He knew I wasn't a
pushover, and he couldn't get by with it. He couldn't have done that with any
of us," she said. GEO Group gave money to several state officials'
campaigns -- State Rep. Jerry Madden held his annual "How Sweet It
Is" dessert party in Plano on Thursday night to raise money for a future
campaign. One of the sponsors at the $2,500 "cherries jubilee"
level was to be The GEO Group Inc., a Florida-based corrections company.
Until last week, GEO operated the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center near
Bronte under contract with the Texas Youth Commission. In recent years, the
company has donated to the campaigns of some legislators who oversee the
youth agency. Two of them, Mr. Madden and Sen. John Whitmire, are co-chairmen
of the special legislative committee established this year to oversee reforms
of TYC in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal at the West Texas State School
in Pyote. Mr. Madden, R-Plano, received a total of
$2,500 from GEO's political action committee in 2005 and 2006, according to
campaign finance records. Mr. Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, received $2,000
from the political action committee of Wackenhut Corrections Corp., as GEO
was previously known, in 2003 and 2004. Other recipients of GEO or Wackenhut
contributions are Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who received $2,500 in 2006, and
House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, who received $1,000 in 2005, state
records show. In addition to Mr. Madden, the chairman of the House
Corrections Committee, two other panel members received donations from GEO or
Wackenhut. Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, received
$250 in 2006. And Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso, received $500 from the Wackenhut
Corrections PAC in 2004. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, chairman of the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and another member of the
Joint Committee on the Operation and Management of the Texas Youth
Commission, received $250 in 2006. Mr. Madden's predecessor as head of the
corrections committee, Ray Allen, received $3,500 in 2003 and 2004 from Wackenhut.
He since has left public office and is a lobbyist for GEO. Mr. Madden
acknowledged that lobbyists for GEO might attend his fundraiser at the
Southfork Hotel on Thursday night. But he said he had told the lobbyists that
he did not want a check. "Just right now, I think it would be a bad idea
to specifically look for contributions from GEO," he said.
October 11, 2007 The Olympian
The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a Texas prison this
year has become a corrections activist. Shirley Noble travels to Austin,
Texas Friday to urge lawmakers there to stop accepting out-of-state prisoners
at their for-profit lockups. Texas is holding hearings over The GEO Group, a
Florida-based private prison company that lost its contract to oversee a juvenile
prison because of dirty bed sheets, feces-smeared cells and insects in the
food. GEO also ran the prison where Shirley Noble's son, Scot Noble Payne,
slashed his throat March 4. The convicted sex offender had been shipped to
Texas with a group of 450 Idaho inmates because of overcrowding at prisons at
home. Shirley Noble contends sending prisoners out-of-state leaves them
without family contact - and caused Idaho prison officials to neglect them.
October 6, 2007 Dallas Morning News
The Texas Youth Commission is investigating whether its employees had
improper ties to GEO Group Inc., the company that ran a West Texas juvenile
prison where inmates lived in dangerous and squalid conditions. Acting TYC
Executive Director Dimitria Pope said Friday that
agency investigators will be checking into the backgrounds of employees to
"see if they are connected to GEO in any way." Among the areas of
inquiry, she said, is whether anyone in TYC was working as a consultant for
GEO. Investigators also will look for any other financial arrangements
between TYC workers and GEO, which operated the now-closed Coke County
Juvenile Justice Center in Bronte. Any TYC employee found to have ties to GEO
will be fired, Ms. Pope said. "I'm saying let's go back to the time this
facility just opened. Let's see if there are any interesting financial
transactions," she said. "I think if you go back and look, there
will be some interesting things to look at." On Friday afternoon, Ms.
Pope toured the TYC prison in Mart, which took in the 197 inmates removed
from the GEO facility on Tuesday. TYC canceled its $8 million contract with
the company on Monday, citing "deplorable conditions." Ms. Pope,
who visited the Coke County prison late last month after a surprise agency
inspection, said she saw indications that the relationship between TYC's
on-site monitors and GEO was not as separate as it should have been. For
example, she said, GEO workers had keys to TYC's office in Bronte. When she
entered the office, she said, no agency employee was there, but confidential
inmate records remained in plain sight. "Kids' files were laying out on
the table," she said. "There was stuff on the fax machine."
Ms. Pope said she does not know if any TYC monitors formerly worked for GEO,
but she is concerned about that as well. 'A disgrace' -- TYC has already
fired seven employees whose jobs were to monitor the Coke County unit and
GEO's contract compliance. TYC's on-site inspectors routinely filed glowing
reports on the prison. "They were there," she said of the inspectors.
"They [their reports] say absolutely nothing." At a news conference
in Austin earlier in the day, Ms. Pope blasted GEO, with whom Texas has done
business since 1994. She said it operated a fire trap and that inmates'
medical needs were ignored, schooling was "almost nonexistent" and
a pattern of "physical and psychological harm" was routinely
tolerated. "GEO should be ashamed," she said. "The Coke County
Juvenile Justice Center is a disgrace." A TYC audit of the facility
described a breakdown on many levels, including safety, hygiene, medical
treatment, education and maintenance. Asked if TYC auditors found anyone at
the Coke unit who had been doing the job properly, Ms. Pope responded:
"I'm saying, 'Hell, no, they weren't.' " "The kids had a stench
because they weren't allowed to bathe," she said. "And their teeth?
Horrible." During her visit to TYC's prison in Mart, near Waco, Ms. Pope
spoke with about 25 inmates from the GEO-run unit. "I notice you have
toothpaste in there," she said to one, as the inmates stood at parade
rest outside their cells. "I got you here so you can be treated like a
human being," Ms. Pope told one 15-year-old inmate. A TYC audit of the
GEO facility, released Friday, said inmates did not have access to toothpaste
or toothbrushes for days at a time. Filth and disrepair were common
throughout the prison, the report said. Only one washer and one dryer were
available to serve nearly 200 youth. TYC auditors who visited the prison got
so much fecal matter on their shoes they had to wipe their feet on the grass
outside, Ms. Pope said. Many pieces of fire safety equipment were either
inoperable or missing, the report said. Some emergency exits were closed with
locks and chains. "I personally was locked in one of the dorms because the
doors didn't work properly," Ms. Pope said. The prison's warden said he
was aware of many of the problems pointed out by auditors. "He indicated
that corporate did not respond to many of his purchasing needs ...," the
audit report said. Dispatching audit teams -- TYC paid GEO $632,000 a month
to operate the prison, the report said. Last year, TYC spent nearly $17
million of its $249 million budget on private contractors, according to a
Dallas Morning News investigation in July, which revealed problems with the
agency's contract facilities. The agency said it was sending audit teams,
composed of former members of the state's jail standards commission, to visit
every TYC prison and halfway house. "No stone is going to go
unturned," Ms. Pope said. "I don't want any more surprises."
State Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee,
said Friday that he would hold legislative hearings on GEO's contracts to run
other correctional facilities throughout Texas. "We're preparing
ourselves for a thorough review of GEO, and it could easily take us into
other private contractors," he said. "But GEO is our focus now as a
result of Coke County and their response." He criticized not only the
conditions that GEO allowed to exist but also the company's response to the
problem. "They tried to cover it. They tried to spin it. They had their
lobbyists try to pressure legislators not to listen to TYC," Sen.
Whitmire said. "So if that's their attitude, then I question their
ability to carry out their contractual requirements in other state
facilities." Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, chairman of the House
Corrections Committee, said he had no information to suggest financial
corruption in the GEO contract but added, "I think that we should let
the [inspector general's] investigation go forward and see what they
find." Criminal inquiry -- TYC Inspector General Bruce Toney said
Wednesday that he had begun a criminal investigation of the GEO-run youth
prison. He requested assistance from the state auditor's office and also
advised the Texas Rangers and Texas attorney general's office of his
investigation. TYC is "an agency that has had deep internal problems,
and they just don't go away overnight," Mr. Madden said. "There
should have been a lot of people who had the responsibility of finding out
that those things had happened." Ms. Pope expressed anger at critics of
TYC's cancellation of the GEO contract. "I will no longer sit here and
take the unfair jabs of individuals who are attempting to advance their
personal agenda over the welfare of youth," she said. She would not
specify about whom she was talking. "I think it speaks for itself,"
she said. Some local officials in Coke County have said the prison does not
deserve to be closed and have said TYC's actions will have a devastating
economic impact on Bronte. "Anyone who's rallying behind GEO," Ms.
Pope said, "should ... hold their heads in shame."
October 5, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
The Texas Youth Commission's chief blasted critics Friday who questioned her
handling of problems at a juvenile center shuttered this week, but also
admitted a "significant breakdown" in her own agency's oversight.
"I will no longer sit back and take the unfair jabs from individuals who
are attempting to advance their own particular agenda over the welfare of the
youth," said Dimitria Pope, TYC's acting
executive director. "Neither money nor power can come over my No. 1
priority, which is our youth." Pope, who made the comments at a news
conference she called at TYC's Austin headquarters, refused to name the
individual critics she called unfair or inaccurate. Her comments appeared
directed, however, at two sources of criticism. One is the elected leadership
of the small town of Bronte in West Texas, angered by the loss of 100 jobs when
TYC shuttered the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center this week and
transferred about 195 young inmates elsewhere. The other is state Rep. Jerry
Madden, R-Richardson, chairman of the House Corrections Committee, who said
he wonders why TYC only now is learning about alleged squalor and unfit
conditions at the youth lockup run by Geo Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla.
Citing those conditions, Pope fired seven agency "quality
assurance" staffers and canceled the agency's $8 million contract with Geo,
which specializes in private prisons. The action threw TYC in the spotlight
again after a sex abuse scandal at the agency led to investigations and
intense legislative scrutiny last spring. "I am very concerned as to how
did this condition arise, how long did it take and why are we just now
finding out about it?" Madden said Friday, applauding a criminal
investigation under way by TYC's inspector general. "We asked the
question at our last hearing, were the kids safer? The answer we got was yes.
It appears to me some of them were not," Madden added. Pope complained
during her news conference that she was "damned if I did and damned if I
didn't" and asserted that the agency should get the respect it needs as
it attempts to carry out the mission of keeping confined youths safe.
"There was a significant breakdown. That will be totally
restructured," she said of the lack of checks and balances for the
agency's oversight team. TYC's acting director of quality assurance,
Elizabeth Lee, resigned this week but the agency's spokesman Jim Hurley said
he didn't know if it was connected to the problems at the Geo-run youth
facility. "Geo should be ashamed and anyone who's rallying behind Geo
should also hold their head in shame," Pope said. Geo officials, who had
said they provided quality services, said Friday they'd make no further
comments. Coke County Judge Roy Blair said that he'd been to the Geo-run
youth facility several times, and the Commissioners Court had inspected it
every quarter. "I have never noted any, what I would call severe,
problems as far as mistreatment or health issues or any significant
problems," he said. "The thing has always been relatively
clean." Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire,
D-Houston, opened an investigation of adult private prison contracts with
Geo.
October 5, 2007 Houston Chronicle
A Houston lawmaker is launching a broad investigation into a private prison
contractor after the state closed one of its youth facilities this week,
citing filth, poor safety and health violations. Democratic Sen. John
Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, cited the
"terrible job" Geo Group Inc. did running the West Texas youth
lockup and said Thursday he plans to review adult corrections contracts the
state has with the company. Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group, which runs
eight adult lockups in Texas, was sued by the Texas Civil Rights Project in
2006 in connection with an alleged rape and suicide of a woman at the Val
Verde County Jail. The suit alleged jail guards working for the company have
allowed male and female inmates to have sex with each other. The suit was
settled earlier this year with a nondisclosure agreement. Geo spokesman Pablo
Paez did not return phone calls seeking comment,
but earlier stated the company had provided quality services at the TYC
facility. On Monday the Texas Youth Commission shuttered the doors of its
Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, run by Geo, and moved nearly 200 young
offenders to other TYC facilities. "When we saw what a terrible job they
were doing at Coke County, TYC had the ability to shut it down and move their
youth," Whitmire said. As for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
he wondered, "When we find a failure to properly run a facility, what do
they do?" Geo operates four prisons, two shorter term lockups and a
halfway house for the adult prison system. Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons
said the agency hasn't had any "significant ongoing operational
issues." Whitmire said he found evidence that a 90-day lockup in Houston
run by Geo was out of compliance in 139 of 395 areas in a recent inspection.
Lyons said Whitmire is referring to a 2006 audit, and all problems cited have
now been cleared up. Geo also supervises state prisoners in leased space in
the Jefferson and Newton county jails. TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said the
agency's inspector general has opened a criminal investigation into the
conditions at the Coke County juvenile facility. Seven TYC employees have
been fired, including several who were responsible for on-site monitoring of
the Coke facility. This was the only contract Geo had with the Youth
Commission. But the agency has contracts with several other providers for
various programs throughout the state, including foster homes and a program
to teach parenting skills to delinquents who are pregnant.
October 3, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Seven Texas Youth Commission employees were fired Wednesday as a state
investigation widened at a privately run West Texas juvenile prison where
inmates were found living in filth. TYC Inspector General Bruce Toney said
Wednesday he has begun a criminal investigation of operations at the Coke
County Juvenile Justice Center near Bronte. Mr. Toney said his inquiry could
focus on TYC employees and those of GEO Group Inc., which operates the
prison. "We are going to follow all leads wherever they take us and as
high as they may go both in TYC and the operation of that facility," Mr.
Toney said. Citing "deplorable conditions," TYC this week canceled
its contract with GEO to operate the state's largest private juvenile prison.
All 197 male inmates were removed on Tuesday. Mr. Toney said he has requested
assistance from the state auditor's office and met with the head of the
Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit on Wednesday. He said
he also advised the Texas Rangers and Texas attorney general's office of his
investigation. He sent one of his investigators to the Coke County facility
last week. "Our initial response was to go out there and basically take
a preliminary look and see what we had out there. We will just look at
everything and see what transpires," Mr. Toney said. State Sen. John
Whitmire, D-Houston, threatened to hold a public hearing on GEO's operation
of the TYC prison. "Certainly that's an option if this goes any
further," said Mr. Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice
Committee. "If GEO thinks they've been treated unfairly, let's have a
public hearing and look at all the photographs and videos [of the Coke County
prison] and let the public decide." Mr. Whitmire said he was upset at
efforts this week by GEO lobbyists to convince legislators that TYC had
treated the company too harshly. "Now enters GEO with their paid
lobbyists attempting to put a good face on this," Mr. Whitmire said. "I'm
saying the corporation should back off. They've run a very poor facility that
probably violates the youths' civil rights. ... Kids were stepping in their
own feces. The sheets were such that a cat or dog wouldn't sleep on
them." GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said he would
not comment on any attempts by the company's lobbyists to sway legislators.
Mr. Paez said his company was disappointed in TYC's
decision to cancel the contract. "We believe we have provided quality
services for the Texas Youth Commission for many years," he said. TYC
officials have been unable to explain how the agency's own quality assurance
monitors, stationed just outside the prison, not only failed to report
substandard conditions but praised the operation. In the monitors' most
recent review, in February, the prison was awarded an overall compliance
score of 97.7 percent. In that review, monitors also thanked GEO staff for
their positive work with TYC youth. "Those who were supposed to be our
quality-assurance people out at Bronte will no longer be working for the
Texas Youth Commission," agency spokesman Jim Hurley said. He cited an
"abysmal failure on their part to not report the deterioration of that
facility." Four of the TYC employees who were fired on Wednesday worked
as quality assurance monitors at the Coke County facility. A fifth, who
worked in TYC's district office in Fort Worth, was an author of the February
report. The two other employees also were in contract care management, but
Mr. Hurley said he would not disclose their specific job titles or where they
worked. TYC identified none of the employees by name. Late last month,
several TYC officials – including acting executive director Dimitria Pope – visited the prison and found poor
conditions. A report by TYC ombudsman Will Harrell detailed numerous
deficiencies. He found inmates who had been placed in solitary confinement
for five weeks. They were allowed to leave their cells once a day, in
shackles, to take a shower. Mr. Harrell also noted that some bedsheets were
dirty and that inmates "complain regularly of discovering insects' in
their food. "Children seemed almost desperate to lodge their
complaints," Mr. Harrell wrote in his report. Many of his findings were
confirmed in a report by Susan Moynahan, the TYC
liaison for the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department. Among her
discoveries at the Coke unit: Inmates in one dorm did not have a restroom, so
they were forced to defecate in plastic bags. Mr. Paez,
the GEO spokesman, said he has read the ombudsman's findings. "I have
seen the report," he said. "I really can't comment on it."
State Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, said he will meet today with GEO
representatives to discuss the Coke County prison. "I want to hear their
side of it." TYC paid GEO $8 million a year to run the Coke County
prison. GEO said it had pre-tax earnings of about $800,000 a year on the
contract. Last year, TYC spent nearly $17 million of its $249 million budget
doing business with private contractors, including GEO. TYC is putting
together a plan to review each contract care program, Mr. Hurley said.
"We are working right now on plans to have a physical presence at every
contract care program that we are operating to review what is going on and to
ensure the monitoring reports that we get are accurate," he said. In July,
The Dallas Morning News found numerous problems with TYC's contractor-run
facilities. The stories revealed that private contractors housing juvenile
inmates in Texas repeatedly have lost contracts or closed operations in other
states after investigators uncovered mismanagement, neglect and abuse. Two
states closed GEO-operated units because of abuse allegations and inadequate
care of inmates. TYC was placed in a state conservatorship this year after a
sex abuse scandal and subsequent cover-up were exposed by The News and the
Web site of The Texas Observer. Mr. Madden of Plano was one of the authors of
legislation this year intended to reform TYC. He noted Wednesday that he had
asked TYC officials at a hearing last month if inmates are safer now than they
were before the reforms. Officials assured him they are. Now, Mr. Madden
said, problems such as those in Coke County have caused him to question TYC's
response. "I'm not sure the answer, 'They are safer,' is actually
true," he said.
October 3, 2007 Dallas Morning News
The Texas Youth Commission is investigating why juvenile inmates endured
squalor and deprivation at a privately run West Texas prison that was
repeatedly praised by TYC's own quality-assurance monitors. The agency began
busing the 197 male inmates from the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center
before dawn Tuesday. Officials also canceled an $8-million annual contract
with operators of the state's largest private juvenile prison, citing
"deplorable conditions." The problems found at the prison in
Bronte, operated by the GEO Group Inc. of Florida, were described in a report
by TYC Ombudsman Will Harrell. "There is a greater sense of fear and
intimidation in this facility than perhaps any other I have been to,"
Mr. Harrell wrote. He also noted that: •Some young inmates were kept in
"malodorous and dark" security cells for five weeks. They were
allowed to leave, in shackles, only once a day for a shower. •There was an
"over-reliance" on the use of pepper spray. •Inmates "complain
regularly of discovering insects in their food." TYC announced Tuesday
that its inspector general's office, as well as Department of Public Safety
troopers, were investigating. TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said other agencies,
including the state auditor's office and the attorney general's office, could
join the investigation. Asked if TYC suspected financial wrongdoing, Mr.
Hurley would say only, "We're concerned about every aspect of the way
this facility was run and the contract was administered." The agency "cannot
tolerate this kind of situation," he added. "Not only do there need
to be financial sanctions, but there need to be other actions taken against
people who operate this way." This is only the latest problem to beset
TYC, which was placed in state conservatorship this year after a sex abuse
scandal and subsequent cover-up were exposed by The Dallas Morning News and
the Web site of The Texas Observer. In July, an investigation by The News
detailed numerous problems with TYC's contract-run facilities, including
GEO's Coke County prison. The investigation revealed that at least two other
states had closed GEO-run facilities because of inadequate care of inmates
and abuse allegations. GEO spokesman Pablo Paez
said the company was disappointed by TYC's decision, which he said was
unexpected. "We had not received any notices or any indication of any
significant deficiencies at the facility prior to agency's decision to
discontinue the contract," Mr. Paez said.
Contractor of the year -- Among other matters at the Bronte facility near San
Angelo, state investigators will explore whether inmates were prevented from
filing grievances with TYC. "I don't think the phones worked all the
time if they wanted to complain," Mr. Hurley said, and "kids
weren't let out of their cells" to file complaints. TYC employs four
full-time quality-assurance monitors at the Coke County prison. They work in
a portable building just outside the facility's secure perimeter. Their jobs
were to ensure that GEO was meeting the terms of its contract, the first
priority being inmates' health and safety, Mr. Hurley said. "What were
they doing? That's what we're asking," Mr. Hurley said of the monitors.
"I do imagine that we will be seeing personnel actions taken as a result
of this." According to TYC records, the agency's quality-assurance
monitors awarded the Coke County facility mostly high scores on planned and
unplanned inspections there over the last seven years. In 1999 and again in
2005, TYC named Coke County its "contract facility of the year."
Mr. Hurley said monitors conducted their most recent comprehensive review of
the facility in late February 2007. Records show few problems were recorded.
Coke "achieved an overall compliance score of 97.7 percent with
twenty-eight of twenty-nine critical measures passed," the report
stated. "Thank you to the Coke County staff and administration for the
positive work they do with TYC youth." Monitors did note that one dorm
"had an offensive odor" due to a sewer backup. "A number of
youth complained that their clothing was not getting clean and that it was
returned to them still damp," the report stated. In addition, TYC
monitors wrote that the schedule for inmates' showers had been interrupted
because of emergencies requiring guards to maintain safety in the dorms.
"Administrative staff was made aware of the issue and the need to
correct," according to the report. The comprehensive review occurred
five months after 19-year-old Robert Schulze, an inmate who had complained
that he felt unsafe, hanged himself in his solitary cell. A TYC investigation
found a number of missteps that contributed to the young man's suicide, and
TYC put the facility on a corrective action plan as a result. 'Prevalence of
fear' -- Mr. Harrell, the new TYC ombudsman, said he visited the Coke County
facility on Sept. 21 as part of his tour of the agency's West Texas
facilities. He found dirty mattresses lying on cell floors and a large
infestation of spiders, beetles and crickets crawling around the facility, he
said. Inmates told him their sheets and clothes had not been laundered in
weeks or months. "Most of what I had seen had to be pre-existing for
months if not years," he said in an interview. There was also a
"real prevalence of fear" among the inmates, he said. "If I
was to be placed in a TYC facility that would be my last pick for sure,"
he added. Of the schooling available to inmates in security cells, Mr.
Harrell wrote in a report on his visit: " 'Education' consists of
someone dropping a single sheet of paper through the door slot each day which
usually contains a cross work [sic] puzzle, a word game or math
problems." Three days after Mr. Harrell's visit, acting TYC Executive
Director Dimitria Pope dispatched her new director
of juvenile corrections to the Coke County facility. Billy Humphrey, a former
adult prison warden, told his boss that the facility was "filthy"
and that TYC needed to "take a much deeper look" because he had a
"very uncomfortable feeling," Mr. Hurley said. On Sept. 26, a team
of TYC officials made an unannounced visit to Coke. Ms. Pope arrived at the
facility last weekend and returned on Monday to Austin, where she met with
Alfonso Royal, the governor's liaison to TYC, and Brian Newby, the governor's
chief of staff. She then ordered the GEO contract canceled and the youths
moved to another TYC prison in Mart, near Waco. "She told us that this
needs to happen," said Robert Black, the governor's spokesman. "And
we told her if this needed to happen, she needed to do it." Inmates were
moved to TYC's McLennan County facility on buses escorted by DPS troopers.
TYC made room for the Coke County youth by moving dozens of Mart inmates to
other agency facilities, said Scott Medlock, an attorney for the Texas Civil
Rights Project. At least two TYC inmates he represents in legal action
against the agency were transferred to the Crockett State School in East
Texas, he said. TYC transferred the youth without notifying parents, he said.
"I've had panicked parents calling me all day, saying, 'I can't find my
kid,' " said Mr. Medlock. Problems persist -- State Sen. Juan Hinojosa,
D-McAllen, said Tuesday he has been concerned about GEO's performance for
years, a point he raised at a legislative hearing in August. "I'm not
surprised at what they [TYC officials] found," said Sen. Hinojosa, an
author of the 2007 law aimed at reforming TYC. "There are still a lot of
problems at TYC that we're trying to clean up." A GEO news release
issued Tuesday noted that its TYC contract generated quarterly revenue of
about $2 million and pre-tax quarterly earnings of about $200,000. Now, the
company plans to market the facility to state and federal detention agencies
around the country. In the meantime, it expects to lay off most of the 140
employees. City and school district officials in Bronte said Tuesday they had
no advance notice of TYC's decision to close the Coke County facility. The
mayor and school superintendent blamed the decision on politics. "It is
straight from Gov. Perry's office. He wants this facility closed," Mayor
Gerald Sandusky said. "He's looking for public image." "This
facility does an outstanding job," Mr. Sandusky added. "It couldn't
be better."
October 2, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Texas Youth Commission officials will pull the 197 TYC inmates out of a
West Texas juvenile justice center today and cancel their contract with the
company that runs it, citing deplorable conditions at the state's largest
privately operated juvenile prison. "The decisive action ... is a clear
indication of the positive changes under way at the Texas Youth Commission,"
Gov. Rick Perry said Monday. "I am deeply disappointed that conditions
at the facility have deteriorated to this point, but am confident that
today's actions will remedy the situation." The Coke County Juvenile
Justice Center in Bronte, operated by the Florida-based GEO Group Inc. since
2003, has a history of abuse and neglect, including a 2006 suicide,
allegations of sexual assault that were settled out of court, and the 2004
death of a youth whose medical conditions were ignored. As recently as this
spring, the prison realized it had hired a registered sex offender as a
guard. An investigation by The Dallas Morning News in July detailed problems
at the facility. The coverage also documented problems at GEO facilities in
other states. A representative from GEO could not be reached for comment on
Monday. In the July article, spokesman Pablo Paez
told The News that the company strives to provide high-quality service and
always reviews serious incidents to determine "what corrective actions,
if any, can be taken." After reports last month of unsanitary conditions
at Coke County, acting TYC Executive Director Dimitria
Pope visited the facility last weekend for a surprise audit. On Monday, she
ordered that all youth be transferred to other TYC units immediately.
"TYC's No. 1 priority is the safety and well being
of those youths under our care," Ms. Pope said in a statement. "The
unsafe conditions I witnessed at Coke County this weekend are unacceptable.
We have zero tolerance for any form of abuse within the system, and those
responsible parties will be held accountable." Despite the high-profile
cases reported at the Coke County facility – and the fact that at least two
other states have closed their GEO facilities over reports of abuse and
neglect – GEO and the company's previous owner were allowed to renew their
contract in Texas at least seven times. GEO has the highest rate of alleged
abuse among all TYC contractors. This is hardly the first time GEO has run
into trouble in state juvenile justice systems. The U.S. Justice Department
sued the company in 2000, when it was known by a different name, alleging
that youth inmates in a Louisiana facility suffered abuse and neglect. All
youth were removed from the facility under a settlement. Five years later, Michigan
closed its state prison run by GEO after budget problems and a lawsuit over
poor inmate care. Until recently, TYC has continued to give GEO high marks,
awarding the Coke County outpost its "contract facility of the
year" award in 1999 and again in 2005. This despite a history of abuse
and neglect at the facility, including: • A 1999 lawsuit filed by former
female inmates alleging sexual abuse at the hands of Coke employees. The
lawsuits, which involved girls being forced into performing sexual act and
dancing naked, were settled out of court. • The death in 2004 of John
Rodriguez, whose rashes, open sores and spiking fever were overlooked for
months by medical staff. • The hiring – and eventual termination – of a
registered sex offender to work as a prison guard. The TYC acknowledged the
GEO facility does its own hiring, and wasn't held to the same standards as
other non- contract prisons. • The 2006 suicide of Robert Shulze,
a 19-year-old inmate who repeatedly threatened to harm himself and lost 23 pounds
in two months. Nurses never put Mr. Shulze on
suicide watch, and he hanged himself in his cell. Scott Browne, a Beaumont
attorney representing Mr. Schulze's family, commended the TYC on Monday for
its action. "I would hope that changes like this by TYC would help
ensure that no one else would suffer the way Robert Schulze did," Mr.
Brown said. "... Hopefully a move like this by TYC will get the
attention of anyone who wants to be in the private corrections
business."
July 29, 2007 The Dallas Morning News
Robert Schulze was scared. He threatened to harm himself unless he was moved
to another youth prison location. He lost 23 pounds in two months. Ten days
later, he hanged himself from the top bunk of his solitary cell. Texas Youth
Commission investigators presented a grim report on the prison's failings to
Gov. Rick Perry and other state officials in February. They could have
discovered even more disturbing details had they looked beyond Texas'
borders. A three-month Dallas Morning News investigation found that private
contractors housing juvenile inmates in Texas repeatedly have lost contracts
or shuttered operations in other states after investigators uncovered
mismanagement, neglect and physical and sexual abuse. In Colorado, a suicide
finally prompted state officials to close a private youth prison that
investigators said was plagued by violence and sexual abuse. In Arkansas,
former employees of a private juvenile facility said inmates were shackled
and left naked on the ground in sleeping bags. And in Michigan, a private
contractor was sued for allegedly allowing mentally ill inmates to languish
in solitary confinement. Last year, TYC spent nearly $17 million of its $249
million budget to do business with these and other private contractors. The
agency houses about 450 young inmates with 13 private operators. Legislative
reforms passed in the wake of the TYC sex abuse scandal largely overlooked
private contractors and focused instead on agency-run prisons. "They are
a much under-examined problem in the TYC system," said Scott Medlock, a
prisoners' rights attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, which has
filed a class-action lawsuit against TYC alleging widespread inmate abuse.
The News focused its investigation on three private contractors with the largest
number of TYC inmates and high numbers of complaints – GEO Group, Cornerstone
Programs Corp. and Associated Marine Institutes. Those contractors have been
dogged by problems in Texas strikingly similar to what led officials in other
states to take action. Such problems include difficulties in attracting
qualified employees, high turnover rates and inadequate care for inmates –
sometimes with tragic consequences. States that hire contractors with poor
performance records "obviously have a very low regard for our
children," said Isabelle Zehnder, director of the Coalition Against
Institutionalized Child Abuse, a child advocacy organization in Washington
state. "They're letting money or circumstances stand above
children." But Michele Deitch, an expert on prison privatization at the
University of Texas at Austin, said research showed that privatization did
not save money and that "private facilities tend to have many more
problems in performance, such as higher levels of assaults, escapes, idleness."
TYC officials said they were reviewing the agency's policies on contractors
but could not comment about changes under consideration. However, just days
after detailed questioning by The News, TYC canceled bid requests for new
contract facilities. Bidders included contractors currently operating
facilities in Texas that had a history of problems in other states. The
vetting process -- TYC first turned to contractors in 1974 to relieve
overcrowding. Contract care facilities vary from group homes to large prisons,
and over the years contractors have come to provide specialized services not
available at TYC prisons, such as care for pregnant inmates. TYC's executive
director makes the final decision to hire a private contractor after a
five-phase review process that includes checks on the contractor's ability to
provide adequate medical care and educational and behavioral treatment.
Companies with contracts terminated in the last year "for deficiencies
in performance" anywhere in the country are ineligible to bid. And,
under a new policy enacted in March as the TYC sex abuse scandal unfolded,
the agency reserved the right to declare ineligible bidders with canceled
contracts in the last three years. "We ask for contracts [canceled]
within 36 months, because this provides us with additional information that
might be important – [such as] funding, or lack of funding," said Mark
Higdon, TYC's business manager for contract programs. "It might not be
performance. It might be something else, and we can look at that also."
While a contract cancellation would clearly be a red flag for TYC, there are
many loopholes through which worrisome contractors can pass. Arkansas
officials, for example, let an agreement with Associated Marine Institutes
expire after an audit found the contractor had mismanaged its billing and
failed to provide proper services to young inmates. Elsewhere, companies have
negotiated deals allowing them to withdraw from their contracts, or simply
shut down after states have removed youth from their facilities. Neither of
these would constitute a terminated contract as defined by Texas. Critics say
that TYC requires private contractors to provide less background information
when bidding than it should. For example, TYC does not request major incident
reports or disclosure of lawsuits against contractors, nor does it do any
independent research. In Florida, by contrast, companies must list and
explain any "correctional facility disturbances" – major incidents,
such as escapes or deaths – in any of the company's prisons. Such
disturbances may be the result of inadequate staffing, poor training or other
factors and raise warnings about a company's practices. TYC should require
contractors to provide all incident reports, said Ms. Deitch, a lawyer with
20 years' experience in criminal justice policy issues. "It is
absolutely important that the contracting agency has this kind of background
info," she said. "If problems occur, there can be liability
concerns for the state agency, and the costs of dealing with the problems can
far exceed any savings from going with a low-cost contractor." Elizabeth
Lee, the new acting coordinator for TYC contract care, acknowledged the
agency has no "established process for collecting information" on
how its contractors performed in other states. The important thing to
consider, she said, is what they're doing in Texas "and what we're doing
to monitor the care of our kids." Correcting contractors -- TYC
regularly reviews contract facilities. It checks program areas, such as staffing
and security, at least once a year. It also uses statistical information,
such as rates of confirmed mistreatment and the number of escapes, to
evaluate operators. TYC quality assurance monitors also make at least two
unannounced visits per year. If a facility has significant problems, it is
put on a corrective action plan, which outlines improvements and deadlines
for them. The Coke County youth prison, for example, was placed on a
corrective action plan in February after Robert Schulze's suicide. The plan
required Coke to improve staffing and procedures in solitary confinement.
Records show that Coke was also placed on a corrective action plan in July
2006 for deficiencies in case management, which includes inmate monitoring
and record keeping. Earlier this month, TYC monitors visited WINGS for Life
in Marion, just outside San Antonio, which houses female inmates and their
babies, to follow up on a corrective action plan necessitated by deficiencies
in staff training and documentation. "If a facility fails any critical
measure, we have to come back and check it," said Jim Humphrey, the TYC
quality assurance supervisor for WINGS. TYC has the authority to fine
contractors for problems, but it has never done so in 33 years of
outsourcing, officials said. "If it comes to that, we would just stop
the contract," said Paula Morelock, who
recently retired after 17 years as TYC's contract care coordinator. But it
rarely does that. The News could find only a few instances of TYC not
renewing contracts because of poor performance. TYC is required to retain
contractor records for only a few years, so a full review of the program was
not possible. In 2001, TYC terminated its contract with FIRST Program of
Texas in Longview after repeated problems. One young woman said that when she
was at FIRST, it had chronic staff shortages. "A lot of stuff took place
that shouldn't have," said Michelle, a 22-year-old who asked that only
her first name be used. "There were lots of problems ... like staff
having sex with the youth there and improper restraints and lack of
supervision." In 2004, TYC removed its youth from the Hemphill County
Juvenile Facility, then run by Correctional Services Corp., a former state
contractor, because of "grave concerns for the safety of youth." The
move followed a December 2003 complaint signed by about 30 inmates. Still, an
agency review conducted shortly after the letter was sent gave the facility
"above average" scores on all performance measures. The facility
was later placed on a corrective action plan. A February 2004 update from TYC
staff to Ms. Morelock said: "Although they
have not completed all items, the team does believe that youth are safe and
that the program is stable." But staffing shortages followed, and in
June 2004, TYC removed its youth from the facility. "We feel like we do
a lot of good monitoring and do our very best to ensure that the youth
receive quality services," Ms. Morelock said.
When contracts expire, TYC determines whether the facility met the terms of
its agreement. The contractor completes a renewal packet, and then youth
commission officials visit the facility to determine whether to extend the
contract for another two years. More often than not, Ms. Morelock
said, contracts are renewed. Critics say that TYC needs to change its policy
and open the process to outside bidders each time a contract comes up for
renewal. A question of oversight -- TYC already has come under fire for lax
employment guidelines that allowed contractors to hire convicted felons or
even sex offenders. A Texas state auditor report in March urged TYC to ban
contractors from hiring employees with convictions and to require background
checks of applicants. Even with background checks, some workers with criminal
records have slipped through. A registered sex offender employed by the
GEO-run Coke County Juvenile Justice Center was fired in March. Ms. Morelock said the facility told TYC that it ran a
background check on the worker, but his criminal records did not turn up. GEO
said the correctional officer's prior record was not uncovered because
juvenile records in Texas are sealed. [See dallasnews.com for further GEO
comment.] The Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, which licenses county
facilities, found the Garza County Regional Juvenile Center in Post out of
compliance last year because it failed to do criminal background checks on
employees before they were hired. In a unique arrangement, TYC contracts with
the county, which in turn hired a private operator, Colorado-based
Cornerstone Programs, to run the Garza facility. TYC relied on the county to
vet the contractor's background, Ms. Morelock said.
A Garza County official said he did not know what, if any, backgrounding of
Cornerstone had been done. It's impossible to know whether other employees of
private contract facilities have criminal records because, unlike workers at
state-run facilities, their names are not public information. "The fact
that [these] facilities are private simply adds one more layer of opaqueness
to the process," said Ms. Deitch, the UT adjunct professor. A few of the
TYC legislative reforms will carry over to private operators. Their guards'
training hours must match that of TYC employees, their younger inmates must
be separated from older ones, and contractors must now conduct fingerprint background
checks on all employees and volunteers in contact with youth. "Some of
the contractors were already doing that [fingerprinting], but just as a
safeguard we're putting it in the contract that they all have to do it
now," said the TYC's Ms. Lee. TYC officials say the most valuable part
of the agency's monitoring is staff visits to facilities. "They're
looking at grievances, they're talking to kids, they're talking to staff and
they're reviewing incident reports," Ms. Lee said. In general, though, TYC
relies heavily on its contractors to police themselves. Contractors are
required to forward inmate abuse allegations, although agency monitors have
raised concerns that not all make it to TYC. Contractors also must report
serious incidents to local law enforcement, but TYC reviews found facilities
that failed to do so. Critics of privatized juvenile care think more state
oversight is necessary. "Child welfare and juvenile justice systems have
both a legal and moral obligation to protect kids from harm, which means they
have a responsibility to exercise due diligence when it comes to placing
youths in certain types of facilities," said Dr. Ronald Davidson, a
university psychologist frequently hired by the Illinois Department of
Children and Family Services to review juvenile care. "Whether we look
at this situation in terms of public policy or simple morality, the question
we have to ask is whether our society ought to be in the business of funding
gulags for children."
July 29, 2007 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. The Florida-based GEO has
renewed, extended or renegotiated its contract with the Texas Youth
Commission at least seven times since it first won the contract to run the
Coke facility in June 1994. During that time, at least two other states have
closed their GEO-run juvenile facilities because of inadequate care of
inmates and abuse allegations. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company
in 2000, when it was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., alleging that
juveniles at the company's Louisiana facility were subjected to excessive
abuse and neglect. Wackenhut agreed to a settlement that provided for
sweeping changes to Louisiana's juvenile justice system and required the
company to move all juveniles from its facility. The former security chief
pleaded guilty in 2001 to beating a 17-year-old handcuffed inmate with a mop
handle. In October 2005, Michigan closed the state's private youth prison run
by GEO after an advocacy group sued the prison over inadequate inmate care.
Budget shortfalls also played into the prison's closure. Tom Masseau, director of government and media relations for
Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service Inc., said his watchdog group found
juvenile inmates who needed special education but were not receiving it and
inmates who were not receiving appropriate mental health care. The prison
also managed problem juveniles by putting them in solitary confinement, he
said. Mr. Masseau said his group tried to work with
GEO and the state before filing a lawsuit, but the problems remained unsolved
and inmates faced reprisals. "The youth would report back that they were
retaliated against for meeting with us," Mr. Masseau
said. "We said enough is enough." The group's lawsuit against the
state is pending, but GEO was dropped as a defendant because it closed the
facility and left the state. GEO sued the state for alleged wrongful
termination of the lease agreement, which is also pending. TYC accolades --
In 1999, TYC named GEO's Coke County operation its "contract facility of
the year." The same year, former female inmates filed several federal
civil rights lawsuits alleging they were sexually abused by Coke employees.
(TYC had moved all girls from the facility a year earlier.) The lawsuits –
which eventually resulted in confidential settlements – were filed four years
after TYC confirmed allegations that some staff members coerced girls into
performing sexual acts or dancing naked, according to a court document and a
report by Michele Deitch, a prison privatization expert at the University of
Texas, and others. "Given GEO's track record generally and the general
record of these for-profit private prison companies, I have serious concerns
about them running any correctional institutions ... especially when such
egregious wrongdoing was going on," Scott Medlock, an attorney at the
Texas Civil Rights Project, said. The Coke County facility routinely hired
unqualified workers, said Isela Gutierrez, juvenile justice initiative
director at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. Former Coke County guard
John Christman, who now lives in New York, said he
witnessed that problem firsthand. He worked there for nearly a year and said
he initially loved it. But he eventually grew frustrated with the company's
poor hiring standards and staff shortages. The company met its
guard-to-inmate ratios by making employees work extra shifts, he said.
"I was working five, six days a week, 12-hour days, overtime," Mr. Christman said. "It's hard to get people to go into
that line of work." He quit his post but returned about 18 months later,
in 2001, after he heard that working conditions had improved. Unfortunately,
he said, not much had changed and he left shortly thereafter. TYC again named
Coke County contract facility of the year in 2005. And, during the past seven
years, TYC quality-assurance monitors have awarded it mostly good scores on
planned and unplanned inspections there. But some recent problems were
reported: During an unscheduled visit in April, a TYC monitor discovered that
a staff member had falsified an accusation against an inmate. The young man
was put in solitary confinement on April 16. Two days later – on the morning
of the unannounced visit – his paperwork already noted that he'd committed an
infraction that would extend his stay in solitary confinement. "This was
alarming because it was only 9:30 a.m. and the incident had not occurred
yet," the monitor reported. The TYC monitor notified the warden, who
released the inmate from solitary and told the security director "that
writing incident reports prior to the incident was not allowed," the report
said. Suicide inquiry -- TYC's investigation into Robert Schulze's suicide
offers a bleak picture of the facility. "Robert's cries for help – to be
assigned to a dorm where he felt safe or to be transferred to Gainesville
State School – were never adequately addressed," a February 2007 report
noted. A guard promptly turned in Robert's note in which he threatened to
harm himself unless his dorm assignment was changed. Robert then asked to go
to solitary confinement because he felt unsafe, but he was not put on suicide
watch. He stayed in solitary confinement for nine days, refusing to return to
his dorm because of safety concerns. His case manager made only one
documented visit with him during that period. He was not given prescribed
medication during his time at Coke and lost 23 pounds in two months. No one
checked his food intake. None of that was brought to the doctor's attention,
and a medical review was never conducted, the TYC investigation revealed. The
nursing staff also "failed to discover three original prescriptions for
antidepressants and a mood stabilizer that had been prescribed by a
consulting psychiatrist ... on July 28," TYC later reported. Eight days
before Robert hanged himself on Sept. 28, 2006, "he filed a TYC
complaint form stating that he makes self-referrals to ... [solitary
confinement] to get away from harm and people who threaten him," TYC
said in its report. It's not clear anyone saw the complaint before his death.
"The form got lost in a stack of mail on the TYC staff member's desk,"
the investigative report said. TYC's investigation found that Coke County's
solitary cell unit had only one staffer on the floor – in violation of the
required two guards – at the time of the hanging. The one guard on duty
failed to make contact with each inmate every 10 minutes, as required. For
more than an hour, no one checked on the despondent inmate. After Robert's
dinner tray arrived, it sat for 28 minutes before the guard took it to his
cell and discovered him unresponsive. The guard was disciplined with training
and five days of unpaid suspension. TYC put the facility on a corrective
action plan, which required it to improve the deficiencies that contributed
to Robert's death. GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said
the company strives to provide high-quality service and conducts thorough
reviews after any serious incident to determine "what corrective
actions, if any, can be taken." An attorney for the family of the
19-year-old said they had no comment.
March 13, 2007 KTRK
Two inmates discovered missing from a West Texas youth prison overnight
were captured Monday in Eagle Pass after a woman saw them in a convenience
store and thought they looked suspicious, authorities said. Coke County
Sheriff Rick Styles said the woman thought the two were illegal immigrants
and called the Maverick County Sheriff's Office, which arrested them. Styles
said he expected the two to be returned to Bronte in a few days. He said the
two allegedly stole a pickup in Bronte and left it in Eagle Pass. Two other
inmates at the Texas Youth Commission's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center
were found hiding in the attic after staff were told that a vent had fallen
out of the ceiling, said TYC spokesman Jim Hurley. Another inmate said
insulation had fallen on his face. Investigators searched both inside and
outside the facility. No breach had been found in the perimeter fence, he
said. The 17- and-18-year-old missing inmates, both Hispanic males, were not
imprisoned for violent crimes, Hurley said. The facility in Bronte drew
attention last week after a convicted sex offender was fired from his post as
a correctional officer. David Andrew Lewis, 23, said he told his employer of
his background when he applied for the job. He was hired in August 2006 by a
private contractor. State officials have said the case demonstrated that
private prison operators don't always check employees' juvenile records.
March 12, 2007 The Monitor
Two detainees of a Texas Youth Commission contract prison in West Texas
are missing. The boys, ages 17 and 18, were both non-violent offenders. One
is serving time in the high-security facility for burglary of a vehicle; the
other for violating conditions of parole, said Jim Hurley, TYC spokesman.
They are missing from the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in Bronte,
which is run by GEO Inc. At about 3 a.m. Monday a vent fell from a ceiling
dorm, prompting guards to conduct a bed count, Hurley said. They discovered
four youth were missing, but two were later found, he said. Hurley said TYC
would not release the names or description of the missing youth because they
were not considered to be a danger to the public. It is possible the youth
are still inside the facility because there is so far no indication the
razor-wire fence that surrounds the Coke County center was breached, Hurley said.
Monday’s discovery at the 200-bed facility is another in a long line of
problems at the TYC. The agency that runs the Evins
Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg was placed governor-appointed management
in February among a sex scandal and wide reports of youth abuse.
March 10, 2007 KRIS TV
A convicted sex offender who was fired this week from his job at a West
Texas youth prison said he told his employer of his background when he
applied for the job. David Andrew Lewis, 23, was fired from the Texas Youth
Commission's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center when state investigators
discovered he was a convicted sex offender. State leaders dispatched law
enforcement officials to all 22 commission facilities and its headquarters
this week to investigate claims of sexual abuse of inmates by employees.
Lewis was fired by the GEO Group, a Florida-based private company that runs
the all-male facility in Bronte, about 30 miles northeast of San Angelo.
Lewis said Thursday that he showed a sex offender registration card to his
prospective employers when he was being interviewed for a job as a
correctional officer in August 2006. "They said to wait for the
background check to go through," Lewis said, adding that he also
presented other paperwork related to his offense. Lewis was 15 when he was
convicted in 1999 of indecency by exposure with a 5-year-old girl, according
to a Texas Department of Public Safety Web site listing sex offenders. He is
required to register annually as a sex offender. Pablo Paez,
director of corporate relations for the GEO Group, said the company conducts
background checks on new hires and re-runs the checks annually. The Texas
Department of Public Safety checks off on the company's employees, he said.
"In this particular case, we conducted a background check through DPS
and received clearance from DPS," Paez said.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which does not make public the records
of juvenile offenders, referred a call for comment to Gov. Rick Perry's
office. Perry spokesman Ted Royer said the case highlights why the special
master and new executive director "are going to completely rewrite the
playbook" for how the agency operates. "Having sex offenders guard
prisoners is totally unacceptable, and if an agency contract prohibits the
hiring of registered sex offenders then that needs to be enforced,"
Royer told The Associated Press on Friday. "There needs to be a clear
delineation of consequences if a contractor goes against those rules."
State officials have said Lewis' case demonstrated that private prison
operators don't always check their employees' juvenile records. Texas Youth
Commission spokesman Tim Savoy said the agency's contracts with the private
operators prohibit hiring registered sex offenders, but the agency doesn't
"have any control over who they hire."
March 7, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Law enforcement officers who earlier this week moved into the Texas Youth Commission
facilities to protect inmates from sex predators on Wednesday discovered a
registered sex offender working as a correctional officer in a halfway house
for juveniles. The sex offender had been allowed to stay on the job despite
an alert that had been sent months ago to TYC administrators in Austin. David
Andrew Lewis, 23, was discovered by investigators sent to TYC's 22 facilities
after reports of sex abuse stunned lawmakers. Lewis was employed at the Coke
County Juvenile Justice Center, a juvenile halfway house 30 miles from San
Angelo run by the Geo Group, a private prison company. TYC's acting executive
director, Ed Owens, said a facility staff member had months ago warned agency
officials in Austin of Lewis' sex offender status, but was rebuffed. The
tipster “was told he was a company employee and that the company needed to
deal with their employee,” Owens said, adding that the incident was yet
another illustration of the systemic failures plaguing TYC. Owens said once
he learned of Lewis' background Wednesday, he called the Geo Group and they
suspended him. It was not clear if the Geo Group had learned months earlier
of Lewis' sex offender status. No one in its Florida headquarters could
immediately be reached for comment Wednesday evening. Owens said that there
was no evidence Lewis acted inappropriately with any juveniles. Lewis was 15
when he was forced to register for 13 sexual indecency acts against a
5-year-old girl. His case is posted on the Texas Department of Public Safety
web site of registered sex offenders. With that history, it remained a
mystery how Lewis could have been hired to work with juveniles in the first
place. Criminal background checks are required for all TYC employees and
those hired by private contractors to work with TYC juveniles.
July 27, 2001
Inmate awards were upheld by an appeals court in a case where young inmates
said they were sexually abused by Wackenhut Corrections Corporation
employees. But the inmates' attorney was sanctioned for disclosing the
terms of the confidential agreement. Background: Several girls said
they were sexually and mentally abused by Wackenhut employees at the Coke
County Juvenile Justice Center in Bronte, Texas. Wackenhut owns and
operates the facility. The claims were settled in mediation for 1.5
million. Wackenhut was to prepare the settlement papers by Oct. 8, 1999, and
wire transfer the settlement funds to the inmates' attorney by Oct. 15, 1999.
However, Wackenhut failed to do so. The attorney filed a motion to
enforce the settlement agreement, but failed to do so under seal, which
exposed the terms of the settlement agreement and resulted in a newspaper
article about the deal. Wackenhut then moved to set aside the
settlement and sought sanctions against the inmates' counsel. The court
referred the matter to a magistrate judge who found the inmates' counsel had
acted in bad faith. However, he recommended upholding the settlement.
(Corrections Professional)
May 17, 2001
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court's decision
to levy a $15,000 fine and imposed a number of sanctions on attorneys
representing nine girls held at the juvenile detention facility in this West
Texas city. During mediation in 1999, the former detainees' attorneys
reached a $1.5 million settlement agreement with Wackenhut Corrections
Corp. The girls had alleged they were sexually, physically, and
mentally abused by employees. In an agreement reached in October 1999,
Wackenhut did not admit liability and said the payment was for "alleged
personal injuries only." Details were confidential and remained
under seal until the detainees' attorneys disclosed the terms when they filed
a motion to enforce the settlement without sealing it, Wackenhut
claimed. Confidentiality was at the heart of the settlement
agreement. "The unsealed motion exposed the terms of the
settlement agreement and resulted in a newspaper article regarding the
agreement," Judge Carl E. Stewart wrote. (AP)
Cold Springs Correctional Facility (Mansfield Boot Camp)
Fort Worth, Texas
Correctional Services Corporation
October 22, 2005 Sarasota Herald
Tribune
Correctional Services Corp. has settled a $38.3 million judgment that held
the company responsible for the death of an 18-year-old inmate at a Texas
boot camp. Terms of the agreement are confidential, but the Sarasota-based
prison manager said Friday it will pay $2.7 million toward the settlement.
The rest will be covered by CSC's liability insurers, which initially balked
at paying the award. The agreement is contingent on the closing of CSC's
previously announced sale to The GEO Group Inc. for $62 million. CSC
shareholders will vote on the sale Nov. 4. If that deal falls through, so
does the settlement. A Texas jury in August 2003 found CSC and a nurse at the
now-closed Mansfield boot camp responsible for the death of Bryan D.
Alexander. Alexander, serving a six-month sentence for a misdemeanor driving
conviction, died in 2001 of a rare penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia.
Trial testimony showed he was treated for a cold and flu even though he had
coughed up blood for five days before his death. His parents sued CSC and
nurse Knyvett Reyes for their loss and anguish.
Reyes was convicted of negligent homicide and was sentenced to four years of
community supervision. She also surrendered her registered nurse's license.
The judgment against CSC and Reyes included $35 million in actual damages,
$750,000 in punitive damages and more than $2.4 million in interest. The
settlement will resolve all claims and lawsuits against CSC and Reyes. It
also will end a dispute between CSC and its liability insurers over who
should pay. Boca Raton-based GEO is paying $62 million in cash, or $6 a
share, and assuming $124 million in liabilities to acquire CSC. It will then
sell the Youth Services International subsidiary to CSC president James
Slattery for $3.75 million. That unit manages programs at 17 centers with
1,300 beds. GEO will acquire the adult division that owns or operates 15
facilities with 7,500 beds. GEO manages 41 prisons and jails with 36,000 beds
in the United States, Australia, South Africa and Canada. Shares of CSC were
selling for $5.91 on the Nasdaq at the close of trading Friday, up 1 cent.
October 22, 2005 NEWS8 Austin
The corporate parent of a now-defunct Mansfield detention facility has
reached an out-of-court settlement with the family of a teenager who died
while serving time at its boot camp. Correctional Services Corp. announced
the settlement yesterday with the family of Bryan Alexander. The 18-year-old
died in 2001 while serving a six-month sentence for a drunken-driving arrest.
Alexander's family was awarded nearly $40 million in damages by a Tarrant
County jury in 2003. But the details of Friday's settlement have not been
released. Under the agreement, the boy's family will not file any new suits
or pursue appeals against Tarrant County or its criminal-court judges. The
boy's parents sued the company and camp nurse after he died from
penicillin-resistant pneumonia. Although the teen complained of weakness and
was coughing up blood, the camp had waited several days before taking him to
a hospital. The suit claimed the camp and nurse failed to provide the teen
with adequate and timely medical care.
September 30, 2005 Star-Telegram
U.S. District Court Judge Terry Means on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit
against Tarrant County and its criminal court judges over the death of a
teen-ager who was serving a sentence at the former Mansfield boot camp four
years ago. Means left the door open for attorneys representing the family of
Bryan Alexander to sue the judges in state court. A lawsuit against the
county has been thrown out of state court. Alexander, 18, died in January
2001 while serving a six-month sentence for drunken driving. While at the camp,
he complained of feeling weak and coughing up blood. Days later, he was taken
to John Peter Smith Hospital, where he was immediately put into intensive
care. He died two days later. Tests indicated that he had a rare,
penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia. In the federal lawsuit, Alexander's
family said the county, and the judges individually, should be held liable
because they didn't properly monitor Correctional Services Corp., the company
contracted to run the camp. A year ago, Means denied the judges judicial
immunity, saying they were acting not as judges but as managers of the
facility. But in his ruling Wednesday, Means said public officials do enjoy
immunity from lawsuits for damages providing that their conduct does not
clearly violate an individual's rights.
February 10, 2005 Star Telegram
Several Tarrant County judges sued over a death at the defunct boot camp are
being accused of unethical behavior for considering cases involving the
attorneys who are suing them. Defense attorneys Charlie Smith and Bill Lane
say that state district judges Sharen Wilson and George Gallagher have
decided that they will not automatically transfer those cases to other
courts. Since January 2003, the judges have routinely transferred cases
handled by Smith and Lane to other courts after the attorneys filed a federal
civil rights lawsuit against them and the county. In the federal lawsuit, the
attorneys say that sloppy oversight by the judges allowed an array of
problems to continue at the former Mansfield boot camp, where 18-year-old
inmate Bryan Alexander died. Lane and Smith are among several attorneys
representing the Alexander family. U.S. District Judge Terry Means ruled in
August that the judges can be held liable individually, along with the
county, because they were acting as managers of the facility operated by
Correctional Services Corp. Smith filed a motion to remove Wilson from
hearing a felony theft case on Tuesday. In the filing, he described the
judge's decision to deny a transfer as "clear evidence" of
hostility toward him. Denying Smith's motion "creates a reasonable doubt
as to Judge Sharen Wilson's capacity to act impartially as a judge in
connection with this case," court documents state.
August 27, 2004
Tarrant County's criminal court judges are not protected by judicial immunity
in a civil rights lawsuit stemming from the death of a teen-ager at the
former Mansfield boot camp, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Court
Judge Terry Means said the judges can be held liable individually, along with
the county, because they were acting not as judges, but as managers of the
facility operated by Correctional Services Corp. The judges helped
establish the budgets and approved the selection of the private prison
operator "in spite of a significant history of operational
deficiencies," attorneys for the teen-ager's family have argued.
"The court concludes that the defendant judges are not entitled to
judicial immunity," Means wrote this week. "It's huge,"
Mark Haney, the family's attorney, said of Means' ruling. "The judges
can be held personally accountable for establishing policies and procedures
... that routinely denied access to medical care to the
detainees." In July, Means denied a claim by Northland Insurance
Co., CSC's insurance carrier, stating that its policies do not cover the
judgment against them. (Star-Telegram)
February 25, 2004
Mid-States Services - the Hurst company in line to take over Tarrant County's
jail food contract if the current company fails to do a better job -- has its
own food-quality problems, a former Mid-States manager told commissioners
Tuesday. Emilio Gonzalez, who until January was director of operations
for Mid-States, said the former jail contractor often took outdated food from
its commissary operations and served it to inmates after removing packaging
that listed the freshness dates. "Vendors need to make a profit,
but it doesn't need to be at the county's expense," Gonzalez told county
commissioners Tuesday during their meeting. Mid-States Chief Executive
John Sammons said the allegations are untrue and blamed them on a competitor
that he declined to name. Sammons said some boxes of outdated food were
found in Mid-States' stocks when the company provided food service to the
jail, but he said those boxes had already been designated for disposal when
jailers told the company to remove them. "This is another
desperate attempt by those who would like to cause Mid- States problems, at a
time when the commissioners are looking at us as a back-up supplier," he
said. Last week, commissioners put current contractor Aramark
Correctional Services on 30 days' notice to improve the quality of food and
service or be removed from the contract. Mid-States, which held the
jail food contract until December, was designated as a backup supplier if
Aramark failed to meet the terms. Sheriff Dee Anderson said Tuesday
that in the week since the commissioners issued the ultimatum, Aramark has
made improvements and inmate complaints are declining. Checks of the
food service have found improved food temperatures and larger portions, he
said. But the company still has a long way to go to be acceptable, he
said. "If I had to make a recommendation today, I'd cancel the
contract," Anderson said. As to Gonzalez's allegations about
Mid-States, Anderson said he would discuss them with commissioners.
"If any of it is true, it's disturbing," he said. Gonzalez
apologized to commissioners for not coming forward sooner, and said that
during contract deliberations last fall he was still employed by Mid-States
and feared retaliation. He said he resigned because of concerns about
Mid-States' operations. Sammons said that Gonzalez left Mid-States on good
terms to take another job and that he was disappointed by the comments.
An Aramark spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday
but has said Aramark officials believe they are meeting contractual
obligations. Commissioners did not discuss Gonzalez's comments at the
Tuesday meeting because the issue was not posted as an item for consideration.
After the meeting, however, commissioners questioned the timing of the
comments. "I'm always grateful for people to come forward, but
it's odd that he would come forward at this time," Precinct 1
Commissioner Dionne Bagsby said. Precinct 3 Commissioner
Glen Whitley said he gave no credence to Gonzalez's comments and would vote
to bring in Mid-States if Aramark did not improve its service. "It
just amazes me that this guy shows up to speak against Mid-States a week
after we put Aramark on 30-days' notice," he said. Mid-States was
the food service operator that served meals to inmates in the Tarrant County
Jail until Aramark won a $3.3 million contract over Mid-States, Mid-America
and Canteen Correctional Services. Mid-America -- run by former
Mid-States executive Jack Madera -- operates the jail commissary, which sells
toiletries and snack items to jail inmates. Madera has been indicted along
with two other men on charges that they used a forged document to win a jail
food-service contract in Kaufman County. The indictments stem from an
investigation into whether Madera influenced Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles
with thousands of dollars in favors before Bowles picked Madera's company for
a $20 million jail commissary contract. The scope has widened to
include Madera's dealings with other counties, including Tarrant and
Denton. (Lawyer Texas Parole)
February
19, 2004
It would be easy to dismiss inmates' complaints about jail food simply as
whining -- not worthy of serious attention because incarceration is not meant
to be a pleasant experience. But in the case of the Tarrant County Jail
and the meals being served by its newly contracted food service provider,
Aramark Correctional Services, the food being distributed to prisoners not
only does not meet the taste test -- it may actually pose health risks.
Inmates have been complaining about the quality of the food since Aramark
began serving the county's four jail sites in December under a $3.3 million
annual contract. In response to the complaints and boycott of the meals
by some prisoners, county purchasing director Jack Beacham and other county
officials went to inspect the food service operation. Beacham said they
saw 17 pans of soured pinto beans, discovered foods that were being kept at
improper temperatures, and witnessed one employee drop tortillas on the floor
and then place them back on the service line. (Lawyer Texas Parole)
December 3, 2003
Visiting State District Judge Roger Towery has ruled that Sarasota,
Fla.-based Correctional Services Corp. must pay a $38 million judgment that
was awarded earlier this summer to the parents of a young man who died at a
Mansfield, Tex., boot camp in 2001. In August, a jury in Fort Worth's
236th District Court awarded the family of Bryan Alexander $35 million in
actual damages and $5.1 million in punitive damages following an eight-week
trial. Alexander died from a penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia he
contracted while participating in a six-month boot camp program as a
condition of his misdemeanor probation. Evidence in the case showed that
Alexander, who was 18 years old, died after CSC employees ignored his pleas
for medical attention for days. In September, Judge Towery set the
actual damages at $37.4 million, including interest, and reduced the punitive
damages to $750,000. CSC responded by asking the court to reduce or set aside
the entire judgment, arguing that there was "no legally or factually
sufficient evidence to support the jury's findings." CSC President James
Slattery told CSC investors during a recent conference call that the company
expected the court to reduce the $38 million judgment. In his ruling issued
yesterday, the judge denied all of CSC's motions. "We are pleased
that once again the jury's verdict in this case has been upheld," says
attorney Jeff Kobs, a partner in Fort Worth's Kobs & Haney, who represented the Alexander family
along with Fort Worth attorney Bill Lane. "We are confident that the
Courts will continue to deny CSC's repeated attacks on the jury's decision."
As a result of this ruling, CSC has until Dec. 16, 2003, to file its notice
of appeal, and the company must also post a $25 million bond by Dec. 28,
2003, in order to prevent the Alexander family from attempting to collect the
judgment amount. Interest has been accruing at a rate of $5,250 per day since
the original judgment was entered in September. In a related federal
court action, CSC's insurance carrier, Northland Insurance Co., is seeking a
declaration that its policies do not cover the $38 million judgment. CSC is
arguing that the Northland policies should cover the judgment amount, and
that Northland acted improperly in failing to settle the claims prior to the
jury's verdict. For more information on the court's ruling, please
contact attorney Jeff Kobs at 817.332.5956,
attorney Bill Lane at 817.625.5570, or Bruce Vincent at 214.559.4630 or pager
888.361.8452. (yahoo.com)
October 10, 2003
Day in and day out, workers sling hash to feed the
3,500 Tarrant County Jail inmates three hot meals a day. But as companies line up this month to bid for a
multimillion-dollar food-services contract, the focus has shifted from
slinging hash to slinging mud. Two of
the companies expected to bid on the contract are run by former business
partners turned bitter rivals. Sealed
bids are due to the Tarrant County purchasing department by Oct. 27. The
contract, now held by Hurst-based Mid-States Services, is worth about $4.1
million a year. Among the companies
expected to bid is Dallas-based Mid-America Services, run by Jack Madera. He
has a long history of winning lucrative contracts and maintaining friendships
with elected officials who have a say in whether the company gets public
business. Mid-America will compete for
the contract against Mid-States, which Madera started in 1970 and sold in
February 1999. John Sammons, chief
executive of Mid-States and one of the investors who bought the company from
Madera, said there is more to the bid than just a second helping of cafeteria
business. "Our group is committed
to running this company with integrity," Sammons said. "There is a
clear-cut delineation between the Mid-States of the past and the Mid-States
of today. "The kind of customer
base we want is the kind who embraces integrity in government."
Business and pleasure Many in Texas law
enforcement consider Madera a friend, including Tarrant County Sheriff Dee
Anderson, whose office oversees jail operations including the kitchen.
"The relationship began when I was
elected," Anderson said. "Jack was, at that point, a consultant for
Mid-States. "Both he and John
[Sammons] became friends of mine and supporters." Sammons says Madera's ties to law-enforcement officials
prompted him to keep Madera on board as a consultant after Madera sold
Mid-States in 1999. Madera and Sammons
parted ways in March 2002, when Madera started Mid-America after a three-year
non-competition agreement expired with Mid-States. Madera looked to his old friends to help his new business
and promptly won contracts in Dallas and Denton counties. There are two types of contracts: food-services contracts,
under which the county pays companies to provide meals to inmates, and
commissary contracts, under which companies sell snacks and other items to
inmates and return a portion of the proceeds to the county. Sheriffs control jail commissaries, including selection of
the companies that handle the services. Bids are required, and county
proceeds must be used to benefit inmates. A provision applying only to Tarrant County requires
commissioners court approval of commissary contracts. Some of Madera's contracts have raised eyebrows. In
Dallas, Madera's relationship with Sheriff Jim Bowles has been criticized
since Bowles awarded the commissary contract to Mid-America in June 2002.
One Dallas County official labeled the contract a
"bad business decision," and questions have been raised about
whether Madera exerted undue influence through his friendships. But no
specific allegations of wrongdoing have been voiced publicly. Madera's bid in Dallas County gave the sheriff's
department about $600,000 a year, less than what was offered by two other
competitors, including Mid-States. In
Tarrant County, Anderson awarded Madera's Mid-America the contract for
commissary services in April. The company sells aspirin, snacks, soap and
other items from carts, dubbed "banana wagons," that workers wheel
through the jail. Under the commissary
contract, Madera will pay the sheriff's office at least $750,000 a year. As
was the case in Denton and Dallas counties, Madera won the Tarrant County
business by beating out Mid-States, which held the existing contracts.
'No hidden agenda' Anderson says he is
confident that the bidding will be above board, as he says it was when he
awarded Mid-America the commissary contract. Tarrant County commissioners are expected to vote on the
food-services contract by Dec. 31. Six companies are expected to submit bids,
which will be analyzed by an evaluation committee. Anderson said the current commissary contract shows that
local officials are committed to hammering out the best deal possible.
"I believe we have the most lucrative contract
for any county in the state," Anderson said. "It is second to
none." Anderson said he has
lunched regularly and dined occasionally with Madera and has dined with
Sammons, played golf at his country club and seen a Dallas Stars game from a
luxury box, all at Sammons' expense. "I
don't do anything in secret," Anderson said. "There is no hidden
agenda. "Because we are clients,
we have a relationship with those people," he said. "Certainly,
nothing improper has taken place." Sammons also said there is nothing improper about his
relationship with Anderson. "Building
relationships is part of doing business in the public and the private
sector," Sammons said. "It is hard to develop trust."
Madera would not comment to the Star-Telegram
except to say he intends to bid on the jail food-services contract and that
he denies any inappropriate relationships with Tarrant County officials.
"There is nothing inappropriate going on in
Dallas, either," Madera said. Commissioner
J.D. Johnson, who represents Precinct 4, in the northwest part of the county,
said his 15- to 20-year friendship with Madera has not influenced county
business. "I've always tried to
vote for what I thought was the best deal, and it's what I'll do this
time," Johnson said. Sammons,
however, said he'll watch the bidding closely to ensure that he's treated fairly.
He won't be alone. Patrick Turner, regional sales director for Aramark Corp.,
which also expects to bid on the contract, said: "On a level playing
field, we have always been able to compete. But that's always been the
question, whether it has always been a level playing field."
(Star-Telegram)
September
18, 2003
Visiting State District Judge Roger Towery has signed a $38.3 million
judgment against Sarasota, Fla.-based Correctional Services Corp. in a
lawsuit over the death of an 18-year-old man who died at a Mansfield boot
camp in 2001. The judgment, entered yesterday in Tarrant County's 236th
District Court, includes $37.4 million in actual damages plus interest and
$750,000 in punitive damages. In August, a Fort Worth jury awarded $35 million
in actual damages and $5.1 million in punitive damages to the family of Bryan
Alexander. The punitive damages were reduced in the judgment under Texas
punitive damage caps. According to the lawsuit, Alexander died on Jan.
9, 2001, from a penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia while participating in
a six-month boot camp program as a condition of his misdemeanor probation.
Alexander chose the boot camp over jail time. He died after his pleas for
medical attention were ignored for days. "This judgment sends a
clear signal that the original verdict in this case was sound," says
Jeff Kobs, a partner in Fort Worth's Kobs & Haney, who represented the Alexander family
along with Fort Worth attorney Bill Lane. During trial, Kobs and Lane argued that Alexander's medical condition
should have triggered a response from the boot camp nurse or other employees
of CSC. Evidence in the case showed that Alexander experienced difficulty
breathing and began coughing up blood at least five days before his death.
CSC eventually transferred Alexander to a local hospital, but he died less
than 36 hours after being admitted. "Bryan's was a senseless death
that should never have happened," Lane says. "The Alexander family
hopes this judgment will send a clear message to CSC and other for-profit
correctional companies, and that no other families are forced to suffer a
similar ordeal." Under Texas law, CSC has 30 days to appeal the
judgment, ask for a new trial, or pay the $38.3 million judgment. If CSC
appeals the judgment, state law would delay the payment of the judgment if
CSC posts a $25 million bond. For more information on the judgment in
this case, please contact attorney Jeff Kobs at
817.332.5956, attorney Bill Lane at 817.625.5570, or Bruce Vincent at
214.559.4630 or pager 888.361.8452. (Yahoo Finance)
September 6, 2003
A state judge in Montague County is set to hear arguments today to finalize
$40.1 million in damages that a jury awarded last month to the parents of an
Arlington man who died while at the former Mansfield boot camp. Correctional
Services Corp. and its nurse Knyvett Reyes were
found responsible for the Jan. 9, 2001, death of Bryan Alexander. The
18-year-old probationer died of a rare lung infection after his complaints of
feeling weak and coughing up blood went ignored for days. A Tarrant County
jury decided that the Florida-based company, which contracted to run the
camp, and its nurse should pay $35 million for Alexander's death, his
suffering and his parents' loss. The jury then added $5.1 million in punitive
damages, with CSC to pay most of the judgment. Attorneys for CSC and Reyes
are expected to appeal the verdict. CSC Chief Executive James Slattery said
his attorneys intend to "request that the court set aside the jury's
verdict." "Mr. Alexander died from an extremely rare form of
antibiotic-resistant pneumonia, which is not normally contracted outside of a
hospital setting," he said in a statement last week. "Even the
plaintiffs' experts testified that this condition would have been extremely
difficult to diagnose." Plaintiffs' attorneys say CSC's position shows
an "ongoing unwillingness to take responsibility" for Alexander's
death. "The defendants said they plan to fight us tooth and nail,"
said Mark Haney, one of seven attorneys representing Alexander's parents,
Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert. "They
want to try and disregard the verdict that addressed their bad
behavior," he said. "It is a slap in the face to the Alexander
family and the jury's verdict." CSC's Fort Worth attorney, Vic Anderson,
declined to comment on the case. Reyes' attorney, Michael Wallach, could not
be reached to comment. CSC has $35 million in insurance to cover the jury
award in Alexander's death. But the company's insurer has sued, saying it is
not obligated to pay because Reyes was convicted last year of negligent
homicide. That conviction is being appealed. Under Texas law, punitive
damages in the Alexander case are limited to $750,000 for CSC and $100,000
for Reyes. The jury had set punitive damages at $5 million to be paid by CSC
and $100,000 from Reyes. (Star-Telegram)
September 2, 2003
Jail operator Correctional Services Corp. on Friday said a Texas jury awarded
plaintiffs $5.1 million in punitive damages in a wrongful death suit against
the company and a former employee, but recovery is limited to $850,000 under
Texas law. The company said its primary liability insurance carrier has
recently taken the not uncommon step of disclaiming coverage, but it believes
the carrier has no legitimate basis for the decision and has retained counsel
to enforce its rights under the policies. (Yahoo Finance)
August 29, 2003
With no prior criminal record, the 18-year-old Arlington man hoped that the
former Mansfield boot camp would set him straight after a drunken-driving
arrest. He chose the regimented, low-security corrections facility over
jail time. But a rare, penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia killed
Bryan Alexander on Jan. 9, 2001, while he served his six-month sentence. His
pleas for medical attention had been ignored for days. "He wanted
to get some discipline at the camp and a chance to get his GED. It turned out
to be a death sentence for a DWI," said Charlie Smith, who represented
the teen-ager in the criminal matter and his family in a civil lawsuit.
On Thursday, a Tarrant County jury added $5.1 million in punitive damages to
its award Wednesday of $35 million in actual damages for Alexander's death,
his suffering and his parents' mental anguish and loss of their son.
Jurors blamed the camp's nurse, Knyvett Reyes, and
Florida-based Correctional Services Corp., which contracted to run the
370-bed facility. CSC must pay $26 million of the judgment, Reyes $14.1
million. Reyes' attorney, Michael Wallach, and CSC's attorney, Vic Anderson,
declined to comment. The lawsuit brought by Alexander's parents, Rickey
Alexander and Judy Schumpert, said Reyes and CSC
failed to provide Alexander with adequate and timely medical care. He
had complained of feeling weak and coughing up blood days before he was taken
to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. Alexander was immediately placed
in intensive care but died two days later. The boot camp and
residential drug-treatment programs at the Mansfield facility were closed six
months after Alexander's death. CSC had been paid $2.9 million a year by the
state to run the facility. On Thursday, attorneys for the Alexander
family asked the jury of five women and seven men to further punish CSC and
Reyes to send a message to other correction facilities and nurses.
"You did listen to Bryan's pleas for help. Unfortunately for Bryan, you
are 2 1/2 years too late," Bill Lane, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys,
told the jury in closing arguments Thursday in the punitive-damage stage of
the trial. "But you are not too late to send a message to this private
corporation that we will not accept the lowest bidder or that the bottom line
is worth more than a human life." Attorneys for the defendants
argued that their clients were unaware of the seriousness of Alexander's
illness. Reyes testified that she treated Alexander for a cold, flu and strep
throat based on her evaluation of his symptoms. Fort Worth accountant
L. Andrew McCartney said CSC is worth more than $50.8 million, based on
recent financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CSC has about $25 million in insurance coverage that could be used to cover
the judgment, said Anderson, CSC's attorney. "If the company is
closed down, there are going to be a lot of people out of jobs," he
said. Reyes' attorney, Wallach, said: "I think we all know Knyvett Reyes is not a corporation. I would ask that you
punish her no further." (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
August 28, 2003
A former nurse and a Florida-based private
corrections company that operated the defunct Mansfield boot camp were
responsible for the death of an 18-year-old inmate, a Tarrant County jury
decided Wednesday. The jury of five
women and seven men ordered the nurse and company to pay $35 million for the
death of Bryan Alexander, his suffering, and his parents' mental anguish and
loss of companionship. Alexander died
of a rare penicillin-resistant form of pneumonia at John Peter Smith Hospital
in Fort Worth, two days after being transported from the camp for
probationers. Arlington lawyer Charlie
Smith, who represented Alexander in his criminal matter and the Alexander
family in the wrongful-death lawsuit, said he was not surprised by the jury's
verdict. "This case was more like
a homicide case than a wrongful-death lawsuit because of the way this young
man died," said Smith, one of seven attorneys representing the Alexander
family. "Bryan's family was hopeful that this jury would speak loud
about the conduct of these defendants so it will not happen to another child
in the same circumstances as Bryan Alexander." The lawsuit asserted that Correctional Services Corp., and
its nurse at the camp, Knyvett Reyes of Arlington,
did not provide Alexander with adequate and timely medical care. Alexander
had complained of feeling weak and was coughing up blood days before he was
taken to JPS Hospital. But Reyes
testified during the seven-week trial that, based on her evaluation of his
symptoms, she treated Alexander for a cold, flu and strep throat. Witnesses
testified that Reyes thought the inmate was faking his illness. Reyes' attorney, Michael Wallach, declined to comment
after the jury's verdict. Correctional Services Corp.'s attorney, Vic
Anderson, also declined to comment. Attorneys
for Alexander's parents, Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert,
said Reyes' skepticism cost Alexander his life. He was serving a sentence at
the facility for a drunken-driving conviction and had no prior criminal
record, according to testimony. Correctional
Services Corp., which was paid about $2.9 million a year to run the camp,
must pay 60 percent of the $35 million judgment, while Reyes was ordered to
pay 40 percent. The jury also decided
that Reyes and Correctional Services Corp. acted with malice in ignoring
Alexander's pleas for help, which means the defendants must pay punitive
damages. Closing arguments are scheduled for today to determine punitive
damages. Fort Worth accountant L.
Andrew McCartney said Correctional Services Corp. is worth more than $50.8
million, based on recent financial reports filed with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. "They are
currently making a profit," he testified. Reyes' financial condition was not brought up.
Plaintiffs' attorneys are seeking $40 million in
punitive damages for the Alexander family. Correctional Services Corp. has about $25 million in
insurance coverage that could be used to cover the lawsuit judgment, said
Anderson, the company's attorney. "In
this case, the plaintiffs are asking the jury to punish the company. If the
jury punishes the company, they are probably going to be punishing the
stockholders of this company," Anderson said. (Fort Worth
Star-Telegram)
August
28, 2003
A former nurse and a Florida-based private corrections company that operated
a defunct Mansfield boot camp were responsible for the death of an 18-year-old
inmate, a Tarrant County jury decided Wednesday. The jury of five women
and seven men ordered the nurse and company to pay $35 million for the death
of Bryan Alexander, his suffering, and his parents' mental anguish and future
loss of companionship. Alexander died of a rare penicillin-resistant
form of pneumonia at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, two days after
being transported from the camp for probationers. Arlington lawyer
Charlie Smith, who represented Alexander in his criminal case and the
Alexander family in the wrongful-death lawsuit, said he was not surprised by
the jury's verdict. "This case was more like a homicide case than
a wrongful-death lawsuit because of the way this young man died," said
Smith, one of seven attorneys representing the Alexander family.
"Bryan's family was hopeful that this jury would speak loud about the
conduct of these defendants so it will not happen to another child in the
same circumstances as Bryan Alexander." The lawsuit asserted that
Correctional Services Corp. and its nurse at the camp, Knyvett
Reyes, failed to provide Alexander with adequate and timely medical care.
Alexander had complained of weakness and was coughing up blood days before he
was taken to JPS Hospital. But Reyes testified during the seven-week
trial that, based on her evaluation of his symptoms, she treated Alexander
for a cold, flu and strep throat. Witnesses testified that Reyes thought the
inmate was faking his illness. Attorneys for Alexander's parents,
Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert, said Reyes'
skepticism cost Alexander his life. He was serving a sentence at the facility
for a drunken-driving conviction and had no prior criminal record, according
to testimony. Correctional Services Corp., which was paid about $2.9
million a year to run the camp, must pay 60 percent of the $35 million
judgment; Reyes was ordered to pay 40 percent. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
August 27, 2003
Correctional Services Corporation today announced that a Tarrant County,
Texas jury has returned a $35 million verdict against the Company and its
former employee in the wrongful death suit by the parents and estate of Bryan
Alexander. Mr. Alexander died of a rare penicillin-resistant form of
pneumonia while incarcerated at the Tarrant County Community Correctional
Facility, which was operated by the Company at the time. The jury will now be
asked to consider whether punitive damages should also be awarded against the
Company and/or its former employee. (Yahoo Finance)
August 27, 2003
A Tarrant County jury is expected to continue deliberations today in the
wrongful-death lawsuit in the case of an Arlington teen-ager who died while
serving a sentence at the former Mansfield boot camp. Bryan Alexander,
18, died of pneumonia at John Peter Smith Hospital on Jan. 9, 2001 -- days
after he complained of feeling weak and coughing up blood. He had a rare
penicillin-resistant infection, hospital tests later revealed.
Attorneys for his parents, Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert,
said Florida-based Correctional Services Corp., the private company that
operated the boot camp, and its nurse, Knyvett
Reyes, ignored Bryan Alexander's pleas for medical attention and could have
saved his life. The attorneys are asking for at least $75 million for
Alexander's death, his suffering and his parents' mental anguish. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
August 26, 2003
A Tarrant County jury began deliberations Monday in
the wrongful-death lawsuit in the case of an Arlington man who died while
serving a drunken-driving sentence at the former Mansfield boot camp.
Bryan Alexander, 18, died of pneumonia at John Peter
Smith Hospital on Jan. 9, 2001 -- days after he complained of feeling weak
and coughing up blood. He had a rare penicillin-resistant infection, hospital
tests later revealed. Attorneys for his
parents -- Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert --
said the Florida-based private company that operated the boot camp and its
nurse, Knyvett Reyes, ignored his pleas for medical
attention and could have saved his life. "They don't believe they did anything wrong,"
said Jeff Kobs, one of seven attorneys representing
the Alexander family. "No one has come to this courtroom to say they
were sorry or regret what they did. I want you to tell these people they are
responsible and what happened was wrong." Alexander's parents are suing Reyes and Correctional
Services Corp., which contracted to run the 370-bed facility for probationers
and drug treatment. Plaintiffs' attorneys suggested an award of $75 million
for Alexander's death, his suffering and his parents' mental anguish.
A jury of five women and seven men listened to
nearly eight hours of closing arguments Monday in the trial that began July
7. They are expected to resume deliberations this morning. The defendants' attorneys argued that Alexander was
provided with adequate medical care and that he was the only one to blame for
his death because he failed to provide the camp's nurse with enough
information about his illness. "It
wasn't going to make any difference on the ultimate outcome if he had been
seen by a doctor on Jan. 5," Reyes' attorney, Michael Wallach, said.
"Alexander never proved he was coughing up blood until Jan. 7. He had
every opportunity to bring nurse Reyes the proof." Attorney Vic Anderson, who represents CSC, said the
plaintiffs' witnesses were not credible because they were mostly former
inmates at the boot camp, and he frequently called them
"criminals." Anderson also
said that Alexander showed signs of having a cold or the flu but that he was
not seriously ill until he was transported to JPS. "We believe nurse Reyes did not think there was an
extreme risk involved with Alexander," Anderson said. "She was
treating him for strep throat." Reyes
was convicted of negligent homicide last year in Alexander's death and
sentenced to four years' probation. But attorneys for the Alexander family
could not present her conviction to jurors because the case is under appeal.
The county's 19 criminal court judges closed the
boot camp in July 2001 amid an array of problems at the facility. Attorneys
for the Alexander family are also suing the judges who oversaw the facility
in 2000 and 2001 and the probation department. Reyes surrendered her nursing license in 2001 during a
state nursing board investigation. CSC
still has two contracts with Texas. The publicly traded company is paid about
$7 million to run a halfway house in Fort Worth and an intermediate-sanction
facility in Houston, state prison spokesman Larry Todd said. Alexander's attorneys said a judgment in the lawsuit is
important to prevent similar incidents at other facilities operated by CSC.
"We're talking about a for-profit corrections
company that houses our youths. They do it for the money. And it's the bottom
line they are concerned about, not about responsibility," said Bill
Lane, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. "It is wrong what happened to
Bryan Alexander, and they should pay for what happened."
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
July
21, 2003
A Texas Rangers' investigation into the death of an inmate at the former
Mansfield boot camp determined that the 18-year-old probationer had to take
cold and flu pills for days before he was allowed to visit a nurse. Attorneys
blamed a nurse's skepticism and poor staffing by a Florida-based private
company that ran a Mansfield boot camp for the death of an inmate who had
been serving a drunken-driving sentence at the facility. The attorneys,
who represent the parents of Bryan Alexander, made the accusations Thursday
during opening statements of a wrongful death trial. Alexander, 18, of
Arlington died Jan. 9, 2001, two days after being transferred to a Fort Worth
hospital. He had a form of pneumonia that was resistant to penicillin. Plaintiffs'
attorneys contend the camp's nurse and Correctional Services Corp., which
contracted to run the camp for the county's judges and probation department,
failed to provide Alexander with timely and adequate medical care.
"They watched him die," Charlie Smith said in opening statements.
He is one of seven attorneys representing Alexander's parents, Rickey
Alexander and Judy Schumpert. Visiting State
District Judge Roger Towery is presiding over the trial, and a five-woman,
seven-man jury will decide the case. The plaintiffs' attorneys contend
Bryan Alexander tried to get medical attention as early as Dec. 31 but was
not seen until Jan. 5. Alexander had been given over-the-counter medication
to treat a cold or flu. Alexander's parents are suing CSC and the
camp's former nurse, Knyvett Reyes, who was hired
by the company. Reyes was convicted of negligent homicide last year in
Alexander's death. Attorneys on both sides are awaiting clarification from
the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth on whether that conviction is final or
under appeal. Vic Anderson, an attorney for CSC, said Reyes acted
appropriately in treating what she believed was the flu or strep throat and
could not have known the severity of Alexander's illness. "We do
not deny the fact that Mr. Alexander was ill and began feeling bad sometime
in late December or early January," Anderson said in opening statements.
"But a lot of people at the facility were feeling bad," he
said. "There was an outbreak of flu. It was not an unusual thing
for someone at the camp to say they are sick to get out of work or to get a
trip to the hospital." Alexander died two days after being taken
to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth on Jan. 7, 2001. "Just
because there is a death doesn't necessarily mean there is someone at
fault," Anderson said. Texas Rangers Sgt. Alvin Alexis testified
that the boot camp had a policy of requiring probationers at the 370-bed
Mansfield facility to take over-the-counter drugs for three days before they
could request a visit to the camp's nurse. Alexis said Alexander
complained of coughing up blood but had to take cold and flu pills for three
days and then tried for another three days to visit the camp's nurse. Alexis
based his conclusions on CSC records and interviews with CSC employees and
boot camp inmates. Reyes' attorney, Michael Wallach, told jurors they
should question the reliability of inmates' statements, even
Alexander's. "You will have to determine whether Bryan Alexander
was a reliable historian of his own health problems," he said. The
civil lawsuit, which initially sought more than $700 million in damages, is
expected to last more than a month, court officials said. Attorneys for
Alexander's parents are not disclosing how much in damages they'll seek at
the conclusion of the trial. (Fort Worth Star Telegram)
July 14, 2003
Jury selection begins today in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the
parents of an 18-year-old Arlington man who died after becoming ill at a
former Mansfield facility for probationers. While serving a sentence
for drunken driving, Bryan Alexander developed a rare lung infection and died
Jan. 9, 2001, two days after being transferred to a Fort Worth
hospital. Alexander's parents, Rickey Alexander and Judy Schumpert, are suing Correctional Services Corp., the
Florida-based private contractor that operated the camp, and its former
nurse, Knyvett Reyes, who was convicted in
Alexander's death last year. The lawsuit, which initially sought $755
million, contends that the camp and its employees ignored warning signs of
Alexander's failing health. Attorneys for Correctional Services and
Reyes did not return phone calls Friday. The lawsuit may help prevent
other inmates' medical concerns from being ignored, attorneys for Alexander's
parents say. Last year, Reyes, the camp's former nurse, was sentenced
to two years in jail, but a probationary sentence was imposed in lieu of jail
time. She was also ordered to pay $10,939.74 in restitution. The attorneys
for the state and for Reyes negotiated the sentence. Reyes' attorney,
Jack Strickland, is trying to appeal the conviction. But the special
prosecutor in the case is fighting the request, meaning that Reyes'
conviction can be used as evidence in the civil case, attorneys say.
Plaintiff attorneys said they will focus on Reyes' actions in Alexander's
death and how the private contractor limited inmates' access to medical
attention. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office ruled that
Alexander died of pneumonia caused by an antibiotic-resistant infection.
Doctors at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth could not detect and treat
the infection in time to save his life. Six months after Alexander's
death, the county's 19 criminal-court judges voted to close the boot camp and
residential drug-treatment programs at the 370-bed facility. The judges also
voted to end the county's $2.9 million annual contract with Correctional
Services Corp. (Star-Telegram)
January 22, 2003
A
former Mansfield boot camp nurse convicted of negligent homicide in the 2001 death
of an inmate is appealing and asking for a new trial. Knyvett Reyes,
36, was sentenced in August to four years of community supervision for the
death of boot camp probationer Bryan Alexander, 18, of Arlington. Reyes
struck a deal with prosecutors to avoid serving two years in state jail. The judge who presided over the non-jury
trial in June found that Reyes failed to provide timely and adequate medical
care to the teen-ager, who died of a rare lung infection that was resistant
to antibiotics. Alexander's parents
are suing Reyes, the boot camp's doctor and a Florida-based private
contractor that ran the facility. The suit contends that Alexander's pleas
for medical help were ignored and his death could have been prevented. The civil case is scheduled to begin July 7
in Judge Tom Lowe's 236th District Court. (Star_Telegram)
December 31, 2002
Attorneys for parents of an 18-year old who died after falling ill at a
Mansfield boot camp filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Tarrant County
and its 19 judges who managed the correctional center. The lawsuit
contends that the judges who supervised the Tarrant County Community
Correctional Facility failed to ensure that its staff provided proper medical
care for Bryan Alexander, 18, of Arlington. The boot camp's former
nurse, Knyvett Reyes, was sentenced in August to
four years of community supervision. She was convicted of negligent
homicide in Alexander's death for failing to provide the teen-ager with
timely medical care. A $755 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by
Alexander's family is pending. (Star-Telegram)
August 31, 2002
FORT WORTH - Former Mansfield boot camp nurse Knyvett
Reyes was sentenced Friday to four years community supervision for negligent
homicide and ordered to pay restitution to Bryan Alexander's family.
Alexander, an 18-year-old probationer at the boot camp, died in 2001 of a
lung infection that led to pneumonia after leaving her care. During her
trial, the prosecution accused Reyes of failing to provide adequate and
timely attention. Reyes was sentenced to two years in jail, but the
probationary sentence was imposed in lieu of jail time. Reyes was also
ordered to pay $10,939.74 in restitution. The attorneys for the state and
Reyes negotiated the sentence. Alexander, who was in the boot camp because of
a drunken-driving conviction, died after being taken from the camp to John
Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. Reyes is also barred from performing any
nursing duties involving direct patient care during her probation. She is
working as a hospital clerk. Barring an appeal, criminal proceedings are now
concluded. But family members have filed a $755 million wrongful death civil
lawsuit. The family two weeks ago moved to add Tarrant County's 19 criminal
judge to the suit. (Star-telegram)
June 29, 2002
A
nurse accused in the death of a probationer at the former Mansfield boot camp
was convicted Friday of negligent homicide. Knyvett
Reyes, 36, of Arlington, faces up to two years in state jail in the death of
18-year-old Bryan Alexander, a probationer at the camp. "It's kind of
difficult to feel sorry for nurse Reyes because she didn't show any empathy
for Bryan," the teen's father, Rickey Alexander, said outside the
courtroom. "The important thing for us was we didn't want her in a
position where she could do the same thing to some other person."
"Bryan Alexander died as a result of being ignored," special
prosecutor Bill Turner said during closing arguments. A pending $755 million
wrongful death lawsuit in Alexander's death kept the courtroom packed
throughout Reyes' two-week trial. Alexander's parents are suing Florida-based
Correctional Services Corp., the private company that ran the 370-bed
Mansfield facility for probationers. (The Star-Telegram)
June 28, 2002
A
former boot camp nurse thought an inmate who died after complaining of
coughing up blood had a cold or strep throat, she testified Thursday. Knyvett Reyes, 36, of Arlington, is being tried on
charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Bryan
Alexander, a probationer at the Mansfield camp. Prosecutors contend Reyes
failed to provide Alexander with adequate and timely medical attention.
Witnesses for the prosecution have said Reyes was skeptical of inmates'
illnesses, and that she did not provide physicians with enough information to
detect Alexander's infection. During Reyes' cross-examination, special
prosecutor Bill Turner accused her of altering Alexander's medical records,
ignoring his complaints and failing to take some vital signs that could have
helped doctors save the teen-ager's life. Turner accused Reyes of creating
records after Alexander died to help in her defense. Original boot camp
records and inmate's files have not been located, he said. (The
Star-Telegram)
June 25, 2002
A
Colorado prison warden testified Monday that a Mansfield boot camp nurse
could not have known an inmate under her care had a fatal illness based on
his written request for medical treatment. The nurse, Knyvett
Jane Reyes, is on trial on negligent homicide and manslaughter charges in the
death of 18-year-old Bryan Alexander, a probationer at the camp who medical
examiners determined died of a form of pneumonia. Prosecutors have argued
that Reyes did not thoroughly examine Alexander. They contended she should
have taken several vital signs, such as his blood pressure and heart rate,
which would have revealed a rare infection that eventually caused his death
Jan. 9. An official with the state nurse licensing agency testified last week
that Reyes should have sent Alexander to a doctor Jan. 5. Alexander was taken
to the hospital Jan. 7 and died two days later. Special prosecutor Lindsey
Roberts said Alexander's weight loss - about 25 pounds during his two months
at the camp - and claims that he was coughing up blood should have been red flags.
Roberts said Alexander was 6 feet tall and weighed 150 pounds when he died.
(The Star-Telegram)
September
27, 2001
The boy knew rage. A troublemaking, dope-smoking misfit, "Brad" was
in and out of trouble with the law, and more in than out. He ran away from
home, stayed out all night, stole. Help came in the form of confinement to a
juvenile "boot camp" run by Correctional Services Corp., a private
company that manages two Dallas County juvenile facilities. Sent to CSC's
program for emotionally disturbed youths in Southern Dallas, Brad's condition
quickly deteriorated. Privately, the boy's group counselor told his
grandmother, "I am not qualified. I do not have the education. He needs
more than I can give him." Those words, from one of CSC's own employees,
might be used to sum up the company's long and troubled history of running
juvenile and other jail facilities here and nationwide with what one critic
calls a "Costco" approach to juvenile treatment. It is a track
record that includes chilling episodes of sexual abuse, gross mismanagement
and, in one Tarrant County case, the death of an 18-year-old. In the past
decade, in New York, Florida and Texas, local authorities and the federal
government have canceled contracts with CSC, following a host of complaints
from former CSC inmates and their families. One top Texas government official
in the juvenile justice system, who declined to be named, says CSC has a
two-pronged pitch when it sells its services. First, it promises much lower
costs. The Texas Youth Commission, for instance, budgets $129 per day per
juvenile at its facilities, compared with the $80 or $90 a day CSC charges.
In other instances, CSC pledges to help counties make money. At CSC boot
camps in North Texas, drill instructors are hired at $7.46 an hour. Their
training consists of observing other instructors for a week, before being put
to work. "There were a whole lot of people hired to do jobs they didn't
know how to do," says one educator who taught at the facility, speaking
on the condition that she not be identified. She worked for another company
hired by the county to provide schooling at the CSC facility but quit after
six months because she believed she and her staff, who went for weeks without
offices or phones, were ill-equipped to handle their responsibilities. One
fresh-out-of-college education major, she recalls, was handed the
responsibility of developing a special education program. After the July 1999
attack on his grandmother, Brad was taken to the Dallas County juvenile detention
center. A month later, state District Judge Hal Gaither committed him to the
CSC boot camp. Initially, his grandmother welcomed the development. She
believed the help she had sought had finally arrived. But even behind bars he
continued to misbehave and spent countless hours, sometimes shackled and
handcuffed, seated on a concrete bench in a small confinement room that
reeked of urine. Brad, like many of his peers, did not meet with an
individual counselor, family counselor or psychiatrist for months. When he
did see a doctor, the juvenile simply told the psychiatrist to halt his
prescribed drugs, and the physician agreed, according to records. The lack of
promised counseling wasn't unique to Brad's case. Attorney Craig Sargent
represented a mentally retarded client sent to CSC's unit for emotionally
disturbed kids. His client, he says, was also denied the family counseling he
had been promised. At a hearing to determine whether the boy should be sent
to a Texas Youth Commission facility, Sargent grilled a CSC drill instructor
and program director Brown. The instructor testified that despite working
with the youth every day, she had not realized he was mentally handicapped.
"That would be important to know when you're addressing someone as far
as their mental capacity and their ability to follow your directive, if they
have any defect. Would you agree with me?" Sargent asked. "Yes,
sir," the employee replied. For four months, CSC had been receiving $82
a day to treat the boy, Sargent notes. "It pissed me off as a
taxpayer," he recalls. In the late '90s, the company ran into similar
problems in Florida. Dade County officials terminated contracts when they
discovered CSC had deliberately kept delinquents beyond their release dates
to pocket extra money. The local school district paid the company to teach
kids in its custody; CSC was accused of collecting money for days when it
provided no schooling. "They are a completely greedy company. They have
a Costco approach to meaningful intervention," says Marie Osborne, an
assistant public defender in Dade County who went to court to get 11 of her
indigent clients removed from a CSC facility. The Florida Department of
Juvenile Justice conducted a study of the facility and found a lack of
training, inadequate background checks on employees and inadequate food
service. Employees had even helped stage fights between 13- and 14-year-olds
while their peers watched and referred to these bloody scrabbles as "The
Main Event" in memos, according to CSC employees' testimonies. The
lawsuits against CSC are mounting to the point analysts say that they are
threatening the corporate bottom line. Once a Wall Street darling, CSC has
fallen on hard times. (Dallas Observer)
July 13,
2001
Five former Mansfield boot camp inmates filed a civil lawsuit Thursday,
alleging that they were sexually harassed or given inadequate medical care
while housed there. Two female plaintiffs allege that a male guard
fondled them and repeatedly made sexually suggestive comments. Three
former male inmates allege that they suffered long-term physical problems
after failing to receive prompt and adequate medical attention.
Arlington attorney Howard Rosenstein, who filed the suit Thursday, represented
three female former boot camp inmates who won a $2.8 million award in a
sexual harassment suit against Correctional Services Corp. in March.
"Again, we find ourselves in the situation where, due to the absence of
enforcement of a security policy at CSC, instructors and guards were allowed
to isolate, torment and sexually abuse these women," Mr. Rosenstein
said. The suit is the latest in a series of legal battles facing the
company, which operates more than a dozen facilities in Texas and runs
facilities in 18 states. A $ 755 million lawsuit alleging inadequate
medical care was filed by the parents of Bryan Alexander, who died Jan. 9
from pneumonia while an inmate at the boot camp. The company also faces
a civil lawsuit by a former operations manager who alleges that he was
improperly fired for reporting staffing shortages. The company has
repeatedly denied the allegations in those cases. (The Dallas Morning
News)
June 21, 2001
A panel of judges voted unanimously Wednesday to close the Mansfield boot
camp and residential drug treatment facility July 6 and reopen it as a day
treatment program for probationers. The Board of Criminal Judges, with
11 of its 19 members in attendance, decided to move up the closure date from
Aug. 31. A contract with Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. to
operate the 370-bed facility ends Aug. 31, but the company has agreed to end
its obligations sooner. The judges voted this year not to renew the
contract with Correctional Services Corp. The company came under scrutiny
after some female inmates were sexually assaulted by employees and because of
questions about the quality of health care for inmates. Probationer
Bryan Alexander, 18, of Arlington died of pneumonia Jan. 9, two days after
being transported to a Fort Worth hospital. Alexander's parents have
filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the nurse who treated him, the company
and others. (The Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
May 19, 2001
Two Tarrant County judges pulled about a dozen probationers from
drug-rehabilitation programs at the Mansfield boot camp facility Thursday
after reports that a guard had consensual sex with an inmate. Boot camp
administrator Randy Tate declined to discuss details of the allegations,
other than saying that the reports are being investigated and that the guard
has been suspended. State District Judges Jamie Cummings and Sharen
Wilson removed probationers from the substance-abuse treatment program at the
facility Thursday after officials notified the county's probation department
of the reports. (Arlington Morning News)
May 17, 2001
A privately operated prison that was the subject of a Texas Rangers
investigation over prisoners' treatment will now be shuttered. The
370-bed Tarrant Community Corrections Facility will close in less than three
months due to a $2.8 million budget shortfall. Earlier this year, the
judges voted to not renew a contract with Florida-based Correctional Services
Corp. to operate the facility. The company, which has run the center
since 1992, has been criticized because of escapes, sexual assaults by
employees and questions about the health care inmates have received.
Earlier this month, a Tarrant County grand jury indicted a nurse who provided
medical treatment for a boot camp probationer until two days before he died
of pneumonia. (AP)
May 4, 2001
Rick Alexander, hat clutched in hand, sat for nearly 50 minutes as a lawyer
defended the woman the Arlington resident is convinced helped kill his
18-year-old son. Mr. Alexander listened intently as Fort Worth attorney
Jack V. Strickland lambasted the Tarrant County grand jury's indictment on
charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide against Knyvett
Jane Reyes, a nurse at the Mansfield boot camp where Bryan Alexander was an
inmate. " I don't think that Nurse Reyes is a victim," Mr.
Alexander said in a hallway at the Tarrant County Justice Center.
"Bryan told me he filled out three requests, not to see the doctor, but
to go to the hospital. But he said, ' She's real mean and she doesn't
like me. ' He told me that himself." Bryan Alexander died Jan. 9
at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. He was sentenced to the
camp for assault and drunken driving. The teen filed a written request
for medical attention Jan. 4. Camp officials contend that he was seen
by Ms. Reyes the next day and given antibiotics, but the teen was required to
continue a workout regimen through Jan. 6. James Slattery, chief
executive officer of Sarasota, Fla.-based Correctional Services Corp., was
out of town Thursday and was unavailable for comment on the pending court
case. (Arlington Morning Star)
May 4, 2001
A 35-year-old nurse at the Mansfield boot camp was indicted Thursday on
charges of manslaughter and negligent homicide in connection with the death
of an 18-year-old inmate. The indictment alleges that Knyvett Jane Reyes recklessly and negligently caused the
death of Bryan Alexander of Arlington by failing to adequately assess his
condition, report his illness and provide adequate care at the Tarrant County
Community Correctional Facility. The two-page indictment states that
Ms. Reyes failed to adequately assess and evaluate Mr. Alexander's medical
status, failed to accurately report his status to the boot camp's attending
physician, and failed to stabilize Mr. Alexander's medical condition and
prevent complications. The indictment also says Ms. Reyes did not order
bed rest, and did not prohibit strenuous physical exertion or transfer Mr.
Alexander to the hospital in a timely manner. Florida-based
Correctional Services Corp. has operated the Mansfield facility since
1992. The boot camp is part of the Tarrant County Community
Correctional Facility. (Arlington Morning News)
May 4, 2001
The parents of a Mansfield boot camp inmate, who died of pneumonia days after
complaining of being ill, filed a $755 million wrongful death lawsuit Friday
against the company that runs the camp and others. Bryan Alexander, 18,
of Arlington, died Jan. 9, two days after being transferred from the camp to
Fort Worth's John Peter Smith Hospital. The lawsuit contends the camp
and its employees ignored signs of Alexander's "falling health" and
were grossly negligent in providing medical treatment. Defendants in
the lawsuit are Correctional Services Corp., a private, Florida-based company
that runs the camp; CSC attorney Tony Schaffer; the Tarrant County Community
and Corrections Department; CSC nurse Knyvett
Reyes; and Dr. Samuel Lee, who was employed by the company. Reyes was
indicated Thursday on a charge of manslaughter and negligent homicide in
Alexander's death. An Austin administration law judge, who suspended
Reyes' nursing license in March, wrote that Alexander "would most likely
have been" cured if his illness was diagnosed earlier and treated with
other antibiotics. In February, three former inmates were awarded $2.8
million by a Tarrant County judge for sexual harassment the women suffered at
the facility. (Star-Telegram)
April 20, 2001
Members of Tarrant County's judiciary have voted to stop sending probationers
to the Mansfield boot camp out of concerns that there won't be enough money
to keep the camp open long enough for the next platoon to graduate.
Under the contract with Florida-based Correctional Services Corp., the county
pays $21.94 a day per bed, regardless of whether the beds are occupied. This
arrangement will continue until the contract expires Sept. 1. The
judges voted in February to manage the facility after the private
contractor's contract expires in September. Allegations of sexual
harassment by guards and the death of a probationer in January have plagued
the boot camp. (The Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
April 6, 2001
A Tarrant County grand jury will decide whether to indict officials at the
Mansfield boot camp in connection with the death of a former inmate, a
special prosecutor said Thursday. Grand jurors will hear evidence April
25 from witnesses and the Texas Ranger's investigation into the death of
18-year-old Bryan Alexander of Arlington, who was an inmate at the boot camp,
also known as the Tarrant County Community Correctional Facility. Mr.
Smith has notified Correctional Services Corp., which has run the boot camp
since it opened in1992, that the Alexander family may file a civil
lawsuit. A Correctional Services Corp., official said Thursday that a
grand jury was the proper venue for consideration of the investigation.
The Texas State Board of Nurses Examiners on March 2 indefinitely suspended
the license of Knyvett Jane Reyes, the boot camp
nurse who provided medical care to the teenager. Two other inmates have
alleged that they received inadequate medical care at the camp, charges
facility officials have denied. The Board of Criminal Court Judges
voted Feb. 21 to assume management of the 370-bed facility when Correctional
Services' operating contract ends Aug. 31. On March 5, a Tarrant County
judge awarded $2.8 million in damages to three female former inmates who sued
Correctional Services Corp. and a former drill instructor for sexual
harassment. (The Dallas Morning News)
March 21, 2001
A Tarrant County criminal justice task force has recommended that the
Mansfield boot camp program be discontinued and its beds used for housing
probation violators. If approved, the program would occupy the 120 beds
currently used for the boot camp. (Dallas Morning News, March 21, 2001)
March 6, 2001
Bryan Alexander's medical treatment while incarcerated at the Mansfield boot
camp was so poor that one official compared it to "modern day
torture," and the nurse supervising him has her license temporarily
suspended. Knyvett Jane Reyes' nursing license by
the Texas State Board of Nurse Examiners was suspended Feb. 13, according to
documents released Monday by State Sen. Chris Harris' office. Mr. Alexander
died Jan. 9 at John Peter Smith Hospital of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia
caused by a staphylococcus inflection. Charles Smith, attorney for Rick
Alexander, Bryan Alexander's father, said the nurse's suspension validates
his client's claims. "This is what we've been saying all along, that
medical service was substandard," he said. On Jan. 3, Mr. Alexander
first notified medical staff through a locked drop box that he was not
feeling well. Inmates at the boot camp submit sick forms into a locked box.
In the case of Mr. Alexander, his form was not read until Jan. 4.Documents
show Mr. Alexander was not assesses by Ms. Reyes until Jan.5, two days after
he filled out a report detailing his complaints of flu-like symptoms. "I
caught the flu or something from somebody. My whole body is sore. It hurts real bad when I cough," Mr. Alexander wrote on Jan.
3. "My nose gets closed up to where I can't even breathe and the pills
I've been taking are not working. Mr. Reyes, who had been on Christmas
vacation, returned to work Jan. 3. According to the drill instructor's
testimony, Ms. Reyes was aware of the ailing teen's symptoms Jan. 4. On Jan.
5, he filled out another form. According to registered nurse carol Dobrich,
an independent expert hired by the board to review the case, the treatment of
Mr. Alexander, who died at John Peter Smith Hospital on Jan. 9, amounted to
"modern day torture." "By 2 p.m. on January 5th, once she knew
Bryan Alexander had as temperature of 101, and a red, sore throat, respondent
knew he had an infection," according to Ms. Dobrich's testimony, outline
in the order suspending the license. "And her failure to have him seen
by a doctor or send him immediately to the emergency room was an
inappropriate nursing response. (Arlington Morning News)
March 1, 2001
Three women who allege they were sexually harassed while inmates at the
Mansfield boot camp asked a state judge Wednesday for up to $4 million in
damages. "If this court does not dress down and discipline this attitude
every women, everyone else, is subject to the same consideration these women
got," Brice Cottongame, the attorney representing
the three women, said in closing arguments. But the attorney for Correctional
Services Corp., the Florida-based company that operates the boot camp, said
employees, not the company, are at fault. the civil trail's final day
included testimony from a Correctional Services executive, who refuted
earlier testimony from a state senator. On Wednesday, Mr. Rau suggested that
the senator misinterpreted a comment he made. "I did not make any
statement like that," Mr. Rau said. "There was point in the conversation
where I said I would like to get all the facts and hear both sides of the
story. "The senator said, "What could the other side of the story
be?' which is when the statement was made. That is the other side of the
story." "We stand of Senator Harris' credibility," Mr. Cottongame said. "Sen. Harris has no ax to grind, no
interest in this lawsuit." (Arlington Morning News)
February 27, 2001
In the latter dated Jan. 30, 2000 - 11 days after Kari Echels
Chattha graduated from the boot camp - she wrote to
Joseph Fonville telling him she missed him and she was worried about him. She
used the term of endearment "honey." Tony Schaffer, an attorney
representing Correctional Services Corp., which runs the boot camp, said Mrs.
Chattha 's letter proves she was involved
romantically with Mr. Fonville. Mrs. Chattha, 19,
and two other plaintiffs, Karen fowler, 21, and Annawaynette
Creek, 33 allege in their suit they were fondled and sexually harassed by
boot camp workers during their incarceration at the Mansfield boot camp over
a seven-month period in 1999. Ms. Fowler and Ms. Creek also are suing former
boot camp maintenance worker Michael Zahn. Fred Bagely,
a former vice president of CSC, testified in a videotaped deposition that
sexual harassment was a problem at the Mansfield Facility. he initially
learned of the allegations made by Mrs. Chattha,
Ms. Fowler and Ms. Creek in 1999. he said. (Arlington Morning News)
February 26, 2001
The county's 19 criminal court judges voted unanimously last week to stop
using a private contractor at the Tarrant County Community Corrections
Facility, which houses the boot camp and three substance abuse programs.
Three former female inmates are suing Florida-based Correctional Services
Corp., alleging sexual abuse at the 370-bed facility. The company's contract
expires Sept. 1. The lawsuit's allegations are among recent criticisms of the
facility. Accusations of sexual misconduct by male guards against female
inmates have plagued the camp since it opened in 1992. The facility has also
endured accusations of the staff shortages and questions of proper medical
care. Bryan Alexander, 18, a boot camp inmate, died of pneumonia Jan. 9.
Relatives allege he didn't receive timely medical care. "I don't think
any of us want to see CSC or any private company run this camp any
longer," Judge Gallagher said last week. State Sen. Chris Harris,
R-Arlington, who testified against Correctional Services Corp. on Friday in
civil trail, said the company's problems may be a
result of paying many of its employees near the minimum wage. Last year, 50
of 77 employees at the facility were paid less than $17,000 per year,
according to company records. "They are in business of making
money," Harris said. "As result, they are out there cutting corners."
Attorneys for the plaintiffs have alleged that a corporate culture exists at
the company. On Friday, Harris testified that a company executive vice
president told him in a telephone conversation that the women at the boot
camp "got what they wanted." He said the company "seemed to
have no concern about what happened to the women." According to the
company's contract, a female inmate cannot be alone with a male guard unless
a female guard is present. Testimony during the first three days suggested
that staff shortages prevented the company from following its policy of
female inmate supervision, which is part of its contract with the county's
probation department. "They are allowing employees to work 16-hour
shifts, and sometimes more than that," Harris said outside the court
after his testimony Friday. "It obviously came down to the corporate
bottom line." (Star-Telegram)
February 23 ,
2001
The private company that operates the Mansfield boot camp filed false reports
about staffing hours to Tarrant County officials, the facility's former
manager testified Thursday. John Renfroe, a former U.S. Army lieutenant
colonel who worked for the Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. between
June 1994 and June 2000, testified that he had reported the practice to his
supervisors since 1995. "The data that had been in the monthly reports
indicated that CSC as meeting or exceeding contract hour requirements,"
said Mr. Renfroe, a witness in a civil trail in
which three women are suing the company because of sexual harassment at the facility.
"If you did the math, what was being reported included extraneous,
inappropriate figures." (Arlington Morning News)
February 22, 2001
Tarrant County criminal judges agreed
Wednesday to assume management of the Mansfield boot camp when a contract with
Correctional Services Corp. ends in August. the 19-member Board of Criminal
Judges cited a $2.5 million budget shortfall in its decision not to renew the
private company's contract. The facility could close by Sept. 1 if the
legislature does not approve additional funding, the judges said. Recent
controversies - including the death of an inmate, the hospitalization of two
others and allegations of sexual exploitation of female inmates - were factors in the decision. State Sen. Chris
Harris, R-Fort Worth, who has strongly criticized the boot camp's operation,
praised the judges' decision and said he will ask other state agencies
funding. "I think the judges are the ones who are accountable on that
since they're the ones with the oversight," Mr. Harris said. "I
think this is smartest thin they can do."
(Dallas Morning News)
February 22, 2001
The private company that runs the Mansfield Boot Camp was negligent in
allowing two former workers to sexually harass women at the facility. an
attorney for the three former inmates said in court Wednesday. An attorney
for Florida-based Correctional Services corp. apologized for the incidents
and defended the company's record of quality management. Ms. Fowler and Ms.
Creek allege former maintenance worker Michael Zahn sexually harassed and
exploited them during their several month stays in 1999 at the boot camp.
Mrs. Chattha alleges Joseph Fonville forced her to
participate in improper sexual activity during her 1999 stay. In July, Mr.
Zahn received two years' probation after he pleaded guilty to two counts of
official oppression in connection with both incidents. "The attitude of
this corporate defendant will outrage you." (Arlington Morning
News)
February 22, 2001
As compliance officer at the Mansfield boot camp, John Renfore
spent six years faulting the private contractor that runs the facility,
citing staff shortages and a failure to protect female inmates from sexual
abuse. That testimony Thursday before 141st District Court Judge Paul Enlow bolstered the case of the three former female
inmates who are suing Florida-based Correctional Services Corp., which runs
370-bed facility for probationers. The women assaults contend CSC employees
sexually abused then while they were serving sentences at the Tarrant County
Community Corrections facility in Mansfield. On Thursday, Renfore
said he outlined staffing shortages and inadequate supervision of female
inmates in numerous memos that he sent to CSC officials and his bosses with
Tarrant County Community Corrections Department. those complaints began in
1995 and continued until the probation department fired him in June, he said.
Fort Worth lawyer W. Brice Cottongame, who is
representing the women, said the incidents were caused by a corporate culture
in CSC that does not protect female inmates and ignores their complaints of
abuse. Sherry Johnson, who worked as a drill instructor at the camp last
year, said grievances filed by inmates are often thrown away or shredded by
CSC supervisors. She also said CSC employees retaliate against inmates who
file grievances. "They would read them out loud and laugh, then throw
them in the trash," she said. "They would be disregarded for
misspelling a CSC employee's name." (Star-Telegram)
February 07, 2001
The former operations manager of a Mansfield boot camp filed a lawsuit
Tuesday charging he was unjustly fired after pointing out deficiencies at the
camp. Mr. Renfore says his relationship with
Correctional Services and Ms. Calaway soured 1999
after he began filing critical reports with boot camp administrators. The
reports said that because of staff shortages, the company was not keeping the
facility properly cleaned and maintained, and not adequately supervising its
staff and did not have enough drill staff on duty to properly supervise probationers.
(Arlington Morning News).
January 23, 2001
The Texas Rangers agreed Wednesday to act on a local judge's request for an
independent investigation into the death of an 18-yeat old former Mansfield
inmate. Mr. Harris, who called for wholesale changes at the boot camp five
months ago in the wake of the alleged sexual abuse of three former inmates.
since the Mr. Alexander's death, various judges have removes
more the 50 of the camp's 120 inmates. (Arlington Morning News)
December 14, 2000
A former employee of the private company that operates a North Texas
correctional facility is denying a lawsuit's claims that female inmates were
sexually harassed. Zahn, in deposition released this week, said his behavior
was limited to peeping through an attic vent while one of the women performed
unsolicited sexual acts. (Arlington Morning News)
October 2, 2000
Three teenagers ran from security officers and scaled a seven foot fence in a
recreation yard at the minimum-security center for non-violent offenders.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct.6, 2000)
January 16, 2000
Accusations that neglect caused the death of an inmate at a Mansfield
boot camp last week may slam the door on a million-dollar deal for Tarrant
County to lease its long-shuttered Cold Springs Correctional Facility,
officials said Tuesday. The contract to operate the 384-bed Cold Springs
facility for state inmates. After months of negotiations and some last minute
changes, the contract, signed by CSC officials, was received by county
officials Tuesday. But all five members of Commissioners Court and the
sheriff now say they won't approve it unless the investigation into the death
last week of 18-year old Bryan D. Alexander -- whose family says boot
officials failed to get him proper medical care for pneumonia -- shows that
CSC was not at fault. County officials' concerns about contracting with CSC
for new prisoners were heightened last week when several district judges
began pulling offenders out of the facility after Alexander died. The boot
camp has gone through a year of turmoil, including escapes and allegations of
drill instructors sexually assaulting female inmates, and has struggled with
staffing. Similar issues plagued the facility in the mid-1990's, said James
Slattery. Commissioners Dionne Bagsby and Marti Vanravenswaay voted against the CSC contract last year,
saying they were concerned about problems at the boot camp. (Star-Telegram)
Colorado County Juvenile Facility
Eagle Lake, Texas
Correctional Services Corporation
February 7, 2006 The Victoria Advocate
Colorado County officials are expected to decide today if the county will
close the Eagle Lake Juvenile Detention Facility Boot Camp. The decision will
be made during a special commissioners court meeting
at 9 a.m. The only item on the agenda is to consider authorizing County Judge
Al Jamison to close operation of the boot camp. The county has been operating
the facility since Sept. 1 after the previous operator, Florida-based
Correction Services Corporation, notified the county it would end its contract
on Aug. 31. The court conducted a six-month review, Jamison said in a Monday
phone interview. "We're losing money on the facility and I would like to
shut it down and quit the bleeding."
September 5, 2002
A juvenile sent to a military-style correctional boot camp in Eagle Lake died
Saturday from what officials there said was a "clear case of
suicide." Police in Eagle Lake were contacted after the young man's
death and are conducting an investigation, MacIntyre
said. They could not be reached for comment Sunday. The Colorado County
facility, operated by the Sarasota, Fla.-based Youth Services International,
is part of a growing trend of private correctional centers. (The Houston
Chronicle)
Community House Arrest
Program
Wichita County
September 20, 2003
Since the Community House Arrest
Program started six months ago in Wichita County, the program has led to a
hotbed of controversy, confusion and hard feelings. But, for better or
worse, CHAP is flat-lining this month. The
program, designed to monitor people charged with non-violent crimes with
electronic ankle bracelets until they are sentenced or charges are dropped,
is expected to shut down by Oct. 1, program administrators said Thursday.
"Although the commissioners, several judges and
many in the Sheriff's Department are behind the concept of the house arrest
and its potential benefits, there can be no such program without a concerted
effort from the staff of the District Attorney's Office," (Times
Record News)
Cornell
Companies
(bought by GEO Group)
Houston, Texas
How
The Recession Hurts Private Prisons Nancy Cook, Newsweek June 30, 2010
October 25, 2011 AP
The management company that formerly ran a Rhode Island prison is suing the
facility's governing body, saying it is owed more than $671,000, according to
a complaint filed in federal court. In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S.
District Court in Providence, Cornell Corrections of Rhode Island, Inc. says
the corporation running the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central
Falls still owes money it agreed to pay the firm in 2008. The prison is run
by the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation, a quasi-public agency.
Cornell Corrections operated Wyatt from its opening in 1993 to July 31, 2007,
when the corporation took over, according to a 2009 report on the facility.
Cornell Corrections says it reached a deal in 2008 with the corporation over
the amount of money it was owed under an earlier agreement. The lawsuit says
Wyatt's governing board still hasn't paid. The suit seeks $671,808, plus
interest, costs and attorneys' fees. The corporation stopped making full
payments to Cornell Corrections in 2006, according to a report released last
month by former R.I. Auditor General Ernest A. Almonte. As of August 2007,
the corporation owed Cornell Corrections more than $3.9 million, Almonte's
report found. The 776-bed facility houses medium- and maximum-security
federal detainees awaiting trial or transfer to federal Bureau of Prisons
facilities. It lost a contract to house federal immigration detainees after
one died in its custody in 2008. The jail has been beset by financial
problems in recent years, having lost $6.2 million and taken on $3.5 million
in additional debt from 2007 to 2009, Almonte's report said. The city of
Central Falls once banked on revenue from the prison, but hasn't been paid in
three years. The city filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Attorneys for
Cornell Corrections and the corporation did not immediately return messages
on Tuesday.
September 1, 2010 Smart Money
Owners of municipal bonds issued to pay for jails might not get to pass
Go--and could have trouble collecting interest payments as well. These tax
free bonds don't have a monopoly on defaults, but they're well represented
among failures and troubled issues among the more speculative classes of
municipal bonds. Data from Municipal Market Advisors reveals a slew of
tax-free bonds issued to fund construction of privately run prisons and
detention facilities in states from Texas to Rhode Island to Montana. The
most recent example is Littlefield, a West Texas town of about 6,500 people.
Located between the New Mexico border and Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock,
Littlefield had to dip into reserves to cover payments for about $1.2 in
bonds and other debt used to finance the Bill Clayton Detention Center. The
bonds were issued in 2000, but the expected revenue stream evaporated when,
after a prisoner suicide in 2008, the 310-bed private prison lost its
contract to house out-of-state inmates. In 2009, the Geo Group (GEO),
formerly known as Wackenhut Security, ended its operating agreement with the
detention center, leaving it unoccupied. In April, Fitch Ratings, which in
2009 lowered the bonds to BB from BBB, affirmed a negative rating outlook.
Littlefield city manager Danny Davis says the city is scrambling to avoid
default on the $780,000 worth of annual payments and plans to cut police and
fire service while dramatically raising property taxes when the new fiscal
year begins Oct. 1. The property could be sold or could be taken over by the
state, though neither option is certain. "It's going to be
difficult," he says. "In the meantime, we're just trying to keep
our heads above water until we get to a solution." Bob Libal is the Texas campaign coordinator for Grassroots
Leadership, a lobbying group which opposes for-profit prisons, and the editor
of the blog Texas Prison Bid'ness. He says many
small towns agree to build "speculative prisons" to be run by
private contractors using municipal bond financing but that many of these
projects in a post-Sept. 11 boom have had trouble. Libal
criticizes the development groups that get paid up front for building
detention centers thus saddling the bond-issuers (usually special public
facilities corporations created solely for those projects) with risky debt.
"They go after a lot of towns without a lot of sophistication and
resources to do the due diligence," Libal
says. "If they let the bonds go under, it's very difficult for them to
issue any more debt." Matt Fabian, director of research at Municipal
Market Advisors, cites similar bond woes in Central Falls, R.I.; Hardin,
Mont.; and Baker County, Fla., where about $105 million in total debt has run
into trouble because the prison projects haven't worked out as expected.
"The incarceration rates drives speculation," he says.
"There's an idea that you can profit from this prison trend."
Investors in these increasingly-insecure jail bonds have certainly had to
assume more risk, even though they get higher yields. The $99 million Central
Falls Detention Facility bond issue of 2005 entered technical default in 2009
when it drew on its reserves to make payments. The bonds, issued at par with
a yield of 7.25%, last traded at the end of 2009 at 85.3 cents to the dollar,
with a yield of 8.69%. Municipal revenue bonds issued in 2002 that funded the
West Alabama Youth Services detention facility defaulted in 2005. The bonds
last traded in February at 9 cents to the dollar with a yield of 73.6%.
Fabian says some of the biggest private prison busts are unlikely to have
simple resolutions. A shopping center is easy to repurpose; a detention
center is not. "It's hard to restructure," he says. "Even the
land underneath a prison isn't worth as much as it was." Even with a
resurgent effort by the private prison industry to use their facilities to
detain illegal immigrants and an attempt by the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agency to overhaul detention procedures, problems persist. The
Baker Correctional Development Corporation, created to finance a correctional
facility and immigration detention center west of Jacksonville, Fla., dipped
into reserves for its August payment to holders of bonds issued in 2008. With
those bonds trading last at 71.25 cents to the dollar with a yield of 20.73%,
investors looking to lock up their money should probably seek less risky
types of municipal bonds.
August 17, 2010 Market Watch
The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO 22.20, -0.17, -0.76%) ("GEO") announced today
the final results of the elections made by former stockholders of Cornell
Companies, Inc. (NYSE: CRN) ("Cornell") as to the form of merger
consideration they wish to receive in connection with the acquisition of
Cornell by GEO. GEO closed the acquisition on August 12, 2010, after Cornell
stockholders approved the transaction at a special meeting and GEO
shareholders approved the issuance of shares of GEO common stock issuable as
merger consideration at a special meeting.
August 12, 2010 AP
Private prison operator Geo Group Inc. on Thursday disclosed preliminary
results of a vote by shareholders of Cornell Companies Inc. on that company's
proposed sale to Geo Group. In all, holders of some 15.2 million shares of
Cornell common stock voted on Wednesday on how they would like to receive
their payout once the company is sold. Holders of about 54.5 percent of the
shares elected to receive Geo common stock; 21.5 percent want cash. Another
24 percent didn't make a valid election, Geo Group said. Under the terms of
the deal, Cornell shareholders had two options: Receive 1.3 shares of Geo
common stock for each Cornell share held, or cash equal to the market value
of one Geo share plus $6 or the fair market value of 1.3 shares of Geo common
stock, whichever is greater.
July 27, 2010 Charlton County Herald
For years Charlton County Schools got well over $1 million annually in state
funds to make up for the county's low tax base. Those dollars have fallen
dramatically this year, however to just $27,000. Superintendent Steve McQueen
believes local system funding has changed because of errors in the county tax
digest. Because of the drop, the Charlton County Board of Education voted
unanimously last week to appeal the digest to the state auditor’s office.
“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is get the equalization board to
exercise their discretion and adjust our funding,” explained BOE Attorney Kelly Brooks. “When the state auditor’s
office receives our appeal, they will notify the state department of
education to hold off on the final determination of our funding for 2011.”
The lawyer says this will buy the school system 45 more days, time enough the
school board hopes, for the Charlton County Tax Assessor’s office to come up
with an accurate tax digest. “There have been substantial post-levy
reductions in the digest through timber tax appeals and Cornell’s appeal [on
the D. Ray James Prison valuation],” said Brooks. “Call me skeptical but for
six years in a row the county’s certified digest has meant nothing.” Last year
for example, Charlton County’s certified digest was $332 million but the
county, school board and cities never collected taxes on that amount. After
the state approved the digest, but before payments started coming in, the
digest dropped by $16.5 million because of the prison appeal. That one
reduction amounted to a loss in property tax revenues to the school system
last year of $252,000.
June 22, 2010 DOJ Press Release
ROBERT B. SURLES, 64, of Chicago, Illinois, was sentenced today by United
States District Judge Clarence Cooper to federal prison on charges of
conspiracy and wire fraud for his part in a scheme to defraud the operator of
a California corrections facility of almost $13 million. United States
Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “This defendant
was part of an elaborate fraud scheme that ironically involved the
construction of a prison. He will now experience how business is conducted
inside a real prison.” SURLES was sentenced to 10 years in prison to be
followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution
in the amount of $5,417,500. SURLES was found guilty of one count of
conspiracy and 15 counts of wire fraud by a federal jury at the conclusion of
a two-week trial on February 19, 2010. SURLES’ co-defendants, EDGAR G.
BEAUDREAULT, JR. and HOWARD A. SPERLING, were sentenced to federal prison
terms on April 29, 2010, following their pleas of guilty. Both cooperated
with the government and testified in SURLES’ trial. BEAUDREAULT is currently
serving a prison sentence of three years, one month. SPERLING is currently
serving a prison sentence of five years, 10 months. According to United
States Attorney Yates, the charges and other information presented in court:
From August 2003 through January 2004, BEAUDREAULT, SPERLING and SURLES
conspired to defraud Cornell Corrections of California, Inc., a private
company that operates corrections facilities for various governmental units.
In June 2003, Cornell Corrections contracted to have a corrections facility
built in Canon City, Colorado for $13 million. The $13 million purchase price
was to be held in an escrow account until the facility was completed. In
August 2003, the defendants induced Cornell Corrections to transfer its $13
million to an account in Atlanta, which they controlled, by falsely
representing to Cornell that the account was an escrow account that was
administered by a reputable bank. Upon receipt of Cornell Corrections’ $13
million, the defendants wire transferred the majority of Cornell’s $13
million to other accounts, to be used for their own purposes. Under the terms
of their contract, the defendants were also to obtain a construction loan on
behalf of “Western Comfort, Inc.” the general contractor who began
construction of the facility. No loan was secured, making Western Comfort
another victim of this scheme. This case was investigated by special agents
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorneys
Bernita B. Malloy and David E. McClernan prosecuted
the case.
June 2, 2010 Yahoo Business Wire
The GEO Group (NYSE: GEO - News) and Cornell Companies (NYSE: CRN - News)
announced today that the waiting-period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 with respect to
the previously announced proposed merger of GEO and Cornell Companies
(NYSE:CRN - News) has expired as of 11:59 pm on Tuesday, June 1, 2010,
effectively clearing the transaction by the United States Federal Trade
Commission and the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division.
The closing of the transaction remains subject to GEO and Cornell stockholder
approval, and other customary conditions to closing. GEO and Cornell continue
to expect that the transaction will close in the third quarter of 2010.
April 29, 2010 Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
An Alpharetta man was sentenced Thursday to three years and five months in
prison for bilking a Colorado corrections facility project out of nearly $13
million. Edgar J. Beaudreault Jr. pleaded guilty in
December to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In 2003, Beaudreault, 61, and San Diego co-defendant Howard
Sperling tricked Cornell Corrections of California Inc. into transferring $13
million into an Atlanta account that was supposed to be an escrow account for
the purchase price of a Canon City, Colo., facility under construction, court
authorities said. Rather than having the escrow administered by a reputable
bank, Beaudreault and Sperling wired the money to
other accounts for their own personal use. Under the same contract, the two
men and another defendant also were supposed to obtain a construction loan on
behalf of the general contractor on the project, but didn’t. “These
defendants were part of an elaborate fraud scheme that ironically involved
the construction of a prison,” U.S. attorney Sally Quillian
Yates said. “They will now experience how business is conducted inside a real
prison.” In addition to the federal prison sentence, Beaudreault
is required to serve three years on supervised release and pay $5.4 million
in restitution.
April 29, 2010 PR Log
An investor in CRN shares filed a lawsuit in Texas State Court on behalf
of current investors in Cornell Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN) alleging breaches
of fiduciary duty by the Cornell board of directors for selling Cornell
Companies too cheaply to The GEO Group. If you currently hold shares of
Cornell Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN), you have certain options and you should
contact the Shareholders Foundation, Inc by email at
mail@shareholdersfoundation.com or call +1 (858) 779 – 1554. Cornell
Companies, Inc., located in Houston, Texas, is a provider of correctional,
detention, educational, rehabilitation and treatment services outsourced by
federal, state, county and local government agencies for adults and
juveniles. On April 19, 2010, Cornell Companies (NYSE:CRN) and the GEO Group
(NYSE:GEO) announced a merger agreement pursuant to which The GEO Group will
acquire Cornell Companies for stock and/or cash at an estimated enterprise
value of $685 million based on the closing prices of both companies' stocks
on April 16, 2010, including the assumption of approximately $300 million in
Cornell debt, excluding cash. Under the terms of the definitive agreement,
stockholders of Cornell will a value of approximately $24.96 per Cornell
(CRN) share. According to Cornell Companies the Boards of Directors have
approved the merger agreement and the offer represents a 35 percent premium
over the closing price of Cornell's stock (CRN) on April 16, 2010. Shares of
Cornell Companies, Inc. (CRN) traded after the takeover announcement at
$24.74 per share, and at $18.62 per share the trading day before the news.
CRN shares were down from its 52weekHigh of $25.13 per share, and from $27.71
per share in 2008. At least one analyst set a price target for Cornell stock
at $29.00 per share. On April 27, 2010, an investor filed a lawsuit against
members of the board of directors, Cornell Companies Inc and The Geo Group
over breaches of fiduciary duty arising out of the attempt to sell Cornell
Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN) to the GEO Group. According to the complaint the
plaintiff alleges, among other things, that the proposed acquisition is
intended to take advantage of Cornell’s temporarily low current valuation and
that the agreement contains certain provisions, like the $12million termination
fee and “no shop” provision that unduly benefit GEO Group by making an
alternative transaction either prohibitively expensive or otherwise
impossible.
April 24, 2010 Grits For Breakfast
Texas Prison Bidness brings word that the Geo Group
gobbled up yet another competitor, adding to its already enormous debt load
and making it the second largest private prison company on the planet, behind
Corrections Corporation of America. Reported the Financial Times: The Geo
Group offered about $385m for Cornell Companies in a mixture of cash and
stock, valuing the company at about $24.96 a share. The company will also
take on about $300m of Cornell debt. The Geo Group's most recent 10K
statement is really quite an amazing read, for anyone interested, particularly
the lengthy section on risk factors, where the possibility is raised that a
quarter-billion dollars in unsecured bonds issued privately last fall might
be considered a "fraudulent conveyance" if the company defaults and
a bankruptcy judge ever takes a close look at the deal. Facing a mountain of
debt, mostly from acquiring competitors, this appears to be a pretty critical
year for the Geo Group, with contracts up for renewal on almost one in five
beds they operate. According to the 10-K: "As of January 3, 2010, eleven
of our facility management contracts representing 10,407 beds are scheduled
to expire on or before December 31, 2010, unless renewed by the customer at
its sole option. These contracts represented 19.3% of our consolidated
revenues for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2010." Other risks
identified in Geo's 10-K include: •Our significant level of indebtedness
could adversely affect our financial condition and prevent us from fulfilling
our debt service obligations. •A decrease in occupancy levels could cause a
decrease in revenues and profitability. •State budgetary constraints may have
a material adverse impact on us. •Public resistance to privatization of
correctional and detention facilities could result in our inability to obtain
new contracts or the loss of existing contracts, which could have a material
adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of
operations. •Adverse publicity may negatively impact our ability to retain
existing contracts and obtain new contracts. •We may face community
opposition to facility location, which may adversely affect our ability to
obtain new contracts. •We may not be able to obtain or maintain the insurance
levels required by our government contracts.
April 19, 2010 Palm Beach Post
Private prison operator The GEO Group Inc. (NYSE: GEO, $18.91) has agreed to
buy rival Cornell Cos. in a deal worth about $685 million, including the
assumption of about $300 million of Cornell's debt. The merger is a move to
expand to meet increasing demand for private correctional facilities and
services, the companies said in a release.
February 26, 2010 AP
Cornell Cos. Inc.'s sales and profit will decline if the state of Arizona
removes inmates from the company's Oklahoma prison, an analyst said as he
downgraded the prison operator's shares. First Analysis Securities analyst
Todd Van Fleet downgraded the Houston company to "equal weight"
from "overweight." The January budget proposals from Arizona's
governor and legislature would phase out the use of private out-of-state
beds. Arizona is struggling to close budget shortfalls. Van Fleet said there
was less than a 25 percent chance that Cornell would be able to persuade
legislators to keep Arizona inmates in the company's Oklahoma prison. The
loss of the Arizona prisoners which could cut into Cornell's annual earnings
by 35 cents to 45 cents per share. Van Fleet cut his estimate for 2010 profit
to $1.09 per share from $1.69 per share, and his 2010 sales estimate to $398
million from $440.6 million. On Wednesday, when it released fourth-quarter
earnings, Cornell predicted it would make $1.31 to $1.41 per share in 2010.
The guidance assumed that Cornell would continue to keep all its Arizona
inmates for the rest of the year. The contract for the Arizona prisoners ends
in mid-September, Van Fleet said. Cornell shares slipped 13 cents to $18.61
in midday trading. They have dropped about 25 percent since Arizona proposed
its budget in mid-January.
February 23, 2010 Pueblo Chieftain
A Chicago man who pocketed $605,000 in construction funds during the building
of a youth treatment facility here was convicted Friday of conspiracy and
wire fraud. A federal jury in Atlanta found Robert B. Surles,
64, guilty of conspiracy and 15 counts of wire fraud in connection with a
scheme to steal nearly $13 million from Cornell Co., which built the Southern
Peaks Regional Treatment Center in 2003. From Aug. 2003 to Jan. 2004, Surles, along with Edgar Beaudreault,
60, of Georgia, and Howard Sperling, 45, of San Diego, conspired to defraud
Cornell of construction funds. Surles was to obtain
a $12 million construction loan, but he and his co-defendants never obtained
financing for the project and instead led the contractor to believe they had.
The trio falsely represented that the funds were in an escrow account, but
instead the money was transferred to other accounts. Although some money was
used to get the construction started, the majority of
funds was taken by the trio for personal purposes. The evidence at trial
showed Surles took $605,000 of the funds, according
to Patrick Crosby, public affairs officer for the United States Attorney's
office in Atlanta. "This defendant fraudulently induced a company to
transfer approximately $13 million into an ‘escrow account’ that turned out
to be nothing but a piggy bank for the defendant and his
co-conspirators," said Sally Quillian Yates,
acting U.S. Attorney in Atlanta. "A federal jury was not fooled by the
story he told when he testified and convicted him on conspiracy and multiple
counts of fraud." Both Beaudreault and
Sperling pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and testified
against Surles. All three are awaiting sentencing
for the crime and Surles is slated to be sentenced
April 27.
January 22, 2010 Times-Union
The Charlton County Commission, the county school system and Folkston are all
hastily adjusting their budgets after a single successful appeal of a
property assessment. Commissioners are expected to approve an "error and
relief" agreement in February to reduce the assessed value of privately
owned D. Ray James Prison from $97 million to $55 million. The successful
appeal by Cornell Companies, owners and operators of the prison, will cost
the city, county and school system at least $730,000 in anticipated tax
revenue. County Manager Steve Nance said Cornell appealed the assessed value
of the prison after it nearly doubled in 2009. Two new structures - an
addition that will house 700 inmates this year and another facility for 300
prisoners from both Charlton County and the U.S. Marshals Service - were on
the tax rolls for the first time this year, likely leading to the increase in
value, Nance said. During the appeal, Cornell officials didn't dispute the
accuracy of the appraisal of the facility. Instead, they argued it would be
impossible to sell the sprawling prison complex for what the company invested
because the structures are for very specialized purposes - to securely house
inmates. They also claimed the original part of the prison, more than a
decade old, had depreciated in value, Nance said. "They contended the
value did not equal the cost," he said. The property appraiser who
determined the appraised value never visited the prison until after Cornell
filed an appeal, Nance said. Instead, the appraiser determined the value from
manuals, he said. "She did not actually tour the facility until the
appeal was made," he said. "After the tour, she agreed the value
was too high. It was a lot more austere than she thought." Despite the
hardship losing an estimated $334,000 in anticipated tax revenue, Nance said
county officials have no plans to contest the ruling by the Board of
Assessors. "It would be difficult for us to appeal our own
valuation," he said. Also, there is no appeal process unless the
complaint is taken to the Board of Equalization by the property owner, Nance
said. "Is there any recourse [for Folkston and the school
district]?" Nance asked. "I don't think they have the right to
challenge this." Now, the already cash-strapped county will maintain a "continuous
evaluation process" to cut spending to make up for the shortfall, Nance
said. Folkston City Manager Pender Lloyd said the appeal will cost his city
at least $108,000 in anticipated tax revenue - nearly a 5 percent cut to the
city's $2.4 million budget. "We knew Cornell was probably going to
appeal," Lloyd said. "We certainly had no idea it [the prison's
value] would drop by $42 million." Lloyd criticized the timing, saying
one appeal should not have so much impact to local governments. An appeal of
the magnitude of Cornell's should have been resolved before the county digest
was completed to give local governments an accurate estimate of how much
revenue would be generated in taxes. The city will delay some projects
planned this year, including construction of a new park, he said. Travel to
conferences and training is also canceled, unless it is required by law,
Lloyd said. "We have some revenues built up, so we can handle it,"
he said. "We're all affected and we've got to work through this thing.
We've got to deal with it."
May 20, 2009 Yahoo.com
Cornell Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN) today announced that it has been
informed by the Georgia Department of Corrections that the Department will
not start using the Company's recently completed expansion at its D. Ray
James Prison in Georgia. The Company's previous guidance, included in the
first quarter earnings release, provided a base case that assumed that the
700-bed expansion at D. Ray James Prison would begin to ramp at the beginning
of the third quarter of 2009, and an alternate case that, if the expansion
was to remain empty for all of 2009, earnings for the full year would be
reduced by up to approximately $0.08 per share. Today's updated guidance
assumes that the expansion will remain empty for the remainder of the year. As
a result, the Company now expects earnings per share for the full year of
$1.62 to $1.70. The Company also reaffirmed the earnings guidance range for
the second quarter of $0.42 to $0.46 per share.
February 2, 2009 Ledger-Enquirer
A California man pleaded guilty Monday to taking part in a plot to
defraud a prison construction firm out of almost $13 million. Howard A.
Sperling, 44, of San Diego entered the plea to a charge of conspiracy to
commit wire fraud. Sperling could receive up to 20 years in prison when
sentenced April 30 by U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper. Sperling and two
others conspired to defraud Cornell Corrections of California Inc., which
operates 71 private corrections facilities in 15 states, federal prosecutors
said. In 2003, Cornell was hired to build a prison in Canon City, Colo., and
the $13 million purchase price was to be placed in escrow until completion.
Cornell was induced to transfer the money to an Atlanta account controlled by
co-defendant Edgar J. Beaudreault that was supposed
to be administered by a reputable bank. Prosecutors say most of the money was
transferred to other accounts, and Sperling withdrew $365,000 in cash,
transferred $400,000 to personal and family members' accounts, paid $215,000
to banks and credit card companies, $85,000 to a Harrah's Casino and $60,000
for a Mercedes Benz. Beaudreault, 60, of
Alpharetta, Ga., pleaded guilty Dec. 17 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Charges against the third defendant, Robert B. Surles
of Canon City, are pending. A motion hearing is set for later this week.
December 17, 2008 AP
A Georgia businessman has admitted taking part in a scheme to defraud a
California construction company of nearly $13 million. Edgar J. Beaudreault of Alpharetta pleaded guilty Wednesday in
Atlanta to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors say Beaudreault, 60, and two others conspired to defraud
Cornell Corrections of California Inc., which operates private corrections
facilities. In 2003, Cornell was hired to build a prison in Canon City,
Colo., and the $13 million purchase price was to be placed in escrow until
completion. Cornell was induced to transfer the money to an Atlanta account,
and most of it was then diverted to other accounts. Beaudreault
could receive up to 20 years in prison and be fined $250,000 at sentencing
March 18.
August 26, 2008 Atlanta Business
Chronicle
An Alpharetta, Ga., man is among a group indicted Tuesday on charges of fraud
related to a prison-building contract in Colorado. Edgar J. Beaudreault Jr., 60, of Alpharetta, Howard A. Sperling,
43, of San Diego, and Robert B. Surles, 62, of
Canon City, Colo., were indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple charges.
The indictment alleges from August 2003 through January 2004, the men
concocted a scheme to defraud Cornell Corrections of California Inc., a
private company based in Ventura that operates corrections facilities for
governmental units. In June 2003, Cornell Corrections contracted to have a
corrections facility built in Canon City, Colo., for $13 million. The money
was to be held in an escrow account until the facility was completed. But in
August 2003, the men allegedly got Cornell Corrections to transfer the $13
million to an account in Atlanta controlled by Beaudreault,
and allegedly told Cornell the account was an escrow account administered by
a reputable bank. After the transfer was made into the Atlanta account, the
indictment claims the men then transferred the $13 million to other accounts
to be used for their own purposes. The indictment charges 20 counts of wire
fraud and one count of conspiracy. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20
years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count.
July 15, 2008 The Daily Cougar
As Sen. Barack Obama wages his presidential campaign across the United
States with political gusto, he's attracted names such as Vice President Al
Gore and Sen. John Edwards. University of Houston Associate Professor of Law
Tony Chase has also temporarily shifted his duties as a professor to become a
member of the National Finance Committee of Obama's campaign. "I've
known (Obama) for quite some time, and I was one of the people he asked
whether if he should run," Chase said. "Because of that, this is
very personal, and I genuinely believe he is best for this country."
Aside from teaching, Chase is chairman and CEO of ChaseCom
L.P. and Chase Radio Partners. He is also chairman and co-founder, together
with SBC Communications Inc., of The Telecom Opportunity Institute, an
organization that provides technical literacy training at no cost to at-risk
communities. He serves as a director of Leap Wireless International Inc. and
Cornell Companies Inc., and is chairman of the Houston Zoo Development Board.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a director of
the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and Houston Parks. Chase began
teaching communications law and contracts at the UH Law Center in 1990 and
received the Edith Baker Faculty Award in 1994. On July 8, he stepped down as
the director of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank to dedicate more time to the
campaign. "I can't pick out a certain experience, but teaching graduate
law and undergraduate classes has been particularly helpful in preparing me,
because students are the future and full of ideas that in turn help me think
about today's issues," Chase said. "My experience at the University
helps me by being part of the excitement and interest among young and
potential voters." As for his motives, he believes that the nation, in
its current state, needs Obama as president. "I've known Barack and
Michelle for a long time, and based on that, I believe he is a transcendent
political figure," Chase said. "I know him well and his integrity
and how he responds to pressure, but also how he will be an excellent
leader." As the member of the National Finance Committee for the
campaign, he helps make decisions on how the campaign will utilize its funds
and how the fundraising will be run. He also performs special projects such
as arranging meetings with constituents and senior advisors. "The
experience I gain from the campaign will only help the way I try to bring
practical experience to the classroom, and this is actually quite relevant to
what I teach at the University," Chase said. Chase will return to teach in
the fall and resume his usual duties for his organizations. "I will
still do what I can to accommodate my teaching responsibilities and campaign
duties and continue to voice my support for Barack Obama," Chase said.
January 23, 2007 Market Watch
Cornell Companies, Inc. announced that, at a special meeting of its
shareholders held earlier today, a proposal to merge with the Veritas Capital
Fund III, L.P., was rejected. As a result of this vote by shareholders,
Cornell will continue to operate as a stand-alone publicly-traded entity.
Although the company has not yet announced the timing of its fourth quarter
earnings conference call, management intends to use such forum to provide
further commentary on the transaction, as well as to discuss any changes to
the previously-released 2007 guidance that was made public as a result of the
transaction process.
January 19, 2007 AP
Alpine Associates, a Cornell Cos. (CRN) shareholder, plans to vote
against Cornell's plan to be acquired by Veritas Capital Fund for $18.25 a
share. Alpine and related entities own 631,700 shares, representing a 4.49%
stake. Thursday, shares of private-prison operator Cornell closed at $18.90,
up 16 cents. Alpine said "the current transaction does not fairly value
Cornell's shares." Other shareholders have expressed opposition to the
deal.
October 9, 2006 Market Watch
Cornell Companies, Inc. (CRN : news, chart, profile ) announced today the
execution of a definitive merger agreement with Veritas Capital, under which
Veritas will acquire Cornell in a transaction valued at approximately $518.6
million, including the assumption or repayment of approximately $273.6
million in debt. Under the terms of the agreement, Cornell stockholders will
receive $18.25 in cash for each share of common stock they hold. The
Company's Board of Directors has unanimously approved the agreement and will
recommend that Cornell's stockholders approve the merger. James E. Hyman,
Cornell's chairman and chief executive officer, said, "The Board of
Directors has completed a comprehensive review of the strategic alternatives
available to the Company, the result of which we are pleased to announce
today. The Board endorses this transaction and believes it to be in the best
interest of Cornell's shareholders. Veritas Capital is a private equity
investment firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1992 by Robert B.
McKeon, Veritas invests primarily in companies specializing in outsourcing
services to the government, primarily in the areas of defense and aerospace,
security and infrastructure. Veritas' portfolio of companies includes, or has
included, DynCorp International, Integrated Defense Technologies, Vertex
Aerospace, McNeil Technologies, The Wornick
Company, and TRAK Communications, among others. Veritas is dedicated to
providing the highest level of critical services and equipment to the defense
and federal sectors around the world. For more information, please visit
www.veritascapital.com.
September 29, 2006 New York Times
Pirate Capital, a $1.7 billion fund based in Norwalk, Conn., lost half
its investment team this week, according to a letter from the founder and
portfolio manager, Thomas Hudson. In addition, Pirate, an “activist” fund
that pressures management to increase shareholder value, is being investigated
by the Securities and Exchange Commission on suspicion of failing to alert
the commission when it was selling stock, according to one person briefed on
the inquiry. Mr. Hudson’s letter, dated Sept. 28 and on stationery with a
pirate ship logo, said that Pirate would close to new investors Sunday, to
focus on delivering returns rather than collecting more money. “I’ve decided
to return the firm to its roots,” Mr. Hudson wrote. “The goal is to focus on
returns and not the size of the assets we manage.” Pirate Capital has had a
difficult year: its flagship Jolly Roger Fund is up only 3.3 percent, while
its activist fund is up 2.86 percent, according to materials sent to
investors. Those returns are well below the average activist fund. Hedge Fund
Research in Chicago tracks the returns of 44 funds that operate solely
activist strategies; through August those funds have returned 10.39 percent.
An S.E.C. spokesman, John Nester, declined to comment. Isa Bolotin, head of
investor relations at Pirate Capital, did not return calls seeking comment.
Pirate is known for its unusually brash tactics and unabashed style. A New
York magazine cover article reported that Zachary George, 27, an analyst with
the firm and former competitive snowboarder, told the chief executive of the
Cornell Companies, a prison operator, that “You work for us,” and that Mr.
George and Pirate wanted Cornell sold and the chief executive sacked. “Next
year we’re going to be here, and you won’t,” Mr. George told the chief
executive, according to the article. Mr. Hudson said two investment
professionals, including Mr. George, resigned on Monday. On Wednesday, Carl
Klein, a portfolio manager, resigned, and Mr. Hudson asked two more analysts
to leave. Five people, including Mr. Hudson, remain. The S.E.C. is
investigating whether Pirate was late in reporting to the commission material
changes in its holdings. Investors with at least a 5 percent stake must
report any changes to those holdings.
September 1, 2006 Alaska Report
The FBI served four more search warrants today in its investigation of
the relationship between lawmakers and oilfield services company VECO
Corporation, an Anchorage-based oil field services and construction company
whose executives are major contributors to political campaigns. Bill Allen,
owner of VECO, and his firm, were involved in a renovation of Alaska Senator
Ted Stevens' chalet in Girdwood in the recent past. The Associated Press is
reporting that the search warrants seek "from the period of October 2005
to the present, any and all documents concerning, reflecting or relating to
proposed legislation in the state of Alaska involving either the creation of
a natural gas pipeline or the petroleum production tax." An Anchorage
FBI spokesman says that about two dozen search warrants have been executed so
far, including three today in Anchorage and one in Willow. No arrests have
been made as of yet. AlaskaReport has learned that
a staffer in one of the offices raided has been providing information to
federal authorities. In an interview with KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Wev Shea, a former U.S. attorney for Alaska says he knows
who created the climate that he alleges allowed corruption to flourish.
"The Republican Party is going to rue the day in this state for allowing
Randy Ruedrich (chairman of the Republican Party of
Alaska) to remain as a chair. He's bringing this party down and it's
bad." KTUU also interviewed Rep. Eric Croft. He says he saw this coming
two years ago, during a legislative committee meeting concerning VECO’s pitch
for a sole-source contract award for a private prison. "I said at the
time, in 2004, on the Whittier proposal, someone's going to jail over this 'cause I could see how corrupt the process was,"
said Croft, D-Anchorage.
August 31, 2006 Anchorage Daily News
Federal agents swarmed legislative offices around the state Thursday,
executing search warrants in a coordinated series of raids that appeared to
target the longstanding relationship between the oil-field service company Veco and leading lawmakers. Above Anchorage’s 4th Avenue,
FBI agents spent most of the afternoon behind the closed doors and drawn
blinds of the fifth-floor offices of Senate President Ben Stevens and Senate
Rules Committee Chairman John Cowdery, both Anchorage Republicans. Through
slits in the blinds, one agent in Stevens’ office, wearing rubber gloves,
could be seen packing away evidence in a container. In Juneau, tourists and
residents were greeted with the extraordinary sight of FBI agents hauling out
files form the Alaska State Capitol after searching offices there. After the
FBI searched his Wasilla office and questioned him, Rep. Vic Kohring,
R-Wasilla, the chairman of the House Special Committee on Oil & Gas, said
the investigation was focused on Veco. Other
legislative offices known to have been searched Thursday included those of
Reps. Pete Kott of Eagle River and Bruce Weyhrauch
of Juneau, and Sen. Donny Olson of Nome. Kott, a former House speaker, and Weyhrauch are Republicans. Olson is the only Democrat in
the group. FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said federal agents executed about 20
search warrants Thursday, not all in legislative offices. The warrants were
executed in Anchorage, Juneau, Wasilla, Eagle River and Girdwood, he said.
Ray Metcalfe, a former legislator and the founder of the independent
Republican Moderate Party, said he has been trying to get the authorities
interested in what he described as the “corrupt” relationship between Veco and the Republican-lead
legislature, principally Ben Stevens. “I put all the stuff in front of federal
prosecutors a year and a half ago,” Metcalfe said Thursday, clearly relishing
the turn of events. “I laid hundreds of pages of detailed information
alleging bribery, and I distributed it to federal authorities, I distributed
it to the U.S. Attorney’s office, I distributed it to the (state attorney
general’s) Office of Special Prosecutions, and we held a demonstration in
front of the attorney general’s office that hardly anyone showed up for.”
Metcalfe attempted to initiate a recall campaign against Stevens, but his
effort was rejected by Lt. Gov. Loren Leman on legal grounds. After first
announcing he’d run for re-election in November, Stevens changed his mind in
June and opted to retire.Tamara Cook, a lawyer who
heads the nonpartisan legal services division of the Legislature, said
Thursday evening that she reviewed a couple of the search warrants at the
request of legislators or aides upon whom they were served. The search
warrants allowed the FBI to search computers and office files including
financial records, she said. The warrants named Veco
Corp., she said, but could not say whether Veco was
a target or whether the investigation concerned oil taxes, its failed push to
build a private prison in Alaska or something else.
August 28, 2006 Yahoo.com
Cornell Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN - News) announced today that Mark S. Croft,
the General Counsel and Secretary of the Company, resigned on Saturday,
August 26, 2006, to attend to personal matters unrelated to his role as an
officer of the Company. Patrick N. Perrin, Senior Vice President and Chief
Administrative Officer, has been appointed to the office of Secretary of the
Company to succeed Mr. Croft.
June 5, 2006 Houston Business
Journal
Cornell Companies Inc. on Monday afternoon said it has retained a financial
advisor to assist the Houston operator of prisons in analyzing ways "to
maximize shareholder value." The announcement, which came in a brief
news release distributed Monday after the regular session of the stock market
closed, essentially puts Cornell (NYSE: CRN - News) on the block as a
candidate to be acquired. Beyond making the brief statement about hiring a
financial advisor, Cornell in the Monday release said the prison operator
does not intend to make further announcements on the matter until the NYSE-listed
company "has made definitive decisions on its future strategic
direction." No assurance can be given that any transaction will be
pursued," according to the Cornell press release.
February 10, 2006 Yahoo
Cornell Companies, Inc. announced today the settlement of a securities
class action lawsuit. In re Cornell Companies, Inc. Securities Litigation was
originally filed by certain Cornell stockholders in March 2002 on behalf of
all purchasers of Cornell's common stock from March 6, 2001 to March 5, 2002.
The Company has agreed to settle this class action lawsuit for $7.0 million
to avoid further protracted and expensive litigation. The settlement amount
will be funded through the Company's directors' and officers' liability
insurance and will have no impact on the Company's financial position,
results of operations or cash flows. Under the terms of the settlement,
Cornell has not admitted to any wrongdoing.
September 29, 2005 Baltimore Sun
Two Maryland judges said yesterday that the Ehrlich administration's decision
to close the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School without a clear plan to replace it
is jeopardizing the welfare of youths and putting public safety at risk.
Baltimore County Circuit Judge Kathleen Cox and Anne Arundel Circuit Judge
Pamela North told legislators that with Hickey preparing to close, there are
not enough places to send tough young offenders who need to be removed from
their homes to protect their safety and the community. The department said
some Maryland youths will be sent to programs in Texas, Iowa, Indiana,
Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio with rates ranging from $47,450 to $116,800
per child per year. The list includes three facilities run by a for-profit
Texas-based company that, according to published reports, was forced to close
one of its centers amid complaints of abuse. Under pressure from Pennsylvania
authorities, a company operating as Cornell Abraxas closed its New Morgan
Academy near Reading in 2002 after about a dozen children were sexually
assaulted by adults over the span of less than two years, according to the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The same company runs programs that the Department
of Juveniles Services plans to use in Shelby, Ohio; Marienville, Pa.; and
South Mountain, Pa., according to a list provided to legislators yesterday.
Another facility on the list has had a more recent, but less severe, incident
of violence. The Summit Academy reform school in Herman, Pa., has said that
four workers were fired in July over a June 18 incident in which a
17-year-old male student suffered cuts to his face and ear.
September 29, 2005 Star-Telegram
In a move denounced as a political witchhunt, Rep.
Tom DeLay was indicted Wednesday with two associates on a felony charge of
conspiring to circumvent Texas' prohibition of corporate campaign donations
to secure the Republican takeover of the Texas House in 2002. Shortly after
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle announced the indictment, the
Republican congressman from Sugar Land resigned his powerful majority leader
post in Washington, at least temporarily. DeLay, 58, is accused of conspiring
with two associates to convert $190,000 in donations from several
corporations into campaign contributions on behalf of seven Republican
candidates who were involved in what many had believed would be close
contests for seats in the Texas House.
September 28, 2005 Bloomberg
U.S. Representative Tom DeLay, the No. 2 Republican in the House, was
indicted by a Texas grand jury for criminal conspiracy in connection with
illegal corporate political donations, prompting him to give up his
leadership post. Two former campaign aides, John Colyandro
and Jim Ellis, were also charged with conspiracy by the state grand jury in
Travis County, according to the single-count indictment. The charge stems from
an investigation into alleged use of illegal corporate contributions by
DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, in the
2002 races for the state House of Representatives. The four-page indictment
charges that DeLay conspired with Ellis and Colyandro
to use donations from companies including Williams Companies Inc. and Sears,
Roebuck and Co., now Sears Holdings Corp., to help finance the election
campaigns of seven members of the Texas House in 2002. Under Texas law,
corporations aren't permitted to donate to candidates. Other companies named,
but like Williams and Sears, not charged in the indictment were Diversified
Collections Services Inc., Cornell Companies Inc., Bacardi U.S.A. Inc. and Questerra Corp.
September 22, 2005 Texas Lawyer
A private corrections company seeks to hold Locke Liddell & Sapp liable
for more than $5 million that's allegedly missing from an account set up for
a land deal. Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. sued Locke Liddell and David
Montgomery, a partner in the firm, alleging malpractice, among other things.
The company filed Cornell Companies Inc. v. Locke Liddell & Sapp, et al.
on Aug. 26 in Houston's 333rd District Court. In its petition, Cornell
alleges that the defendants "dropped the ball" by failing to ensure
that a proper escrow account was set up in 2003 to hold the company's funds.
Those funds were intended to be used to buy land in Colorado on which to
develop a regional correctional rehabilitation center. As alleged in the
petition, the defendants gave Cornell the "green light" to wire
almost $13 million into an account that was purported to be an escrow
account. "There was no escrow agent; there was no escrow account,"
alleges Scott Hershman, one of the attorneys representing Cornell. The suit
against Locke Liddell is related to a suit that a Cornell subsidiary filed
last year in the Superior Court of Fulton County in Atlanta. Cornell alleged
in its second amended complaint in Cornell Corrections of California Inc. v. Longboat
Global Advisors, et al. that attorney Edgar J. Beaudreault
of Roswell, Ga., a defendant in the suit, handled the construction loan
transaction on behalf of Longboat, which was providing financing for the
corrections facility project. Cornell Corrections alleged in the Georgia
complaint that Beaudreault, who is also Longboat's
vice president and managing director, arranged for the escrow account but it
turned out to be a regular bank account. Cornell Corrections further alleged
in the complaint that, although the company wired the funds to Bank of
America in August 2003, it didn't learn until November of that year that the
bank was not holding money in escrow and that a withdrawal never authorized
by Cornell Corrections had been made. Hershman, a partner in Lackey Hershman
in Dallas, says he doesn't expect Cornell Corrections will be able to collect
the damages awarded in the Georgia case, because he thinks the money is gone.
Michael Shaunessy, an Austin, Texas, attorney who
represents plaintiffs in legal malpractice cases but is not involved in
Cornell's suit against Locke Liddell, says the fact that a company hires
lawyers to handle this type of transaction doesn't eliminate the company's
responsibility to exercise due diligence in the matter. Shaunessy, a partner in Shaunessy & Burnett, says he expects Locke Liddell
and Montgomery to raise a causation defense, arguing that those who took the
money out of the account caused Cornell's loss. Cornell can argue that, if
the defendants had set up the account so that the money couldn't be moved
without the company's authorization, Cornell would not have suffered the
loss, he says.
September 13, 2005 American-Statesman
A Travis County grand jury today added new felony charges against two
officials with Texans for a Republican Majority who first were indicted last
fall. The grand jury re-indicted political consultants John Colyandro and Jim Ellis on first-degree felony charges
that the two laundered a $190,000 corporate check into campaign donations
during the 2002 elections. It added lesser felony charges of unlawfully
making a contribution to a political party and criminal conspiracy involving
the $190,000 transaction. Just weeks before the 2002 election, Colyandro, who was executive director of the political committee
created by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, sent a blank
check to his counterpart, Ellis, in Washington.
September 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A Travis County
grand jury indicted a business organization and a political
committee founded by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Thursday on
felony charges of violating election laws by using corporate money to
influence state elections. The indictments accuse the DeLay-founded Texans
for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee of two counts of
illegally soliciting corporate money for political campaigns. The indictment
of TRMPAC is significant because it reflects on DeLay's role in overseeing
the committee. DeLay served on its board of advisers and helped raise some of
the corporate money at the core of the controversy. Texas
election law prohibits the use of corporate or labor-union money
to influence races for elective office. TRMPAC could face a fine of up to
$40,000, but the committee filed articles of dissolution with the Texas
Ethics Commission in July. Earle said the dissolution does not matter because
TRMPAC's management or board of advisers can be held liable for its criminal
conduct.
August 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A state district judge refused Tuesday to dismiss charges of money laundering
and accepting illegal political contributions against two associates of U.S.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Judge Bob Perkins denied
arguments from John Colyandro and Jim Ellis that
the charges were based on an unconstitutionally vague law and that the
indictments were improperly worded. Lawyers for Colyandro,
who worked for DeLay's fundraising committee Texans for a Republican
Majority, and Jim Ellis, who worked for Americans for a Republican Majority,
have said they will appeal, likely delaying any trial for at least several
months. The charges stem from the 2002 Texas legislative elections. The
money-laundering charges are based on $190,000 in corporate money that was
sent to the Republican National State Elections Committee.
June 3, 2005 Houston Business
Journal
Insurgent shareholder Pirate Capital LLC has captured the board of
Cornell Cos. Inc. Pirate gained control of the Houston-based prison operator
last month after setting sail on a proxy fight that originated a year
earlier. Toting a treasure trove of Cornell common shares -- a 14.8 percent
stake as of mid-May -- the Connecticut-based investment firm emerged with the
right to put seven directors on Cornell's nine-member board. Cornell controls
the remaining two seats on the board, which increased from seven to nine
members as part of a new agreement with Pirate. "It appeared that
(Cornell) had been heading for a distracting and costly proxy battle,"
notes Scott Schneeberger, a stock analyst at Lehman
Brothers. Cornell also got Pirate to concede that the investment firm will
not pursue a transaction to take the publicly traded Houston company private
for at least the next two years. At the same time, Cornell Chairman James
Hyman will no longer steer the board of directors after the end of this
month. Despite 20 years of experience in operations, finance, process
management, mergers and acquisitions, Hyman's name is conspicuously missing
from the slate of nominees for the new board.
July
13, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A state district judge declined Tuesday to dismiss charges of accepting
illegal political contributions against an associate of U.S. House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay. Lawyers for John Colyandro, who worked for DeLay's fund-raising committee
Texans for a Republican Majority, had claimed that the indictment against him
was based on an unconstitutionally vague law. Judge Bob Perkins also
declined to dismiss a charge of money laundering against Colyandro,
although that issue remains technically alive. The charges stem from
the 2002 Texas legislative elections.
The money-laundering charges are related to $190,000 in corporate
money sent to the Republican National State Elections Committee. The committee then gave the same amount to
seven Texas House candidates.
March 11, 2005 The Deal
True to its swashbuckling name, hedge fund Pirate Capital LLC is preparing to
make a run at struggling Cornell Cos., a prison and juvenile-facilities
operator. Since last year, Houston-based Cornell has been under pressure from
Thomas R. Hudson Jr., portfolio manager at the 2-year-old Norwalk Conn.-based
hedge fund, to seek a buyer. After a series of missteps by Cornell, Pirate's
Jolly Roger Fund LP launched a proxy contest on Feb. 24 to take over all
seven seats on Cornell's board at an annual meeting expected in June.
"You can just see the shots being fired across the bow of Cornell,"
says Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners LLC in New York.
Skolnick says a strategic acquirer would pay roughly $20.50 a share for the
assets — $270 million in equity plus $112 million in debt. Cornell traded
early last week at around $14.40 a share. Anton Hie, an analyst with
Jefferies & Co. in Nashville, says a strategic acquirer would value
Cornell at $16 to $18 a share, and would cut costs by eliminating overhead
and other administrative expenses. A financial buyer could break up the
company and sell various facilities "in pieces," Hie says.
Skolnick, whose firm does not do work for Cornell, cites Nashville-based Correction
Corp. of America and Geo Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., the two largest
private providers of adult-prison management services in the U.S., as likely
buyers. Hie, whose firm does not own Cornell stock, says CCA and Geo might be
more interested in Cornell's adult facilities, but he would not estimate a
valuation on these assets. Privately held Management and Training Corp. of
Centerville, Utah, could also be interested, Skolnick says. She and other
analysts say the other major player in the industry, Sarasota, Fla.-based
Corrections Services Corp., is smaller than Cornell and unlikely to make a
bid. "These publicly traded companies are interested in growing, and
acquiring Cornell would help them improve their bottom line," says a
corrections consultant. Officials for CCA and Geo did not return calls
seeking comment. Cornell posted a loss of $897,000 for the third quarter of
fiscal 2004, the latest results available, compared with a profit of $1.4
million a year earlier, even as sales rose to $74.7 million from $68.6
million. The company has made some internal changes. In January it hired
James Hyman to replace outgoing CEO Harry Phillips. Skolnick says Hyman has
some real estate experience but "may not know what he's gotten himself
into." Pirate Capital, which has a 14.8% Cornell stake, has yet to offer
an opinion of Hyman. As part of a broad strategy to learn shareholder
concerns, Hyman has met with numerous investors, including activist hedge
fund managers, since he took over in January. He has also huddled with Pirate
officials several times in the past month, and says he plans to do so again.
"It's part of an ongoing process," Hyman says. "I asked
[investors] to be very frank and tell me as straight as they can how they
view Cornell." He says Cornell would consider any offer, but that the
company is not seeking a buyer. Cornell also recently replaced director
Marcus Watts with Isabella Cunningham, a communications professor at the
University of Texas. That move, says a shareholder, suggests "creeping
compliance" with Pirate's wishes. Shareholders had repeatedly asked the
board to replace Watts, a partner at law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp LLP,
who they argued lacked sufficient independence. Locke Liddell & Sapp has
a business relationship with Cornell. Cunningham, considered independent,
developed a criminal-justice program at St. Edward's University in Austin,
Texas. Skolnick says Hyman will have his work cut out for him. He
acknowledges that Cornell has made some major mistakes lately. For example,
it leased an abandoned jail in Bernalillo County, N.M., and announced in
spring 2003 that the facility would house roughly 1,000 inmates by the end of
that year and generate $25 million in annual revenue. But after lease
problems and poor planning, Skolnick says, the facility held only 300 inmates
by the end of 2004 and brought in significantly less revenue than promised.
Cornell's acquisition of an abandoned training school in Plankinton, S.D.,
was another botched purchase. The company turned the school into a juvenile-detention
center with an investment of $200,000. For the program to be profitable,
Cornell needed the state to pay $175 a day per inmate. But the state agreed
to pay only $125. After three months, Cornell closed the operation.
"What this points out is how Cornell generally does not complete the
necessary due diligence before going out and opening facilities,"
Skolnick says. "They do a terrible job of completing projects and
ramping up occupancy in their facilities." On Feb. 1 Cornell announced
plans to buy San Diego-based Correctional Systems Inc. for $10 million, an
acquisition Hyman says is complementary. Other shareholders have risen to
Pirate Capital's support. "We believe that the board's attempt to
simultaneously replace the company's CEO and CFO without reaching out to
Pirate Capital, its largest shareholder, represents another example of poor
judgment," says Nelson Obus, president of New
York hedge fund Wynnefield Capital LLC in a January
Securities and Exchange Commission filing. People familiar with Pirate say
its nominees have vastly more experience in corrections-facility management,
restructuring and turnarounds than Cornell's current board. Pirate nominee
Richard Crane, a corrections-project consultant, is a former general counsel
to CCA, one of the companies that might consider acquiring Cornell. Then
there's Sally Walker, president of Encourage Youth Corp., a consulting firm
specializing in programs for juvenile offenders. Pirate is also nominating
two people from within its own ranks: portfolio manager Hudson and investment
analyst Zachary George. Says Skolnick: "Shareholders would be
well-served to have a professional management team that is focused on returns
instead of revenue growth."
March 10, 2005 Dow Jones
Cornell Cos.' (CRN) fourth-quarter loss ballooned as the company took a
number of charges and announced that it will eliminate two layers of
management and close underperforming programs. In a press release Thursday,
the prison operator said that among the jobs eliminated was that of President
and Chief Operating Officer Thomas R. Jenkins. Chief Executive James Hyman
will assume the chief operating officer responsibilities. In a bid to improve
its operations, Cornell said it was trimming its management, cutting Jenkins'
job as well as a number of vice president and director-level positions that
"interfered" between business unit managers and their programs. The
shakeup is just the latest in a slew of management changes at Cornell. Hyman
himself was named chief executive in January. John Nieser,
the chief financial officer, was named in February. Meanwhile, a group of
shareholders including Pirate Capital LLC, which hold about 15% of the
company, have called for the entire board to step down. Apart from changes to
its management, Cornell said Thursday it will close a number of its programs
that consumed cash and managerial talent that could better be spent
elsewhere. The
programs, set to be shuttered in the first and second quarters, include the Joz-Arz program in the District of Columbia, the
Residential School in Illinois, which is owned by the company, and behavioral
health programs in Pennsylvania.
November 9, 2004 PRNews
Cornell
Companies, a leading provider of privatized adult and juvenile correctional,
treatment and educational services, announced today that the Company has
commenced a search for a new chief executive officer. Harry J. Phillips, Jr. will continue to
serve as chief executive officer until a successor is named and, thereafter,
will continue as chairman of the board of directors.
October 22, 2004 AP
Two associates of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who have been indicted
for alleged campaign finance violations will be allowed to put off answering
a civil lawsuit until their criminal charges have been resolved. State District Judge Joe Hart on Thursday
postponed a civil lawsuit against John Colyandro
and Jim Ellis, who were charged last month with laundering corporate
donations during the 2002 elections.
September 22, 2004 AP
The money laundering allegation in a congressional ethics complaint filed
against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay involves the same $190,000 in
political contributions that led to indictments of the Texas congressman's
aides on similar charges. DeLay is accused in an ethics complaint of misusing
the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to launder
$190,000 in illegal corporate contributions through the Republican National
Committee for use in Texas legislative races. On Tuesday, a grand jury in
Texas indicted Jim Ellis, a paid consultant to Texans for a Republican
Majority, and John Colyandro, former executive
director of the Texas committee, on money laundering charges involving the
same $190,000 check. A third aide was indicted on separate charges. The
indictments allege that on Sept. 13, 2002, Ellis delivered a check for
$190,000 to the Republican National Committee. The check was signed by Colyandro and made out to the Republican National State
Elections Committee. Accompanying it was a list of several GOP Texas
legislative candidates and the amount of money that each should get from the
RNC, according to the indictment. The indictments said the $190,000 came from
corporate contributions to Texans for A Republican Majority. Givers included
Diversified Collection Services Inc., $50,000; Sears, Roebuck and Co.,
$25,000; Williams Companies Inc., $25,000; Cornell Companies, $10,000,
Bacardi USA, $20,000 and Questerra Corp., $25,000,
the indictments said. They did not account for the remaining contributions.
The Republican National State Elections Committee subsequently wrote checks
totaling $190,000 to seven Texas candidates, the indictment alleges. Texas law prohibits
the use of corporate money for direct political purposes.
August 15, 2004
Rarely does the siren of shareholder revolt sound as loudly as it has at
Cornell Cos., a Houston-based operator of adult and juvenile corrections
centers and treatment facilities. During a conference call last week,
investors irate over the company's performance blasted Chairman Harry
Phillips. "Our capital is being wasted here, and our company is being
undermanaged," said Zachary George with Pirate Capital, a Connecticut
hedge fund that owns 7.5 percent of Cornell's shares, making it one of the
company's biggest investors. "We are not going to let you guys destroy
this company. Your time at Cornell is limited." Pirate, which began
buying Cornell shares in May, targets companies it believes are undervalued.
It isn't alone in its displeasure: Thirty-five percent of the company's
investors withheld their votes for directors at the last annual meeting, and
that was without any organized effort. Investors have ample reason to be
ticked off. Net income was almost $8 million in 2000, but the company hasn't
seen a profit like that since. Last year, earnings were less than $4 million.
Profit margins have been halved during the same period. Cornell's market
value has tumbled to $166 million from $228 million in 2001. For Cornell's
management, the hour of reckoning is nigh. Promises of a prosperous future
will no longer quell the discontent. The sirens are sounding, and the message
for management is clear: The future is now. (Houston Chronicle)
August 14, 2002
Prison builder and operator Cornell Cos. Inc. said on Tuesday its second
quarter profit fell, in part from a one-time charge for a federal prison
contract in Mississippi that it failed to win. The company, which
operates 69 prisons, detention and substance treatment centers across
America, said short-term prospects for new contracts were uncertain as federal
funds were diverted to the new Homeland Security Department. But
Cornell also said it was optimistic about the growth in the future as prison
recidivism rates increase, along with demand from Immigration and
Naturalization Service detention centers. In addition, increasing
budgetary restraints on states should drive demand for prison
privatization. Cornell said unusual items, including about $1 million
in costs of the failed bid for the Southeast Federal Bureau of Prisons
project in Mississippi reduced earnings by 5 cents per share. (Yahoo
Finance)
August 13, 2002
Prison builder and operator Cornell Cos. Inc. on Tuesday said net income fell
in the second quarter, pressured in part by a one-time charge after it failed
to win a federal prison contract. (Yahoo Finance)
June 2, 2002
Cornell Companies Inc. (NYSE:CRN - News) updated today its outlook following
the announcement of results from a recent federal procurement process. The
Company previously submitted a response to a request for proposal from the
Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) for a potential new prison in the Southeast
U.S. The Company did not receive this award. Since these awards require
construction to be completed within 365 days, the Company had successfully
pre-arranged and received bank commitments for a construction and
lease-financing vehicle that would allow it to meet this schedule. As a
result, the Company has elected to expense approximately $530,000 in
after-tax costs in the second quarter, or $0.04 earnings per share,
representing bank commitment fees and related accounting and legal costs.
(Yahoo Finance)
May 31, 2002
Shares of prison builder and operator Cornell Cos. Inc. dropped more than 19
percent in intraday trading on Friday, a day after the Federal Bureau of
Prisons awarded a contract to a Cornell rival, analysts said. The
1,500-bed contract went to Corrections Corp. of America, the No.1 prison
operator, on Thursday. Cornell was the other finalist for the $109
million contract. "It's a disappointment. There's a chance
they could have gotten it," said Jim McDonald, an analyst with First
Analysis. But the chances were slim, he added, because Corrections
Corp. had an empty facility in Georgia, whereas Cornell would have had to
build a new facility. Lehman Brothers downgraded Cornell's stock on
Friday morning to "buy" from "strong buy."
Cornell's troubles may not be over, said Matt Hull, an analyst at Avondale
Partners, who has the stock at an "accumulate" rating. The
prison bureau's move "removes growth from the picture at the federal
level, and state budgets have less money, so you don't see a lot of prison
expansion at the state level," he said. "These stocks sell on
growth, and that's what were missing," Hull
said. "Now there's no near-term catalyst." (Yahoo
Finance)
May 1, 2002
At
the D. Ray James Prison in south Georgia, the
inmates have been kept behind bars by all types of lawmen: sheriffs, chiefs
of police and more than a few wardens. But never, until now, have they been
kept in jail by a charity. In August, a partnership headed by Provident
Foundation Inc., a not-for-profit group based in Baton Rouge, La., bought the
prison, a 1,500-man compound on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. Corrections
experts say they don't know of another example in recent times of a charity
owning a prison. Provident isn't a conventional charity. It is run by a group
of lawyers, investment bankers and financial consultants. Lehman Bros.
Holdings Inc. and other Wall Street titans do its financial work. With that
impressive firepower, Provident is trying to carve a unique niche for itself
in the corrections world, offering off-the-books financing for public and
private prison operators. It has helped the state of North Carolina and
Cornell Cos., a for-profit prison company, buff their financial profiles.
Provident does this by creating special subsidiaries and partnerships that
take advantage of controversial accounting rules and allow its clients to
keep debt off of their balance sheets. As scrutiny of complex accounting
grows in the wake of the Enron Corp. collapse, Provident offers the unusual
twist of a nonprofit playing the off-the-books game. The foundation's major
deal with Cornell sparked an embarrassing restatement of the Houston-based
company's financial figures last month. The company's top official has been
stripped of his titles as chairman and chief executive. In April 2001,
Provident formed a subsidiary, Carolina Corrections LLC, to bid for a
contract to build three 1,000-bed prisons for North Carolina. This
arrangement allows North Carolina to avoid borrowing more money itself at a
time when its budget deficit has grown. But in the long run, renting could
cost the state more than simply building the prisons itself. North Carolina's
nonpartisan fiscal-research division has estimated the 20-year-lease expense
as $370 million. That's $146 million more than the $224 million purchase
price. Early this year, Cornell's stock continued to rise. But on Jan. 31,
its auditor, Andersen, sent a troubling letter to members of the Cornell board's
audit committee. Acting after it had come under fire for its auditing of
Enron, Andersen questioned the purpose of an unusual $3.7 million retainer
Cornell last August had agreed to pay Lehman. The retainer wasn't linked to a
specific assignment but was supposed to pay for work Lehman might do in the
future. Six days after receiving the letter, Cornell announced plans to
review its accounting of the August sale-leaseback. Its stock fell 43% in one
day. (The Wall Street Journal)
April 29, 2002
Cornell has announced that it will establish a memorial to American ideals at
the Shanksville-Stonycreek school, near the
Pennsylvania site of the crash of United Flight 93 on September 11th.
(Cornell Companies/Yahoo! Finance)
March 8, 2002
Milberg Weiss, Levy and Levy, P.C., Cauley Geller
Bowman and Coates, LLP, and Schiffrin and Barroway, LLP announced that a class action has been
commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of
Texas on behalf of purchasers of Cornell Companies, Inc. The complaint
charges Cornell and certain of its officers and directors with violations of
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint alleges that during
the Class Period, defendants issued favorable but false statements and made
false and misleading statements about the Company's business. (Press
Releases from Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes and Lerach, LLP, Levy and Levy, P.C., Cauley
Geller Bowman and Coates, LLP, and Schiffrin and Barroway, LLP)
April 25, 2002
This isn’t a good time to be CEO of a Houston company audited by Arthur
Andersen. Especially if you are a former Arthur Andersen accountant. And most
especially if you may have to restate your earnings because the “innovative”
off-the-books transaction you arranged six months ago could violate the same
SEC rules that exposed Enron’s partnerships. In August, Steve Logan completed
a deal that he boasted would enable Cornell Cos., the country’s third-largest
builder and operator of prisons, to double the industry’s growth rate. His
deal involves a sale/leaseback transaction, in which facilities are sold to a
bond-issuing special-purpose company, Municipal Corrections Finance, or MCF,
and leased back to Cornell at a favorable rate. “We’ve changed the industry,”
the CEO declared last summer. “This is something that competitors have been
trying to do for a decade. No one else has been able.” On Jan. 31, auditors
alerted Cornell of a possible conflict with SEC rules, which require that the
equity owner of MCF—in this case affiliates of Lehman Brothers—own at least 3
percent of MCF for it to qualify as a separate company. Cornell’s shares fell
43 percent on the news, to $9.96 from $17.48. At issue is $3.65 million
Cornell paid to Lehman Brothers in September. The fee was reported as a
retainer to Lehman Brothers for future financial advisory services. However,
it could also be seen as a belated payment for Lehman Brothers’ role in
setting up MCF, which would reduce Lehman Brothers’ equity below the required
level. Outside ownership was the missing ingredient in Enron’s partnerships.
(The e-Network for CEOs)
March 6, 2002
Prison
builder and operator Cornell Cos Inc. said Wednesday it will restate its
earnings for 2000 and for three quarters of 2001 after reviewing two
off-balance-sheet transactions, a move that will reduce previously reported
earnings. Last month Cornell said its board of directors -- acting on the
recommendation of its independent auditor -- had formed a special committee
to review an August off-balance-sheet transaction in which Cornell sold 11
facilities and then leased them back. It also said it was reviewing what it
called a ``synthetic lease transaction'' which occurred in 2000. The
facilities were sold to affiliates of an unnamed investment bank. Cornell
said Wednesday that it has decided to consolidate the transactions, moving
them back onto the company's income statements and balance sheets. The effect
of the restatement will require waivers of certain covenants under the
company's senior credit facility, Cornell added. Based on discussions with
its lenders, Cornell expects to reach agreement to waive and/or restructure
the covenants. (Reuters)
February
11, 2002 Last Wednesday, Cornell Cos. , a
Houston-based prison builder and operator, announced that it is reviewing its
books - or rather, reviewing an off-book transaction that it entered into
during 2001. Not surprisingly, in this post-Enron environment, the market
reacted very negatively. However, from the Sleuth's point of view, there are
several "disconcerting" aspects to all of this: Even though this
"retainer agreement" was reportedly entered into during the third
quarter, the Sleuth was unable to find references to any "retainer
agreement" in CRN's third quarter 10-Q Report, and there was no evidence
that the company had either paid this $3.65 million to Lehman Brothers or had
recognized this debt as a liability. Likewise, this $3.65 million
"retainer" does not appear to have been used to pay for any of the
costs of the company's secondary offering, announced on November 27, 2001,
for which Lehman Brothers was the lead underwriter. A review of the Company's
filings with the SEC for this offering fails to show that any of CRN's
expenses from this secondary offering were paid out of any "retainer
agreement." And then, the company also announced a changing of the
guard. One of its outside directors would become chairman, while the
now-former chairman would remain president and chief executive of the
company. This press release came only eleven minutes after the announcement
of the investigation. (Securities Sleuth)
February
6, 2002
Prison builder and operator Cornell Wednesday said it was reviewing
accounting issues raised by its auditor related to an off-balance-sheet
transaction, in one of the clearest signs yet that accountants are increasingly
questioning such deals after Enron's collapse. Cornell said its board of
directors had formed a special committee to review an August transaction in
which Cornell sold 11 facilities and then leased them back. Accounting firm
Andersen, under fire for blessing Enron's books, was Cornell's auditor,
according to its most recent quarterly report. Cornell, which said the review
could have material financial consequences, also said its president and chief
executive will no longer be chairman. The news sent Cornell shares plunging
on the New York Stock Exchange, where they lost more than half their value
before recouping some losses. Cornell shares were down 40 percent, or $7.03
to $10.45 on the New York Stock Exchange in late afternoon trading, making it
the largest percentage loser on the NYSE on Wednesday. Cornell said the
facilities were sold to an entity owned by affiliates of an unnamed
investment bank for net proceeds of $173 million. Cornell is focusing on a
$3.65 million non-refundable fee it paid to the investment bank and whether
that fee affected the previously reported accounting treatment for the
transaction, the company said. It also is looking at whether its financial
statements appropriately reflected the amount paid to the investment bank.
The fee was for financial advisory services concerning future financing
vehicles and strategic development. Depending on the results of the
accounting review, the company could be forced to put the facilities back on
its balance sheet as assets and take on the debt of Municipal Corrections
Finance L.P., the entity formed to buy the facilities, as a liability,
Cornell said. Municipal Corrections Finance is a completely independent
entity from Cornell and involves no Cornell employees, the spokesman said. Cornell,
which provides prison, treatment and educational services to government
agencies, also said it had installed an outside director, Harry Phillips Jr.,
as its new chairman. Phillips succeeds Steve Logan, who remains president and
chief executive of Cornell. (Reuters)
February
7, 2002
Shares of private prison operator Cornell Cos. fell 43 percent
Wednesday after the company disclosed it is reviewing its accounting of a
real estate deal in August. Also Wednesday, Houston-based Cornell named Harry
Phillips chairman, replacing Steve Logan, who remains president and chief
executive officer. The special committee is reviewing whether the retainer
amount paid by Cornell to the investment bank would reduce the previously
established equity of the investment bank affiliate in Municipal Corrections
Finance. If that happened, Municipal Corrections Finance's assets,
liabilities and operating results would have to be reported as part of
Cornell's financial statements going back to 2001's third quarter. (Houston Chronicle)
Corplan, Argyle,
Texas
June 9, 2010 Arizona Silver Belt
At two consecutive city council meetings in April, the Globe council members
heard from a group of men representing three corporations: Emerald
Correctional Management, Corplan and Cuny Corporation. These men addressed the council
regarding their desire to put in a bid with the Arizona Department of
Corrections to construct a private, 1,000-bed prison in the City of Globe.
The men presented estimates of economic growth that sounded almost too good
to be true. According to Mike Moore of Emerald Corrections, “the city could
get a monthly revenue check per inmate per month but it would depend on the
monthly per diem that the state pays. It does pay and it’s a sizable number.”
The group of business men went on to say the entire project would be $60 to
$100 million in construction, and the goal would be to hire local workforce for
70 percent of the construction. They also promised to help the city with
expansion of the sewer infrastructure. The city council took two hours to
reach a decision, but in the end, a 4-2 vote in favor of supporting Emerald
Corrections’ bid to build the prison was approved. A deal too good to be
true? Well, there might be more than meets the eye. Case Study: Hardin, Mon.
In 2004, Mr. James Parkey of Corplan
- the same James Parkey who spoke to the Globe city
council - proposed the construction of a private prison in Hardin, Mon., a
small rural city suffering from economic stalemate. A team of experts spoke
to the city officials, selling them hope of economic prosperity through the
private prison business. The 450-bed prison was supposed to generate 150 secure
jobs and at least $100,000 in annual per-prisoner revenue. The companies
involved, Corplan as the developer, Cuny Corporation as the civil engineer of the project,
and Civigenics as the prison operators, promised to
realize the project from start to finish. To pay for the prison, the city of
Hardin would have to conduct a bond sale. Prior to the construction, Parkey promised the city officials an economic
feasibility study, which was carried out by Howard Geisler, a consultant
specializing in prisons, and who had worked together with Parkey
in a number of other cities. The study presented facts and figures that a
Montana state auditor later described as providing “little methodology” and
lacking “historical data to support anticipated prisoner counts.” The auditor
went on the say the report made “a number of assumptions made related to
financial viability that appear to be unfounded.” The prison was built, and
the three companies involved received their payments and Hardin prepared
itself for its first prisoners. In this case, however, they built it, but no
one came. Hardin became so desperate to get prisoners in their prison, that
they requested taking sex-offenders and later even Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
Since the prison had been built for less high profile inmates, with 24-bed
cells, Hardin’s requests were turned down. Hardin’s detention center never
received the expected prisoners and the city has been in bond default for the
last two years. A post on the detention center’s website reads, “any person or
parties interested in operating or leasing space in the Hardin Detention
Facility should contact...” “Do a lot of research” -- The pain is still
throbbing in Hardin, Mon. After contacting the executive director of economic
development and the mayor, the only comment given was “do a lot of research.”
Hardin, Mon. is one of the most prominent cases, where Corplan
and its partners have left a city with an empty prison. Corplan’s
website lists a number of sample prisons that they have built that are
surviving. However, it does not list Hardin. Neither are a number of other
cases, where things ‘went wrong,’ including facilities in LaSalle County,
Texas, Pioche, Nev., Lindsay, Okla., McLennan County, Texas, Las Cruses,
N.M., and St. Luis, Ariz. In Willacy County, three county commissioners who
were working very closely together with Corplan
were indicted on bribery charges. Parkey’s and Corplan’s actions have caught attention in the media. Dan
Rather reported on a few cases, especially the prison in LaSalle, Texas.
Frank Smith, of the non-profit organization Private Corrections Working
Group, has been following Parkey and Corplan over the years. Smith warned that the economic
feasibility report must be read very closely and to expect that there may be
exaggerations or left out aspects. The economic feasibility study “sells” the
project more than examines it in some cases. When asked why nothing has been
done legally against Corplan, Smith named a number of small factors that may be reasons why is some
cases nothing was done. In Globe’s case, Corplan,
Emerald Corrections, and Cuny Corporation have
asked for support for a bid in response to a request for proposals put out by
the Arizona DOC. In Hardin, the three partner corporations told the city that
the prison operator, Civigenics, would provide the
service of having prisoners housed in the facility. This could be a major
difference in the success or failure of the proposed Globe project. The
Arizona DOC will be awarding the contracts for the prisons by June 30, 2010.
April 28, 2010 San Pedro Valley
News-Sun
Allowing a private detention center to operate in Benson is not in the
city's best interest said Michelle Brane, the director of the detention and
asylum program for the Women's Refugee Commission. In fact, Brane said
private prisons like the proposed 200-bed facility are "horrible for
rural communities." Corplan Corrections, a
Texas Company, wants to build a 104,000-square-foot facility to house mostly
women and children who are in the country illegally. The company known for
building prisons and detention centers in the U.S., has promised the city big
payouts if they sponsor the $27 million bonds needed to pay for the prison
construction. Representatives of Corplan, including
Toby Michael and James Parkey, have told city
officials and council members that the bond is paid for through federal
funding. Corplan Corrections has already selected a
25-acre parcel that would hold the facility, that they are calling a
"Family Residential Center of the Southwest," near Benson Municipal
Airport. However, Brane said the promise of federal funding is not a true
statement. "I have spoken to the Department of Homeland Security, and
the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement because if Corplan
were to get funding, it would be from them," she said. "At this
point there are not any (request for proposals); there have been no
discussions with the federal government. Nothing is a sure thing and in fact
I would say highly doubtful." City Manager Glenn Nichols said city staff
has moved forward with investigating whether this would be a good economic
move for the city, and it will be discussed by the City Council during the
May 10 regular meeting. Nichols said the biggest concern remains
accountability. "We have seen nothing in writing from the Department of
Corrections that this would definitely be funded," he said. The second
concern is the city's liability if the bond were to go into default. Corplan Corrections says there is no liability on the
city's part, but Nichols said they are not completely sure. Nonetheless, the
direction the city will take will depend on how the council votes on May 10.
Nichols said the council will be presented the information, discuss it and
vote to either move forward with the process or stop it. Corplan
Corrections has painted a picture of great economic promise if Benson moves
ahead with the project. In closed-door meetings with council members, Corplan has promised a federally funded facility that
would house 500 women and children in the country illegally and would create
up to 150 jobs. The city has also been told they would get an increased
revenue stream of $218,000 a year. Similar facilities have been proposed in
New Mexico and Texas, and one became a failure in Hardin, Mont., where the
city signed off on $27 million in bonds in 2007 for a 200-bed facility. The
facility was constructed, but to this day sits empty with no federal grant
funding or per diem fees as promised by Corplan
Corrections. Kim Hammond, mayor of Hardin, has warned cities like Benson to tread
lightly when considering the proposals brought forth by private companies
like Corplan.
April 23, 2010 Texas Observer
State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, a Brownsville Democrat, is following in his
father's footsteps by joining forces with Corplan
Corrections, a scandal-plagued prison development company. Lucio is
representing Argyle, Texas-based Corplan
Corrections in its bid to build an immigration family detention center in
Weslaco, a Rio Grande Valley town that is in Rep. Lucio's district. State
Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., also a Democrat Brownsville, “consulted” for Corplan in 2003 and 2004. Corplan
and its CEO, James Parkey, specialize in selling
desperate communities on risky government-financed prisons with promises of
jobs and economic development. Typically, the company talks local governments
into financing speculative jail facilities and then leaves the community to
figure out how to keep them open. In recent years, Corplan
has been at the center of numerous controversies, including a bizarre
prison-building scheme in Hardin, Montana that involved a private military
force called American Police Force run by an ex-con. The prison cost the
small town $27 million but never housed any prisoners. In one of his latest
gambits, Parkey has approached city officials in
several towns across the U.S. – Benson, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and
Weslaco, Texas – with a proposal to build a new detention center for
immigrant families. Parkey’s reputation, however,
has caught up with him in Las Cruces and Benson, where officials have nixed
the deal. That’s not the case in Weslaco. Weslaco Mayor Buddy de la Rosa told
me that he was first introduced to Parkey two or so
years ago and the project has been in the works ever since. Corplan, he said, is handling all the details. The
company recently brought Rep. Lucio on as an attorney for the project.
Weslaco is in Lucio’s district. In February, Lucio and Parkey
spoke to the Weslaco City Commission and urged the commissioners to pass a
resolution giving Corplan authorization to file a
“grant application” for the facility, according to minutes from the meeting.
(De la Rosa said he has not seen the application and doesn’t know to whom it
will be submitted.) It might be a lousy deal for the city – if it's a deal at
all. "James Parkey and Corplan
are prison developers who get paid when a prison is built," said Bob Libal, an anti-private prison organizer with Grassroots
Leadership. "It's not necessarily in their interest to make sure the
prison project is successful." The Weslaco project is particularly
fraught with risk, Libal says, because the Obama
administration has all but done away with detaining immigrant families. In
August 2009, federal officials removed immigrant families from the T. Don
Hutto Residential Center, a privately-operated jail near Taylor that
attracted international attention after advocates and detainees reported
inhumane conditions. The Obama administration has also let Bush-era plans to
add new family facilities expire, said Michelle Brane, director of detention
and asylum programs at the Women's Refugee Commission. “To my knowledge – and
I spoke specifically with Immigration and Customs Enforcement about this –
they insist they don’t have any requests for proposal out there or any plans
for building a new family detention facility,” said Brane. “I think they’re
being duped frankly.” Mayor de la Rosa said that he wasn’t aware of the shift
in federal policy but said it may explain why he hasn’t heard from Parkey or Lucio recently. “They have been remarkably
quiet for the past several weeks,” he said. Representing Corplan
appears to be a Lucio family business. According to Texas Ethics Commission
filings, state Sen. Eddie Lucio, also a Brownsville Democrat, worked as a
“consultant” for Corplan in 2003 and 2004 at a time
when the company was part of a consortium of private prison interests seeking
to build a 2,000-bed immigrant detention center in Raymondville, the seat of
Willacy County. (I did a feature story on Raymondville's prison boom in 2006.
You can read the whole gruesome story here.) During that time, Lucio also
represented other corporate entities involved in the bid: prison construction
company Hale-Mills, prison operator Management and Training Corp., and
Aguirre, Inc. Here's what I wrote in 2006: The consortium needed a deal
closer and found one in state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. The Brownsville Democrat
had worked as a "consultant" for Corplan
and Management & Training in 2003 and 2004, according to records filed
with the Texas Ethics Commission. He had suspended his consulting work in
2005 in the aftermath of the bribery scandal, but Hale-Mills hired him this
year for the federal detention center project. Lucio says Hale-Mills paid him
"to figure out what kind of impact this will have on the community, to
talk to the general public to see what their feel is." [Former Willacy
County Attorney Juan] Guerra alleges that Lucio made multiple appearances in
Raymondville pressuring the commissioners to select Management & Training
over Corrections Corp. "As far as I'm concerned, had it not been for
Eddie Lucio the commissioners would not have gone and put the county in a $60
million debt," Guerra says. "In my opinion, in his position as a
senator he let our commissioners, including me, know where he stood... Once
your senator lets you know what he wants, it's hard to go against
[him]." In 2005, Lucio ended his consulting work with Corplan after two Willacy County commissioners pleaded
guilty to accepting cash bribes in exchange for their votes to award a
contract for another Raymondville prison. Amazingly, no one was ever indicted
for supplying the bribe. Sen. Lucio no longer appears to be working for Corplan, at least according to personal financial
disclosure statements for the last four years filed with the Ethics Commission.
Rep. Lucio’s involvement with Corplan is not
disclosed on his latest disclosure filing. The form was turned in on February
16th, the same day Lucio appeared at the Weslaco City Commission meeting.
It's not clear why Corplan is not listed as a source
of occupational income. For some, the whole thing stinks. “I think that
raises some pretty serious questions especially when he’s presenting false
information to a local body that’s in his district,” said Libal.
“Does it break any law? I don’t know. Does it seem like a big conflict of
interest? Yes.”
Coryell County Jail
Gatesville, Texas
Corplan, CiviGenics
November 13, 2006 Killeen Daily Herald
A Willacy County official has a word of caution for the Coryell County
Commissioners' Court as it considers a private prison vendor as a remedy for
its overcrowded jail facility. "Have your sheriff talk to our sheriff.
He will let you know what kind of problems he is having," said Juan
Guerra, who pulls double duty as both county and district attorney in Willacy
County. Guerra said his county has struggled through criminal investigations
that saw two of its county commissioners convicted, and it is also is in
danger of defaulting on a bond payment because it hasn't received enough
federal prisoners to generate the needed revenue to sustain the facility.
Coryell County Commissioners are expected to open a proposal from Innovative
Government Strategies to construct and operate a jail facility when they meet
in regular session at 10 a.m. Monday in the Coryell County Courthouse.
According to the documents turned in by Innovative Government Strategies, the
proposed project team includes James Parkey, with Corplan Corrections Inc., for developer, Hale-Mills for
construction company, Municipal Capital Markets Group for financing, Deborah
L. Williams for architecture and engineering and CiviGenics-Texas
Inc. for management and operations. Coryell County Attorney Brandon Belt
previously expressed concern about the proposed operator, saying that CiviGenics had been at the center of controversy
recently. However, it is not just CiviGenics that
has a troubled past. The commissioners' consideration of the group comes just
days after a federal judge sentenced former Willacy County Commissioner
Israel Tamez to six months in jail for his role in
a bribery scandal connected to a $14.5 million prison project to construct a
U.S. Marshals Service jail. On Nov. 9, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen
handed down the sentence and also gave Tamez three
years' probation and imposed a $25,000 fine. Tamez
and former Commissioner Jose Jimenez, who died of cancer before being
sentenced, pleaded guilty in January 2005 to taking more than $10,000 in
kickbacks, Guerra said. Former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez also was
involved in the scandal and was convicted in March 2005 of funneling the
bribes to the Willacy County commissioners in exchange for their votes to
hire a consultant in the prison project, Guerra said. Cortez is scheduled to
be sentenced Nov. 20. "My understanding was, as far as implicating the
company, it has not been implicated, but the commissioners have been
convicted," Guerra said. "Our records indicate that when (Cortez)
came before the commissioners when this happened four years ago, he
represented himself as a private consultant for Corplan."
In May 2005, Willacy County, on Guerra's instructions, filed a civil suit
against Corplan and Hale-Mills alleging that the
two companies were parties to the bribery. The suit later was dismissed,
Guerra said. Guerra said he could not say whether a federal investigation was
still pending, and U.S. District Court offices were closed Friday for the
federal holiday. Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence could not be reached
either. Guerra said the lack of competitive bids when Willacy was building its
third federal facility – against his advice and despite the criminal
implications – was not only suspect, but something that possibly lost Willacy
County millions. "No one is checking to see if you are getting your
money's worth," he said. "Because we don't know if that facility
cost $50 million to construct." In fact, Guerra said according to
information he received from experts, the project, which was for a facility
to house Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, could have been done
for between $30 and $35 million. "The information that I got, from
experts that reviewed the expenses, says they could not justify the $50
million. They padded the construction costs by an extra $20 to $15
million," Guerra said. "What is funny you get commissioners that
are indicted for taking $10,000. I am just wondering who are
the real crooks?"
Crystal City
Bobby Ross Group
June 4, 2003
City librarian Annette Lehmann doesn't really mind the FBI agents and Texas
Rangers using her conference room day after day for interviews, but she
wishes they'd check in with her first. "It's during the day when
there is really nothing going on, so it doesn't bother me. I'd just like to
be told," she said. "The Texas Rangers wear guns. That's how
you can tell them apart," she added. A little over a month after
voters here gave the boot to a City Council faction that some accused of
running the city like a totalitarian state, the winds of rumor and reform are
both blowing hard. The Rangers and federal agents are busy trying to
make sense of a $14 million detention centers purchase the old administration
rushed through with great secrecy early this year. They also are following
other money trails at City Hall and at the city's economic development
corporation. The $14 million purchase of a pair of prison facilities from the
Bobby Ross Group in Austin remains the big mystery. "We still
don't know exactly where the money went," Mayor Raul Gomez said of the
mammoth deal. "People are just waiting to find out what happened. It's
like they say, 'I hope they (the investigators) don't find anything, but if
they do, I hope something is done about it,'" he said. Both the
FBI in Del Rio and District Attorney Roberto Serna in Eagle Pass have
declined to discuss their investigations in Crystal City. Sources say that so
far nearly a dozen people have been interviewed and numerous records have
been subpoenaed. The sale was financed by high interest bonds sold without a
referendum through a public facilities corporation, and the closing was at a
title company in Austin. An enigmatic key figure in the detention
centers deal was Mario Hernandez, 64, a former city councilman whose name is
on the bronze dedication plaque on City Hall dated 1963. Hernandez
earned thousands in Crystal City as a consultant to the economic development
corporation for cheese factory and tire recycling deals that have yet to bear
fruit. But when he hit the jackpot on the detention centers deal, he was
working for someone else. Acting as a representative of the Bobby Ross
Group, which sold the detention centers to the city, Hernandez made hundreds
of thousands of dollars when the deal closed. "He was paid
$300,000 when the bonds were sold," said Tim Kurpiewski,
a Bobby Ross vice-president in Austin, who said Hernandez made additional
money on the deal that he would not disclose. After the prison
facilities were sold to the city, Hernandez sought to be hired to a
$120,000-a-year city job overseeing the operating contract with Bobby Ross
Group. However, since the change on the City Council, he has dropped
out of view. Contacted by telephone this weekend, Hernandez declined to
be interviewed. Hernandez's background is of special interest to
authorities. In the early 1990s he served 32 months in federal prison
for convictions in a credit card scam in Wisconsin and for harboring
undocumented immigrants in San Antonio. In that case, authorities
accused him of keeping Mexican immigrants locked in a shed on Rigsby Avenue
and releasing them in the daytime to work as laborers. According to the
Bexar County Sheriff's Department, Hernandez is wanted on an active
misdemeanor warrant for theft of service under $500. Former Crystal
City Mayor Frank Moreno, who last fall asked the FBI to look into the city
government's activities, was elected to the council this spring. He
said the outside probes are essential to clear the air. "The people
are glad that finally some type of investigations
are started, and they are definitely glad that both the FBI and the Rangers
are involved," Moreno said. (San Antonio Express-News)
February
25, 2003
The forced removal of a council member
from a City Council meeting has ignited a political battle over whether
Crystal City's government is operating in the open. At the recent
February meeting of the council, member Raul Gomez began questioning City
Manager Eleazar Salinas about city expenditures. Mayor Jody Cerda told him he
was out of order. "I was told by the mayor I should not be asking
those questions, and I said, as a councilman, I have the right to ask about
bills and invoices," Gomez told the San Antonio Express-News for a story
in Monday's edition. Gomez refused to be silenced. "If
someone from the public wants to talk about something, they need to give
10-day notice to the city manager, and if he thinks it's fit, he'll put it on
the agenda," Gomez told the Express-News. The newspaper reported that
Cerda's critics were worried by the recent sale of $14 million in bonds to
buy two detention centers near Crystal City from the private company that
operates them. It reported the council approved the deal with the Bobby Ross
Group last month with almost no public comment or release of information. The
council also turned away questions from the public. Gomez and Macias,
who opposed the detention center deal, said they were given no information
before the purchase. Even now, more than a month later, they said they haven't
seen complete financial documentation. The purchase was done through a
recently created, Cerda-led public facilities corporation that sold the
high-interest bonds. Documents examined by the Express-News showed the
facilities corporation paid $9 million for the centers, plus the surrounding
75 acres. The Zavala County appraiser values the centers at $6 million, the
newspaper reported. The lease-purchase deal included a $1.1 million
payment back to Crystal City, with $300,000 apparently going to the city and
$800,000 to the city's economic development corporation - also led by Cerda,
the newspaper reported. In a separate contract, the Bobby Ross Group
will still operate the centers, with revenue generated by the centers going
directly to pay down the bonds, the newspaper reported. (AP)
Dallas County Jail
Dallas, Texas
Aramark, Keefe, Mid-America
October 11, 2006 The Dallas Morning News
Dallas County commissioners voted Tuesday for the first time to award a
jail commissary contract, ending a tradition in which the sheriff decided who
gets the lucrative deal to sell snacks and other items to more than 7,000
inmates. The roughly $34 million, five-year contract awarded to Keefe
Commissary Network is expected to generate more money for the county than the
existing contract. County officials who didn't like how the former sheriff
handled the awarding of the existing commissary contract moved to get state
law changed last year to allow commissioners to decide the commissary vendor.
The new law allows the sheriff to designate commissioners to decide the
contract. Sheriff Lupe Valdez didn't want to be involved because of past
problems, her spokesman has said. Keefe, a St. Louis company, estimated that
annual revenue to the county based on sales of snacks, pens, toiletries,
playing cards and other items would be about $2.6 million, which is almost
four times what the current contractor provides. That contractor, Mid-America
Services, was given the contract in 2002 by then-Sheriff Jim Bowles, who was
a longtime friend of the owner, Jack Madera. At the time, commissioners
complained that other companies offered better financial terms. Commissioner
Kenneth Mayfield cast the sole vote against the contract award, saying
Aramark offered a better value to the county. He said Aramark offered a
slightly higher commission rate as well as $1 million in upfront money, to be
paid out each year of the contract. But Commissioner John Wiley Price said
Keefe guaranteed the county at least $2 million each year. "The numbers
speak for themselves," he said. Mr. Mayfield also said Keefe did not
disclose to the county its involvement in a federal corruption investigation
in Florida involving a prison contract until after the Justice Department
issued a news release about it in July. The county's request for proposals
required such a disclosure. The former head of the Florida corrections
department and a prison official were charged in July with accepting more
than $130,000 in kickbacks from a Keefe subcontractor over two years in
connection with a 2003 prison-store contract. "There's a lot of smoke
there," Mr. Mayfield said. "I find it incredulous that Keefe did
not know they were under investigation in 2004 and 2005." No knowledge:
Keefe's chief executive wrote in a July 31 letter to purchasing supervisor
Linda Boles that the company had no knowledge of illegal activity related to
the case. In a Sept. 11 letter, U.S. Attorney Paul Perez in Florida wrote
that Keefe and its employees are considered witnesses in the investigation
but that could change. "Nothing in this letter ... shall preclude the
United States from later determining that Keefe or any of its employees are
subjects or targets of this investigation," he wrote. It isn't the only
controversy in which the company has been involved. In 2004, Keefe was found
to have charged sales tax on some items that aren't taxable in Texas in
connection with a Collin County jail commissary contract. As a result, almost
600 inmates were overcharged more than $5,000, records showed. Because of the
error, the Collin County sheriff awarded the contract to a different firm.
October 4, 2006 Dallas Morning News
Dallas County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved the first
phase of a plan to provide more clinical space inside the jail for inmate
medical and mental health needs. The county's selection committee recommended
that St. Louis-based Keefe Commissary Network be awarded the five-year
contract to sell snacks, toiletries and other items to the more than 7,000
inmates. The company's bid calls for a 40 percent commission on sales or $2
million in guaranteed annual revenue for the county, whichever is greater.
Revenue under the current vendor has averaged about $670,600 a year over the
last three years, according to the county auditor. "It shows what can
come from a very well-run procurement process," Mr. Clemson said. Keefe
disclosed to the county that it currently is under investigation by the U.S.
Department of Justice over kickbacks its subcontractor is accused of paying
to the former head of corrections in Florida in connection with a prison
contract.
December 15, 2003
An investigation into the Dallas County sheriff and his dealings with a jail
vendor has expanded to include three other North Texas counties that have
contracts with the vendor, according to a published report. Court
records obtained by the Dallas Morning News show that the campaign finance
records of Denton County Sheriff Weldon Lucas were recently subpoenaed by
Chris Milner, who is overseeing the probe of Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles.
Officials in Tarrant and Nueces counties told the newspaper that Milner had
also subpoenaed jail commissary and election records there. Milner is
investigating whether Bowles improperly awarded the Sheriff Department's
commissary contract to Jack Madera of Mid-America Services based on reports
published by the newspaper in September. Milner, an assistant district
attorney in Collin County, declined the newspaper's request for
comment. Bowles accepted meals and travel expenses worth thousands of
dollars from Madera from 1999 to 2001. In 2002 he awarded Madera the
department's commissary contract even though other vendors offered higher
commissions to the department. The sheriff said he repaid Madera for
all expenses except the meals, but hasn't shown proof of those
reimbursements. Lucas awarded Mid-America Denton County's jail
commissary contract that same year under similar circumstances, the newspaper
reported Thursday. (AP)
September 22, 2003
Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles accepted meals, airfare and hotel rooms
worth thousands of dollars from commissary vendor Jack Madera in the two
years before he awarded Madera's company a contract to sell goods in the
jail, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday. Bowles told the
newspaper that he reimbursed Madera or his companies for any expenses except
lunches. He said he didn't keep copies of checks that would show the
reimbursement. "I don't keep copies of checks anticipating
this," the sheriff said. "No one has ever questioned my integrity
before." Bowles has occasionally acted on behalf of Madera,
accompanying him on visits to solicit business from other sheriffs, according
to interviews. At a fund-raiser for the sheriff last week, Madera
declined to be interviewed. Bowles awarded the five-year contract to
Mid-America Services Inc., Madera's company, in June 2002. The
commissary sells snacks, soft drinks and other products to inmates. The
department receives a portion of the $4 million in projected annual revenue
to pay for some inmate programs and jail costs. Madera's bid was worth
about $600,000 in annual revenue to the sheriff's department. Other
bidders offered a minimum of $1 million, according to county records.
After county commissioners criticized the deal, Bowles said he was friends with
Madera. He later backed off that description and now says they interact only
about business. Between October 1999 and November 2001, Madera paid for
72 meals totaling $3,698 at which Bowles or his top aide, Executive Chief
Deputy Larry Forsyth, often were the only guests, according to financial
records provided by Madera's former company. Madera paid $789 for
airfare and hotels for Bowles to attend the 2000 and 2001 Sheriffs'
Association of Texas conferences in Lubbock and Corpus Christi. Madera also paid
$150 for plane tickets for Bowles' wife to attend the 2001 conference.
Madera's new company advanced the sheriff $1,211 for airfare and registration
for this year's National Sheriffs' Association annual conference in
Nashville, Tenn., an expense the sheriff later reimbursed with campaign
funds. The Morning News obtained Madera's expenses from Mid-States
Services, one of the companies that Bowles passed up to award the commissary
contract to Mid-America. Madera founded Mid-States almost 20 years ago and
sold it in February 1999. John F. Sammons Jr., the chairman and chief
executive officer of Mid-States, said he provided the records because they
show that Bowles is too close to Madera. "Sheriff Bowles has never
accepted one red cent from Jack Madera," said Clayton P. Henry, the
sheriff's campaign consultant. "We consider this to be sour grapes on
the part of John Sammons." Some officials said the sheriff has
occasionally worked on behalf of Madera. In 1999, Bowles and Madera paid a visit
to Travis County Sheriff Margo Frasier. "It was one of those kinds
of deals where Jim was introducing me to Jack and saying Jack wanted to talk
to me about my commissary business," Frasier said. "Jim Bowles was
there for the introduction." (AP)
July 3, 2002
Several Dallas County commissioners accuse Sheriff Jim Bowles of awarding a
$20 million jail commissary contract to a longtime friend over bidders who
offered far better financial terms for the department. A five-year contract
was awarded last month to Mid-America Services Inc., owned by Jack Madera, to
sell pens, toothpaste, chips and other items to about 7,000 inmates at Dallas
County jails. The contract would generate about $4 million a year, with
$600,000 a year going to the Sheriff's Department starting July 15, according
to county officials. But two of the unsuccessful bidders, Swanson Services
Corp. and Mid-States Services Inc., said they offered to give the Sheriff's
Department at least $1.2 million a year. He said Bowles, who has been in
office 17 years, has a long relationship with Madera but showed "no
favoritism whatsoever" in awarding the contract to his friend.
Commissioners contend that Bowles, 73, has declined to turn over bid
documents from the four vendors.
Dallas School District
Dallas, Texas
Community Education Partners
May 7, 2008 Creative Loafing
Patti Welch was living in Douglasville when she went through a divorce
last year. Atlanta was her chance to start over. Weary of her one-hour,
20-minute commute to the northside law office where she works as a paralegal,
Welch found a duplex in the West End only 20 minutes from her job. But the
move also was about her 15-year-old son, Patrick. He was a smart kid, a B
student entering the 10th grade. But he'd gotten into fights. One took place
just off school grounds and involved several kids, so officials labeled it
"gang-related." That meant Patrick would be sent to Douglas
County's alternative school. Even though she was confident her son wasn't in
a gang, Welch didn't bother to appeal the school district's decision. She
thought an alternative school might help him. And she hoped the 10 days
Patrick spent in jail after his last fight would serve as a wake-up call.
Welch knew her son would be sent to an alternative school when they moved to
Atlanta. But she thought it would be temporary. Instead, officials told her
that because Patrick had a gang-related fight on his record, he'd never be
allowed to enroll in a regular school in Atlanta. She tried to make the best
of it. When told he'd be sent to Forrest Hill Academy, she looked at her son
and forced a smile. "Wow," she said hopefully. "They're
putting you in an academy." Six months later, Patrick became one of
eight student plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil
Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program in New York City. The suit alleges
that Forrest Hill – which is operated by a for-profit company called
Community Education Partners – is little more than a pathway to prison for
Atlanta's unwanted students. "It would be a stretch to even call this a
school," says Reggie Shuford, an attorney with
the ACLU's Racial Justice Program in New York. "There is little to no
academic instruction, and its students are treated like criminals. It is
nothing more than a warehouse, largely for poor children of color." The
ACLU contends that Forrest Hill students, 97 percent of whom are
African-American, spend most of their days filling out worksheets, for which
they get no feedback. According to state figures, nine out of 10 students at
the school are unable to pass the standardized state test for math
proficiency. The figures also show that Forrest Hill is the most violent
school in Atlanta. "It is a national disgrace that the Atlanta school
system has handed over its constitutional responsibility to a private,
for-profit corporation," says Emily Chiang, the case's lead lawyer.
Forrest Hill wasn't quite the academy that Patti Welch had hoped for. The
idea of putting problem children into an "alternative school" is a
recent phenomenon in the world of education. Before a federal law that took
effect in 1978, public schools had no legal requirement to provide education
to special needs kids. If a child was violent, or continually disrupted the
class, schools could kick him or her out. When the law took away that option,
teachers and school systems faced the chore of trying to tame disruptive
students. The trend of taking those kids out of regular classrooms and
putting them into "alternative" schools began to take hold. That
practice quickly led to allegations that some systems – under increasing
pressure to churn out higher scores on standardized tests – were simply
"warehousing" their undesirable students, out of sight and out of
mind. "Those schools weren't about education, but just getting through
the day," says Eric Freeman, assistant professor of educational policy
studies at Georgia State University. "Those were the 'expendable kids.'
It's no longer acceptable to have schools where kids are warehoused, but we
still have a long way to go." When it was founded in 1996, Community
Education Partners touted itself as a way to get expendable kids back into
the mainstream. From the start, however, there were indications CEP's
considerable political weight was as responsible for its rise as were its
education programs. CEP was formed in Nashville by four men with heavy
Republican connections.CEO Randle Richardson, was
chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party from 1992 to 1995 and oversaw a
1994 electoral sweep in which Bill Frist and Fred Thompson won Senate seats
and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Another
co-founder, John Danielson, would become chief of staff for Education
Secretary Rod Paige under George W. Bush. One of the initial investors, Tom
Beasley, had chaired the Tennessee GOP before Richardson did. Beasley also
founded the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs privatized
prisons. Founded in 1984, CCA has grown to become the sixth-largest prison
system in the country – trailing only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and four
states. But the company also has faced criticism for understaffing, high
turnover and lax security. According to a 1999 state audit, neglect of
medical care and security at CCA facilities in Georgia amounted to
"borderline deliberate indifference." The two companies – CCA and
CEP – have turned out to share some parallels. Both had business plans that
relied on obtaining contracts to operate government services. Both were
started in Nashville by major Republican Party players. And both went to
Texas to make their mark. Texas was a natural entry point for CEP. In 1995,
George W. Bush had become governor, and his administration was brimming with
ideas to reform schools. The bundle of changes would be touted during Bush's
2000 presidential run as the "Texas Miracle." In that environment,
George Scott, president of a Texas nonprofit education reform group, helped
CEP gain a foothold. "I got pulled into it by the former superintendent
for the Houston school department," Scott says. "It's a sinister
manipulation of reality to say that public education is meeting its
constitutional and moral obligation to these children; we throw at-risk kids
into alternative centers and forget about them. Then along came a company
that said it was going to do something different." Scott says he first
used his political connections to help the company land a contract to take
over the education services at a juvenile detention center. He was impressed
by CEP's pitch that its methods could help problem children get up to speed
academically so they go back to mainstream schools. "You have kids in
the ninth grade who can't do fractions," Scott says. "If a kid is
in the ninth grade but is at the fifth-grade level, giving them an algebra
book is useless. Under this program, we would start them at the level where
they are at, and build from there. CEP promised two years of academic growth
for every year a student was in their school." In 1997, Scott says, he
used his relationship with Paige, then Houston's school superintendent, to
help CEP land its first public school contract. Under the future education
secretary's stewardship, the Houston Independent School District was becoming
a cradle of the so-called Texas Miracle. Paige had put a system in place that
held individual principals accountable for dropout rates and test scores.
Then, the district signed a $17.9 million contract to turn the education of
as many as 2,500 children to CEP. Initially, the corporation hired Carl Shaw
– who was the former chairman of the Texas Education Agency's assessment
committee – to develop an independent test to grade the progress of the CEP
students. "I will never forget the day the school board approved the CEP
contract," Scott says. "Randle Richardson and I were walking out of
the building and I told him that not all the kids in this are going to make
two [years of progress] in one. But that is going to be your strength. You'll
say that you're being held accountable for the program." Before CEP's
contract with Houston took effect, however, the first test results from the juvenile
detention facility came back. Scott recalls that they showed the students
weren't making much progress – some had even regressed. CEP blamed the test,
and fired Shaw. Richardson disputes that account. He says Scott let his
friendship with Shaw intrude on his judgment and that the scores showed 20
student inmates had regressed in math but that most had made great progress.
His own expert looked at the test and determined it was flawed, an opinion
seconded by the Texas Education Agency. Whether it was over a principle or a
friendship, the incident left Scott with strong feelings about CEP. He now
says the one thing he's most ashamed of in his professional life is helping
the company get into the Texas schools. The absence of Shaw's test, he says,
left the company devoid of the very thing that had attracted him to the
concept in the first place: accountability. Instead, Scott says, CEP began to
cull its political connections. A sitting Houston school board member was
hired as a consultant. Sandy Kress, who later authored Bush's No Child Left
Behind program, was hired as a lobbyist. And when the company opened the
campus of its first alternative school, in Houston in 1997, former President
George H.W. Bush was at the opening ceremony to offer his endorsement. "They
put together a very powerful, politically juiced operation in Texas,"
Scott says. CEP followed its Houston deal with a five-year, $10
million-a-year contract in Dallas. Then, it moved on to Florida and
Philadelphia. And all along it followed a familiar pattern: It hired
well-connected lobbyists to sell the program and courted elected officials
with generous campaign contributions. CEP claimed it had found the key to
educating a student population that was thought to be beyond help. The
schools used a computer-based education program called PLATO that CEP said
enables students to quickly catch up to their age level in reading and math
skills. The company was swept up in the middle of what became a nationwide
education reform movement. Bush campaigned for the presidency heralding his
"Texas Miracle" of low dropout rates and high test scores. When he
was elected, he named Paige to his Cabinet and pushed through Congress the No
Child Left Behind Act, which instituted high achievement goals for the nation's
public schools. But even as it rode the wave of its association with Bush's
education changes, CEP became a target of criticism. Some parents complained
of prison-like conditions inside CEP schools. Others claimed CEP was, in
reality, doing little more than warehousing problem students. There were
official rebukes as well. An internal evaluation in Dallas found that
"the model of education provided by [CEP] was untenable." "The
reliance on non-certified teachers for the bulk of the student- teacher
interaction was useful for the company to save money, but was not a design in
the best interest of the students," the report went on to say.
"Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do very well
academically." CEP had even refused to provide its budget data to the
school district, the report said, which made it impossible to know just how
it was spending the money it received. In 2002, the Dallas school system
fired CEP. By then, however, the company was developing its relationship with
a new customer: Atlanta. It's unclear exactly how CEP came to acquire a $6.9
million contract to open an alternative school in Atlanta. Richardson says
the school system contacted the company in 2001. Citing the pending ACLU
lawsuit, Atlanta school officials won't even talk about CEP. At the time the
contract was signed, Atlanta officials brushed aside concerns already brewing
in Dallas. They cited a "task force" report that supposedly
recommended the district privatize its alternative schools; when the AJC
requested a copy of that report, however, school officials said they couldn't
find one. It didn't take long for concerns to crop up in Atlanta. In August
2002, CEP opened its alternative school in temporary quarters at the old
Archer High School. Parents of some of the students attended the Rev. Darryl
Winston's southeast Atlanta church. "We were hearing allegations of
mistreatment and a prison environment," says Winston, president of the
Greater American Ministerial Council. "We met with the staff, and they
admitted that 90 percent of what we described had to do with the building.
The Archer High School campus was extremely chaotic. They told us the
building did not give us an accurate picture of what the program was
about." CEP even flew Winston and other community leaders to Houston to
tour their schools there. "We were impressed by what we saw," he
says. The company assured Winston the problem was that the Atlanta school had
yet to find a permanent location. The company prefers a specific design for
its schools. Kids are segregated into male and female classes, and the
classes are isolated inside pods within the building. "In school, kids
get in trouble in the hallway or the cafeteria or going to the
restrooms," says Anthony Edwards, a CEP vice president. "So we control
that. There are restrooms and water fountains in each of the common areas. It
eliminates movement. Kids get in trouble when they're moving." Three
properties had already been identified, but each was scuttled by community
opposition to an alternative school in the neighborhood. CEP asked for
Winston's patience, and he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
Meanwhile, the company did what it could to strengthen its political ties in
Atlanta. When school board members faced re-election in 2005, CEP and its
executives gave money in four races. According to Fulton County records,
Randle Richardson made a $250 contribution to Mark Riley, who easily won
re-election. He also contributed $500 to Brenda Muhammad, a former board
member who ran successfully to regain a seat. CEP's chief financial officer,
Phil Baggett, contributed another $250 to Muhammad. CEP was more generous in
two other contests: Richardson and Baggett each made three separate
contributions to incumbent Eric Wilson that totaled $2,000, and newcomer
Yolanda Johnson received a total of $2,500. Although Georgia law requires
candidates to list the occupations and employers of their contributors on
their disclosure forms, none of the school board candidates did that for the
CEP executives. Muhammad says she had no idea Richardson and Baggett were CEP
executives until CL told her. "If they were standing in front of me, I
wouldn't know them," she says. "No campaign contribution will
influence me from making my decisions based on the best interest of the
children of Atlanta." Riley also said he was unaware that Richardson led
CEP. "That's a little embarrassing," he says. "I make a point
of never accepting contributions from vendors. I've even returned checks
before." Six months after the school board began its new term, it
extended CEP's contract to 2009. When school opened in August, Patti Welch
and her son got their first look at Forrest Hill. Welch went through a
90-minute orientation, where the rules of the school were laid out. Patrick
wasn't to bring anything onto campus that was considered contraband. The list
included watches, jewelry, purses, combs, brushes, keys and money in excess
of $5. Paper and pens weren't allowed either; the school would provide
everything that was needed, even tampons for female students. Patrick would
go through a metal detector each morning and be patted down by a security
guard to ensure he didn't have weapons or drugs. Backpacks weren't allowed,
and books couldn't be taken home. In fact, there was no homework for Forrest
Hill students. Patrick went through a weeklong orientation that included
tests on the PLATO computer system to determine where he stood academically.
On his first day, he sent his mother a text message: "This school is so
bad." He found the lessons boring. He complained that the teacher would
simply put an assignment on the board; then the kids would be expected to do
it on their own. Once the students were finished, they were given crossword
puzzles to fill out. "Patrick found it totally uninteresting and totally
unmotivating," Welch says. "He kept sending me text messages, and I
didn't believe him. He started missing days, so I went up there." What
Welch saw alarmed her. The building was new and well-maintained, but the pods
where students were segregated reminded her of a jail. "There's one
steel door to the classroom, no windows. It looked like a mini-prison."
Not long after that, she heard the ACLU wanted to interview parents with
children at Forrest Hill Academy for a potential lawsuit. Welch decided to
talk to the organization. Two years ago, a special education lawyer in
Atlanta called the ACLU and suggested they investigate the CEP school in
Atlanta. "As soon as we began to scratch the surface, we were so
outraged by what we found," says the ACLU's Chiang. "The
standardized test scores are really shocking. No one was passing." State
statistics show the school has made few strides toward improving its
students' academic standing. According to state Department of Education
figures from the 2006-07 school year, 91 percent of CEP's students failed the
state's assessment test in mathematics; 66 percent failed the reading
portion. In its latest contract with Atlanta, CEP agreed to a performance
goal of making measurable progress in 31 categories for the 2005-06 school
year, based primarily on results from the state's Criterion Referenced
Competency tests. Of those categories, six couldn't be measured because there
were too few students enrolled to get a proper study group, and CEP students
showed improvement in 11 from the previous year. But in 13 categories, the
students tested worse. In the final category – ninth grade physical science –
there was no change: 100 percent of the students failed both years.
"They cannot deny their standardized test scores are abysmal,"
Chiang says. Shirley Kilgore, a former Washington High School principal in
Atlanta who now consults for CEP, counters that it's unfair to evaluate the
program based on state tests. "Students in an alternative program are
transient," she says. "We had a girl come in here last week. She's
been here a matter of days, but her score belongs to us. Some of these
students taking the tests have not been with us for any length of time."
Richardson, the company's CEO, points out that almost 90 percent of students
sent to Forrest Hill are at least two grade levels behind in reading and
mathematics: "You wouldn't pass it either, if you're reading at the
fourth grade level and you're taking a ninth grade competency test." The
ACLU claims the heart of the problem is that Forrest Hill cuts corners when
it comes to academics. The teachers don't teach, Chiang says, but instead
hand out worksheets for the students to fill out. She also notes that CEP has
a practice of hiring inexperienced teachers. According to state figures, the
average level of experience of the teaching staff at Forrest Hill is less
than a year. Kilgore, the CEP consultant, argues that few quality teachers
want to work at an alternative school. "They are either committed to
making a difference," she says, "or else a new teacher starting
out." But at least one other alternative school attracts far more senior
teachers: The average level of experience at Fulton County's McClarin Alternative School is 19 years. The ACLU also
alleges that students often are manhandled by the school's staff, that
teachers have even thrown textbooks at the children in their rooms. CEP
denies there is any student mistreatment. "Inexperienced teachers are a
recipe for problems," says GSU's Freeman. "These kinds of schools
are special places and full of a challenging population of kids." Most
of CEP's teachers aren't instructing in their fields of expertise either.
According to state records, of the 76 total core classes taught at Forrest
Hill, only 45 percent are taught by "highly qualified" teachers –
those who have majored in the subject they teach. The statewide average is 96
percent. "We're very deeply concerned, especially in an alternative
school setting where you need highly-qualified educators to work with the children,"
says Georgia Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard, whose group has
lobbied against privatizing schools. "We don't think students should be
put in a situation where a company is trying to make a profit off their
education." CEP says it spends $9,300 per student compared with $12,406
per pupil for the rest of the students in Atlanta's public school system. The
company contends the school saves money because it doesn't have to offer such
activities as sports or music programs that are required in regular school
programs. But Freeman's skeptical. While the savings sound efficient, he
stresses that, in education, you generally get what you pay for: "These
kids need a lot; they're needy kids. You need to spend more money on them
than typical schools. If they are spending less, I'd want to know why it
costs less to educate a student with exceptional needs. Where are they saving
money? What are they subtracting and is it good? Are they saving money by
hiring less experienced teachers who have no training in dealing with these
kids?" Freeman is careful to say he hasn't studied Forrest Hill enough
to make an ironclad assessment. But, he says, "I know people who teach
in alternative schools. It's not an easy environment. It usually requires
very special teachers who can work with those kids. It's a big
challenge." The Rev. Darryl Winston is angry that he sees many of the
same issues raised in the ACLU lawsuit that led him to confront CEP officials
four years ago. And his anger isn't just directed at the company. "We
need a statement from Superintendent Beverly Hall that she takes these
allegations seriously and that the APS is looking into them," he says.
"All we got was a statement from the press person that amounted to kind
of 'dismissing' it. I've been told as recently as last week that the APS
position is to wait and see what comes out in court." What especially
frustrates him is that no one who isn't behind the walls at Forrest Hill can
really know what's going on there. "CEP has denied every one of the
charges, but there's no way to verify that," Winston says. "We need
experts. I've called on the board of education to launch its own
investigation and see if the charges are true. If they can't, they need a
task force appointed by the governor to see what is going on at CEP." As
far back as Houston, CEP officials have had to deal with complaints that the
company's performance needed to be evaluated by independent parties. "We
want to be held accountable for attendance and behavior and academics,"
insists CEP's Anthony Edwards. "It's very important to us that we are a
standards-based program." CEP claims students who attended Forrest Hill
in the 2006-07 school year were, on average, performing math and reading on
the third-grade level when they arrived. The school claims that students who
were at the school for at least 150 days made remarkable progress: an
increase of 3.2 grade levels in reading and four years in math. Under its
Atlanta contract, however, CEP both administers and grades those tests. There's
no independent verification of the results, but longtime educators say making
those kinds of academic strides in one year is virtually impossible. For a
certain percentage of students who are highly motivated, yes, it can be done;
for an entire student population, unlikely. "Kids with emotional and
behavioral problems don't do well in school," Freeman says. "And
kids aren't just going to snap to and start learning." Chiang says lack
of progress on standardized tests make it clear the PLATO test scores are
skewed. Students have told the ACLU that they take the PLATO tests
unsupervised and can ask each other for the answers they don't know.
"CEP claims a pronounced spike in the test scores, but we believe it is
because of PLATO," she says. "In reality, there's no teaching going
on." Edwards downplays PLATO's results. "We are not judged by
these," he says. "It's just a mechanism, a diagnostic tool. The
student is given a grade level of functionality." But the contract with
the Atlanta school system says that Forrest Hill's success or failure will be
measured by a combination of results from PLATO tests and state standardized
tests. In addition, if a student who attends CEP for at least 120 days
doesn't show growth in reading and mathematics of at least one year on the
PLATO system, the contract mandates that CEP must educate that student at no
additional cost to the school district until he or she has reached that
level. Patti Welch says her son continues to struggle at Forrest Hill, and
has missed extended stretches of school because he doesn't want to be there.
But she says his disciplinary problems now seem to be behind him. She plans
to take him out of the alternative school at the end of the year; she wants
to home-school him. But ACLU lawyers say the federal lawsuit – which names
the school system, board members and CEP as defendants – is about more than
just eight kids in one school. It cuts to the heart of a public school's
responsibilities to kids who are in the margins, and it raises questions
about the risks of privatizing public education. "We see it as a broader
national problem, the trend of privatization of government functions and
warehousing kids in a school-to-prison pipeline," Chiang says. For the
students at Forrest Hill, it's also about not being forgotten by the
officials who sent them there. "The problem is that Atlanta didn't build
in an adequate system for oversight and evaluation," Freeman says.
"You want it written into the contract to have a good program
evaluation. It's got to be done by people who know how to do it, people not
connected to the school department or CEP so there's no conflict of
interest." Freeman says there should be an annual independent review of
Forrest Hill. Evaluators would go into the school, see the teaching methods,
and interview students and teachers and the administrators. "I hope the
CEP school is investigated by people who know what they're doing," he
says. "There are good questions to ask, and they deserve good answers.
The school can't answer those question, they can only provide the
information. Somebody else has to be the evaluator."
Dallas
County Judicial Treatment Center
Milmer, Texas
GEO Group (formerly Cornell)
January 7, 2011 Dallas Observer
Cornell Companies, the private operator of correctional facilities 'cross the
country, has a motto: "People Changing People." A lawsuit filed
this week in Dallas County District Court proposes an alteration:
"People Filming People." At least, so suggest 36 former inmates of
the Dallas County Judicial Treatment Center in Wilmer, a 300-bed facility to
which men and women convicted of drug- and alcohol-related crimes in Dallas
County are sent to get clean and sober rather than spend time behind bars.
Says the suit, in January 2008 Cornell Companies employees began filming the
inmates without their consent. Caught on film were their often intense drug
treatment sessions, scenes from their daily routines and a talent show
called, but of course, Cornell Idol. The suit says the inmates, who were
already uncomfortable about the filming, were told the footage would be
transferred to DVD and shown only to the Drug Court judges who send prisoners
to the treatment center. But the complaint alleges it was "turned into a
publicity and promotional film" -- shown to, among others, Dallas County
Commissioner John Wiley Price and Attitudes & Attire -- and used as a
fund-raising vehicle and "to obtain future contracts for supervision and
operation of other treatment facilities in Texas and locations in other
states." Other patients in the facility also saw the film, says the
suit, and as a result: "The sharing of the film with the patient
population caused considerable embarrassment for the women residents from
taunts and teasing of the male patients." The suit is alleging that
Cornell Companies violated both state and federal privacy statutes, including
those related to keeping confidential records related to those undergoing
drug and alcohol treatment. It also directs the court's intention to a 2002
doc prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice -- Practical Guide for
Applying Federal Confidentiality Laws to Drug Court Operations -- which says
that "the intent of Congress in creating these statutes was to encourage
the rehabilitation of substance abusers who might otherwise be deterred from
entering treatment by concern that their substance abuse would become public
knowledge." The suit is asking for $50,000 per plaintiff. The attorney
-- Charles Paternosto, who's up in Denison -- wants
$100,000 for providing "exemplary work for his clients"; more, if
it goes into appeal.
Danville Center for
Adolescent Females
Danville, Texas
Cornell
August 8, 2005 Danville News
Texas-based Cornell Abraxas will not renew its contract with the state to
provide youth treatment services at the Danville Center for Adolescent
Females. The company has run the facility since 1998, but has chosen not to
continue its management, citing a lack of infrastructure support.
Dawson
State Jail
Dallas, Texas
CCA
Mar
21, 2014 prisonlegalnews.org
AUSTIN,
TX – Yesterday, a Travis County District Court held that Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company,
is a “governmental body” for purposes of the Texas Public Information Act and
therefore subject to the “Act’s obligations to disclose public information.”
The court entered its ruling on a motion for summary judgment filed by Prison
Legal News (PLN), a monthly publication that reports on criminal
justice-related issues and a project of the non-profit Human Rights Defense
Center. PLN had filed suit against CCA on May 1, 2013 after the company
refused to disclose records related to the now-closed Dawson State Jail in
Dallas, including reports, investigations and audits regarding CCA’s
operation of the facility – records that would have unquestionably been made
public had the jail been operated by a government agency. “This is one of the
many failings of private prisons,” said PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann.
“By contracting with private companies, corrections officials interfere with the
public’s right to know what is happening in prisons and jails, even though
the contracts are funded with taxpayer money. This lack of transparency
contributes to abuses and misconduct by for-profit companies like CCA, which
prefer secrecy over public accountability.” CCA currently operates nine
facilities in Texas, including four that house state prisoners. “The
conditions of Texas prisons have been the focus of intense public scrutiny
for nearly 40 years,” stated Brian McGiverin, an
attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Today’s ruling is a victory
for transparency and responsible government. Texans have a right to know what
their government is doing, even when a private company is hired to do it.” In
its summary judgment motion, PLN argued that CCA meets the definition of a
“governmental body” under the Texas Public Information Act, Section 552.003
of the Texas Government Code, because, among other factors, the company
“shares a common purpose and objective to that of the government” and performs
services “traditionally performed by governmental bodies.” In the latter
regard, PLN noted that “Incarceration is inherently a power of government. By
using public money to perform a public function, CCA is a governmental body
for purposes” of the Texas Public Information Act. CCA’s argument to the
contrary – that it is not a governmental body and does not have to comply
with public records requests – was rejected by the court. CCA had also argued
that the taxpayer funds received from the State of Texas “are not necessarily
used specifically for operating Texas facilities,” and that such payments
“are used generally to support CCA’s corporate allocations throughout the
United States.” PLN previously prevailed in a similar public records lawsuit
filed against CCA in Tennessee, where the firm is headquartered; another
records suit is pending against CCA in Vermont. The company has vigorously
opposed lawsuits requiring it to comply with public records laws. “CCA and
other private prison companies should not be able to hide behind closed
corporate doors when they contract with government agencies to perform public
services using taxpayer money,” said PLN editor Paul Wright. PLN was ably
represented by attorneys Cindy Saiter Connolly with
Scott, Douglass & McConnico, LLP and Brian McGiverin
with the Texas Civil Rights Project. The case is Prison Legal News v. CCA,
Travis County District Court, 353rd Judicial District, Cause No.
D-1-GN-13-001445.
Mar
21, 2014 grassrootsleadership.org
BOISE
— Several Idaho and national faith, human and civil rights, social justice,
labor, and criminal justice reform organizations delivered a letter to Idaho
officials calling for the return of the 236 Idaho prisoners currently being
held in a for-profit, private prison — the Kit Carson Correctional Center —
in Burlington, CO. The Colorado prison’s operator, Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), is the same company that admitted to falsifying
thousands of staffing hours at the Idaho Correctional Center (ICC) and is now
the subject of an FBI criminal investigation for its management of the Idaho
facility. “It took months of investigative research, a trial and a
contempt hearing to hold CCA accountable for cheating Idaho taxpayers and
creating a ‘Gladiator School’ at an Idaho Correctional facility,” said
Monica Hopkins, Executive Director of the ACLU of Idaho, “and yet Idaho
officials continue rewarding this kind of deceptive and abhorrent behavior by
extending their contract with CCA to ship Idahoans out of state. If we can’t
trust them in our backyard, how can we trust them over 1,000 miles away?”
Letter signatories argue that CCA is untrustworthy and Idaho prisoners’
safety and well-being are at risk under CCA’s management. In light of
Governor Otter returning control of the ICC back to the state, they now urge
Idaho officials to immediately end the contract with CCA to house prisoners
across state lines and cut ties with CCA once and for all. "It defies
comprehension why the state of Idaho continues to do business with CCA — a
company that has admitted defrauding the state, which ran a facility with
levels of violence four times higher than all other Idaho state prisons
combined, and which is currently the subject of an FBI criminal
investigation,” said Alex Friedmann, Associate Director of the Human Rights
Defense Center. “In any other context, the state would have severed its
relationship with such a company. It is time to do so now with respect to
Idaho's contract to house state prisoners in a CCA-run facility in Colorado,
located far from their families." The letter also cites a national
report released last November, which demonstrated that sending prisoners
out-of-state impedes prisoner rehabilitation by diminishing supportive ties
to family and community, a component research has shown to contribute to
better behavior and reduce recidivism. “This practice of shipping
prisoners out of sight and mind to address prison overcrowding must come to
an end,” said Holly Kirby, author of the report and organizer at Grassroots
Leadership. “For too long and with little public scrutiny, state
leaders have slapped this costly bandaid on a
problem that requires sustainable solutions to reduce the number of people
behind bars.” Furthermore, signatories of the letter argue that alternatives
exist, highlighting a January 2014 report, Justice Reinvestment in Idaho:
Analyses and Policy Framework, which showed that Idaho prison space is
currently being used inefficiently — with people convicted of nonviolent
crimes and eligible for parole occupying prison beds rather than being
released. Releasing these low-risk individuals would free up the much
needed in-state capacity to bring prisoners home from the out-of-state CCA
facility. Organizations that signed on urging Idaho officials to bring prisoners
home from a private prison in Colorado include American Civil Liberties Union
- Idaho, Idaho Public Employees Association, National Association of Social
Workers - Idaho, The Sentencing Project, Grassroots Leadership, In the Public
Interest, Justice Policy Institute, United Methodist Church - General Board
of Church and Society, American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights
Defense Center. See the letter with full list of signatories HERE.
August
2, 2013 texastribune.org
Male
detainees work to fix a cell door inside of the Dawson State Jail in Dallas
on Jul. 31, 2013. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice decided not to
renew its contract with the Corrections Corporation of America for the Dawson
State Jail after the state legislature struck 97 million dollars from its
funding. The unit will begin relocating its offenders on Aug. 1, 2013, and
expects to have all offenders relocated by the end of the month. The demise
of the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility, which officially closes at
the end of this month, is a major economic disappointment for the community
that has been its host for more than 15 years. But the closing of the Dawson
State Jail in Dallas, which will also happen this month, comes as a relief
for many in the city, and might even result in a financial windfall. For only
the second time in the state’s history, Texas lawmakers are closing inmate
facilities to reduce bed capacity as the state’s prison population continues
to drop. The decision by legislators this year to close two privately run
jails operated by the Corrections Corporation of America is being met with
very different reactions in the communities where the jails are situated.
Since 2011, Texas’ prison population has fallen to about 150,800 from more
than 156,000, bringing the total of empty beds to about 12,000 statewide,
said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Senate Criminal
Justice Committee. Improved diversion programs and alternatives to
incarceration have fueled the downward trend, he added. “The logical thing to
do is to look to close facilities you don’t need,” Whitmire said. In 2011,
the state shut the aging Central Unit in Sugar Land, a Houston suburb. When
lawmakers started the regular legislative session in January, advocates for
criminal justice reform and the prison employees’ union urged them to
consider ending the state’s contracts at the Dawson jail and the Mineral
Wells unit. “Both facilities received a lot of very serious complaints,” said
Scott Medlock, a prisoners’ rights program director and lawyer at the Texas
Civil Rights Project. Lawmakers eventually agreed, and sliced nearly $97
million from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice budget. The
department’s board officially decided to terminate its contracts for the two
facilities with the Corrections Corporation of America when they expire on
Aug. 31. Jason Clark, a department spokesman, said the decision to close both
privately run facilities was based on a number of factors, including safety
and security at the units. All of the inmates who were at the Mineral Wells
jail have been transferred to other facilities, he said. The transfer of
inmates from the Dawson unit began on Thursday, and Clark said it would be
emptied by the end of the month. Established in 1997, Dawson State Jail —
which is near the Trinity River, on the outskirts of downtown Dallas — can
house about 2,200 inmates, including nearly 1,400 women. After the deaths of
at least two female inmates and a newborn baby, the facility came under
increased scrutiny in the last year, and faced lawsuits over the health care
it provided to inmates. In January, a group of civil rights advocates urged
lawmakers to take notice of poor conditions and of a 2012 health services
audit that found conditions at the facility that did not meet the terms of
the Corrections Corporation of America’s contract. The corporation has
defended its oversight of Dawson. In an emailed statement in January, the
company said that the University of Texas Medical Branch provided health care
at the Dawson jail and that the company took seriously its responsibility to
oversee that care. “It’s unfortunate that these organizations are so
closed-minded when it comes to facts and perspectives that might challenge
their political agendas,” said Steve Owen, a company spokesman, responding to
civil rights groups’ letter. “CCA simply provides safe inmate housing and
quality rehabilitation programming at a cost savings to Texas taxpayers.” But
Dallas city leaders did not come to the company’s defense in the Legislature.
The jail is among a number of impediments to the Trinity River Corridor
Project, a redevelopment effort that has long been in the works for the area.
The project involves a 20-mile span of urban development that includes
houses, waterfront condominiums, office buildings and shops and restaurants.
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, said he was unaware of any plans to sell the
prison, and he said any talk of moving forward with development in its place
anytime soon was “speculation.” But West did say that the closing of the
Dawson jail was welcome news because of concerns about conditions there. “If
there’s going to be a conversation about repurposing the facility,” he said,
“the community needs to be involved in that.” Clark, the criminal justice
department spokesman, said no decisions had been made about the future of the
jails, and that the agency intended to work with both local and state
officials. By contrast, in Mineral Wells, about 80 miles west of Dallas,
local officials lobbied lawmakers vigorously to keep the state facility
running. The jail, at what had once been a U.S. Army base, can house up to
2,100 inmates. It opened in 1989. “It’s going to have a significant impact on
our economy,” said Lance Howerton, the city manager of Mineral Wells. He said
that the city would lose up to 300 jobs, $80,000 annually in local property
taxes and $800,00 annually in water and sewer sales. Howerton said that all
told, city officials expected the economic impact to be about $40 million
annually. Corrections Corporation has become a partner in the community,
Howerton said, offering scholarships each year for high school seniors and
providing inmate labor for city projects and to help tend the local state
park. “Being a small community, most everyone here knows of someone” affected
by the closing, Howerton said. Along with city officials, local lawmakers and
lobbyists for the Corrections Corporation also fought unsuccessfully to keep
the Mineral Wells facility open. Howerton called the decision to close it
shortsighted. With the state’s ever-increasing population, Howerton said,
there is sure to be a need for more prison beds in the future. But Whitmire
said he was confident that the state’s continued focus on rehabilitation and
diversion programs would keep the prison population from expanding. Even if
it did, he said, the Mineral Wells facility would be a poor choice to house
inmates because of security concerns. The jail, which was not built as a
place to put inmates, has long had problems with contraband. At one point,
Whitmire said, officials hung a net above one side of the facility to keep
passers-by from tossing items over the fence. Lawmakers said they were
expecting to save nearly$97 million by closing the two facilities — money
that Whitmire said could be more wisely spent on the criminal justice system.
“We’re running a good program,” he said, “but we still have some flaws we’ve
got to fix.”
May
12, 2013 www.gosanangelo.com
AUSTIN
— Texas Senate and House budget negotiators have tentatively agreed to close
two privately run state prisons. The Texas Board of Criminal Justice would
decide which two prisons to shutter under the Friday’s agreement, the Austin
American-Statesman reported. The Senate, in its state budget plan, had
targeted a 2,100-bed transfer facility in Mineral Wells and a 2,200-bed state
jail in Dallas for closure. The House, in its plan, had allocated funding for
each. Under new wording in the budget bills, legislators agreed to cut $97
million from the criminal justice budget. That’s the amount it costs to run
the Dawson State Jail in Dallas and the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer
Facility, although the budget bill won’t specifically name those two lockups.
The conflicting budget proposals and feuding lawmakers in both chambers had
endangered the entire state criminal justice budget. The newspaper, without
naming them, said legislative leaders are in agreement on closing Dawson, but
that Mineral Wells representatives are pushing to keep their facility open,
saying it would harm the economy in the city about 75 miles west of Dallas.
State Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee,
has campaigned to close the two units for more than two years. They are both
operated by the Corrections Corp. of America under a contract with the state.
Whitmire contends that the state already has 12,000 unused prison beds and
the two aren’t needed. Brad Livingston, executive director of the Department
of Criminal Justice, wrote Whitmire earlier this month that the design of
Mineral Wells, built as a military barracks and not a prison, made it a top
candidate for closing. The design causes security and safety code
considerations, Livingston said. Its location adjacent to a park, college and
private land also contributes to security concerns, he said. Prison records
show frequent instances of contraband drugs and cellphones tossed over the
prison fence. It opened in 1989 at a time when Texas prisons were under
federal court control because of crowding and was intended as a holding site
for parolees heading out. Livingston says his agency has been planning to not
renew its contract for Mineral Wells after it expires in August.
May 3, 2013 www.thecrimereport.org
The Corrections Corporation of America, which runs 12
Texas prison facilities, is facing a lawsuit from a publication that says it
is failing to release information related to deaths and health care at the
Dawson State Jail in Dallas, reports the Texas Tribune. The prison is one of
several the legislature is considering for closure because of a declining
prison population. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Austin, seeks to
force the company to comply with an open records request that was filed in
March by Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine based in Vermont that focuses
on prisoner rights. The magazine says it is trying to "enforce its right
under state law to investigate patterns of unconscionable and
unconstitutional conditions in corporate-run jails." "This lawsuit
is about the truth," said Brian McGiverin, a
Texas Civil Rights Project lawyer for Prison Legal News. "They hide the
truth because they know the truth is horrifying." Lawmakers are
considering whether to close Dawson State Jail in the current budget, an
effort spearheaded by state Sen. John Whitmire, along with the American Federation
oif State County Municipal Employees.
May
1, 2013 statesman.com
Two
civil-rights advocacy groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in Travis County
district court alleging one of the nation’s largest private prison companies
is refusing to make public details about deaths and injuries in its Texas
lockups. The suit filed by the Prison Legal News, a subsidiary of the
nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, and the Texas Civil Rights Project
state in the suit thatthey requested information
from Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America under the Texas
Public Information Act concerning its Texas contracts, lawsuits filed over
its Texas operations and information about settlements and other legal
filings. According to the suit, the company declined to respond to the
request. Steve Owen, CCA’s senior director of public affairs, said “We will
review the complaint and determine the appropriate course of action.” The
filing of the suit came as the closure of two CCA-run state lockups — the
Dawson State Jail in Dallas and the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Center — is
being considered by the Texas Legislature. Legislative opponents of the
closures said the suit was timed to push for approval of the closures. In a
press release announcing the filing of the suit, the Texas Civil Rights
Project alleged that by refusing the release the records, CCA is “covering up
the deaths of seven people at the Dawson State Jail while denying hundreds of
women access to medical care. “ CCA has previously denied those claims. In their
lawsuit, the two groups seek a court order requiring CCA to make the records
public. No hearing date has been set.
Mar 12, 2013 dallasnews.com
Just
weeks ago the Texas Observer branded the Jesse R. Dawson State Jail on the
banks of the Trinity River near downtown Dallas as “Texas’ worst state jail,”
citing, among other things, poor conditions and inadequate medical treatment
that “in a few cases led to deaths.” Among them: Autumn Miller’s premature
baby, a girl named Gracie born after just 26 weeks of gestation. Autumn told
KTVT-Channel 11 in July that guards at the privately operated jail, which is
owned by Corrections Corporation of America, refused her cries for medical
attention. She says the guards gave her a menstrual pad and locked her in a
cell. She says they told her she just had to go to the bathroom. As a result,
Miller says in a lawsuit filed Friday in Dallas federal court, on June 14,
2012, “She looked down and watched, in horror, as she delivered baby Gracie
into the toilet.” The infant lived for four days and died in her mother’s
arms. “Within an hour of Gracie’s death,” says the suit, “CCA employees took
Autumn back to Dawson.” Autumn, who was sent to Dawson State Jail in February
2012 to serve one year for violating probation on a drug-possession charge,
and her attorneys, Paula Sweeney of Dallas and Suzanne Kaplan of Austin, are
claiming negligence and cruel and unusual punishment in the suit filed last
week. The complaint follows in full below. The suit alleges CCA guards did
nothing to help Miller, before or after she gave birth to her baby; she
claims it took guards 15 minutes just to find the key to get into her cell,
and that “several CCA employees came into the holding cell while Gracie lay
there helpless next to her bleeding mother.” She alleges one guard videotaped
the whole ordeal. Finally at the hospital, says the suit, Autumn — a
nonviolent offender — “was still handcuffed and shackled” when allowed to
visit with her baby. “As a result of Defendants’ deliberate indifference to
their serious medical needs, failure to follow the existing telemedicine
policy, failure to adequately supervise and train its employees to follow the
telemedicine policy, and to supervise and train its officers and agents to
act in an emergency,” says the suit, “Autumn is traumatized and Gracie is
dead.” The suit was filed just days after a coalition of state and national
groups issued “Dawson State Jail: The Case for Closure,” which mentions
Gracie’s death while making the case that the jail’s an unsafe place. State
legislators have also begun to push for the jail’s closure, insisting it just
isn’t needed with a dwindling state jail population. And the city of Dallas
wants the jail closed in order to develop the property along the Trinity
River.
February
27, 2013 reporternews.com
If
the nation’s largest correctional officers union gets its way, then the empty
multimillion-dollar Jones County lock up will soon house a little more than
1,000 minimum-security state inmates from the privately run in Jacksboro. Built in 2010, the
$35-million, 1,100- bed capacity prison in Jones County sits empty at the
edge of Anson, a town of 2,422. It was supposed to create nearly 200 jobs
with a $5 million annual boost to the local economy. On Wednesday, the
American Federation of State County Municipal Employees — Texas Correctional
Employees operates under that umbrella — called on state legislators to end
three contracts with the Correctional Corporation of America, citing abuses
and poor management. Along with Lindsey in Jacksboro, two other private prisons
included on the proposed chopping block are Dawson State Jail in Dallas and
Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility. The union’s local 3807 chapter
president, Lance Lowry, said the proposal calls for the Jones County facility
to be run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and house the Lindsey
inmates starting Sept. 1, should the state opt to not renew the private
contract. Inmates from the other private prisons also will be moved to
state-run facilities. Lowry said about 25 state and national organizations
are calling for the closure of Dawson for “extreme abuses, and other medical
abuses,” accusing Correctional Corporation of America of having a history of
abusive practices. “There were three female inmates that died there and a
baby last year, and all of the incidents were easily preventable” Lowry said.
“What we’re finding is that these private facilities are not paying their
staff the equivalent of what the state pays correctional officers.” U.S.
Department of Labor data indicate the median annual wage for correctional
officers by the state is $38,850. In contrast, officers employed in privately
operated prisons earned a median salary of $28,790. In 2011, the TDCJ
derailed plans to house inmates at Jones County facility when it terminated a
contract with the county. More than 30,000 of the state’s 93,000 county beds
sit empty — both at county jails and at centers built through county-private
partnerships, like Anson, according to the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards. “Jones County will come out better from this deal, than with a
private prison in their community,” Lowry said. “And we don’t want another
(private) facility to open to open up. That’s going to be disastrous like the
other ones.” Lowry said the union notified Jones County officials about the
proposal.
December
4, 2012 Dallas Business Journal by
Lance Murray
A
Houston lawmaker is proposing the closure of a privately-run prison in
Dallas. State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and a union representing prison
employees are proposing the closure of the privately run Dawson State Jail in
Dallas and the the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole
Transfer Facility, the Texas Tribune reported. The lawmaker and the union
said the state doesn't need the facilities and closing them would be a way to
save money. Whitmire said the state has an excess of prison beds because of
improved diversion programs and alternatives to imprisonment. Whitmire said
the Dawson State Jail sits on prime land in downtown Dallas, and local
officials would like to have the land for development. Lance Murray edits and
writes for the DBJ's website and can be reached at 214-706-7106
July 10, 2012 CBS 11 News
CBS 11 has learned a baby was prematurely born last month at the Dawson Jail
in downtown Dallas, apparently with no medically trained personnel in
attendance. The baby lived four days. In an exclusive interview with CBS 11,
Doctor Owen Murray, Vice President of Offender Health Services at the
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said there is no state
requirement to have medically trained personnel at Dawson between 5 p.m. and
5 a.m., which was the period in which Autumn Miller gave birth to her
daughter, Gracie. It was the latest development in a series of stories CBS 11
has been investigating on the medical care provided to inmates at the
privately-run prison facility. In our first report, a severely diabetic woman
died after her family said she became ill in the jail. Her cries for help to
guards went ignored, according to her family. In our next report, a young woman
died of pneumonia after personnel at Dawson failed, according to her family,
to furnish her with the antibiotics she needed. After our second story aired,
Jean Burr contacted CBS 11. Burr is a grandmother with a dozen grandchildren.
She called us the day after her family buried her newest granddaughter. It
was a little girl, with a name that conveyed her brief life, Gracie. “She was
here by the grace of God and gone the same way,” her grandmother said. Gracie
came into the world in an unlikely place: Dawson State Jail. The facility
holds non-violent criminals who commit minor crimes. Gracie’s mother, Autumn
Miller, was convicted of a drug charge, violated her probation and got a year
behind bars. Miller arrived at Dawson in January. She has three other children
and knew what it felt like to be pregnant. “Three weeks before the baby was
born, she had requested a pregnancy test and pap smear, because she had not
had a period since she had been there and she was feeling unwell. She didn’t
know what was wrong, but she was not feeling right,“
Burr said. Officials at Dawson will not tell CBS 11 News whether they have
any records of Autumn Miller requesting a pregnancy test. Dawson State Jail
is run by a private company called Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
CCA will not respond to our questions about what occurred inside the jail on
June 14, 2012. But Burr says her daughter tells a chilling story of what
happened during the early morning hours when she began to bleed and cramp
inside the jail and had trouble walking. “They took her down to the medical
unit on a stretcher. When she got there, there was a doctor on the screen,”
Burr said. But Miller told her mother that the doctor, who was available
through a teleconference, never had a chance to see her. “The lady that was
down there in the medical unit in charge told the doctor they did not need
him for this patient and they just turned this off … She was crying,
complaining that she was feeling pressure, pain, bleeding and something was
bad wrong. They needed to do something,” Burr told CBS 11. “One of the guards
in there made the comment that, ‘Oh, it is probably the food, you probably
need to go poo.’ They gave her a menstrual pad, locked her in a holding cell
and closed the door. And then she went in there and pressure was so bad she
went to the toilet…,” Gracie’s grandmother said. What happened next,
according to Burr, has changed all of their lives forever. And, she says, it
was something no one at the jail was prepared to handle at that time. After Miller
went to the bathroom, “the baby came out and went into the toilet and she
started screaming,” Burr said. Tiny Gracie was born premature on June 14 at
just 26 weeks. She weighed a little more than a pound. Ambulances rushed
Gracie and Miller to Parkland Hospital where doctors worked against the odds
to save Gracie. Pictures from the hospital show Miller holding her newborn,
snuggled in a pink blanket, near to her chest. Miller, still in handcuffs,
holds the little girl’s hands. By day three, Miller, Burr and other family
members had hope that Gracie had a fighting chance of surviving. But after
four days, doctors told them Gracie was beyond all help. So she made the
decision to let the baby go; Autumn held her while she took her last breath
and heartbeats. And they pronounced her dead at 5:30. “And shortly after 6,
(Autumn) was on her way back to Dawson,” Burr said. Once at the jail, Miller
was placed in solitary confinement for two days, her mother, overwhelmed with
emotions, said. “This is still a woman with the afterbirth and bleeding and
stitches where she’d had a tubal … and they locked her in there for two days
… and then they took her to see a psychiatrist and said, ‘Well, you’ve been
on suicide watch,’ “ Burr said. Burr, grief stricken by the loss of her
granddaughter, contacted CBS 11 after learning that the station had been
investigating the medical care at Dawson, and the circumstances leading up to
the deaths of other inmates at the facility. “I understand that their freedom
and their rights have been taken because they have done things to cause
that….(But) this could have been prevented,” Burr said, as tears welled up in
her eyes. “No baby should be born in a toilet in prison.” Burr tells CBS 11
she believes that if Autumn had been given the pregnancy test that she
requested, things would have turned out differently. “Then three weeks later
they would have known she was having a baby,” Burr said. “She could have been
in a medical unit. She could have had the treatment she should have been having.
And maybe Gracie would still be with us,” the grandmother said. Fighting back
tears and still devastated by the loss of her newest grandchild, she clings
to an album of the pictures the hospital took of them all together over the
four days Gracie lived. “It would have changed the outcome of what will be
with Autumn for the rest of her life to live with. She’s going to see that
baby being born in that toilet – and die — for the rest of her life … she
didn’t deserve that,” Burr said. Miller’s lawyer told CBS 11 he did not want
Miller speaking to us while she is still at Dawson. She is scheduled to be
released in November. Neither CCA nor the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice will answer our specific questions about the incident that occurred
on June 14 or about the deaths of the other inmates.
June 14, 2012 CBS
Ashleigh Shae Parks, 30, died just six weeks before she was scheduled to be
released from Dawson State Jail in downtown Dallas, a low security facility
for people convicted of non-violent crimes. Parks was serving an 18-month
sentence for drug possession. “My little sister lived long enough for my
mother to make it to her bedside,” recalled Keith Grady. Ashleigh Parks’
brother says he didn’t know his sister was sick until the family got a call
saying she had been moved from the jail to the hospital. “As soon as my
mother came in, she died.” Her family says Ashleigh had pneumonia and they
believe her death could have been prevented if she had simply gotten
antibiotics sooner. Their suspicions are based, in part, on letters they
received from inmates at Dawson. “I thought all she needed was medication,
and all my daughter needed was antibiotics,” said Reni Palmer, Parks’ mother.
Parks’ family blames the staff at Dawson State Jail for not recognizing Ashleigh’s
illness sooner. They say they filed a lawsuit but later dropped it. “The
medical personnel in ICU told me there was basically nothing they could do
for her. And these are the people at the hospital (who) told us that the
prison killed my sister,” said Grady. His anger and grief was renewed in
April when he saw a CBS 11 investigation which raised troubling questions
about a lack of medical care at Dawson State Jail. In our previous report,
CBS 11 spoke with the family of Pam Weatherby, an inmate who died while
serving a one year sentence for drug possession. Weatherby’s parents believe
their daughter didn’t receive adequate treatment for her diabetes while in
jail. Anne Roderick, another inmate, said Weatherby was very ill, but no one
moved her from her cell from for medical treatment. Roderick claims the
inmates tried desperately to keep Weatherby alive. “I knew she was going to
die,” said Roderick. “I knew if we didn’t get her out of there, she was going
to die.” Pam Weatherby died on May 12, 2010. Ashley Parks died two years
earlier. After watching our earlier report, Parks’ brother wonders if by
speaking about more, he could have helped prevent Weatherby’s death. “I
wondered if that night if I had done more myself (would) that girl still be
alive,” said Keith Grady. Nearly 20 former inmates have also contacted CBS 11
saying they were afraid to talk when they were at Dawson but now want to
speak out about a lack of medical care. Dawson State Jail is run by
Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison management company based
in Tennessee that has a contract with the State of Texas. CBS 11 obtained
internal CCA documents that show the chief of security reported that the
supervisors did not follow proper procedures by failing to call for help for
Pam Weatherby. He recommended terminating a shift supervisor. But when CCA
had to file an incident report with the State of Texas, the warden wrote
“staff acted in accordance with TDCJ procedure” and concluded that “no
training needs have been identified.”
January 11, 2012 Dallas Morning News
Update: Lancaster police arrested the suspect in a shooting that
critically injured a Dawson State Jail employee Tuesday. Walter Moore, 29,
faces a charge of aggravated assault/family violence in the attack on Shiva Daniels,
the mother of two of his children, Dallas police said. Moore was booked into
the Dallas County Jail shortly after midnight and is being held on $250,000
bail. Daniels remains at Parkland Memorial Hospital in serious condition.
Update/rewrite with victim's name 10 pm: A shooting outside the Dawson State
Jail Tuesday left an employee in critical condition and her attacker on the
loose. Shiva Daniels, 26, was leaving work at the jail about 5 p.m. when the
estranged father of her children walked up to her vehicle and shot her twice
with a shotgun, according to a police report. Hit in the neck and shoulder,
the maintenance technician called 911, spoke the alleged shooter's name twice
and told operators she was going to die. The shooter fled the public parking
lot, which serves the Dallas County courthouse across the street, in the 100
block of West Commerce Street.
May 18, 2011 Dallas Observer
Pamela Weatherby, a 45-year-old Big Spring woman -- and, according to a
federal suit filed Monday in Dallas, an "unstable insulin dependent
diabetic" -- was serving a one-year sentence for drug possession at
Dawson State Jail when she died last July. Now her parents and two sons say
Weatherby would still be alive if not for the treatment she received from
guards and medical staff at Dawson, which is on the Trinity River on W.
Commerce Street. They're suing Corrections Corporation of America, the state
jail's operator and the country's largest private prison outfit, over her
death. Says the suit, which follows after the jump, Weatherby wasn't given
off the regular insulin shots she needed -- she got oral diabetes treatment
instead -- nor was she fed the special low-starch diet Texas requires for
diabetic inmates. The suit recounts Weatherby's two months of diabetic comas
after she was taken off insulin shots, blaming them on "CCA's deliberate
indifference to her serious medical needs." CCA spokesman Mike Machak tells Unfair Park they hadn't been served yet and
only just got a look at the suit. "However, at this point, it is
important to understand that we take the health of every inmate in our care
very seriously," he says. Lawyers for Weatherby's family didn't respond
to messages, but Elisabeth Holland, a local nurse practitioner who runs
Project Matthew, a faith-based medical program for incarcerated women, says
she isn't surprised. "My opinion is that the health care in Dawson is
worse than in a developing country," she says. "Any of those
diseases -- HIV would be another one -- that require regular medication with
regular screening gets lost." CCA is the only defendant named in the
suit. But it also mentions one Quindlynn Gray, who,
the suit alleges, signed off on Weatherby's health care at Dawson; Gray is
listed as an employee of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston,
which provides health care for Texas's corrections system. (That may not be
the case very much longer, especially if private health care providers
convince lawmakers to open the market.) The suit against CCA offers a
blow-by-blow account of Weatherby's diabetic incidents at Dawson, where, the
family alleges, her treatment didn't follow the course prescribed by the
diagnostic intake facility Weatherby came through first. Within days of her
arrival at Dawson, the suit says, Weatherby was taken off her scheduled
insulin shots and given oral Glyburide instead -- ushering in "three
consecutive days of diabetic comas," the suit says. Mistaking the comas
for a suicide attempt, the suit says, jail officials had her transferred to a
mental health unit in Gatesville, where she was put back on insulin shots and
stabilized -- only to return to Dawson after a few days, where she was taken
back off insulin and her comas started up again. At 1 a.m. on June 22, the
suit says, guards found Weatherby unresponsive in her cell again; she was
transferred to Parkland, stabilized, and returned to Dawson the next morning.
Weatherby died July 14 after "yet another diabetic crisis", the
suit says; an autopsy blamed effects from her diabetes. "CCA refused to
treat Weatherby, ignored her complaints, and intentionally treated her
incorrectly with wonton disregard for any serious medical needs,"
Weatherby's family claims, blaming the company for "a pattern and
practice of failing to implement processes and procedures" the state
requires.
Diboll
Correctional Center
DibollTexas
Jul 21, 2014 kulturekritic.com
According to the
Lufkin Daily News, a roof collapsed last Saturday in the Diboll Correctional
Center in Lufkin, Texas, which is a privately run prison facility owned by
the Centerville, Utah-based Management & Training Corporation (MTC). The
report continues that 20 inmates received minor injuries from falling
wallboard, but 10 of those injured were transported to local hospitals for
treatment, and one is described as being in critical condition after being
airlifted to a Houston, Texas area hospital almost 100 miles away. The
facility, which has a maximum capacity of 518 inmates and houses minimum
security prisoners, is less than 20 years old, so some are asking why the
ceiling would collapse, even if there has been a lot of rain in the area
recently. According to MTC’s official website, they operate 22 prisons in
eight states, the majority being in Texas and Mississippi, as well as 21 Job
Corps programs for the U.S. Department of Labor. Prison warden David
Driscoll, said that the collapse was probably caused by the amount of rain
that they have received over the last couple of days. Issa Arnita,
spokesperson for MTC added that 86 inmates were inside the area when the
ceiling collapsed, but the cause of the accident is yet to be determined.
Lufkin Fire Department Battalion Chief Jesse Moody said that he couldn’t
understand why the roof collapsed, even though there had been a lot of rain
because the facility is a relatively new building. He added that prisoners
were tagged according to the severity of their injuries and taken for
treatment using rapid transport protocol. Several of the injured inmates were
transported to Memorial Medical Center and Woodland Heights Medical Center, both
in Lufkin, said Sgt. Brandan Lovell of the Diboll Police Department.
According to MTC’s Major Ken Montgomery, most of the remaining 85 inmates are
being transferred to another prison facility in Huntsville, Texas. He added
that because the collapsed ceiling was located in the middle of the day room,
it wouldn’t be safe to leave the inmates there at this time. The Weather
Underground reported that Diboll had received over six inches of rain five
days prior to the collapse. During the rescue operation, law enforcement
officials searched ambulances and fire trucks as they left the facility, in
the unlikely event that an inmate was trying to make a break for freedom.
Jul 19, 2014 lufkindailynews.com
Twenty inmates were
injured with 10 being transported to Lufkin hospitals when a suspended
ceiling collapsed in the dayroom of the Diboll Correctional Center, a private
prison in Diboll, Saturday morning, according to Warden David Driskell.
Driskell confirmed there were 87 inmates in the dayroom of the facility at
the time the ceiling collapsed. None of the injures appeared to be
life-threatening, according to an Associated Press report. Sgt. Brandan
Lovell of the Diboll Police Department said officers had set up a perimeter
around the correctional facility, which holds low- to medium-security
inmates. Off-duty correctional officers were on the scene, along with
officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Angelina County
Sheriff’s Office, the Lufkin Police Department and the Fuller Springs
Volunteer Fire Department. The prison is at 1604 S. First St. in Diboll. It
is next door to another prison — the Duncan Unit, which is part of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice system.
DeWitt County Jail
Cuero, Texas
Keefe (formerly run by Aramark)
May 9, 2006 The Victoria Advocate
Bookkeeping problems in the DeWitt County Jail commissary should be a thing
of the past now that the supplier and office policy have changed, Sheriff Jode Zavesky told county
commissioners Monday. Zavesky said he had signed a
contract earlier this month with Keefe Supply Company to supply and
administer the jail's commissary. "Our last supplier (Aramark) kind of
left us dangling," the sheriff said. "They said we were too small
an operation and they weren't coming back." Commissioner Curtis Afflerbach asked if the problems with the system that the
county auditor reported at the last court's meeting would be resolved with
the new company. "We hope to reconcile that the best we can prior to
this new contract," Zavesky said. "We've
also implemented some changes with our staff that we hope will keep us from
getting into the same problems."
Dickens County Correctional Facility
Spur, Texas
GEO Group (formerly run by Bobby Ross Group)
July 15, 2010 News Express
The GEO Group, a Florida firm that contracts with local governments to
run jails, has agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit
alleging indiscriminate strip searches of inmates at six facilities,
including three in Texas. The Frio County Detention Center in Pearsall, the
Dickens County Detention Center in Dickens and the Newton County Correctional
Center in Newton and jails in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Illinois were
named in the suit, which was litigated in federal court in Pennsylvania. The
suit alleged GEO employed a uniform practice or policy of strip-searching all
pre-trial detainees who entered certain GEO-operated jails, regardless of the
crime or violation for which they were detained, and without making the
legally required determination of whether reasonable suspicion existed to
justify a strip search. Inmates incarcerated at the six jails between Jan.
30, 2006 and Jan. 30, 2008 qualify for a share in the settlement, but they
must call 1-877-234-4512, or visit
http://www.multistatestripsearchsettlement.com/index.html.
September 14, 2009 The Olympian
The Idaho Department of Correction and the parents of an inmate who killed
himself in a private prison have reached a settlement ending a federal
lawsuit over the son's death. The agreement, approved Sunday by U.S. District
Judge B. Lynn Winmill, also marks the end of
lawsuits the parties had filed against each other in state court after
previous settlement talks fell apart earlier this year. The case arose after
the 2007 death of Scot Noble Payne, who had been sent to a private Texas
prison with hundreds of other inmates to alleviate overcrowding in Idaho.
Payne slashed his own throat, and Idaho officials who investigated the
Dickens County Correctional Facility said the deplorable conditions at the
prison and the physical environment of Noble's solitary cell could have
contributed to his suicide. Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, and his father,
Alberto Payne, sued the Idaho Department of Correction, saying the department
was responsible for the wrongful death of their son. The parties went into
mediation to see if they could reach a settlement, and in February both sides
agreed the parents should be awarded $100,000 and that the Idaho Department
of Correction would not admit fault for Scot Noble Payne's death. But when the
official settlement document was sent to the parents the following month,
they refused to sign. At the time, Noble's attorney said the Idaho Department
of Correction added terms to the document that hadn't been arbitrated in
mediation. The Idaho Department of Correction then sued the parents in state
court, asking a judge to force them to sign the document, and the parents
countersued, contending the state was breaching the settlement contract. The
lawsuits filed in state court have now been dismissed, along with the federal
lawsuit. The terms of the federal settlement were not released.
May 15, 2009 The Olympian
The Idaho Department of Correction and the mother of an inmate who killed
himself in a private prison are suing each other after a settlement agreement
over the son's death fell apart. Scot Noble Payne, who had been sent to a
private Texas prison with hundreds of other inmates to alleviate overcrowding
in Idaho prisons, slashed his own throat in 2007. Idaho officials who
investigated the Dickens County Correctional Facility said the conditions
were deplorable and that the physical environment of Noble's solitary cell
could have contributed to his suicide. Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, and his
father, Alberto Payne, filed a tort claim against the Idaho Department of
Correction contending that the department was responsible for the wrongful
death of their son. Correction Department officials and the parents went into
mediation to see if they could reach a settlement, and in February both sides
agreed that the parents should be awarded $100,000 and that the Idaho
Department of Correction would not admit fault in Scot Noble Payne's death.
But the next month, when the official document that would release the Idaho
Department of Correction from liability in the case was delivered to the
parents, they refused to sign. The problem, according to Noble's attorney, is
that the Idaho Department of Correction added additional terms into the
release document that hadn't been arbitrated in mediation. The mediation
agreement lists Shirley Noble, Alberto Payne, the state of Idaho and the
Idaho Department of Correction as parties in the agreement. But the release
also lists the estate of Scot Noble Payne and all of the representatives and
employees of the Idaho Department of Corrections and the state as parties.
That could throw into jeopardy another lawsuit brought by the parents - in
their role as representatives of Scot Noble Payne's estate - against several
employees of the Idaho Department of Correction. After the parents refused to
sign, the Idaho Department of Correction filed a lawsuit against them in Ada
County's 4th District Court, asking a judge to force the parents to sign the
release. The parents countersued, contending the state was breaching the
contract they reached under the settlement agreement by trying to later add
new terms. Idaho Department of Correction officials said they could not
comment on pending litigation. The parents' attorney, Wm. Breck Seiniger, Jr., said the department made a mistake when it
was negotiating and didn't realize it until it was too late - and now is
trying to place the blame, and the loss, on the parents. "I think the
lawsuit is just an attempt to intimidate the parents, frankly," Seiniger said. "If they thought the agreement meant
something different, that is not our problem." The parents have also
filed a lawsuit against Geo Group Inc., the private company that ran the
Texas prison, in U.S. District Court in Texas. That lawsuit is still in the
discovery stages, Seiniger said.
November 14, 2008 Magic Valley
Times-News
Families of two Idaho inmates who apparently killed themselves in lockups
run by private prison company GEO Group Inc., pleaded Thursday with Texas
state senators to bar out-of-state prisoners from the Lone Star State. The
Idaho Department of Correction has housed more than 300 prisoners at GEO-run
Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, but recently announced
plans to move them to the private North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre,
Okla. The move follows allegations that GEO falsified reports and
short-staffed the Texas facility where Idaho inmate Randall McCullough, 37,
died. Families of Idaho inmates spoke Thursday at a Texas state Senate
hearing in Austin, Texas. The hearing, which dealt with general oversight of
the Texas prison system and did not result in specific action, was webcast
live over the Internet. Among those testifying was lawyer Ronald Rodriguez,
who represents McCullough's family as well as that of Idaho inmate Scott
Noble Payne, 43, who killed himself last year at another GEO-run prison in
Dickens, Texas. "Idaho prisoners need to be in Idaho where they have
access to their court - Where they have access to their families,"
Rodriguez on Thursday told the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.
Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, spoke to Texas lawmakers last year and again
on Thursday. "It seems that no lessons were learned," Noble said.
"If changes had been placed - Randall would not have been so desperate
to take his own life, as my son did." Texas Sen. John Whitmire,
D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, questioned
why the "little" state of Idaho recently decided to pull its
prisoners from Geo-run Bill Clayton. "Should we be following their
lead?" he asked. But a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official
told Whitmire that Texas inmates aren't held at Bill Clayton, and warned
against painting private prisons in Texas with a broad brush. Inmate
McCullough's sister, Laurie Williams, told Texas senators that they should do
a review of all private prisons in their state - including GEO competitor
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Idaho prisoners are to be taken to
CCA-run North Fork in Oklahoma, where another Idaho inmate, David Drashner, was allegedly murdered in June. IDOC's decision
to move prisoners from one privately run lockup to another out-of-state
facility concerns Williams, as well as Drashner's
wife, Pam Drashner, who have said they want Idaho
to stop shipping away its inmates. Idaho doesn't have enough room for all its
prisoners, and sending them out-of-state has been widely unpopular. Williams
also wants to talk to Idaho lawmakers, she said. "We should be
addressing the Idaho Senate," said Williams, after Thursday's hearing in
Texas. "This is Idaho sending its inmates out of state whether it's
Texas that takes them or Oklahoma and that's what we have to have
stopped." GEO made $4.9 million in annual operating revenues off its
contract with Idaho to manage prisoners at Bill Clayton. GEO officials said
shareholders won't lose out from Idaho's withdrawal because of an expanding
contract with the state of Indiana.
November 6, 2008 AP
The Idaho Department of Correction has terminated its contract with
private prison company The GEO Group and will move the roughly 305 Idaho
inmates currently housed at a GEO-run facility in Texas to a private prison
in Oklahoma. Correction Director Brent Reinke notified GEO officials Thursday
in a letter. Reinke said the company's chronic understaffing at the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, put Idaho offenders' safety
at risk. An Idaho Department of Correction audit found that guards routinely
falsified reports to show they were checking on offenders regularly — even
though they were sometimes away from their posts for hours at a time. "I
hope you understand how seriously we're taking not only the report but the
safety of our inmates," Reinke told The Associated Press on Thursday.
"They have an ongoing staffing issue that doesn't appear to be able to
be solved." The contract will end Jan. 5. Reinke said the department
wanted to pull the inmates out immediately, but state attorneys found there
wasn't enough cause to allow the state to break free of the contract without
a 60-day warning period. In the meantime, Reinke said, Idaho correction
officials have been sent to the Texas prison to help with staffing for the
next two months. GEO will be responsible for transferring the inmates to the
North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayer, Okla., which is run by Corrections
Corp. of America. GEO will cover the cost of the move, Reinke said, but Idaho
will have to pay $58 per day per inmate in Oklahoma, compared to $51 per day
at Bill Clayton. Amber Martin, vice president for The GEO Group, of Florida,
said she couldn't comment on the audit or on Idaho's decision to end the
contract. She referred calls to the company spokesman, Pablo Paez, who could not immediately be reached by the AP. As
of Oct. 1, Idaho had nearly 7,300 total inmates. The Bill Clayton audit
describes the latest in a series of problems that Idaho has had with shipping
inmates out of state. Overcrowding at home forced the state to move hundreds
of inmates to a prison in Minnesota in 2005, but space constraints soon
uprooted them again, this time to a GEO-run facility in Newton, Texas. There,
guard abuse and prisoner unrest forced another move to two new GEO
facilities: 125 Idaho inmates went to the Dickens County Correctional Center
in Spur, Texas, while 304 went to Bill Clayton in Littlefield. Conditions at
Dickens were left largely unmonitored by Idaho, at least until inmate Scott
Noble Payne committed suicide after complaining of the filthy conditions
there. Idaho investigators looking into Payne's death detailed the poor
conditions and a lack of inmate treatment programs, and the inmates were
moved again. That's when the Idaho Department of Correction created the
Virtual Prisons Program, designed to improve oversight of Idaho inmates
housed in contract beds both in and out of state. The extent of the Bill
Clayton facility understaffing was discovered after Idaho launched an
investigation into the apparent suicide of inmate Randall McCullough in
August. During that investigation, guards at the prison said they were often
pulled away from their regular posts to handle other duties — including
taking out the garbage, refueling vehicles or checking the perimeter fence —
and that it was common practice to fill out the logs as if the required
checks of inmates were being completed as scheduled, said Jim Loucks, chief
investigator for the Idaho Department of Correction. For instance, Loucks
said, correction officers were supposed to check on inmates in the
administrative segregation unit every 30 minutes. But sometimes they were
away from the unit for hours at a time, he said. The investigation into
McCullough's death is not yet complete, department officials said. The audit
also found several other problems at Bill Clayton. The auditor found that
"the facility entrance is a very relaxed checkpoint," prompting
concerns that cell phones, marijuana and other contraband could be smuggled
past security. In addition, the prison averages a 30 percent vacancy rate in
security staff jobs, according to the audit. Though it was still able to meet
the one-staffer-for-every-48-prisoners ratio set out by Texas law, employees
were regularly expected to work long hours of overtime and non-security
staffers sometimes were used to provide security supervision, according to
the audit. "Based on a review of payroll reports, there are significant
concerns with security staff working excessive amounts of overtime for long
periods of time," the auditors wrote. "This can lead to compromised
facility security practices and increased safety issues." When the audit
was done, there were 29 security staff vacancies, according to the report.
That meant each security staff person who was eligible for overtime worked an
average of 21 hours of overtime a week. That extra expense was borne by GEO,
not by Idaho taxpayers, said Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff
Ray. The state's contract with GEO also required that at least half of the
eligible inmates be given jobs with at least 50 hours of work a month.
According to the facility's inmate payroll report, only 35 out of 371 offenders
were without jobs. But closer inspection showed that the prison often had
several inmates assigned to the same job. In one instance, nine inmates were
assigned to clean showers in one unit of the prison — which only had nine
shower stalls. So although each was responsible for cleaning just one shower
stall, the nine inmates were all claiming 7- and 8-hour work days, five days
a week. GEO is responsible for covering the cost of those wages, Ray said.
"While the contract percentage requirement is met, the facility cannot
demonstrate the actual hours claimed by offenders are spent in a meaningful,
skill-learning job activity," the auditors wrote. Auditors also found
that too few inmates were enrolled in high school diploma equivalency and
work force readiness classes.
September 21, 2008 Times-News
Pam Drashner visited her husband every weekend
in prison, until she was turned away one day because he wasn't there. He had
been quietly transferred from Boise to a private prison in Sayre, Okla. She
never saw him again. In July, she went to the Post Office to pick up his
ashes, mailed home in a box. He died of a traumatic brain injury in Oklahoma,
allegedly assaulted by another inmate. David Drashner
was one of hundreds of male inmates Idaho authorities have sent to private
prisons in other states. About 10 percent of Idaho's inmates are now
out-of-state. The Department of Correction say they want to bring them all
home, they simply have no place to put them. Drashner,
who was 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, and was the first this year. On Aug. 18, Twin Falls native Randall
McCullough, 37, apparently killed himself at the Bill Clayton Detention
Center in Littlefield, Texas. McCullough, serving time for robbery, was found
dead in his cell. IDOC officials say he left a note, though autopsy results
are pending. His family says he shouldn't have been in Texas at all.
"Idaho should step up to the plate and bring their prisoners home,"
said his sister, Laurie Williams. Out of Idaho -- Idaho
has so many prisoners scattered around the country that the IDOC last year
developed the Virtual Prison Program, assigning 12 officers to monitor the
distant prisons. In 2007 Idaho sent 429 inmates to Texas and Oklahoma. This
year; more than 700 - and by one estimate it could soon hit 1,000. But
officials say they don't know exactly how many inmates may hit the road in
coming months. The number may actually fall due to an unexpected drop in
total prisoner head-count, a turnabout attributed to a drop in sentencings,
increased paroles and better success rates for probationers. The state will
also have about 1,300 more beds in Idaho, thanks to additions at existing
prisons. State officials say bringing inmates back is a priority. "If
there was any way to not have inmates out-of-state it would be far, far
better," said IDOC Director Brent Reinke, a former Twin Falls County
commissioner, noting higher costs to the state and inconvenience to inmate
families. Still, there's no end in sight for virtual prisons, which have few
fans in state government. "I do think sending inmates out-of-state is
counter-productive," said Rep. Nicole LeFavour,
D-Boise, a member of the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee.
LeFavour favors treatment facilities over prisons.
"We try to make it (sending inmates out-of-state) a last resort, but I
don't think we're doing enough." Even lawmakers who favor buying more
cells would like to avoid virtual lockups. "It's more productive to be
in-state," said Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Rules
Committee, who said he would support a new Idaho prison modeled after the
state-owned but privately run Idaho Correctional Center (ICC). "We don't
want to stay out-of-state unless we have to ��- It's undesirable." A decade of movement --
Idaho has shipped inmates elsewhere for more than a decade, though in some
years they were all brought home when beds became available at four of
Idaho's state prisons. The 1,500-bed ICC - a state-owned lockup built and run
by CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) - also opened in 2000. But that
wasn't enough: "It will be years before a substantial increase in prison
capacity will allow IDOC to bring inmates back," the agency said in
April. In 2005, former IDOC director Tom Beauclair
warned lawmakers that "if we delay building the next prison, we'll have
to remain out-of-state longer with more inmates," according to an IDOC
press release. That year inmates were taken to a Minnesota prison operated by
CCA, where Idaho paid $5 per inmate, per day more than it costs to keep
inmates in its own prisons. "This move creates burdens for our state
fiscally, and can harden our prison system, but it's what we must do,"
IDOC said at the time. "Our ability to stretch the system is over."
Attempts to add to that system have largely failed. Earlier this year Gov.
C.L. "Butch" Otter asked lawmakers for $191 million in bond
authority to buy a new 1,500-bed lockup. The Legislature rejected his
request, but did approve those 1,300 new beds at existing facilities. Reinke
said IDOC won't ask for a new prison when the next Legislative session
convenes in January. With a slow economy and a drop in inmate numbers, it's not
the time to push for a new prison, he said. Still, recent projections for
IDOC show that without more prison beds here, 43 percent of all Idaho inmates
could be sent out-of-state in 2017. "It's a lot of money to go
out-of-state," Darrington said. Different
cultures -- One of eight prisons in Idaho is run by a private company, as are
those housing Idaho inmates in Texas and Oklahoma. The Bill Clayton Detention
Center in Texas is operated by the Geo Group Inc., which is managing or
developing 64 lockups in the U.S., Australia and South Africa. The North-Fork
Correctional Facility in Oklahoma is owned and operated by CCA, which also
has the contract to run the Idaho Correction Center. CCA houses almost 75,000
inmates and detainees in 66 facilities under various state and federal
contracts. Critics of private prisons say the operators boost profits by
skimping on programs, staff, and services. Idaho authorities acknowledge the
prisons make money, but consider them well-run. "Private prisons are
just that - business run," Idaho Virtual Prison Program Warden Randy
Blades told the Times-News. "It doesn't mean out-of-sight, or
out-of-mind." Yet even Reinke added that "I think there's a
difference. Do we want there to be? No." The Association of Private
Correctional and Treatment Organizations (APCTO) says on its Web site that
its members "deliver reduced costs, high quality, and enhanced
accountability." Falling short? Thomas Aragon, a convicted thief from
Nampa, was shipped to three different Texas prisons in two years. He said
prisons there did little to rehabilitate him, though he's up for parole next
year. "I'm a five-time felon, all grand theft and possession of stolen
property," said Aragon, by telephone from the ICC. "Apparently I
have a problem and need to find out why I steal. The judge said I needed
counseling and that I'd get it, and I have yet to get any." State
officials said virtual prisons have a different culture, but are adapting to
Idaho standards. "We're taking the footprint of Idaho and putting it
into facilities out-of-state," Blades said. Aragon, 39, says more
programs are available in Idaho compared to the Texas facilities where he
was. Like Aragon, almost 70 percent of Idaho inmates sent to prison in 2006
and 2007 were recidivists - repeat IDOC offenders - according agency annual
reports. GEO and CCA referred questions about recidivism to APCTO, which says
only that its members reduce the rate of growth of public spending. Aragon
said there weren't enough case-workers, teachers, programs, recreational
activities and jobs in Texas. Comparisons between public and private prisons
are made difficult because private companies didn't readily offer numbers for
profits, recidivism, salaries and inmate-officer ratios. 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: "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 have grown from the way
they have been sent to the prisons. Inmates describe a horrific bus ride from
Idaho to Oklahoma in April in complaints collected by the American Civil
Liberties Union in Boise. The inmates say they endured painful and injurious
wrist and ankle shackling, dangerous driving, infrequent access to an
unsanitary restroom and dehydration during the almost 30-hour trip. "We're
still receiving a lot of complaints, some of them are based on retaliatory
transfers," said ACLU lawyer Lea Cooper. IDOC officials acknowledge that
they have also received complaints about access to restrooms during the long
bus rides, but they maintain that most of the inmates want to go
out-of-state. Many are sex offenders who prefer the anonymity associated with
being out-of-state, they said. Unanswered questions -- Three deaths of Idaho
interstate inmates in 18 months have left families concerned that even more
prisoners will come home in ashes. "We're very disturbed about...the
rate of Idaho prisoner deaths for out-of-state inmates," Cooper said. It
was the razor-blade suicide of sex-offender Scott Noble Payne, 43, in March
2007 at a Geo lockup in Dickens, Texas that caught the attention of state
officials. Noble's death prompted Idaho to pull all its inmates from the Geo
prison. State officials found the facility was in terrible condition, but
they continue to work with Geo, which houses 371 Idaho inmates in
Littlefield, Texas, where McCullough apparently killed himself. Noble
allegedly escaped before he was caught and killed himself. Inmate Aragon said
he as there, and that Noble was hog-tied and groaned in pain while guards
warned other inmates they would face the same if they tried to escape.
Private prison operators don't have to tell governments everything about the
deaths at facilities they run. The state isn't allowed access to Geo's
mortality and morbidity reports under terms of a contract. Idaho sent
additional inmates to the Corrections Corporation of America-run Oklahoma
prison after Drashner's husband died in June. IDOC
officials said an Idaho official was inspecting the facility when he was
found. IDOC has offered few details about the death. "The murder
happened in Oklahoma," said IDOC spokesman Jeff Ray, adding it will be
up to Oklahoma authorities to charge. Drashner said
her husband had a pending civil case in Idaho and shouldn't have been shipped
out-of-state. She says Idaho and Oklahoma authorities told her David was
assaulted by another inmate after he verbally defended an officer at the
Oklahoma prison. Officers realized something was wrong when he didn't stand
up for a count, Drashner said. "He was
healthy. He wouldn't have been killed over here," she said.
December 28, 2007 AP
Fifty-five Idaho inmates who were moved out of a troubled Texas prison on
Thursday have been forced by a contract delay to make a temporary stop before
going to their final destination, a lockup near the Mexican border. More than
500 Idaho prisoners are in Texas and Oklahoma due to overcrowding at home.
The prisoners being moved are bound for the Val Verde Correctional Facility
in Del Rio, Texas, after more than a year at the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas, where one Idaho inmate killed himself in March.
Because a Texas county official has yet to approve the contract to house
Idaho prisoners at Val Verde, they have first been sent 100 miles away to the
Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas. There, they will sleep
in groups of up to 10 men on makeshift cots in day rooms until resolution of
the contract allows them to complete the final 250-mile leg of their journey
to Val Verde sometime in early January. The inmates "were a bit dubious
and questionable about that," said Randy Blades, the warden in Boise who
oversees Idaho's out-of-state prisoners. That's one reason why his agency has
sent two officers to make sure the move runs smoothly, Blades said. Both the
Dickens and Val Verde prisons are run by private operator GEO Group Inc.,
based in Boca Raton, Florida. Pablo Paez, a
spokesman for GEO, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. GEO no
longer has the contract to manage the Dickens facility after Tuesday. Because
Idaho recently rejected an offer from the new company that will run Dickens,
GEO on Thursday had to move the Idaho inmates to temporary quarters in
Littlefield. Though Idaho officials thought details of the move to Val Verde
had been resolved, Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said he
learned only last week that a Texas county judge wanted a lawyer to look at
the contract one last time. "It was something we did not
anticipate," Reinke said. "GEO is paying the transport costs."
This is just the latest uprooting of Idaho inmates since they were first
shipped out of state in 2005. Since then, they have bounced from prison to
prison in Minnesota and Texas amid allegations of abusive treatment. There
also has been the criminal conviction of at least one Texas guard for passing
contraband to inmates; at least two escapes; and the death of Scot Noble
Payne, a convicted sex offender who slashed his throat last March in a
solitary cell at Dickens County. Idaho officials who investigated concluded
the GEO-run prison was filthy and the worst they had seen. As a result, about
70 Idaho inmates were moved from Dickens to Littlefield, where about 300
Idaho inmates were already housed, while the state continued talks with GEO
over sending the remaining 55 to a new 659-bed addition at Val Verde. Despite
the stopover, GEO has a hefty incentive to make sure the move to Val Verde
goes smoothly, Reinke said. The company hopes to win contracts with Idaho to
build a large new prison here to help accommodate the state's 7,400 inmates.
"They're really monitoring this closely, and doing a good job at this
point," Reinke said. "It's not a lot different than triple
bunking."
December 6, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Seven former and current inmates have filed a lawsuit against a private
prison company, alleging abuse by a registered sex offender who worked as a
night-shift guard at a troubled West Texas lockup that is now closed. The
young men allege they were mentally, physically and sexually abused in 2006
and early 2007 by a guard who was fired in March, after state officials
learned he was on the public sex offender registry. He had worked for seven
months at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, operated by Florida-based
GEO Group Inc. The facility housed Texas Youth Commission inmates until the
teens were removed in October because of squalor and mismanagement. One of
the plaintiffs, who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Friday, alleges that
guard David Andrew Lewis let several inmates into his cell. They sexually
assaulted him with a broom handle while Mr. Lewis watched, according to
Dallas lawyer Bob Crill. GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said the company had no comment about the lawsuit.
Mr. Lewis, who isn't named as a defendant, couldn't be reached. TYC also
declined to comment. Several plaintiffs remain in TYC custody, their lawyers
said. Deon Olthoff, 18, of Granbury, said Wednesday
that his abuse began in November 2006 when he moved to a new Coke County dorm
with individual cells. Mr. Olthoff spent 14 months
in the facility after his parole for burglary was revoked because of truancy.
Mr. Lewis first leered and stood too close as he and other boys showered, Mr.
Olthoff said. Later, the guard would barge into his
cell at night as Mr. Olthoff slept or wrote
letters. "He just came in and started choking me, and getting on top of
me, and grabbing my hands and pulling them behind my back and stuff like
that, and grabbing me in private areas," Mr. Olthoff
said. Until his release in February, Mr. Olthoff
said, he coped with Mr. Lewis' behavior by trying "not to think about
it." Mr. Olthoff said he and two other inmates
filed a joint grievance in late 2006 alleging that Mr. Lewis touched them
inappropriately. GEO sent Mr. Olthoff's father a
letter in February notifying him of the allegations of mistreatment. The
letter said the Olthoffs would receive written
notice about the outcome of an investigation. But no follow-up letter
arrived, Deon and his attorneys said. Mr. Crill and
Dallas lawyer Bady Sassin,
who worked with a Corpus Christi law firm to file the suit in San Antonio,
said they were investigating whether Mr. Olthoff's
complaint led to Mr. Lewis' firing. A Texas Department of Public Safety sex
offender Web site shows that Mr. Lewis, 24, was convicted in 1999 of
indecency by exposure with a 5-year-old girl. After his firing, Mr. Lewis
said he had shown his prospective employer his sex offender card when he
applied but they told him to see if his background check went through,
according to an Associated Press report. Mr. Paez
previously has said that the company didn't know about Mr. Lewis' record
because juvenile cases don't show up on background checks. "Even if you
excuse the inexcusable – which is not knowing from the beginning that this
guy was a registered sex offender – there were complaints that were filed
that should have put them on notice long, long before he was
terminated," Mr. Crill said. TYC grievance
records obtained by The News show the agency recorded four mistreatment
allegations against Mr. Lewis by inmates whose identities were withheld. He
was cleared on three allegations, including an accusation of sexual abuse. In
February, an allegation of unprofessional conduct was sustained against Mr.
Lewis.
November 29, 2007 AP
The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a Texas prison earlier
this year has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the
private-prison company that runs the lockup where he died. In her claim in
U.S. District Court in western Texas, Shirley Noble says prison operator The
GEO Group abused and neglected Scot Noble Payne before he slashed his throat
on March 4th. Scot Noble Payne, a convicted sex offender from Idaho, had been
moved to Texas along with more than 400 Idaho inmates to relieve overcrowding
at prisons in their home state. Idaho officials who investigated at the
Dickens County Correctional Facility in Spur, Texas, said the physical
environment of his solitary cell could have contributed to his suicide.
November 27, 2007 Idaho State
Journal
A company that's due to take over a troubled privately run Texas prison in
2008 made a sales pitch Monday to Idaho Department of Correction officials,
saying it hopes the management shake-up and $1.2 million in proposed
renovations will overshadow past problems and persuade Idaho to ship more inmates
to the lockup. Civigenics, a unit of New
Jersey-based Community Education Centers, Inc., with prisons or treatment
programs in 23 states, will manage Dickens County Correctional Center in
Spur, Texas, starting Jan. 1 after winning a competitive bid. Until now, The
GEO Group Inc., based in Florida, ran the facility. In March, Idaho prison
officials called Dickens under GEO's oversight ''the worst'' prison they'd
seen, citing what they called an abusive warden, the lack of treatment
programs and squalid conditions they said may have contributed to the suicide
of inmate Scot Noble Payne, who was held for months in a solitary cell. Idaho
is nearly ready to move 54 prisoners who remain at Dickens to a new GEO-run
facility near the Mexican border, after shifting 69 inmates elsewhere this
summer. Dickens County and Civigenics officials
came to Boise to offer assurances they'll remedy concerns over their
15-year-old prison as they aim to stay in the running to house some of the
hundreds of prisoners that Idaho plans to ship elsewhere in coming months to
ease overcrowding. Some 550 of Idaho's 7,400 inmates have been sent out of
state since 2005. GEO ''thought they were too good,'' Sheldon Parsons, a
Dickens County commissioner, told Idaho officials. ''They're used to running
bigger facilities. That just kind of didn't fit into our program. Civigenics will definitely fit.'' Idaho plans to send 120
additional prisoners to a private prison in Oklahoma in January. It's also
looking for space in other states for groups of inmates in increments of
about 100 starting in mid-2008. Bob Prince, a Civigenics
salesman, said his company could house as many as 150 Idaho inmates at a
revamped Dickens. The $1.2 million from Dickens County, which owns the
prison, would cover new fencing, exterior lighting, security improvements,
kitchen renovations and more rooms for education and treatment programs.
Still, Idaho officials including Department of Correction Director Brent
Reinke indicated the plan may not be enough to address complaints that have
prompted him to vacate Dickens. Idaho, which earlier this year conceded it
lost track of how its inmates in Texas were being treated before Payne's
suicide, has outlined its concerns in several reports over the last nine
months. Lingering shortcomings include a lack of cell windows and a drab,
dingy atmosphere in an aging facility built as county jail, not for long-term
prisoners. ''The cells inside that facility are pretty dark and dank,'' said
Randy Blades, the Idaho warden who oversees out-of-state prisoners. ''What
are you looking at to change the cells themselves?'' Texas officials conceded
that wasn't considered. ''We haven't looked into any of that,'' Parsons said,
before adding, ''We'll try and do anything we can to make people happy that
are coming in. Nobody has ever brought that up before.'' Despite past
problems with GEO, Blades said Idaho aims to soon finalize a contract with
that company to move inmates still at Dickens to a new 659-bed addition at
the Val Verde Correctional Facility, near the Mexican border. That contract
also calls for roughly 40 inmates currently in Idaho to be sent to Val Verde.
Val Verde has seen its own share of problems under GEO leadership. GEO
settled a wrongful death case after a female Texas prisoner killed herself
following allegations she was sexually humiliated by a guard and raped by an
inmate. Earlier this year, the local government was forced to hire a monitor
for the facility. Even so, Blades said a visit to the new cellblock slated
for Idaho inmates earlier this year convinced him and other officials that
the prison is appropriate and safe. ''It's a very good facility, very
secure,'' Blades said of Val Verde. ''There's a good dayroom. The cells are
well lighted.''
October 12, 2007 KRIS TV
The delayed discovery of squalid conditions at a privately run Texas Youth
Commission jail was "a human failure" and stronger oversight is
needed to prevent similar incidents, a key state senator said Friday.
"It was very simple that the monitors were not doing their job and there
was a human failure," said Sen. John Whitmire, head of the Senate
Criminal Justice Committee. "Who's monitoring the monitors?"
Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, called a committee hearing about a week after a
Coke County juvenile lockup in Bronte operated by The GEO Group, Inc., was
closed because of filthy conditions. A Texas Youth Commission ombudsman
discovered the conditions, even though the facility had passed previous
inspections by TYC monitors. The TYC system was rocked earlier this year by
allegations of rampant sexual and other physical abuse against juvenile
inmates in the system. The star witness at Friday's hearing on adult and
juvenile prison monitoring was Shirley Noble, who told how her son,
43-year-old Idaho inmate Scot Noble Payne, endured months of horrific
conditions then slit his own throat at a private Texas prison run by GEO
Group. "It seemed there was no end to the degradation he and other
prisoners were to endure with substandard facilities," Noble said. Her
son died March 4 in a private prison in Spur. Noble questioned why Idaho sent
its inmates to Texas and why the Florida-based GEO Group was allowed to keep
prisoners in what she described as "degrading and subhuman
conditions." "Please, please hold them accountable for all the
injuries and misery they have caused," Noble said. A spokesman for GEO
Group did not immediately return a telephone call from The Associated Press
to respond to comments made at the hearing. TYC Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope, who took over the youth agency earlier
this year, testified that she's putting more monitoring safeguards in place.
That includes sending executive staff members out to view the lockups,
something she said hadn't been done regularly in the past. "Because of my
concerns of what I saw in Coke County, I have implemented a blitz of every
facility, either the ones that we operate, that contract, district offices,
anything that has TYC affiliated with it," she said, adding that each
site will be visited by the end of October. Adan Munoz Jr., executive
director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said he has four
inspectors do annual inspections of the 267 facilities under his oversight.
He defended his agency's practice of giving two- to three-week notices about
inspection visits but said recently there have been more surprise
inspections. Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa,
D-McAllen, said privatizing prisons is an "easy way out." He said
he worries about the state continuing to contract with companies that have a
history of abuse. "It's a myth that the private sector does a better job
than government" in running prisons, Hinojosa said. "They're there
to make a profit and they'll cut corners, and they'll cut back on services
and they'll many times look the other way when abuse is taking place."
Because of Texas' size and high rate of locking up convicts, the state is in
the national spotlight for its dealings with private prison firms, said Sen.
Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "It puts a special burden on us," he said.
"If it needs to be improved, improve it, because everybody looks to
us." Noble was the panel's final witness. The room hushed as she told
the senators her family's emotional tale. Her son, a convicted sex offender,
was kept in solitary confinement for months with a wet floor, bloodstained
sheets and smelly towels. She said he wrote long, detailed letters to family
members in which he said the only way to escape the prison's harsh conditions
was to join his late grandfather in the spirit world. Noble said she begged
for psychological help for her son. She said he wasn't supposed to have been
given a razor, and she still wonders how he got the one he used to end his
life. "After he tried to unsuccessfully slash his wrists and ankles, he
knelt in the shower and cut his own throat," she said. "Surely only
a person in utter disillusionment and horrifying conditions would bring
themselves to this end."
August 8, 2007 AP
The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a dilapidated private
Texas prison earlier this year has filed a $500,000 claim against Idaho,
contending the state's Department of Correction is responsible for
"inhumane treatment and illegal and unconstitutional conditions of
confinement" that contributed to his death. Scot Noble Payne, 43, was in
prison for aggravated battery and lewd and lascivious conduct when he slashed
his throat March 4. He had been sent to the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas, with other inmates last year to relieve overcrowding
in Idaho prisons, which have more than 7,000 prisoners but too few beds to
house them all. Following Payne's death, Idaho prison health care director
Donald Stockman investigated Dickens and concluded "the physical
condition of the cell where the suicide occurred does not, in my opinion, comply
with any standards related to inmate housing for either segregated housing or
housing for inmates on suicide watch. The physical environment of the cell
would have only enhanced the inmate's depression that could have been a major
contributing factor in his suicide." "Just being in the filth and
degradation of that cell was sufficient to drive somebody into suicide,"
Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, told The Associated Press in a telephone
interview Wednesday from her home near Los Angeles. The tort claim against
Idaho was filed last week. Under state law, the maximum Noble could recover
is $500,000. The state now has 90 days to respond to the claim; if it
doesn't, Noble could file a civil rights lawsuit in federal court. Kit
Coffin, the state's risk management program manager with the Department of
Administration, said tort claims like this are reviewed and assigned to state
adjudicators for consideration. She was uncertain if Noble's claim,
originally filed with the secretary of state, had been sent to her office
yet. In suicide notes he penned for relatives, Payne described a constantly
wet floor, bloodstained sheets and smelly towels in the isolation cell at the
prison where he was confined for three months following his escape and
recapture in December 2006. He slit his throat in his cell just after
midnight March 4. "Due to the inhumane conditions, Scot Noble Payne
became depressed and suicidal. ... Unattended, (he) committed suicide as a
result of being subjected to inhumane treatment and illegal and unconstitutional
conditions of confinement," according to Noble's tort claim. Since
Payne's death, 69 Idaho inmates have been moved from Dickens, which is run by
Florida-based private prison operator The GEO Group, to another prison. By
September, the remaining 56 Idaho inmates still at Dickens are set to be
moved to another Texas prison because Idaho officials aren't satisfied with
improvements at Dickens. Noble's lawyer in Boise, Breck Seiniger,
said Idaho had the responsibility to ensure conditions at Dickens were
adequate, regardless of whether prisoners were located in Idaho or 1,500
miles away. Brent Reinke, director of the Idaho Department of Correction
since January, has conceded his agency didn't do enough to monitor conditions
at Dickens between August 2006, when Idaho prisoners were sent there, and
Payne's suicide in March. During that period, Idaho sent prison staff to
Texas just once. They have a responsibility to provide reasonable conditions
of confinement," said Seiniger. "They
can't escape that responsibility simply by passing these prisoners off to
somebody else." Reinke's office said it would review the claim, but
declined to immediately comment. Payne's family has also discussed a federal
lawsuit against The GEO Group, though no lawsuit has yet been filed. Phone
calls to GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez in Boca
Raton, Fla., weren't immediately returned.
July 31, 2007 Idaho Statesman
Idaho's Department of Correction has created a new position to manage Idaho's
roughly 2,400 inmates in private, out-of-state prisons and county jail beds.
Randy Blades, who has been the warden at the Idaho State Correctional
Institution south of Boise, will monitor the 500-plus inmates, now in three
Texas prisons managed by the Geo Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla. He will also
monitor the 240 inmates soon to be transferred from Idaho to a private prison
in Oklahoma, and the inmates in county jail beds across the state. Correction
Director Brent Reinke created the position after disclosing that conditions
at one of those prisons were so bad that inmates will be moved elsewhere.
Inmates at the Dickens County Correctional Center are being moved to the Bill
Clayton Detention Center after an inmate suicide at Dickens revealed filthy
living conditions and poorly trained and unprofessional staff. “Times have
changed and we simply need to get in front on this issue,” Reinke said in a
statement. “We must be proactive. We need to make sure inmates are being
treated adequately and taxpayers are getting what they are paying for.”
July 26, 2007 The Olympian
Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke next Thursday will visit a
private Texas prison where he intends to shift 56 inmates in September, after
problems including abuse by guards, deplorable conditions and a suicide emerged
at previous facilities in that state. Reinke, who concedes lax oversight by
Idaho contributed to problems, and three other Idaho officials will review
the Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas, run by
Florida-based private prison firm The GEO Group. The prison area where Idaho
inmates are due to be housed at Val Verde is part of a new 659-bed addition,
Reinke said. Still, he wants to make sure the facility located near the
Mexican border meets Idaho standards so the recurring problems at the two
previous GEO-run prisons aren't repeated. "On contracts in general,
we're going to be stepping that up," Reinke told The Associated Press
this week. "We want to take a firsthand look." About 450 Idaho
inmates were first moved beyond state borders in 2005 to relieve overcrowding
at prisons here, where there are more than 7,000 inmates - but not enough
room to house them all. They were incarcerated at the Newton County
Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, until August 2006, when they were moved
following allegations of abuse by guards to the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas. But Reinke, who took over in January, acknowledges his
agency didn't do enough to scrutinize conditions at Dickens before Idaho
inmates were shipped there. And from August 2006 to March 2007, Idaho prison
officials only visited the Dickens County facility one time. The March 4
suicide by Scot Noble Payne, a convicted sex offender, and a subsequent
investigation illuminated conditions that one Idaho prison official described
as "beyond repair." One concern: There have been problems at Val
Verde, too. Inmate LeTisha Tapia killed herself
there in 2004 after alleging she was raped by another inmate and sexually
humiliated by a guard. And a black guard accused his captain of keeping a
hangman's noose in his office and a photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan hood
in his desk. Val Verde County has been forced to hire a full-time prison
monitor to keep a watch on prison operations as part of a settlement with
Tapia's family. Some family members of Idaho inmates now at Dickens told the
AP they're pleased Reinke is scrutinizing Val Verde personally. Still, they
said they're frustrated their relatives are being moved again - especially
since many problems at Dickens have been remedied since Payne's suicide in
March. "Things are OK now," said the wife of a sex offender who
asked not to be identified by name. "They don't want to move."
Reinke has pledged to improve oversight of conditions at Texas prisons through
what he's calling a "virtual prison" that his agency adopted
earlier this week. It's modeled after a similar system in Washington state,
he said.
July 11, 2007 AP
As overcrowding in Idaho prisons intensifies, so have lobbying efforts
and campaign donations by private prison companies aiming to win new
contracts - both to house more inmates beyond state borders and to build a
proposed 2,200-bed for-profit lockup. The GEO Group, a Florida-based prison
operator in 15 states, entered Idaho politics in 2005, when it hired its first
lobbyist, according to a review of lobbying and campaign finance records by
The Associated Press. A year later, it divvied up $8,000 among three
campaigns: Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter got $5,000, Lt. Gov. Jim Risch got $2,500, and former state Rep. Debbie Field, who
lost her House race last November, received $500. Field also served as
Otter's campaign manager and was later appointed by the new governor as
Idaho's drug czar. Since 2006, GEO has won contracts worth $8 million
annually to house more than 400 Idaho inmates in Texas, including at two
prisons where problems became so severe that Idaho demanded inmates be
relocated. Corrections Corp. of America, a Tennessee company whose
95,000-inmate private prison system includes 1,500 prisoners at a prison south
of Boise, gave nearly $32,000 for the 2006 election to 29 Republican
candidates, including $10,000 to Otter, and $5,000 to the state Republican
Party. CCA and GEO each hired two lobbyists for the 2007 Idaho Legislature.
Just one Democrat, Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise,
received money from CCA - $300. The GOP dominates Idaho politics, with 51 of
70 seats in the House and 28 of 35 seats in the Senate. Steve Owen, a CCA
spokesman, said his company makes political contributions to candidates that
support "public-private partnerships." "That's what we're in
the business of, and that's reflective of our participation in the political
process," Owen said, adding his company has run private prisons for
nearly 25 years, including in Idaho, in a professional manner where standards
can exceed a state's own. "It has been a positive working relationship
between the Idaho Department of Correction and CCA." GEO spokesman Pablo
Paez didn't return phone calls seeking comment.
Overcrowding in U.S. prisons, plus a federal push to incarcerate more
terrorists and illegal aliens, has benefited private prisons that now oversee
140,000 inmates. Companies like GEO and CCA spent $3.3 million between 2000
and 2004 on election campaigns in 44 states to ensure they profit from this private
prison boom, according to a 2006 study by the National Institute for Money in
State Politics, in Helena, Mont. Private prisons have become a hot topic
here, because of the problems at GEO's Texas prisons where Idaho inmates are
locked up to ease overcrowding at home. Abuse by guards at the Newton County
Correctional Center in eastern Texas prompted Idaho officials to demand
inmates be relocated in 2006 to the Dickens County Correctional Center. Now,
Idaho officials have called Dickens "filthy" and "beyond
repair," prompting a move to another GEO Texas prison. "The way the
contractor makes the most money is by providing the least amount of
service," said Robert Perkinson, a University
of Hawaii professor who is writing a book on Texas prisons, including
privately run facilities. "It's an inherently problematic area of
government to privatize." Still, Idaho, with about 7,000 inmates, now
has 256 more inmates in-state than it has capacity for - even with about 430
already in Texas. Efforts to develop sentencing alternatives to ease an
expected 7 percent annual increase in inmate numbers through 2010 will take
time, so Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said alternatives are
limited to moving inmates elsewhere. Robin Sandy, Idaho Board of Correction
chairwoman, said she met with CCA officials in Idaho in June. They discussed
a new contract with the state to house 240 Idaho inmates in company prisons
in Oklahoma - a contract worth about $5 million annually - as well as
prospects of the company winning a share of the new 2,200-bed prison proposal
that Reinke plans to introduce in September to lawmakers. "It was a
courtesy visit," Sandy said. Otter said he's also been in discussions
with private prison companies eager to do more business with the state. Otter
is a former J.R. Simplot executive who has said he wants to run Idaho more
like the private sector. "There's been a lot of that activity,"
Otter told the AP. "During the legislative session, there were several
organizations that came in."
July 10, 2007 The Olympian
More Idaho inmates are slated to move to a private Texas lockup in the latest
effort by state prison officials to relieve overcrowding at facilities here.
In the move approved by state officials including Gov. C.L. "Butch"
Otter on Tuesday, 40 inmates now in Idaho will go to the Val Verde
Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas, at a cost of $51 per inmate
per day. In addition, 125 inmates now at the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas, will also be shifted, with 56 going to Val Verde,
located near the Mexican border, and the remaining 69 going to another prison
in Littlefield, Texas, where there are already 304 Idaho inmates. The shift
to Val Verde and Littlefield comes after problems emerged at Dickens,
including a March 4 suicide, reports of "filthy" and "dire
living conditions" and a guard convicted of providing contraband to
inmates. Still, both Dickens and Val Verde prisons are run by the same
private company - Florida-based prison operator The GEO Group - and prison
advocates say Val Verde also has a reputation as a "scandal-ridden
prison." One Texas inmate killed herself at Val Verde in 2004 after
alleged sexual humiliation by a guard, while a guard supervisor was accused
of keeping a photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan hood, resulting in
accusations of racism. "We'll do a site visit in the immediate
future" to Val Verde, said Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent
Reinke, who has pledged to improve monitoring of Idaho inmates by instituting
a new program that includes more-frequent visits to out-of-state facilities.
GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez said his company is
working with Idaho to meet its prison needs. In 2005, a black guard alleged
his captain at Val Verde kept a hangman's noose in his office and a Polaroid
photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan hood in his desk. That case was settled in
2006. The settlement with GEO isn't public, but details of the guard's
complaint were confirmed by a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
probe reviewed by the AP. The guard's attorney said Tuesday that the
atmosphere at Val Verde was "hostile and racist." "I would
have serious concerns about the way inmates will be treated," the
lawyer, Mark Anthony Sanchez, said from San Antonio. "If a jail treats
its employees that way, how is it going to treat inmates?" And in 2006,
a female inmate's family sued The GEO Group in the wake of her suicide at Val
Verde. Before her death, LeTisha Tapia said she was
raped by another inmate and sexually humiliated by a GEO guard after
reporting to the warden that guards let inmates have sex. The lawsuit was
settled this year. Details of that settlement also aren't public, according
to U.S. District Court records in western Texas. But Val Verde County, where
the prison is located, has been forced to hire a full-time prison monitor to
keep a watch on operations at the prison, as part of its own settlement with
Tapia's family. "The county feels that the jail monitor is
necessary," said Ann Markowski Smith, the
county attorney, in an interview with the AP. She added that concerns remain
about the GEO-run prison, including whether inmates are properly receiving
medication meant to treat mental health conditions. Bob Libal,
of Grass Roots Leadership, a group that campaigns against for-profit prisons
like GEO, is more critical. "Val Verde is the GEO-group prison we always
point to as a scandal-ridden private prison," said Libal.
"We hear very bad things from there, whether it be in the lawsuits, or
grumblings about the facility being poorly operated." GEO's Paez declined to comment on the settlement with Tapia's
family, or the guard who sued the company over racism allegations at Val
Verde. Idaho's contract with GEO is worth some $8 million annually. Idaho,
which began sending inmates beyond its borders in 2005, predicts inmate
numbers will grow between 6 percent and 7 percent annually through 2010, with
the population reaching more than 8,800 inmates by then. The state says it
must ship inmates out of state to relieve overcrowding. While Reinke said
he'll soon introduce a plan to build a new 2,200-bed private prison in Idaho,
that won't be done until 2010, at the earliest. As a result, Idaho likely
will continue to send more inmates out of state until then. For instance, it
aims to send an additional 240 prisoners by November to prisons in Oklahoma
operated by another company, Corrections Corp. of America. While Otter
acknowledged he's reluctant to work with GEO due to problems at its
facilities, he added, "I have a great deal of confidence in Mr. Reinke's
ability to clean up the situation."
July 8, 2007 Magic Valley Times-News
The state's top prison official aims to soon send more inmates to a Texas
lockup run by a private company, even though Idaho prisoners at two of that
outfit's other facilities have had to be moved twice because of abuse by
guards, a suicide, filthy conditions and lack of treatment. Brent Reinke,
Idaho Department of Correction director, on Tuesday will ask the state Board
of Examiners, including Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, to let him move
more prisoners now in Idaho to an undisclosed Texas facility run by The GEO
Group, a Florida-based private prison company. Reinke's request also includes
relocating prisoners from GEO's Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur,
Texas. Conditions at Dickens, left largely unmonitored by Idaho between last
August and March, had deteriorated so badly that when Idaho's prison health
director finally investigated earlier this spring, he said it was "the
worst correctional facilities I have ever visited." Reinke concedes his
agency failed to properly monitor conditions at Dickens, but said moving
inmates to another GEO prison won't necessarily mean problems will recur
because not all the its facilities are run so poorly. For instance, another
GEO-run facility where 304 Idaho inmates are housed, the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, is an excellent prison that shows
problems aren't endemic, he said. "We just need to make sure we hold
them to the contract," Reinke told the AP Friday. "We've got to do
a better job monitoring the facilities." It wasn't immediately clear how
many inmates currently in Idaho would be affected by Tuesday's request. Otter
couldn't be reached for comment Sunday. Rising numbers of inmates in Idaho,
whose prisons now house more than 7,000, make this latest out-of-state
shipment unavoidable, Reinke said. Idaho predicts prison growth between 6
percent and 7 percent through 2010, with the population reaching more than
8,800 inmates by then. Idaho now pays GEO $51 a day to house about 430
inmates, or more than $7 million annually. At the time of Idaho's initial
out-of-state shipments in 2005, inmates went first to Minnesota. But space
constraints soon uprooted them again in 2006, this time to a GEO-run facility
in Newton, Texas. There, guard abuse and prisoner unrest forced another move
to two new GEO facilities: 125 Idaho inmates went to Dickens, while 304 went
to Bill Clayton in Littlefield. Problems continued at Dickens, including an
inmate suicide in March. A guard was fired, then convicted in state court,
for passing contraband to inmates. And the Dickens warden was ousted after a
probe in which Idaho prison health director Don Stockman called the facility
"beyond repair or correction," according to a March 15 report
obtained by the AP. GEO, based in Boca Raton, Fla., has said it's aiming for
improvements. "GEO strives to provide quality correctional and detention
management services in a safe and secure environment consistent with
contractual requirements and applicable standards," said spokesman Pablo
Paez, in a recent e-mail. Still, some prison
experts criticize shipping inmates out-of-state because they move prisoners
far from families and raise questions about conditions at for-profit
operations. "The receiving facility is agreeing to this arrangement as a
way to make money, and so there is always a risk that conditions and safety
will be compromised as a way to cut corners and save money," said
Michele Deitch, a University of Texas professor. Reinke said Idaho prisons
are full, so he has little choice. A prison consultant concluded recently
that Idaho will need room for 5,560 more inmates over the next decade. The
cost: $1 billion dollars. Earlier this year, Idaho made a call for 1,100 more
out-of-state prison beds; Correction Corporation of America, another private
prison company, offered just 240 beds. Idaho is now negotiating a contract
with CCA, to shift 120 inmates in July, and the remaining 120 in November.
The state is also planning construction: It's set to build a $15 million,
300-bed addition at a prison south of Boise by December 2008. A separate,
400-bed drug treatment prison near Boise is in the works. And in September,
Reinke said he'll unveil a proposal to Idaho lawmakers for a new 2,200-bed
private prison _ larger than the 1,500-bed facility he'd previously
considered. "We're at 100 percent right now, as far as capacity,"
said Reinke. "We're kind of between a rock and a hard place."
July 6, 2007 AP
After months alone in his cell, Scot Noble Payne finished 20 pages of
letters, describing to loved ones the decrepit conditions of the prison where
he was serving time for molesting a child. Then Payne used a razor blade to
slice two 3-inch gashes in his throat. Guards found his body in the cell's
shower, with the water still running. "Try to comfort my mum too and try
to get her to see that I am truly happy again," he wrote his uncle.
"I tell you, it sure beats having water on the floor 24/7, a smelly
pillow case, sheets with blood stains on them and a stinky towel that hasn't
been changed since they caught me." Payne's suicide on March 4 came
seven months after he was sent to the squalid privately run Texas prison by
Idaho authorities trying to ease inmate overcrowding in their own state. His
death exposed what had been Idaho's standard practice for dealing with
inmates sent to out-of-state prisons: Out of sight, out of mind. It also
raised questions about a company hired to operate prisons in 15 states,
despite reports of abusive guards and terrible sanitation. Hundreds of pages
of documents obtained by The Associated Press through an open-records request
show Idaho did little monitoring of out-of-state inmates, despite repeated
complaints from prisoners, their families and a prison inspector. More than 140,000
U.S. prison beds are in private hands, and inmates' rights groups allege many
such penitentiaries tolerate deplorable conditions and skimp on services to
increase profits. "They cut corners because the bottom line is making
money," said Caylor Rolling, prison program director at Partnership for
Safety and Justice in Portland, Ore., a group that promotes prison
alternatives. Payne, 43, was placed in solitary confinement because he
escaped from the prison in December by scaling a fence and eluding capture
for a week. He was among Idaho inmates sent to the prison in Spur, Texas, run
by a Florida-based company called the GEO Group. The business operates more
than 50 prisons across the United States as well as in Australia and South
Africa. Soon after Payne's suicide, the Idaho Department of Correction's
health care director inspected the prison and declared it the worst facility
he had ever seen. Don Stockman called Payne's cell unacceptable and the rest
of the Dickens County Correctional Center "beyond repair."
"The physical environment ... would have only enhanced the inmate's
depression that could have been a major contributing factor in his
suicide," he wrote in a report on Payne's death. Stockman said the
warden at Dickens ruled "based on verbal and physical intimidation"
and that guards showed no concern for the living conditions. After Idaho's
complaints, GEO reassigned warden Ron Alford, who told the AP he was later
fired. He insisted GEO did not provide enough money to make necessary
improvements. "They denied me everything. To buy a pencil with GEO, it
took three signatures. They're cheap," Alford said in an interview. He
disputes Stockman's findings on his treatment of Idaho inmates. GEO spokesman
Pablo Paez declined to comment on Alford's
performance and would say only that the company had been working to address
Idaho officials' concerns. But on Thursday, the state announced plans to move
125 inmates from Dickens to other facilities, citing the poor living
conditions. The private prison business has been booming as the federal
government seeks space to house more criminals and illegal immigrants.
"Sometimes it may be a better situation for the inmates, and sometimes
it's not," said prison consultant Douglas Lansing, a former warden at
the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, N.J. "Monitoring is a
vital component. You can't just move them out of town and forget them."
That appears to be largely what happened with Idaho's inmates. The prisoners
were sent to Dickens in August from another GEO-run Texas prison after
complaints about abuse by guards. But in the following seven months, Idaho
sent an inspector to Texas only once. That inspection found major problems,
including virtually no substance-abuse treatment, and a complete lack of
Idaho-sanctioned anger-management classes and pre-release programs. There's
no evidence the inspector's recommendations were followed. And no one from
Idaho visited the prison again until after Payne's suicide. Most of the time,
the Idaho prison employee responsible for monitoring the GEO contract used
only the telephone and e-mail to handle grievances, which also included
complaints about inadequate church services, poor food and limited recreation
time. Each time, Alford insisted everything was under control, according to
correspondence reviewed by the AP. The new director of the Idaho prison
system concedes his department did not adequately review the inmates'
treatment when he took office in January. "If I had to do it over again,
I would have," Director Brent Reinke said. Former Director Vaughn
Killeen said he couldn't afford more aggressive monitoring during his term
that ended in December. "We weren't happy about the things that were
going on down there," Killeen said. "We didn't have that level of
budget to accommodate full-time monitors." Some other states are more
vigilant. Washington state, for instance, has 1,000 inmates in Arizona and
Minnesota and places full-time inspectors at the prisons. A superintendent
visits every six weeks. Problems with GEO prisons are not limited to Dickens.
Elsewhere in Texas, a female inmate's family sued GEO in 2006 after she
committed suicide at the Val Verde County Jail near the Mexican border. LeTisha Tapia alleged she was raped by another inmate and
sexually humiliated by a GEO guard after reporting to the warden that guards
allowed male and female inmates to have sex. In March, an investigation into
sex abuse allegations at another GEO-run Texas prison led to the firing of a
guard who was a convicted sex offender. And at GEO prisons in Illinois and
Indiana, hundreds of inmates rioted this past spring. The complaints have not
hurt the company's balance sheet. It reported profits of $30 million in 2006,
four times the amount reported in 2005. Inmates at Dickens say conditions have
improved since Payne's suicide. Hot and cold water problems have been fixed,
and cleanliness was judged "adequate," according to a May 31 report
by a new Idaho contract monitor. But prisoners still complain about sewage
from adjacent cells, poor medical and dental care, and a lack of educational
programs. Inmates like Robert Coulter, who was convicted of robbery, say
authorities should have acted sooner. "They basically put us down here
and just dumped us," he said.
July 5, 2007 AP
State prison officials say 125 Idaho inmates in a private Texas prison are
due to make their fourth move since 2005, following a suicide in March,
problems with a guard passing contraband to inmates and the former warden's
ouster. The inmates, who were moved out of state two years ago due to
overcrowding in Idaho lockups, are now at the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas, where they've been since Aug. 7, 2006. Concerns over
conditions at Dickens, an aging county jail run as a prison by Florida-based
The GEO Group, prompted this latest move, Idaho Department of Correction
Director Brent Reinke said Thursday. "The problems we've had in Texas
reflect the challenge of managing out of state. We believe Idaho inmates are
best managed at home in Idaho," Reinke said. He plans in September to
introduce a proposal to build a new 1,500-bed private prison in Idaho to
create more space for the state's 7,000 inmates. Reinke hopes to move 69 of
the Dickens prisoners soon to another GEO-run prison, the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, where similar problems haven't
occurred. About 304 Idaho inmates are already there, but that facility is
making space for more. The remaining 56 at Dickens could go to another GEO
facility elsewhere. Reinke didn't specify where that prison is located. He
said the date of the move will be withheld until it's complete. The inmates
in Texas were originally moved from Idaho in 2005, going first to Minnesota.
Space limitations there forced them to be relocated in 2006 to a GEO-run
prison in Newton, Texas, where problems emerged immediately, including
beatings by guards. That prompted Idaho to request the move to Dickens and
Bill Clayton last August. But problems continued at Dickens, Idaho Correction
Department officials said. Sex offender Scot Noble Payne escaped in December,
remaining on the run for a week before he was recaptured. Payne then killed
himself March 4. Idaho sent prison inspectors to Texas after Payne's death,
and concerns that emerged over conditions at Dickens prompted complaints
about warden Ron Alford, who was relieved of his post and sent to another GEO
facility. And more recently, a Dickens prison guard was convicted in May in a
Texas state court of providing contraband to an Idaho prisoner. That guard
was fired last December. GEO installed new management at the facility after
Idaho's complaints in March, but Reinke said moving the inmates is still a
priority. "IDOC remains concerned about Dickens' operation and has been
working hard over the past four months to find alternatives," the state
agency said in a statement. In an e-mail statement to The Associated Press,
GEO said it's working to rectify problems at Dickens. "GEO strives to
provide quality correctional and detention management services in a safe and
secure environment consistent with contractual requirements and applicable
standards," spokesman Pablo Paez said.
June 6, 2007 AP
Under terms of his contraband sentence, a Texas prison guard who provided
illegal materials to Idaho inmates will only go to prison if he violates
conditions of his release. Those conditions include staying out of “honky tonks” and “beer joints,” according to court documents.
John Ratliffe, a former guard at the Dickens County
Correctional Center where hundreds of Idaho inmates are housed, is also
implicated in providing assistance to an inmate’s escape. But Ratliffe has denied knowing Payne planned to escape.
Footprints matched to Payne, who later committed suicide, were found near Ratliffe’s home. Dickens County prosecutors couldn’t be
reached for comment on whether Ratliffe faces
additional charges related to the escape. Attempts to reach Ratliffe were unsuccessful. His telephone number in
Paducah isn’t listed. The 43-year-old Payne was among inmates shipped to
Dickens and another nearby facility in Littlefield, Texas, in August 2006 due
to problems they experienced at another Texas facility, the Newton County
Correctional Center. Those included incidents in which the inmates were
punched and doused with pepper spray by guards. Both prisons are operated by
The GEO Group of Florida. GEO officials said they took quick action upon
learning in December about Ratliffe’s contraband
operation. It included setting up a post office box where at least some
prisoners’ families sent items or money to be transferred to inmates,
according to documents. “When we have incidents of this kind, we conduct a
full investigation, and if disciplinary action is required, we take that
action properly, and that’s what we did in this case,” said Pablo Paez, a GEO spokesman. Ratliffe
was placed on unpaid leave, then fired, Paez said.
Records show a chaotic scene in Paducah before Payne was finally cornered by
search dogs in a nearby riverbed. Ratliffe
allegedly threatened to commit suicide shortly after searchers found Payne’s
footprints near his backyard fence, prompting Texas Rangers to transfer Ratliffe to the local courthouse “where a mental health
warrant was signed by the judge,” according to the GEO report. Idaho
officials said they learned of Ratliffe’s
activities after Payne’s capture. “We found out about it on Dec. 11 in a
conversation between Warden Ron Alford and our contract compliance person
Sharon Lamm,” said Jeff Ray, a spokesman for Idaho
prisons. Alford was transferred in March to another GEO prison, after
complaints from Idaho about conditions at Dickens.
June 6, 2007 AP
A private prison guard in Texas who company officials say helped an Idaho
inmate escape by providing an envelope stuffed with money has been convicted
in a separate case of providing contraband to another Idaho prisoner. John Ratliffe, a former guard at the Dickens County
Correctional Center where hundreds of Idaho inmates are housed due to
overcrowding at home, was sentenced last month to five years
probation, 120 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine for giving
cigarettes to Idaho inmate Patterson Franklin, according to court records
obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Ratliffe
pleaded guilty. The problems surfaced starting Dec. 3 when sex offender Scot
Noble Payne escaped through a prison kitchen door and scaled a fence.
Afterward, Ratliffe acknowledged to his bosses at
the prison run by Florida-based The GEO Group that he used Franklin as an
intermediary to provide illegal items, including tobacco, underwear, sex
tapes, music — and at least $200 Payne had with him when he was caught Dec.
10, according to an eight-page report compiled by GEO officials following the
escape. Payne committed suicide March 4 after weeks in an isolation cell. He
had been isolated as punishment for his escape. Officials say guard can avoid
prison sentence.
May 1, 2007 Spokesman Review
The warden of a private Texas prison housing Idaho inmates has been
"relieved of his duties" after complaints from Idaho. The Dickens
County Correctional Center, which houses 125 Idaho inmates, made the change
after an Idaho corrections team visited the large, older county jail near
Lubbock, Texas, in March and reported "deficiencies." Idaho
Corrections Director Brent Reinke said problems included an absence of
required educational and treatment programs, inadequate out-of-cell time,
inappropriate lighting, and problems with food, clothing and cleanliness.
Also, an inmate from Ada County who escaped in December and recaptured
committed suicide at the facility in early March. "The feedback I got
from the team was that what they were concerned with was the Texas style of
justice," Reinke said. "Texas justice is different than Idaho
justice. It just is. And we want our inmates handled according to Idaho justice.
"Ninety-eight percent of those folks are coming back to our communities.
… Our mission is to keep Idaho safe. … We don't want to make the matter
worse, so that they come back more violent or more angry." The state
Board of Correction voted unanimously Monday to explore private prison
options in Idaho as an alternative to sending inmates out of state in the
future. Dickens is one of two Texas lockups operated by GEO Group, formerly
Wackenhut Corp., to which Idaho inmates were moved after problems at another
GEO facility in Newton County, Texas, last year. The Newton County lockup saw
two escapes, a demonstration in which 85 Idaho inmates refused to return to
their cells for hours in protest over conditions, and the discipline of three
prison employees after jailers roughed up and pepper-sprayed six Idaho
inmates. Idaho has 431 inmates housed out of state due to overcrowding in its
prison system – 125 at Dickens, 304 at Bill Clayton Detention Center in
Littlefield, Texas, and two elsewhere. Reinke said GEO Group has been responsive
to the complaints, and the new acting warden has made improvements.
Complaints have dropped off since that change was made last month. But
members of the state Board of Correction were concerned on Monday.
"They're not meeting the terms of the contract," said board
Chairwoman Robin Sandy. "Maybe I'm just used to enforcing a contract a
little more aggressively." Sharon Lamm, deputy
administrator of management services for Idaho Corrections, told the board
conditions were much improved at a follow-up visit in April. Idaho pays $51
per inmate per day in Texas. The average cost in Idaho is $48 per day. Idaho
is seeking proposals for additional out-of-state prison beds for overflow
inmates. The deadline for proposals is today. Reinke said the most recent
estimates show Idaho will need 5,200 more beds in the next 10 years. But
Sandy said placing inmates out of state could become prohibitively expensive
because California is poised to send 8,000 of its inmates out of state.
"We all know what that's going to do to the price of beds," she
said. She proposed that Idaho look into contracting for private prison space
in state, which would require a change in state law. Idaho has one privately
operated prison, but the facility is owned by the state. "It's something
we need to discuss," Sandy told the board. "I've spoken to the
governor's office about it. They seem to like the idea." Board member
Jay Nielsen said, "I don't think we're going to get $60 million out of
the Legislature to build one, so our back's to the wall – if we're going to
have a new prison, it's going to have to be a private one." The board
voted unanimously to seek more information on that option. Jack Van Valkenburgh, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Idaho, said, "I'm less concerned with whether it's a
public or private entity than with whether conditions are adequate and
constitutional, and whether there are adequate programs to return inmates to
society in a productive manner." The Idaho inmate who committed suicide
at the Texas lockup, Scot Noble Payne, 43, was found in a shower at 1 a.m.
with fatal razor wounds. He was serving seven to 20 years for lewd and
lascivious conduct. Matt EchoHawk, staff attorney
for the Idaho ACLU, said his group received complaints from about one in five
Idaho inmates at the Dickens facility after Payne's escape in December. Many
said they were stuck in their cells without opportunities for rehabilitation.
"The prison officials would say it was due to weather or security,
something like that, but it wasn't happening, they wouldn't be out of their
cells," EchoHawk said.
March 5, 2007 Idaho Statesman
An Idaho inmate housed in a Texas prison was found dead from apparently
self-inflicted wounds early Sunday morning, an Idaho Department of Correction
spokeswoman said. Guards in the Dickens County Correctional Center found Scot
Noble Payne, 43, slumped in a shower, bleeding and unresponsive about
midnight Mountain Time, Teresa Jones said. The fatal wounds were inflicted
with a razor, she said. He was pronounced dead at 1:17 a.m. after
unsuccessful attempts to revive him. Payne was serving time on an Ada County
charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under 16, Jones said. He
was isolated from other inmates at the time of his death because of a
December escape, she said. Payne apparently scaled a fence Dec. 3. He was
captured on Dec. 10 after eluding the Texas Rangers, helicopters from the
Texas Department of Public Safety, local law enforcement agents and private
prison workers. Payne was one of about 100 Idaho inmates housed at the
correctional center near Spur, Texas. Idaho inmates have been in the facility
since July 2005. Payne transferred there in August. He was sentenced to 20
years, with seven mandatory, in December 2002.
December 11, 2006 AP
An Idaho inmate who escaped a private West Texas prison was captured
after a week on the run when authorities caught up to him at a ranch.
Authorities arrested Scot Noble Payne, 43, on Sunday at a ranch near the
small town of Paducah, said Daniel Hawthorne, a spokesman for the Texas
Department of Public Safety in Childress. Payne escaped Dec. 3 from the
Dickens County Correctional Center. The facility, which is run by
Florida-based Geo Group Inc., is located in Spur, about 60 miles east of Lubbock.
Prison officials said Payne, who was serving time for aggravated battery and
lewd and lascivious conduct, scaled the facility's fence. He fled when
temperatures were in the mid-20s, apparently without any extra clothing. For
a week, the fugitive eluded searches by the Texas Rangers, helicopters from
the Department of Public Safety, local law enforcement agents and private
prison workers. Hawthorne said several reports of sightings focused searchers
on the Paducah area, which is 50 miles northeast of the detention center.
Authorities closed down sections of highways and continued scanning the area
by helicopter, he said. Dogs eventually tracked Payne to the ranch. Payne is
one of more than 460 Idaho inmates who have been shipped to Texas or other
states since last year due to overcrowding in Idaho prisons. Idaho inmates at
private prisons in Texas have been the subject of controversy, with a
previous breakout in June and allegations of abuse that preceded the firing
of some Geo Group staff and the transfer of inmates to other prisons —
including Dickens County.
December 5, 2006 AP
Texas authorities continue to search for an Idaho inmate who escaped from a
privately-run prison in subfreezing temperatures. Scot Noble Payne escaped
from the Dickens County Correctional Center at about 7:30 p.m. last night.
Idaho authorities say Payne left a shirt in the fence he's believed to have
scaled. Teresa Jones, a spokeswoman for the Idaho Department of Correction,
says "Payne had no extra clothing when he escaped and temperatures are
near freezing." The search for Payne included helicopters, dogs and road
blocks.
December 4, 2006 AP
West Texas authorities were searching in subfreezing temperatures late Sunday
for an Idaho man who escaped from a privately operated prison in Spur. Scott
Noble Payne, 43, escaped from the Dickens County Correctional Center at about
7:30 p.m. CST, said Janie Walker, a dispatcher with the Dickens County
Sheriff's Office. State and local authorities from surrounding counties
joined the two-man Dickens County Sheriff's Office in the search for Payne,
Walker said. The search involved helicopters, dogs and road blocks. Jail
staff members believe Payne scaled the facility's fence, the Idaho Department
of Corrections said in a news release. Authorities believe he did not have
extra clothing. Temperatures in the region had dropped to the mid-20s degrees
by 11:30 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. Payne was serving
time for Idaho charges of aggravated battery and lewd and lascivious conduct,
according to the Idaho Corrections Department. He was one of about 100 Idaho
inmates being held at the Spur facility, which is located about 60 miles east
of Lubbock. The prison, which is operated by Florida-based The Geo Group,
Inc., is designed for minimum- to maximum-security levels, according to the
Geo Group's Web site. It has a capacity of 489 adult males.
October 29, 1998
More than 17 months after a Montana inmate died from wounds suffered during a
riot at the Dickens County Correctional Facility in Spur, his medical bills
totaling nearly $60,000 are still unpaid, a lawsuit states. Montana
inmate Neil Hage, 32, died May 16, 1997, at
University Medical Center in Lubbock a week after he was injured in a prison
riot between inmates from Montana and Hawaii. Now a lawsuit brought by
University Medical Center alleges that former DCCF operator Bobby Ross Group
has failed to pay the $59,480 bill despite promises to do so. But the
May 9, 1997, riot at the Spur facility came at a time when Montana officials were
about to pull their 220-plus inmates out of the prison. An audit
performed by the Montana Department of Corrections in 1996 and 1997 made
numerous claims of inadequacies at the facilities, including a lack of CPR
and medical readiness in general. BRG agreed to terminate its contract
with Dickens County in April after county officials opted to sell the prison
to Florida-based Correction Service Corp., which now runs the facility.
(Houston Chronicle)
Sept. 7, 1997
Montana inmates at a Texas prison go hungry and have to wait days for medical
care, while the company running the prison continues to violate its $3.6
million-a-year contract with the state, an investigation by Montana
corrections officials found. A report released Friday said the Dickens
County Correctional Center, operated by the Bobby Ross Group, is not fully
complying with 15 of 22 provisions of the state contract. Violations
include food service medical care security, inmate transfers and disciplinary
actions, according to the report. Dickens County has had problems since
Montana inmates were sent there about a year ago. One inmate was killed
in a May brawl, a near-riot had to be halted by gunfire from guards last
fall, a warden was fired and two Montana escapees remain on the loose.
Friday's report found that the company is complying with the contract in its
education, treatment and drug-testing programs, providing jobs for inmates,
keeping track of inmate funds, supplying medication to inmates and
maintaining a set of medical policies. But the study was especially
critical of food service at the Spur prison. (Houston Chronicle)
May 12, 1997
One inmate was released Sunday and two others remained hospitalized, one in
critical condition, after a fight at a private prison in this Northwest Texas
town. Officials at the Dickens County Correctional Center would not say
whether the prison remained locked down Sunday, as has been the case since
Friday night's uprising involving inmates from Montana, Colorado and
Hawaii. As many as 100 inmates were in the prison's recreation yard
when the fight began about 8:30 pm Friday. The fighting prisoners
surrendered when guards approached them. (Houston Chronicle)
May 11, 1997
Three inmates were hospitalized, one with critical injuries, and their privately
run prison remained locked down Saturday after a fight involving prisoners
from Montana, Colorado and Hawaii. A total of seven inmates were hurt
Friday night at the Dickens County Correctional Center. No weapons were
recovered, and the victims apparently did not suffer gunshot or knife wounds,
Dickens County Sheriff Ken Brendle said.
Officials said 141 inmates were transferred in November 1996 from Colorado
prisons to the correctional center to relieve crowding. To relieve
crowding at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana sent 251 inmates
to the prison last summer and has about that many there now. An August
1996 uprising began when about 120 inmates from Montana and Hawaii refused to
begin work assignments or return to their barracks in a protest over medical
care, food and strip searches. (Houston Chronicle)
Dickens County Jail
Dickens County, Texas
Community Education Centers
February 3, 2011 KCBD
While the Lubbock County Detention Center is filling up with inmates, other
counties are struggling to find an inmate. Taxpayers of those counties are
now being held prisoners by their own prisons as they're forced to pay the
price of empty facilities. About an hour from Lubbock, the Bill Clayton
Detention Center in Littlefield hasn't had a single inmate in the last two
years. "This was not built to house local inmates; it was built to house
inmates from other parts of the state or other parts of U.S. It was built to
bring economic development to the city of Littlefield," said Danny
Davis, Littlefield city manager. For a while it did bring money into
Littlefield, until the State of Idaho decided to remove its inmates from the
center when the economy tanked back in 2009. "Everybody was cutting back
it seemed, and it was very difficult to find other inmates from out of state
to come in and fill the facility," said Davis. Nearly 100 people lost
their job in the area, and with $9 million left to pay for the now empty
building, residents are stuck paying the price through increased taxes and
fees." Jokingly I've told people when I took this job I weighed a lot
more and had a lot more hair, so that's how I guess you can say how the
frustration level is. It has been a frustrating situation for the whole
community," said Davis. About two hours away Dickens County faces a
similar fate. Their contractor CEC didn't renew their contract with the
Dickens County Correctional Center. In mid-December the remaining inmates
were moved to Lubbock County's new facility, and nearly 120 jobs were lost -
huge hit to the small communities of Dickens County. "It cost money to
put people in jail. The state of the economy, the governments don't have as
much money. Our own state is cutting the budget, and there's one way to save
money…that's not to incarcerate them, and so that's why I believe our inmate
population is down," said Lesa Arnold, Dickens County Judge. So far
Dickens County hasn't had to increase taxes to foot the prison's one million
dollar bill each year, but that option might soon surface. "We need to
get this thing going within a year, and hopefully a whole lot sooner than
that before that issue comes up as to who's going to make those bond
payments," said Arnold. So how can Lubbock County fill its newly built
facility while these two and others around the U.S. are failing? It comes
down to why these facilities were built in the first place. Littlefield and
Dickens County didn't have an inmate population for the large prisons they
built; instead they were built to make a profit for the towns by contracting
out the prison cells to other parts of the state and U.S. Lubbock on the
other hand, needed the bigger facility. All 1,063 inmates currently in the
Lubbock County Detention Center are from Lubbock County, which means their
cells will constantly be filled with a local inmate population. The other
facilities are staying hopeful a new inmate population will come their way.
"I can't worry about why we have it because that's in the past. I can
only worry about what can we do with it now that we have it, and that's what
we work on every day," said Davis.
December 11, 2010 Texas Prison Bidness
On Friday, Community Education Centers (CEC) decided to let their contract
with the Dickens County Jail expire. All the inmates from that facility were
transferred to the Lubbock County Detention Center. The US Marshals will pay
the city of Lubbock a $40 per diem rate, and $10 per hour for guards, but the
jail's Chief Deputy said they would negotiate for a higher rate in order to
recover the cost of Lubbock's sending to Dickens in the first place. Now that
Lubbock has a new and larger jail, they want their inmates back: As of Friday
the Lubbock County Detention Center hold [sic] 105 inmates with more on the
way. Chief Deputy Downes said all the federal inmates should be transferred
by the end of next week. "The Lubbock County taxpayers are seeing some
return on what they spent on this facility," said Chief Deputy Downes.
But for Dickens County, a community of 2,700, having the federal inmates
transferred has led to all 489 beds empty and more than120 jobs lost. This
comes after the privately owned company that operated the Dickens County Jail
did not renew their three year contract and is in the process of
transitioning the operation of the jail back to Dickens[.] "We've been working
diligently for the last 8 months to ensure this day would never come.
Unfortunately it has," said Lesa Arnold, Dickens County Judge. The
Dickens County Judge said possible loss of the jail is not an effect of less
inmates. It's also due to the economy and location. "I think a lot of it
had to do with geography. It was just closer for the U.S. Marshals to the
court system in Lubbock," said Judge Arnold.
Dimmit County,
Texas
Jun 30, 2016 kurv.com
Another South Texas County Rejects New Immigrant Detention Facility
For the second time in two weeks, a South Texas county has shot down a
proposal for a third immigrant family detention center in the region. This
week, Dimmit County commissioners voted down a request to send a bid to the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau. A South Carolina-based oil
company, Stratton Oilfield Systems, had proposed turning a former oil worker
camp in Carrizo Springs into a minimum-security detention facility to house
women and child immigrants — those coming across the Texas border from the
violence-ravaged countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Earlier
this month, commissioners in Jim Wells County rejected a proposal from a
British private prison firm to turn a former nursing home in San Diego into a
detention center for immigrant families. Currently, there are two such
detention centers in South Texas — in Karnes City and Dilley.
Eagle Lake Juvenile Facility
Columbus, Texas
Youth Services International (formerly Correctional Services Corporation sub)
October 24, 2008 Houston Chronicle
The state's troubled youth prison system has canceled a contract with a
Florida company following criticism taxpayers were paying $22,500 a day to
lease empty prison beds, officials said. The Texas Youth Commission
terminated the contract Thursday with Youth Services International. No one at
the company could be reached for comment Thursday, the Austin
American-Statesman reported in its Friday online edition. Previously, a
company official had indicated the payments were reasonable. "This is
what I asked for— cancel that contract. We need to get our money back. It's a
good day for taxpayers and the Youth Commission that they corrected this big
mistake," said Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal
Justice Committee. Whitmire was among the lawmakers demanding the contract be
canceled when they learned the embattled agency was leasing Eagle Lake
prison, near Houston. It sat empty for three months despite the state paying
the company nearly $1.3 million in startup costs, which covered part of July
and all of August. Checks for September and October were withheld by TYC,
which wants to negotiate a refund for much of what it already spent, the San
Antonio Express-News reported Thursday in its online edition. On Oct. 17,
officials moved 18 teen offenders into the Eagle Lake prison but sent them
Thursday to others around the state. Cherie Townsend, the commission's new
executive commissioner, said in a statement the company will be asked for a
detailed accounting of all state money spent so far on the contract.
Commission officials were criticized for inking the deal when its existing
lockups have dozens of empty beds. The number of teenage lawbreakers in
commission lockups has declined from more than 5,000 to about 2,700 in the
wake of a reorganization and management shakeup that followed a sex-abuse and
cover-up scandal in 2007. In a statement Thursday, Townsend said the agency
"is evaluating its youth population, future trends and future
needs." The contract is the latest trouble for TYC. Gov. Rick Perry
recently moved the agency out of the state conservatorship put in place in
2007 following allegations of inmate sexual abuse and a cover-up by agency
officials.
October 19, 2008 AP
Key state lawmakers want a contract with a private prison contractor
canceled after they learned the Texas Youth Commission spent $1.26 million to
lease empty beds. The agency moved 18 teenage offenders Friday into the new
lockup near Houston. It had been empty for three months. The contract showed
the state would pay $22,500 a day for three months at the empty facility to
cover start-up costs. However, records show only $1.26 million has been
spent. The Eagle Lake prison would need to house 119 offenders to cover the
costs. The money was paid to Youth Services International for startup costs,
something other state agencies prohibit. The Austin American-Statesman
revealed details of the contract this past week. John Whitmire, Senate
Criminal Justice Committee chairman, wrote a letter Friday to the agency demanding
the contract with the Florida-based company be canceled.
November 29, 2005 Victoria Advocate
The Colorado County Commissioners Court has formed a committee to determine
which of the county's taxing entities will be able to use the new voting
machines for its elections. "We formed the committee to come up with an
equitable system for all of the voting entities in the county to use the
equipment," County Judge Al Jamison said after Monday's court meeting.
"We've purchased 16 of the machines and have three cities and three
school districts." "Now that the county is running the facility,
the school district wanted the contract to be with us rather than
Correctional Services Corporation," Jamison said. "The district
operates an off-campus program at the juvenile facility with a principal and
five teachers. That way the kids at the facility are not in an educational
vacuum. For example, if they are in eighth grade, they follow an eighth grade
course of learning at the facility."
Eagle Pass
Correctional Facility
Jul 16, 2020
eastidahonews.com
Private prison in
Texas holding Idaho offenders again loses running water in pandemic
The
Eagle Pass Correctional Facility in Eagle Pass, Texas, which holds 610 Idaho
offenders, again lost access to running water and communication services
during the coronavirus pandemic. The Idaho Department of Correction contracts
with the private prison to hold some inmates because Idaho does not have
enough beds to house them in-state. Water pressure has been restored, but
communication lines were still down on Wednesday afternoon. As of Wednesday,
there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus among the inmate population
in Eagle Pass. The county water main that supplies water to the prison was
damaged on July 5. That damage occurred when a Maverick County, Texas,
firetruck parked on top of the line while firefighters were putting out a
vehicle blaze about a mile away, according to IDOC spokesman Jeff Ray. “The
Eagle Pass Correctional Facility lost water service for a few hours while the
main was repaired,” Ray said in an email. “During that time, water from a
water tower was available to flush toilets at the facility. A water truck was
brought to the facility as a back-up measure.” But again, on Tuesday, the
facility lost water pressure and Maverick County investigated. “The crew
found the line was leaking at the location where repairs were made as a result
of the damage that occurred on July 5,” Ray said. Again, the water tower was
used to flush toilets and the men were supplied with bottled water. “While
repairing the water line, the county repair crew cut the internet and
telephone lines to the facility that run just above the water line,” Ray
said. “As of yesterday afternoon, the water main had been repaired, and a
crew was working to restore communication services.” The facility lost water
pressure in April as well, after a nearby water main broke. The Texas prison
is owned and operated by a private corporation, The GEO Group Inc. Visitation
and volunteer groups have been suspended at the facility because of the
pandemic. Eagle Pass continues to comply with all orders from the Texas
governor related to COVID-19 measures for jails and correctional
facilities. As of Tuesday, Maverick County, Texas, where the prison is
located, was reporting 497 active cases of coronavirus.
Feb 20, 2019 boiseweekly.com
The Dead of Winter -- Investigation into Idaho inmate's death at private
prison in Eagle Pass, Texas: "Medical response is where the problem
lies."
The body of Kim Taylor lies in a snow-covered grave in Fielding Memorial
Park Cemetery in Idaho Falls. He was laid to rest there six days after dying
at Eagle Pass Correctional Facility, a private prison near the U.S.-Mexico
border where 700 Idaho inmates, including Taylor, were sent for
incarceration. A spokesman for the Idaho Department of Correction said there
was no indication of foul play, and an official incident report from the
Maverick County [Texas] Sheriff's Office concluded that Taylor, 56,
"died of natural causes." But there was nothing natural about the
events leading up to Taylor's death, which began Dec. 31, when Taylor
complained of a sore throat that escalated to a fever of 101.3 degrees the
next day, followed by complaints of dizziness and filled lungs in days after.
The crisis climaxed just past midnight on Jan. 6, when Taylor's cellmates
told prison officers that they were concerned about Taylor, who was
disoriented and reported to be "pale, diaphoretic and incoherent."
Inmates later told Idaho investigators, part of a Serious Incident Review
team, "When the nurse got here, she showed up with nothing and she
didn't know what to do." Findings in the Serious Incident Review report
on Taylor's death, ordered by IDOC, include:
• "Sick call/triage/follow up is not being done in a consistently timely
manner."
• "There appears to be a deficit in critical thinking skills as
evidenced by the inmate demonstrating worsening symptoms and not being placed
in observation or being frequently assessed until symptoms improved."
•"Nursing staff failed to bring emergency bag/equipment to scene when
attending the inmate at bedside. She left and returned with a wheelchair but
still did not bring emergency bag with her."
• "Oxygenation of the inmate was critical but did not occur as there was
no manual ventilation bag and the nurse was unaware of the proper way to use
the oxygen tank and no mouth-to-mouth was initiated."
Investigators added that, "Unless [the nurse] can
be given some immediate additional training and education, she should be
removed from her position." It was also learned that there were supposed
to be two members of medical staff on overnight shifts, but "due to
short staff" at the facility, the nurse attending to Taylor was there
alone. "An inexperienced nurse should not be working by herself on night
shift," the SIR report said.According to the
report, the nurse wheeled Taylor "to a holding room instead of the room
where all the emergency medical equipment was located. She was unable to
operate the oxygen tank; in addition, she did not have a manual ventilation
bag, nor did she give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She also began CPR on
Taylor when he still had a pulse. When she was asked why she did not utilize
the AED [defibrillator], she said the officers did not know where it
was." Shortly thereafter, Taylor was rushed from the private prison to a
local hospital, and according to a five-sentence incident report filed by the
Maverick County Sheriff Office, which has jurisdiction over the border town,
"While at E.R. [Taylor] passed away from natural causes."
"Obviously, something went wrong," said Craig Taylor, the older
brother of inmate Kim Taylor. "Somebody wasn't doing their job. When I
read the report, everyone wants to pick on the nurse. But I look at the
warden." Indeed, the SIR report indicates that Eagle Pass Correctional
Facility Warden Waymon Barry, pointing to a cause
of death of "natural causes," never requested an autopsy. When BW
asked why the warden didn't request an autopsy, a spokeswoman from GEO Group,
the owner-operator of the private prison, said, "Before an autopsy could
be ordered by the Eagle Pass Facility, next of kin had taken custody of [Kim
Taylor's] remains." But Taylor's brother said an autopsy should
definitely have been performed. "A prisoner died, yet somehow they
forgot such an important priority," he told BW. In the wake of the SIR
report, IDOC spokesman Jeff Ray told BW that Idaho has "urged the
facility's warden to immediately request an autopsy following any future
inmate death. The warden has indicated he will do so." Meanwhile,
questions surrounding the death of Kim Taylor are also beginning to mount
among Idaho prisoners at the Eagle Pass prison. "There are some
frustrations about the facility's inability to respond appropriately to his
medical issue," inmate Patrick Irving told Boise Weekly. "There are
some concerns and frustrations from the staff over that situation as well. A
correction officer has made an effort to tell me that he was not alone in
being upset over how things were handled." Meanwhile, Craig Taylor said
he was still recovering from what he read in the SIR report detailing his
brother's spiral toward death. "There were severe management
errors," he said. "I think I may begin talking to attorneys for
possible legal action regarding all of this." BW asked the GEO Group if
any change in procedures had been instituted at Eagle Pass in the wake of Kim
Taylor's death. "Eagle Pass regularly evaluates its processes,
procedures and training in an effort to continuously improve the delivery of
services and operational efficiency," read an official statement from
GEO. Idaho officials were more detailed with their own follow-up to Taylor's
death. "IDOC will soon send a team to Eagle Pass to conduct a
comprehensive audit of the facility's medical procedures," said Ray.
"We take seriously our obligation to provide appropriate medical care
those who are in our custody, and we hold our partners to the same
standards." Just before Christmas 2018, Kim Taylor penned a letter to
his brother Craig that read, "Just a quick note to let you know I am
still here." About two weeks later, Kim Taylor would return to
Idaho—more specifically to the Fielding Memorial Park Cemetery.
Nov
13, 2018 idahopress.com
Fire started in trash can during 2nd Texas prison disturbance involving
Idaho inmates
EAGLE PASS, Texas — A disruption involving 24 Idaho inmates incarcerated
at the Eagle Pass Correctional Facility in Texas led to one inmate starting a
fire in a trash can, according to the Idaho Department of Correction. It was
the second disturbance in one week involving Idaho inmates at the Texas
facility. The 24 inmates are all facing disciplinary action following the
group disruption around 5:40 p.m. Mountain time Sunday, according to an email
from IDOC spokesman Jeff Ray. The disruption began after a group of prisoners
assaulted an inmate inside a housing unit and refused orders to return to their
cells, according to Ray. Inmates covered windows with sheets and security
cameras with toilet paper and poured soapy water on the floor. A microwave
oven and an exercise bike were also damaged. The prison’s tactical team
entered the unit and ended the disruption around 7 p.m. Mountain time when
one of the inmates started a fire in a trash can. This is the second reported
incident in a week’s span involving Idaho inmates facing disciplinary actions
at the Eagle Pass Correctional Facility. On Nov. 5, a prison guard suffered
minor injuries following a group disturbance with 11 Idaho inmates. The Eagle
Pass Correctional Facility is about 150 miles southwest of San Antonio. It is
a private prison, staffed by the The GEO Group,
Inc., a Florida-based firm operating private prisons. The facility is leased
to the Idaho Department of Correction, and as of Nov. 12, 549 Idaho prisoners
live there. IDOC officials have expected to have about 700 prisoners housed
in Texas by the beginning of November. That’s due to a lack of prison beds in
Idaho. Correction officials have proposed to lawmakers a $500 million prison
expansion package to help accommodate the growing inmate population. A great
deal of that money would be used to fund a new 1,500-bed prison in Idaho.
Nov 6, 2018 idahopress.com
Guard sent to hospital after disturbance in Texas prison housing Idaho
inmates
A prison guard was injured Friday night at the Eagle Pass Correctional
Facility in Texas during a group disturbance involving 11 Idaho inmates.
About 6:30 p.m., two prison staff members saw an inmate trying to steal food
from the prison’s kitchen, according to an email from Jeff Ray, spokesman for
the Idaho Department of Correction. Staff members ordered the inmate to give
up the food, but he refused, and instead threw his shirt and the food at
them, according to Ray. Staff members moved the inmate back to his housing
unit and told him he would be moved to a "restrictive housing
unit," lose his job as a kitchen staff member and face discipline for
assaulting the staff member and stealing food. Other inmates in the housing
unit soon became defiant themselves, according to Ray. They put towels over
their heads, covered security cameras with toilet paper, and began to block
the entrance to the housing unit with boxes and garbage cans filled with
water. A prison administrator repeatedly ordered the inmates to return to
their cells, Ray wrote. Eleven of the 44 inmates in the unit refused to do
so. Eventually, a prison tactical team took over and used pepper spray to
subdue the inmates and move them to restrictive housing units. One staff
member received a shoulder injury in the scuffle, Ray wrote, and was taken to
the hospital. No inmates were injured, according to the email, but an
exercise bike was destroyed, and fire alarms were damaged. Prison authorities
will determine disciplinary action against the inmates, according to Ray. The
Eagle Pass Correctional Facility is in Eagle Pass, Texas, almost 150 miles
southwest of San Antonio. It is a private prison, staffed by the The GEO Group, Inc., a Florida-based firm operating
private prisons. The facility is leased to the Idaho Department of
Correction, and as of Oct. 10, 549 Idaho prisoners lived in the facility. All
told, the department expected to have roughly 700 Idaho prisoners in Texas by
Thursday.
East Hidalgo Detention Center
La Villa, Texas
Geo Group
Apr
16, 2021 progresstimes.net
Former
guard at East Hidalgo Detention Center sentenced to more than two years in
prison for bribery
A
judge sentenced a former guard at the East Hidalgo Detention Center to more
than two years in prison Thursday for accepting bribes — including a horse. U.S.
District Judge Micaela Alvarez sentenced former Correctional Officer Amber
Marie Estrada, 22, of Weslaco during a hearing Thursday morning. Estrada
apologized for accepting bribes and thanked the government for arresting her.
“I don’t know where I’d be if I was continuing to do that,” Estrada said. “So I am very thankful for the lesson learned and I do
apologize. And I am very, very remorseful.” Estrada worked at the East
Hidalgo Detention Center in La Villa. The 1,300-bed jail is owned by the GEO
Group, a private prison company based in Boca Raton, Florida. It holds people
detained by the U.S. Marshals Service. Estrada smuggled food and marijuana to
people detained at East Hidalgo, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Lynn
Greenbaum, who prosecuted the case. Her conduct seriously undermined “the
safety of the institution, the safety of her fellow coworkers, the safety of
the inmates and the public’s trust in the day-to-day operations of this
facility,” Greenbaum said. In exchange, Estrada accepted cash and a horse,
according to the indictment against her. Estrada and six other detention
center employees, including her mother, Brenda Fuentes, were arrested in 2019
and 2020. Fuentes was accused of engaging in sexual activity with a person in
custody, which is illegal. She pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of a ward and
was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison. “It saddens me
always when we have a defendant who has engaged in criminal conduct along
with a parent. In your case it wasn’t necessarily
you were involved in the same offense, but you were involved in very similar
conduct,” Alvarez said. “I can see from the perspective of a young person
that if they see a parent doing something, then maybe in their mind they
don’t think it’s all that bad if the parent is going to do it.” Alvarez said
people frequently apologize at sentencing, but many don’t
recognize the mistake they’ve made and learn from it. “Hopefully
the lesson that you have learned here, Ms. Estrada, is one that will stay
with you for the rest of your life,” Alvarez said. “That is: No matter how
minor the conduct may seem to you from your perspective or how from your
perspective maybe something that you think is worthwhile, that you step back
and look at it from the perspective of society as a whole.” Corruption in
jails and prisons is a serious problem in many other nations, Alvarez said.
Integrity is what sets the United States penal system apart from others. “We
hear often about situations in foreign countries where the penal institutions
are run by the inmates, where if an inmate has the right connections and the
right money, life can be easy for them. They can basically live
in custody as if they were living on the outside,” Alvarez said. “We
take some pride in believing that our institutions are not like that. And
then we have situations like this that show that anybody is subject to
corruption.”
May
27, 2020 krgv.com
Former
East Hidalgo Detention Center employee pleads guilty to sexually abusing
inmate
A
former cook supervisor at the East Hidalgo Detention Center pleaded guilty
Tuesday to sexually abusing an inmate. Brenda Alicia Fuentes, 48, of Weslaco
pleaded guilty Tuesday afternoon during a videoconference with her attorney,
a federal prosecutor and U.S. District Judge Micaela
Alvarez. "She felt like she made a mistake," said attorney Rudy
Moreno of McAllen, who represents Fuentes. "She's remorseful about it
and hopes to move on." Fuentes worked at the East Hidalgo Detention
Center in La Villa, which holds inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service and
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The 1,300-bed jail is owned by The
GEO Group, a private prison company based in Boca Raton, Florida. A grand
jury indicted Fuentes in November 2019. Prosecutors determined that Fuentes
performed oral sex on a male inmate in 2018, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy
Lynn Greenbaum, who represented the government on Tuesday. During the hearing,
Fuentes admitted to performing oral sex on the inmate. Along with Fuentes,
the grand jury indicted four guards and a medical assistant. They’re accused of providing inmates with contraband in
exchange for cash. A grand jury also indicted her daughter, former
Correctional Officer Amber Marie Estrada, in March. Estrada is accused of
providing inmates with contraband in exchange for cash — and a horse. Fuentes
is scheduled for sentencing in August. She faces a maximum of 15 years in
federal prison.
Dec
21, 2019 themonitor.com
Sixth
La Villa ex-guard arraigned on bribery charge
The
indictment against a sixth former employee of the East Hidalgo Detention
Center in La Villa was unsealed Thursday in federal court. Domingo Gonzalez
Hernandez, 25, of Mercedes, was arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge J.
Scott Hacker on Friday morning on the sole charge of bribery of a public
official. According to the indictment, Hernandez, who worked as a
correctional officer at the federal prison, is accused of accepting a Chevrolet
pickup truck, a gift card and money in exchange for bringing contraband into
the facility and distributing it to inmates there. Federal prosecutors allege
Hernandez accepted the bribes between September 2016 and July 28, 2018, the
indictment reads. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge. Hacker set
Hernandez’s bond at $30,000 with a $1,000 deposit, and required he obtain a
court-approved third-party custodian. Court records show the bond deposit was
posted Friday after-noon. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge
Randy Crane, with a final pretrial conference slated for Jan. 31, 2020. Jury
selection is set for Feb. 4, 2020. Hernandez faces up to 15 years in federal
prison, up to a $250,000 fine and up to three years of supervised release. Hernandez
has now become the sixth former employee of the detention center to be
charged with wrongdoing in recent weeks. While the other five men and women
made their initial appearances in McAllen federal court late last month,
Hernandez was first brought before a judge in New Mexico, according to a
statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Nov. 26. Four of the
other people charged also face federal bribery charges, including: Jayson
Catalan, 37; Erasmo Loya, 54; Veronica Ortega, 43;
and Jhaziel Loredo, 32. A
second woman, 47-year-old Brenda Alicia Fuentes, is accused of sexually
abusing an inmate in federal custody. Catalan, Loya,
Ortega and Loredo are all accused of accepting
varying amounts of money in ex-change for smugglings contraband into the
facility for prisoners. The contraband ranged from food, to marijuana to
Xanax pills, according to the indictments. Fuentes is accused of carrying out
a sexual relationship with an inmate, allegedly performing oral sex on him.
During their bond and detention hearings on Nov. 26 and 27, U.S. Magistrate
Judge Juan F. Alanis set bond for the five men and women at $30,000 each,
including a $500 deposit for all but Fuentes. The trials against Loya, Fuentes, Ortega and Loredo
are set to go before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez early next month,
while Catalan’s trial will be heard by U.S. District Judge Ricardo H.
Hinojosa. Owned by The Geo Group, the private prison houses federal inmates
under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service. Its staff is also responsible
for the transportation of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement detainees.
In a statement released via email last month, a spokesperson for The GEO
Group said the prison company had terminated the men and women after their
arrests. “We will continue to cooperate with law enforcement as they
investigate the matter,” the statement read.
Nov
30, 2019 brownsvilleherald.com
Five
ex-detention center staffers plead not guilty to fed charges
McALLEN — Five men and women
facing federal charges of bribery — and in one instance, sexual abuse of an
inmate — have pleaded not guilty and will soon be released on bond. Nov 30,
2019 brownsvilleherald.com Charges against a total of six former employees of
the East Hidalgo Detention Center were announced late last week by the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. Five of those individuals appeared before U.S. Magistrate
Judge Juan F. Alanis for arraignment and detention hearings Tuesday and
Wednesday. The sixth — 25-year-old Domingo Hernandez of Mercedes — made an
initial appearance in New Mexico and will be arraigned here soon, according
to a news release. Hernandez, along with Jayson Catalan, 37; Erasmo Loya, 54; Veronica Ortega, 43; and Jhaziel
Loredo, 32 are all accused of accepting bribes in
exchange for smuggling contraband into the La Villa detention facility, which
houses federal inmates under a contract from the U.S. Marshals Office. Brenda
Alicia Fuentes, 47, stands accused of sexually abusing an inmate in federal
custody. Reached via email, a spokesperson for The GEO Group, which owns and
operates the private prison, said, “We can confirm that all of these
employees were terminated from their positions shortly after their arrests.”
"We will continue to cooperate with law enforcement as they investigate
the matter," the statement further reads. All six people have been
charged under separate, sequential indictments. That of Hernandez remains
under seal. Should they be found guilty of the various charges, the six face
up to 15 years in prison, up to a $250,000 fine, and up to three years of
supervised release, court records show. Catalan, of Mercedes, was employed at
the detention center for three years and served as a commissary officer at
the detention center. Federal prosecutors allege he smuggled food into the
prison approximately a dozen times between January and July of this year. “He
was asked by inmates to do a favor and then another inmate would notice,” and
would also ask for food, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Greenbaum said during
Catalan’s bond and detention hearing Wednesday. Catalan was allegedly paid
$80 for every occurrence, Greenbaum said. Erasmo Loya,
of Edcouch, worked as a correctional officer at the prison. He is alleged to
have accepted between $1,000 and $2,000 to smuggle food and marijuana into
the facility more than five times between November 2016 and June of this
year. Veronica Ortega, of McAllen, worked as a certified medical assistant at
the facility. Prosecutors allege she accepted approximately $780 to smuggle
marijuana to an inmate between April and May of this year. “She would conceal
it within herself and then deliver it to the inmate,” Greenbaum said
Wednesday, adding that Ortega had mentioned the inmate in a social media post
as recently as July. While admonishing Ortega, the judge advised her to not
speak of the case online. “It’s just not advisable to put anything on social
media as these proceedings go forth,” Alanis said. Jhaziel
Loredo, of Progreso,
allegedly smuggled Xanax and marijuana into the prison between October 2018
and August 2019, for which he accepted $1,000 and $600, respectively. Loredo also allegedly accepted a payment after an inmate
thought Loredo, who worked as a correctional
officer, had used his position to get the inmate transferred out of
confinement in “the hole.” During Loredo’s bond and
detention hearing, prosecutors argued the charges against him were especially
serious given that one of his duties at the time was to conduct “shakedowns”
for contraband. And finally, Brenda Alicia Fuentes, who worked at the
detention center for seven years and served as a cook supervisor, stands
accused of sexual abuse of an inmate. According to the government, the inmate
— identified only by the initials R.R.H. — told investigators that Fuentes
carried out a sexual relationship with him. Fuentes also allegedly provided
the inmate with her phone number so the pair could communicate when she was
not at work. The inmate would call Fuentes from jail phones and would engage
in sexual and flirtatious conversations, according to a U.S. Marshal who
testified during Fuentes’ bond and detention hearing Tuesday afternoon. The
agent also testified that surveillance video allegedly showed Fuentes and the
inmate entering a closet at the prison before emerging several minutes later.
The inmate told investigators that Fuentes had performed oral sex on him.
Prosecutors argued against granting bond to Fuentes, arguing that issues may
arise with finding a suitable third-party custodian for her during her
release. According to statements made in open court, one of Fuentes’ two
daughters also worked at the East Hidalgo Detention Center as a correctional
officer and had said she felt like she was “about to be arrested” as well.
Later in the hearing, Greenbaum indicated the daughter, who now works at the
Willacy County Regional Detention Center in Raymondville, may indeed be under
investigation for bribery. “Our main concern is we didn’t want her to live
with her daughter, who is a correctional officer,” the prosecutor said.
Fuentes’ public defender, Rudy Santiago Moreno, rebutted, arguing that the
government had not sufficiently proven a concern that Fuentes was a flight
risk, and therefore bond should be granted. Alanis ultimately advised Fuentes
not to speak to her daughter about her own case, or any case that may be
pending against her daughter. “You’re looking at your own legal jeopardy,”
Alanis said. The judge also advised Fuentes not to reach out to a different
inmate or their family, whom prosecutors allege she also had inappropriate
communications with. A review of “toll records” showed that Fuentes had
allegedly exchanged over 5,000 communications with that second inmate or a
member of their family, and had smuggled contraband into the prison on the
inmate’s behalf, the U.S. Marshal testified. Fuentes has not been charged in
connection with those allegations. Alanis gave all five defendants $30,000
bonds. For Catalan, Loya, Ortega and Loredo, Alanis also required they pay a $500 deposit. All
five were remanded to custody pending the satisfaction of their release
conditions by pretrial services. The cases against Loya,
Fuentes, Ortega and Loredo will go before U.S.
District Judge Micaela Alvarez early next year. Final pretrial hearings are
set for Dec. 30, with jury selection slated for Jan. 7, 2020. Meanwhile,
Catalan’s case is set to be heard by U.S. District Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa.
A final pretrial hearing in that case is set for Jan. 6, 2020, with jury
selection slated for the following day.
May 22, 2012 Courthouse News
A former federal corrections officer was arrested on charges of taking a cash
bribe to smuggle a cellphone to a prison inmate, the U.S. Attorney's Office
said. Jorge Sandoval, 21, of Pharr is charged with taking a bribe while
working under authority of the U.S. Marshals Service as a corrections
officer, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement. Sandoval is accused
of taking the bribe while he worked at the East Hidalgo Detention Center in
La Villa, Texas, a 900-bed prison that houses federal and local offenders.
The prison is run by LCS Corrections Services, which describes itself as
"the largest privately held private corrections company in the United
States." If convicted, Sandoval faces up to 15 years in federal prison
and a $250,000 fine.
March 3, 2012 The Monitor
The operator of Hidalgo County’s only private detention center brought in
additional medical staff this week after concerns from county and state
officials regarding inmate tuberculosis testing at the facility. The Monitor
learned of a meeting between several federal, state and local agencies and
LCS Corrections, which owns and operates the East Hidalgo Detention Center in
La Villa. Questions about the facility came after the prison’s warden was
suspended late last month. Health officials questioned the prison doctor’s assertion
that it was safe for possible carriers of tuberculosis — including inmates
who had tested positive in the past — to be kept with the rest of the
prison’s population, said Adan Muñoz, executive director of the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards. “They were not agreeing with the opinion of the
state and the Hidalgo County Health Department that they were not being
managed correctly … as far as being segregated,” Muñoz said. The meeting came
after Hidalgo County Health Department officials learned a federal inmate at
the facility recently who tested positive for tuberculosis, was released to
Border Patrol agents and deported to Mexico without treatment, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. “He was deported without any precautions or
advisories put out,” the sheriff said. In another instance, county health
officials learned of four inmates at the prison who had tested positive for
tuberculosis or were possible carriers of the infection and were among other
inmates, said Shannon Herklotz, assistant director
of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, who attended the meeting last
month. County officials raised their concerns with LCS, but received little
response from the prison’s management. “I guess they were shunned for lack of
a better word,” Herklotz said. Tuberculosis,
commonly referred to TB, is an airborne bacterial infection that involves the
lungs, but can spread to other organs. It is spread via the air and can
remain dormant in a person for years. The state requires prisons to test new
inmates for tuberculosis within seven days of their booking at a penitentiary
with more than 100 beds. A March 2011 Centers for Disease Control study shows
Texas has one of the country’s highest rates for tuberculosis, with four
cases per 100,000 residents. But Hidalgo County has an average rate twice as
high as the state’s, Herklotz said. Prisons, where
scores of people are confined together for extended periods, can be hotbeds
for disease to spread, Muñoz said. “Any time you have a magnitude of inmates
… you’ve got the potential for all sorts of diseases and so forth,” Muñoz
said. The Hidalgo County Jail tests all inmates upon their initial booking
into the facility and before they are placed among the general population, Treviño said. County inmates kept in La Villa are separate
from those brought in by federal agencies. “The reason we (test inmates upon
booking) is we do not want to take the chance of putting somebody back there
infected and causing an epidemic,” he said. But LCS was not always testing
inmates within the seven-day window, said Richard Harbison, the company’s
executive vice president. “We were falling behind on our time period for
doing our TB tests,” he said.
March 1, 2012 The Monitor
Details remain sketchy about a federal investigation into a La Villa prison warden,
but the facility has faced separate scrutiny in recent weeks. But Hidalgo
County’s only private detention facility faced allegations of unfit
conditions and a separate inquiry from federal investigators, only to have
its operators say they had “disproven everything.” East Hidalgo Detention
Center Warden Elberto E. Bravo has been on paid
administrative leave since he learned the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service were
conducting an investigation into fraud, bribery and theft allegations. No
criminal charges against Bravo have been filed. Sources who know Bravo and
are aware of the investigation say it’s unclear whether it involves his job
or political influence in the Delta region, given the private prison is one
of the area’s largest employers. While Bravo remains on leave, the warden
from the Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown will serve in the interim,
said Richard Harbison, executive vice president at LCS Corrections, the
Lafayette, La.-based company that owns and operates the East Hidalgo Detention
Center. “Any time there is (a federal inquiry), we bring a warden in from
another unit to make sure that if there were mistakes they are not being
repeated again,” Harbison said. The separate inquiry into the East Hidalgo
Detention Center launched in January, when Robin Whiteley,
currently facing illegal re-entry charges in federal court, told Chief U.S.
District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa of days without hot water — or any running
water — and said it sometimes took days to be seen by a nurse. Hidalgo County
Sheriff Lupe Treviño said the investigation into
Bravo was concerning, but he has been told the federal investigation does not
concern inmate safety.
July 21, 2010 The Monitor
Prisoner housing may be free of charge for this city, but inmate labor isn't
freely available. That's the outcome of a dispute between an Edcouch city
alderman and the warden of the La Villa detention center over whether Edcouch
is entitled to sandbags made by the inmates. Elberto
Bravo, the warden of the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a privately run,
900-bed facility in La Villa, said he became incensed when Edcouch Mayor Pro Tem Eddy Gonzalez threatened to write a letter to the
warden's supervisors because inmates didn't make sandbags for Edcouch
residents when Hurricane Alex approached. Gonzalez says no letter was ever
written by the city to Bravo's bosses — City Manager P.R. Avila said the same
during Tuesday's city meeting — but that he was upset that prison-made
sandbags weren't available this year like they were for 2008's Hurricane
Dolly. The apparent misunderstanding nearly led the warden to end his policy
of housing cash-strapped Edcouch's prisoners for free, which could have
forced the city to release people arrested on suspicion of driving while
intoxicated and other charges with a summons to show up at court. "I
don't need Edcouch, but Edcouch needs us," said Bravo, who manages the
La Villa facility and oversees two others detention centers in South Texas
that are operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc., the largest privately
held corrections company in the United States. "It's not costing these
cities in the Delta area one penny to house these individuals here."
Bravo, a long-time corrections officer, often puts inmates from the U.S.
Marshals Service — one agency that contracts to use the private prison and
allows him to use its detainees for labor — to work on special tasks. He
cooks turkeys and other food for special events in neighboring cities, and he
made 4,000 sandbags for Edcouch residents when Hurricane Dolly made landfall
two years ago, he said. But when Hurricane Alex turned this way before the
Fourth of July, he committed to make sandbags for Elsa and Hidalgo County
Precinct 1, which delivered sand by the truckload to the facility off State
Highway 107. When Gonzalez called him to demand that he also make sandbags
for Edcouch residents, Bravo refused to do so because of his other
commitments, he said. The warden said that's when Gonzalez threatened to
write a letter to the company's corporate office in Lafayette, La. Gonzalez
said he was upset sandbags weren't made for Edcouch like they were for other
entities, but he added that he never wrote a letter to LCS to complain about
the warden's approach. "I'm a little discontent, but I have no say-so
over what the prison does," said Gonzalez, who hinted at prior political
issues with the warden but declined to say what they were. "I wish he
would have (made sandbags) for Edcouch and La Villa — small communities like
ours." He also said he thought the warden's warning that he would stop
housing the city's prisoners at the detention facility for free was based on
business, not sandbags. The city was set to approve a new contract with the
East Hidalgo Detention Center in which it would have to pay the going rate of
$50 for each day an inmate stays there. With an average of about six Edcouch
prisoners housed at the detention center each week, the bill would have
topped at least $2,000 each month. But Alderman Noe Garcia said the warden
decided to scrap the new contract after he and other elected officials in the
city called to make amends. The city will now be required to cover any
medical costs the detention center incurs, but the warden said he won't
charge them the daily rate. "People need to understand that this is at
no cost to the city," Bravo said. "Even if the letter got to the
corporate office, they're not paying for our services. It's being provided
free to them."
October 23, 2006 Houston Chronicle
One of the five illegal immigrants who escaped from a privately run South
Texas jail along with a former police officer surrendered to federal agents
at a border checkpoint, officials said Monday. Joel Armando Mata-Castro, a
31-year-old Mexican citizen, walked up to the checkpoint Sunday night and
identified himself to Customs and Border Protection officers, who identified
him as a fugitive on federal escape charges, CBP spokesman Felix Garza said.
Mata-Castro was being held at the Cameron County Jail. He's the only inmate
captured after they escaped from the East Hidalgo Detention Center in La
Villa on Sept. 19 by overpowering a guard with a homemade knife and gaining
access to several exit doors. Authorities have said they suspected the men
had crossed the border into Mexico, about 20 miles away. The five illegal
immigrants are alleged members of the drug gang Raza Unida.
Former McAllen police officer Francisco Meza-Rojas, the supposed ringleader
of the escapees, was two weeks away from trial on drug-trafficking charges.
October 11, 2006 The Monitor
The private prison from which six inmates escaped last month has repeatedly
violated state standards, according to inspection reports from the Texas
prison board. The most recent inspection, conducted eight days after the
escape, cites the prison for employing too few guards, adding an unauthorized
number of bunks and keeping unlicensed guards on the payroll. Since LCS
Correctional Services took over the Eastern Hidalgo Detention Center in 2001,
the prison has come out clean in only two of its annual inspections. LCS
spokesman Richard Harbison said the violations were not intentional and that
they had fixed all the problems. "We are back in compliance," he
said. The latest infractions shed new light on the persistently troubled La
Villa prison, which has struggled with staffing and inmate security for
years. LCS President Patrick LeBlanc told The Monitor in previous interviews
that the La Villa prison staffed enough guards, even though a U.S. Marshals
spokesman said that was not the case. The state conducted an emergency review
after last month’s escape, when an 18-year-old guard said he was overpowered
by one of the inmates and stuffed into a closet. He has since been fired.
That inspection cited the prison for a third time for not employing enough
guards. The jail commission did not say in the documents what the actual
ratio of guards to prisoner was. It also found several guards were working
with expired licenses or no license at all. Harbison said the prison had a
policy of not applying for licenses until guards completed two weeks of work.
The warden didn’t want to waste the $100 application fee for a Texas jailer’s
license until he knew guards would stay, he said. That practice has since
stopped, he said. And since the emergency inspection the guards with expired
licenses have been fired, he said.
October 5, 2006 The Monitor
Three people, including a guard, have been arrested in connection with
the prison break in which six inmates escaped more than two weeks ago. Prison
commissary officer Joseph Paul Llanos, Martin Angel Villarreal Jr., and
Magdalena Peña, wife of one of the escapees, were arrested last week in
connection with the escape from the Eastern Hidalgo Detention Center in La
Villa on Sept 19., according to court documents obtained Wednesday. The six
inmates, including a former McAllen police officer accused of running a
family drug smuggling ring, are still on the loose and are most likely hiding
in Mexico, according to authorities. They are considered armed and dangerous.
The five other inmates who escaped with the former police officer are repeat
immigration offenders known as members of Raza Unida,
a drug smuggling gang based out of Corpus Christi. Information compiled from
the three criminal complaints recently filed in federal court paint two of
the prisoners, Enrique Peña-Saenz, 38, and the former police officer,
Francisco Meza-Rojas, 41, as planning the escape from the inside. The U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Houston would not comment on the case because the
investigation is ongoing. But a spokesman for the company that runs the
prison, LCS Correctional Services, said that Llanos knew at least one of the
inmates before they were housed at La Villa. "One of our policies is
that if a guard recognizes someone they know in the past they need to report
it," said LCS spokesman Richard Harbison. Llanos had not reported
knowing any of the inmates, he said. But under questioning after the escape,
Llanos admitted to U.S. Marshals that two weeks before the escape he smuggled
a cell phone and charger to Meza-Rojas, according to a criminal complaint. Some time after, Llanos smuggled in a pair of pliers that
he handed to Meza-Rojas, according to the complaint. Those pliers were later
used to cut through at least three fences, including an electrified one that
someone had turned off, though the complaint didn’t specify who may have done
that. By the time the six inmates had reached the fences, they had subdued
18-year-old prison guard Enrique Zepeda and stuffed him in a closet. Once
they made it outside, they split up into at least three groups after crossing
a levee east of the prison. Search dogs traced the inmates’ scent to State
Highway 107, which runs east of the prison. Meza-Rojas used the cell phone
that had been smuggled in to him to arrange someone to pick him up at the
highway, according to the complaint. "Everything points that these guys
are in Mexico," said Joe Magallan, the U.S.
Marshal’s McAllen-based spokesman. "These guys are too scared to be
crossing back into the United States." Marshals immediately began
investigating Villarreal after the prison break because three of his business
cards had been found in the eight-man pod where the six inmates where held. One of the cards had Enrique Peña’s name and
home phone number on it. Villarreal, according to the complaint, had visited
Peña in prison two weeks before the escape and listed himself as Peña’s
compadre in the log book. Marshals believe he delivered the cell phone, wire
cutters and $200 to Llanos during two different visits to the prison, the
last one in August. Llanos was arrested Sept. 23, and Villarreal on Sept. 25.
They were each charged with aiding and abetting Meza-Rojas’ escape. It wasn’t
clear why they were not charged in connection with the other prisoners’
escapes. As for Peña’s wife, Magdalena, she told U.S. Marshals her husband
told of her of the escape plans some time in
August. He told her someone would give her $100 so she could pay the man who
would smuggle in the cell phone. She met an unknown older white man later
that day in Mission in front of Foy’s Supermarket. He handed her $100 and
instructed her to give the money to Villarreal. Magdalena Peña was also
arrested Sept. 25. She was also only charged with aiding and abetting
Meza-Rojas’ escape. The other inmates are Fernando Garza-Cruz, 20; Joel
Armando Mata-Castro, 31; Vicente Mendiola-Garcia, 34; and Saul Leonardo
Salazar-Aguirre, 24. LCS Correctional Services has made a series of personnel
changes since the escape. Zepeda, the young guard who the inmates
overpowered, was fired for not following policy, Harbison said. The prison
spokesman said Zepeda opened a control room door, unwittingly letting the six
inmates escape. He has not been criminally charged, though, and the company
believes he did not know of the plot. Zepeda, who was employed shortly after
his high school graduation three months before, had undergone on-the-job
training but had not attended mandatory training at the Hidalgo County
Sheriff’s Academy. New guards must take the course within a year of hire.
Harbison said there are at least 20 other employees, 13 percent of all La
Villa guards, at the prison who are like Zepeda and have yet to undergo the
academy training. The company has closed its investigation and is now
implementing a series of security policy changes, he said. The chief of security
at the prison was also demoted, he said.
September 23, 2006 KRIS TV
A control box for the electrical fence surrounding a private jail was
tampered with before six federal inmates escaped this week and may have kept
the alarm from sounding, an official with the company that runs the jail said
Friday. Richard Harbison, co-owner of LCS Corrections Services Inc., of
Lafayette, La., said an internal investigation revealed tampering with an
outside control box. He also said there were wiring problems with a control
box inside the East Hidalgo Detention Center. Meanwhile, two employees were
placed on paid leave pending the investigation into Tuesday night's escape of
a former police officer facing drug charges and five alleged members of a
drug gang. All six remained at large Friday.
September 23, 2006 The Monitor
The 18-year-old guard overseeing the six inmates who escaped from the
local prison Tuesday had been on the job less than three months and had not
yet undergone a training course mandated for Texas jailers. Enrique Zepeda
was one of 27 guards on duty Tuesday night when the six inmates threatened
him with a foot-long homemade knife, tied him up and stuffed him in a closet.
They then escaped through several inside doors and layers of outside fencing
to make their way out of the prison complex. The escapees, who included five
prison gang members and a former McAllen police officer accused of running a
drug smuggling ring, were still on the loose Friday. Zepeda — who began work
at the Eastern Hidalgo County Detention Center this summer just after his
high school graduation — was slated to attend the next round of training at
the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Academy, said Richard Harbison, a spokesman for
the company that runs the private prison. The Texas Commission on Jails gives
guards a year after their hiring date to complete the training, which at the
Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Academy lasts three weeks. As is standard for all
guards, Zepeda spent two weeks shadowing a more experienced officer when he
first began at the prison, Harbison said. Michael Gilbert, a professor of
criminal justice at the University of Texas-San Antonio, called formal guard
training key to prison security. “The training is critical. The lack of
training, it presents a clear liability for the organization.” Publicly run
prisons are exempt from lawsuits claiming negligence for failure to
adequately train prison staff, but private facilities have no such
protections, Gilbert said. Harbison, the prison spokesman, said Zepeda’s
injuries had not been serious enough to warrant medical treatment. “When we
have a guard that’s in that situation — that’s the first thing we check,” he
said of injuries sustained during prison breaks. “But we have to move forward
with an investigation.” LCS has had ample experience with such situations.
According to the Texas Commission on Jails, the company’s Brooks County
Detention Center has had two escapes in four years — one in 2002 and another
in 2005. The La Villa facility had two escapes in 2000, while it was owned by
a different company. But in September 2005, when under LCS management, a
prisoner escaped from the parking lot of the McAllen Medical Center after he
convinced guard he needed medical attention at the hospital. Another inmate
tried the same trick on Wednesday, when he jumped out of an ambulance headed
for that same hospital. Hoping to avert any more security breaches, LCS has
begun work on a new fence to surround the entire complex and is installing an
outside camera system. Both will likely be complete within 10 days, Harbison
said on Friday.
September 21, 2006 The Monitor
Prison and law enforcement authorities were investigating Wednesday
whether a guard or other staffer at the La Villa detention facility may have
helped the six federal inmates who escaped late Tuesday night. The six
escapees were housed in a single cell in a minimum-to-medium security
building, even though five of them were known to be members of a Corpus
Christi-based prison gang known as La Raza Unida,
according to local and federal officials. They broke out Tuesday at about
9:45 p.m. by threatening a guard with a homemade knife and then cutting a
hole in the electric fence outside. They were still on the loose as of
Wednesday night and considered armed and dangerous. Michael Hallett, chairman
of the criminal justice department at the University of North Florida in
Jacksonville, Fla. and an expert on privately-run prisons, said such
facilities face a greater risk of inmates escaping because they are typically
understaffed and pay low salaries in order to make profits. These working
conditions make for high staff turnover rates, he said. “So, you have poorly
trained guards who are too few in number and who are very inexperienced — and
that combination of factors makes them susceptible not just to corruption,
but also to coercion by the inmates inside,” Hallett said. “That sounds like
an inside job,” Hallett said of the circumstances surrounding this week’s
escape in La Villa.
September 21, 2006 San Antonio
Express-News
The young guard who said he was overpowered by federal inmates at a
Valley detention center was one of two employees put on paid leave Thursday
as officials investigate how six men escaped. Enrique Zepeda, 18, who has
been on the job for three months, said the escape started late Tuesday with a
decoy. "They were distracting me to put my guard down for a moment and
it worked," he said. A spokesman for Lafayette, La.-based LCS
Corrections Services Inc., which owns and operates the East Hidalgo Detention
Center in La Villa, confirmed that Zepeda and one other employee were put on
paid administrative leave Thursday. All employees will be questioned, said
McAllen-based spokesman for the U.S. Marshals, Jose Magallan
Jr. "We are looking at all avenues, we are looking to see if it was an
inside job," he said.
September 21, 2006 Houston Chronicle
Not enough officers were on duty at a privately owned federal jail when an
ex-police officer charged with drug trafficking led five other inmates in a
daring escape Tuesday night, a federal marshal overseeing the investigation
said Wednesday. The six men broke out of the East Hidalgo Detention Center at
9:40 p.m. Tuesday after using a footlong knife made of plastic to overpower a
guard. They managed to get through four jail doors before using bolt cutters
or wire snips to cut through two fences. Teams of federal agents and Rio
Grande Valley police using helicopters, horses and tracking dogs searched for
the escapees late Wednesday but had not found any of them. ''The way we see
it, there is lack of security there right now," said Joe Magallan, a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service.
''There are a lot of safety issues pertaining to that. There's
just not enough personnel. More security officers and more detention
officers, should be placed there."
September 20, 2006 The Monitor
Federal and local authorities are still looking for six men who escaped
from a federal prison last night. The men escaped from the East Hidalgo
Detention Center around 9:40 p.m. Tuesday by holding a foot-long, homemade
knife to the neck of a prison guard, U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Joe Magallan said. They then tied up the guard and locked him
in a room before escaping through the backdoor of the building and using wire
cutters to detach an electric fence from the anchor holding it to the ground,
Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. Someone
had evidently de-electrified the fence beforehand, Treviño
said. The guard was unharmed. The men had been housed in a minimum to medium
security building within the prison complex, said Richard Harbison, a
spokesman for LCS Correctional Services, the company that runs the private
facility. Harbison said this is the first escape from the facility since LCS
took it over from the former management company in 2001. That company had
gone bankrupt. Treviño stopped short of calling the
escape an inside job but said the circumstances were dubious. “From a law
enforcement perspective, it appears to be highly suspicious,” he said.
East
Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility
Longview, Texas
Management &Training Corporation
September 30, 2005 Tyler Morning Telegraph
In other business Thursday, county commissioners allowed the sheriff to
move forward with plans to convert the Marvin A. Smith Regional Juvenile
Center to the Marvin A. Smith Criminal Justice Center. With the county's jail
population hovering around capacity, the county plans to take the
already-closed juvenile facility and turn it into a low-risk adult detention
facility in April. He also said after the meeting that Management and
Training Corp., which leases a total of 300 beds in the county's jail, has
been put on verbal notice that the county currently is not in a position to
renew its contract, which expires in February 2007. The sheriff said
officials are working with the company on finding a new place to house those
inmates when that time comes.
Ector
County Correctional Center
Odessa, Texas
CEC (bought CiviGenics)
Dec 12, 2018 oaoa.com
Commissioners opt out of funding courthouse jail repairs
Ector County Commissioners chose not to make further investment in the
courthouse jail with the majority finding the risks outweighed the benefits.
Commissioners were split 3-2 on the decision with Precinct 1 Commissioner
Eddy Shelton and Precinct 2 Commissioner Greg Simmons voting against a motion
to take no action on advancing funds to GEO Group on Tuesday during a
regularly scheduled meeting. GEO Group, which runs the federal lockup
facility at the Ector County Courthouse, provided information on Nov. 27 to
the Commissioners’ Court regarding the need for physical repairs and
enhancements after an audit was performed by the U.S. Marshals Service. Amber
Barton with GEO Group previously said costs for the repairs would be about
$500,000. Barton requested commissioners pay that amount up front and GEO
Group would give 50 percent repayment over six months. County Judge Debi Hays
said that price was later reduced to $300,000, leaving the county paying
$150,000 after receiving payment from GEO Group. Hays said the current fee structure at the
Ector County Correctional Center averages about $650,000 annually in revenue.
She said there would need to be an increase in what Ector County charges per
inmate in order to recover expenses and make further investment worthwhile.
“As much as nobody likes to put money into a facility that we don’t see as a
long term investment, I guess the way I’ve come to grips with it is that if
someone came to me and said would you invest $300,000 to get $650,000 over the
next three years each year,” Simmons said, “that in itself would be a
no-brainer.” Brent Sheets, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Western
District of Texas, said the per diem with Geo group is about $62. He said the
county could potentially receive up to a $9 increase for housing federal
inmates, but the process for approving a per diem increase could take up to
six months and is not promised. The jail at the courthouse is used to house
up to 235 federal inmates, and as of Tuesday 194 inmates were in the
facility. “I asked for that fee structure be raised to $800,000 guaranteed
annually regardless of what the prisoner population was in the facility,”
Hays said. “Our last conversation with GEO was that they could not guarantee
that $800,000 to Ector County. If you’re asking us to go out on a limb and
gamble whether or not the U.S. Marshals Service is going to raise those fees,
why should we be willing to take that gamble if you’re not willing to take
that gamble and put it in your contract?” Ector County Building Maintenance
Director Charlie Pierce also voiced his concerns at the meeting about the
increasing costs of maintaining an aging building. He said general upkeep of
the building is an ongoing process and the cost of labor over the past year
has totaled about $120,000. Pierce said the courthouse is a headache for his
department and the jail only magnifies the existing issues. “Some of the
costs may not be what they say,” he said. “It’s going to be expensive.” Hays
said that replacing requested items like showers in the facility could take
half a year based on Pierce’s estimates, which could impact the number of
inmates able to be housed at the courthouse as well as the people that work
in the building. “I understand it’s a revenue stream and that we need money,
but sometimes you’ve got to look beyond the money and say, ‘can we
function?’” Precinct 3 Commissioner Dale Childers said. Ector County Clerk
Linda Haney said she wanted to see the commissioners develop a contingency
plan if they were to proceed with jail repairs. “It’s very difficult when we
can’t function in our job,” Haney said. “It’s very disruptive to the
operation of my office which is a revenue office. If we have to close our
offices, that costs money too. I think it’s essential that we calculate that
into the equation.” After deliberation, commissioners found value in putting
the ball back in GEO Group’s court. Hays said the U.S. Marshals Service is
giving the company until the end of the year to address problems with the
facility. Ector County Attorney Dusty Gallivan said funding repairs is at the
county’s discretion and commissioners are not obligated to take any action
under the contract. “At this time the court takes no action on advancing any
funds to GEO and will leave the contract exactly as it is,” Hays said. “Let
the contract play out, let GEO figure out what they want to do going forward
and let them come back to us.”
January
30, 2013 CBS 7 News
Odessa/Midland
– At Least dozen people who worked at the Ector County Correctional facility,
a private jail in Odessa, face federal charges of bribery. Federal officials
say they were bringing contraband into the facility. The suspects indicted by
the federal grand jury are making initial appearances today in federal court.
Bond is expected to be set as well. The indicted employees and former
employees worked in Community Education Centers for the correctional
facility. Sources say one suspect was arrested in Austin. One of them is an
employee at the Ector County Detention Center according to sources. However,
the female employee is alleged to have committed the bribery charge while
working at the private Ector County Correctional Facility. The private jail
is located on the top floor of the Ector County Courthouse.
June 17, 2010 Odessa American
A Midland man who claims he was beaten into submission while jailed in
the Odessa Detention Center has not given up a years-long effort to be
compensated for what he said was the use of excessive force after he ran out
of his cell. Larry Wesley Brown, a federal prisoner serving more than four
years on a conviction of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, sought
$8 million in damages from Civigenics — a private
company also known as Community Education Centers — that operates the
detention center — for injuries he said occurred while he was awaiting trial
in July 2007. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in March, but this
month, Brown appealed the district court’s decision to the Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals. Brown, 55, writes in court filings that he is a former Army
medic with a “well-documented history of psychological problems.” Among other
disorders, Brown said he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Brown’s claim
against the detention center stems from a scuffle with several prison guards
after — in what he called a “delusional episode” — he repeatedly shouted for
help from his cell and then bolted into the hallway once the door was opened.
“At the time I believed that I was a member of the British royal family and
was mistakenly being held in the bowels of a military ship,” Brown said in a
sworn affidavit. “From within the cell, I continued to scream for help, and I
yelled for the guard to contact the Queen.” Brown said he suffered a number
of injuries when he was detained, including several broken teeth. “Community
Education Centers is satisfied with the judge’s ruling and confident it will
survive on appeal,” said Christopher Greeder, a
spokesman for the detention center. In a separate case, Civigenics
was sued by another former inmate who blames the detention center for the
loss of his eyesight. Colby E. Miller of Odessa claims in a federal lawsuit
that Civigenics guards negligently allowed a fellow
inmate to obtain a broom. Miller’s attorney, Robert Swafford of Austin, said
in the lawsuit that the inmate struck Miller in the eye with the broomstick,
causing him to permanently lose his sight. Greeder
declined to comment on the Miller case, citing the pending litigation. No
trial date has been set in the Miller case.
April 6, 2010 Odessa American
An Odessa woman fearing a life sentence in federal prison hanged herself
in an isolation cell Monday morning, her family said. Vickie Faye Purcell,
51, was found dead in the Ector County Correctional Center, authorities said.
The Texas Rangers said Purcell’s death appeared to be a suicide, but they
were still awaiting the results of an autopsy Tuesday. “We’re just
devastated,” Purcell’s sister, Teresa Johnson, said by phone Tuesday. “She
was a good, sweet, wonderful person. We’re just going to miss her terribly.”
Family members said Purcell had been placed in isolation the night before
after getting into a fight with a cellmate. The suicide is at least the
second by an inmate in the past two years at the Ector County Correctional
Center, which is operated by Civigenics, a private
company also known as Community Education Centers. Christopher Greeder, a company spokesman, confirmed the suicide on
Tuesday but declined to comment further, citing an ongoing investigation. Greeder also declined to discuss the jail’s general
policies on suicide prevention.
February 19, 2009 Odessa American
A former Ector County Correctional Center guard pleaded guilty Wednesday
in federal court to a federal bribery charge for giving an inmate a cell
phone for $150, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of
Justice. The release said that Andrew Zehr, who was
arrested Dec. 9 and fired from the privately managed jail two days later,
also told the court he was paid for smuggling in other contraband for the
inmate, including a box of marijuana one of the inmate's relatives gave to Zehr, which was wrapped in black electrical tape with a
lighter taped to the outside of the box. Zehr's
sentencing will take place June 25 at the U.S. District Court in Midland. He
faces up to 15 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. The Ector County
Correctional Center is a federal holding facility in downtown Odessa managed
by New Jersey-based Civigenics.
December 9, 2008 Odessa American
A guard working at the Ector County Correctional Center became the latest
person accused in Texas of smuggling cell phones for jail inmates, an
assistant U.S. attorney said. John Klassen, a prosecutor with the Western
District of Texas in Midland, said Odessan Andrew Allen Zehr,
23, was given a federal charge of bribery. He's accused of taking $150 to
smuggle the cell phone and was also accused of smuggling two or three
"baggies" of marijuana at $100 a pop since late October. Zehr was apprehended by DEA agents Tuesday afternoon and
was in the process of being booked into the Midland County Jail at press
time. Klassen withheld the name of the prisoner that he said offered the
bribes pending a further investigation, but said he was a federal inmate, and
therefore the bribery charge Zehr had was also
federal. Zehr is an employee of Civigenics,
otherwise known as Community Education Centers, a New Jersey-based company
that is contracted by the county to manage the federal holding facility
inside the Ector County Courthouse. A call to Civigenics
was not immediately returned Tuesday. This arrest came as state prison
officials were looking into several cell phone smuggling cases throughout
Texas.
March 13, 2008 CBS 7
The death of an Odessa jail inmate has been ruled self-inflicted in a
preliminary autopsy in Tarrant County. Luis Chavez Chavez
was founding hanging in a cell at the Odessa correctional facility operated
by Civigenics. The 21 year old was being held for
illegal entry into the United States. Formal autopsy results are expected in
four to six weeks according to Texas Rangers.
May 15, 2007 Midland
Reporter-Telegram
A US District Court jury got a short course in jail house jargon in
Monday testimony about a Feb. 11, 2006, fire at Ector County Correctional
Center in Odessa. Through a Spanish translator, Marcos Antonio Gonzalez Alvidres and Nicanor Portillo Olivas heard current and
former ECCC staff members implicate them in the smoky 3 p.m. episode that
caused less than $1, 000 in damages but forced the evacuation of scores of inmates
from the upper floors of Ector County Courthouse. The six-man, six-woman
panel learned the meaning of terms like "tank boss,"
"2-Nancy," "2-Mary," "high profilers" and
"SRT team."The muscular, mustachioed
Gonzalez Alvidres was described as a tank boss, or
dominant inmate, and the smaller Portillo Olivas as a lieutenant of his who
vehemently objected when the man was moved to an isolation cell in another
area. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years each in prison.A court official said they were being held on
alleged immigration violations when the incident took place. They were each
indicted on two counts of inciting a riot and setting a fire in a federal
facility.
September 24, 2003
Promising to increase Ector County’s 2003-’04 revenues from jail inmates’
telephone calls by at least $100,000, a Carrollton company was awarded a
one-year contract Monday by the county commissioners court. T-Netix salesman Hank Schopfer
was among representatives of a half-dozen companies that made pitches at the
10 a.m. Monday meeting. Brad Jones made a pitch for the former contractor,
Inmate Communications of Midland. Commissioners decided at an August
budget workshop to re-bid the contract, noting that 2002-’03 revenues from
charges assessed to people called by inmates at the County Law Enforcement
Center and federal detainees at the private Civigenics
jail in the courthouse had failed to meet expectations. Auditor David Austin
reported then that phone revenues would only total about $200,000.
(Odessa American)
April 12, 2002
Officials were still trying to determine Thursday whether tire failure or
driver fatigue caused a van wreck west of Pcos that
killed two prison inmates and injured 12 people Wednesday afternoon.
The van was carrying 13 U.S. Marshals Service prisoners from El Paso to the
Ector County Correctional Center in Odessa, said Jim Shaw, regional director
for CiviGenics, the company that operates the
detention center. Although law enforcement officials said the driver
became fatigued and drifted off the road, CiviGenics
officials said Wednesday that the van rolled after the right front tire blew
out. Jack Dean, U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Texas, said in
a news release that "tire failure was not the primary cause."
(El Paso Times)
April 11, 2002
At least two people were killed and 12 were injured Wednesday when a U.S.
Marshals Service van carrying 13 prisoners and two guards rolled off
Interstate 10 west of Pecos. The van was carrying federal prisoners
from El Paso to the all-male Ector County Correctional Center in Odessa,
Texas, when it crashed about 2:30 p.m. Investigators said they believed
the driver of the van was tired and allowed the vehicle to drift off the road
and strike a guardrail before the van rolled down a 10-foot regional director
for CiviGenics, the company that owns the van and
operates the detention center in Ector, said the accident occurred when
"the right front tire blew out on the van." (El Paso Times)
Eden Detention Center
Eden, Texas
CCA
May 3, 2017 gosanangelo.com
With prison gone, Eden seeks to keep economy afloat
The City of Eden has begun taking steps to secure its
future now that the city’s biggest employer, Eden Detention Center, has shut
down. Mayor Eddy Markham, Chamber of Commerce President Craig Pfluger and other officials met Sunday at City Hall to
brainstorm ideas for economic growth. The group of nine, which also included
San Angelo City Council member Lane Carter, toured private and city-owned
properties around Eden. “This may well be Eden’s finest moment,” said Mario
Castillo, senior managing director at Aegis Group Ltd., a government and
public relations firm. “Because they realized they had to get it together and
come together as a little town and reach out.” Castillo was brought in by the
city to help get things moving. Sunday also marked the last day of employment
for the more than 275 people at the detention center — operated by private
company Core Civic and on the eastern edge of Eden, about 45 miles east of
San Angelo. “It’s devastated our community economically,” Markham said about
the detention center, which has benefitted Eden since it opened in 1985. “It’s kind of our rock to us. We’ve
depended on it.” The city is now looking to create profitable opportunities
that will make up for the loss — not only of jobs, but also of the $40,000
per month for water and sewer services the detention center paid to the city.
As part of the tour, the group visited the Green Apple Arts Center and four
vacant properties listed for lease and sale. The group was briefed on Eden’s
collaborative health care providers — Concho County Hospital, Frontera
Healthcare Network and Concho Health & Rehab Center. The tour also included a stop by the
detention center, but the group was unable to go inside. “As a result of this
trip, there are already two possibilities that we’re pursuing,” Castillo
said, but he would not elaborate. “This is what that one venture produced.”
Ideas tossed around focused on enhancement of the arts and attracting new
businesses to the small city of roughly 2,100 people. “I think what Eden has
learned is diversification is crucial,“ Castillo
said. “Like other small cities, they need to be careful what their economic
base is made of; they need to look at their economic mix.” On Monday,
Castillo, Markham and others were to meet with representatives from Angelo
State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio’s small business
development program. Markham said the objective of the two meetings was to
explore possibilities of what can work as “an economic benefit for Eden.”
“We’re hoping that people will come in with different views … (and) can come
up with ideas,” he said. “A fresh set of eyes is good.”
Apr
8, 2017 conchovalleyhomepage.com
Eden Mayor and City Officials Begin Planning Ahead of Detention Center
Closure.
Eden, TX - Eden Mayor Eddy Markham and city officials are in the planning
phase ahead of the closure of the Eden Detention Center. A closure which
according to multiple sources would financially cripple the city. Mayor
Markham alongside Eden Chamber of Commerce President, Craig Pfluger, have reached out to other cities in the Concho
Valley to make them aware of the situation and Eden's plans
for the future. CoreCivic owns the detention
center and issued 60-day layoff notices to employees well-ahead of the April
30th contract expiration date. Once the contract expires--those employees
would be left without a job at the center. According to statistical
information provided by Robert Wood with the officer of the Texas Comptroller
of Public Accounts--CoreCivic employs individuals
from San Angelo (120), Brady (36), Menard (26), and Ballinger (21) among a
host of others. In a statement, Jonathan Burns with CoreCivic
had this to say regarding the closure and the issuing of the 60-day notices:
"The contract at the Eden Detention Center expires at the end of April,
which triggered the need for us to send out employee notifications. We will
continue to assess opportunities for other government partners who may be in
need of the type of facility capacity and well-trained, highly qualified
staff found at Eden. " Not only are layoffs the issue, however, as Mayor
Markham says in a letter to Congressman Mike Conaway--"CoreCivic is responsible for 42% of the revenue generated
each month in the city's water fund, thus, the monthly loss of this $40,000
would financially cripple Eden and the city may well cease to exist."
San Angelo city council members have just recently passed a resolution in
support of keeping the Eden Detention Center open while McCulloch County
Judge Danny Neal says officials in Brady intend to do the same.
Aug 21, 2016 gosanangelo.com
Eden, Big Spring brace for impact of private prison elimination
The U.S. Department of Justice's announcement Thursday that it would
phase out private management of federal prisons left several West Texas
communities — including Eden and Big Spring — shaky and on edge. While
questions and speculation ran rampant, city and county officials reiterated
that not enough information is available to know what will happen for sure.
Yet, they admitted, the news had set off a flurry of phone calls — to prison
wardens, congressional representatives and anyone else who could answer
questions or help. Many consider the prisons vital to their community.
"It's like closing Goodfellow Air Force Base would be for San
Angelo," said Eddy Markham, who came to Eden to serve as warden of the
Eden Detention Center. He retired in 2007 and is serving his third term as
mayor. "The prison is a Godsend for this town and everyone is behind it.
We want to keep it." The Eden Detention Center — marked by stark
concrete and shiny razor wire — sits on the eastern edge of Eden, about 45
miles east of San Angelo. It employs more than 275 people and pays the city
about $40,000 per month for water and sewer services. "One of the
reasons we don't give them a big break in rates is because the inmates
outnumber the citizens, even in terms of water use," Markham said,
adding that the out-of-prison population in the city is about 1,250. The Federal
Bureau of Prisons website lists 1,370 prisoners at the detention center,
which has 1,558 beds. In addition, the employees help support the local
economy by paying for meals and fuel. The jobs at the detention center start
in the $19 per hour range, according to the Concho Valley Workforce
Development Board. While the closure of the detention center would hit Eden
the hardest, officials said many of the employees commute from surrounding
areas from San Angelo, Ballinger and Brady. "People drive for these
jobs," city administrator Celina Hemmeter
said. Hemmeter also said Corrections Corp. of
America, the Nashville, Tennessee-based firm that owns the prison, has been a
good corporate citizen. The company sponsors the annual Chili Dip Golf
Tournament that donated proceeds to the Concho Springs Golf Course this year,
and also donates to Eden's Fall Fest celebration every year, she said. The
roots of the prison are further entwined around the heart of Eden. When the
facility was sold to CCA, the firm's local leadership set up a charitable
foundation called the Spirit of Eden Fund. It's managed by a volunteer board
of directors with the stated objective of improving "the quality of life
in Eden and the surrounding area by maintaining and conservatively growing the
assets for perpetuity." The Spirit of Eden Fund gives an average of
$155,000 each year to eligible recipients. Markham said money from the fund
has benefitted almost every entity in Eden — the golf course, the Earl Rudder
Park & Gazebo, the Eden Consolidated Independent School District, the
Concho County Sheriff's Office and more. He said the DOJ announcement came as
a total surprise. Markham said he and the Community Relations Committee
recently met with former Warden Mike Pugh — who is still listed as the warden
on the detention center's web page — about writing letters in support of the
facility in advance of a contract renewal scheduled in May 2017. The
announcement was also a surprise to Howard County Judge Kathryn Wiseman. The
GEO Group Inc., another major player in the private prison business, operates
the Big Spring Correctional Center — comprised of four prison facilities — in
Howard County. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, the Big
Spring facility houses 3,211 offenders and has the capacity to house 3,509.
"I can't for the life of me understand what they're about," said
Wiseman, who has heard reports about prison overcrowding. "If this is
true, it'll have a great impact as far as Howard County is concerned." The
facility employs about 550 people, according to the Big Spring Economic
Development website. "They employ a lot of people who have moved here to
work, and these people are plugged into the community," Wiseman said.
"They eat here, play here, volunteer here." She paused for a bit.
"Many of these people are at our church. They are members of the choir,
they help run the children's program, coach softball." If the facility
closes and many of these people leave, she said she will miss them. Closure
would also hit the city of Big Spring hard. GEO is budgeted to pay the city
about $1.1 million in lease payments and other fees in fiscal year 2016-17,
said Donald Moore, city finance director. "Our biggest taxpayer, Western
Container Corp., is scheduled to close October 2017, and if this is true on
top of that ..." he trailed off. Officials in both Eden and Big Spring
are waiting to hear more and continue to be hopeful. Some media reports
indicate the DOJ announcement only affects American prisoners held in
privately contracted federal facilities and would not affect prisoners held
in state and local facilities. The plan also might not affect prisoners who
are not U.S. citizens, which would give Eden and Big Spring some relief. The
DOJ declared privately run federal prisons are less safe and "compare
poorly'' with government-run institutions. There are 13 such facilities in
the U.S., five of them in Texas. The others are in Post and Pecos, which has
two. Although residents of Eden and Big Spring consider the prisons a boon,
there have been indications of unrest inside both. The Eden Detention Center
has had several riots — in 1996, 2003 and 2010 — and in July a group of
inmates staged a protest by refusing to leave the recreation yard and return
to their housing dormitories. While witnesses saw people wearing what looked
like riot gear and Eden's Special Operations Response Team (SORT) was
involved, the situation was resolved peacefully, according to a CCA
spokesperson. In 2008 there were reports of a riot and fire at Big Spring
Correctional Center, and in 2011 inmates attacked staff.
Jul. 31, 2016 sanangelolive.com
Official: Eden Prison Protest Resolved
By Joe Hyde | Jul. 30, 2016 7:13 pm The standoff between inmates and
prison guards was resolved Saturday afternoon, said a spokesman for CCA,
Inc., the company that manages the federal lockup for the Federal Bureau of
Prisons. ‘This afternoon, staff at Eden Detention Center secured a peaceful
resolution to an incident in which a group of inmates in the recreation yard
refused orders to return to their housing dormitories. “All inmates have now
peacefully exited the recreation yard and are secured in their housing
dormitories. At no time did any incidents of violence occur, and the
community was never in danger. All staff and inmates are accounted for. The
facility is secured while an investigation is conducted. Facility management
notified its partner, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and kept officials
apprised throughout the duration of the incident,” stated Steven Owen,
managing director of communications for CCA, Inc. in a statement released
just before 7 p.m. Saturday. Information leaked that an inmate protest was
underway early Friday evening when a sister of one of the inmates notified
San Angelo LIVE! She said the protest was over the stricter policies of the
head warden there. The head warden there took over one year ago according to
the CCA, Inc. website. The call, that originated out-of-state from a sister
of an inmate, claimed, “He (the brother who is an inmate) has called and said
that the inmates are being treated inhumanely. So they are all outside in the
yard asking for God’s eyes to see them. He said they wanted to be treated
with dignity and like human beings,” the female who in a callback interview
claimed to be the sister of an inmate in the Eden prison. “He would like for
helicopters to come and see them, and see what the situation is,” she said.
Late Friday night, CCA stated that Eden’s Special Operations Response Team
(SORT) has been activated. Personnel in full riot gear were seen and
photographed by our reporter entering the prison compound. CCA did not reveal
if any of the grievances of the inmates were addressed to resolve the protest
that was characterized as “passive.” The prison in Eden is operated by CCA,
Inc. The prison is noted to be a low-security facility operated by the
corporation for the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 1995. It is located along
U.S. 87 in Eden, Texas.
Jul
30, 2016 sanangelolive.com
Texas: Inmate revolt at CCA prison
Officials Confirm Prisoner Protest at Eden Correctional Facility By Joe
Hyde | Jul. 29, 2016 11:12 pm Last Updated: Jul. 30, 2016 12:17 am "A
group of inmates at the Eden Detention Center is refusing to leave the
recreation yard and return to their housing units. Throughout this incident,
they have been passive. Eden’s Special Operations Response Team (SORT) has
been activated to help work toward a resolution and additional teams from
other facilities are available to provide support as needed. We have alerted
our government partners and local law enforcement," said a spokesman for
the company operating the federal prison in Eden. This was an update sent to
us by CCA, Inc. spokesman Jonathan Burns in Nashville following our breaking
news report of personnel entering the Eden Detention Facility. The statement
was released just after midnight. This is the original story posted at 11:12
p.m. Friday night: Personnel in full riot gear were seen entering the prison
in Eden at approximately 10:10 p.m. Friday night. There was also an ambulance
seen leaving Eden northbound on U.S. 87 towards San Angelo at approximately
the same time. Above: Personnel in riot gear were photographed entering the
Eden Detention Facility on July 29, 2016. Outside indications and sources
with inside information about the prison indicate there is an inmate protest
underway. The prison in Eden is operated by CCA, Inc. The prison is noted to
be a low-security facility operated by the corporation for the Federal Bureau
of Prisons since 1995. Company officials attempted to run our photographer
and a KLST-TV cameraman off when both set up late this evening to investigate
reports of a prison riot at the Eden Detention Facility, 702 E Broadway St,
in Eden. Several unconfirmed reports arrived at our offices starting with a
voicemail on the San Angelo LIVE! phone system left from a frantic family
member at 8:08 p.m. Friday night. The call, that originated out-of-state,
claimed to be from a sister of an inmate at the facility there. “He has
called and said that the inmates are being treated inhumanely. So they are
all outside in the yard asking for God’s eyes to see them. He said they
wanted to be treated with dignity and like human beings,” the female who in a
callback interview claimed again to be the sister of an inmate in the Eden
prison. “He would like for helicopters to come and see them, and see what the
situation is,” she said. We called the person who left the voicemail back and
she said her brother, who was serving time after a federal felony drug
conviction, called her at 2 p.m. and everything seemed normal. She said he
called later Friday just before she contacted us to announce the prison
protest. She said the alleged inhumane treatment began when a new warden took
charge in July 2015. “They were limiting how many could go out into the yard
at one time,” she said. She said her brother told her that the changes were
going to take time to adjust to. The call earlier this evening sounded
frantic, she said. “Pretty much the whole facility was protesting,” she said
her brother told her. We could not verify the identity of the female caller.
She stated she didn't want her brother to be singled out. She said, "My
brother told me to not reveal his identity or mine," she said. Her area
code was from well outside the local area. Sources close to the Eden facility
told us that “the shit just hit the fan tonight.” The Concho County Sheriff
dispatch did not indicate there were any issues with the privately-owned
lockup facility along U.S. 87 in Eden at approximately 9 p.m. We called the prison
itself, and after being placed on hold for about five minutes, the person who
answered the phone said nothing was going on. The warden, a CCA employee, is
listed as Mike Pugh. He has been the head warden at Eden Detention Center in
July 2015, according to the CCA website. A Concho County Sheriff’s Deputy
approached our photographer at the scene and told him not to get too close.
He said since the facility is operated by a private corporation that any
information about a disturbance inside its walls will come from CCA, Inc.
April 12, 2010 Standard-Times
The Eden Detention Center was in lockdown status late Monday after a riot
was contained Sunday night, a release from the detention center stated.
Inmates in Dormitory B at the detention center refused to go to their bunks
Sunday night, according to the release. “Facility staff used approved
chemical agents to enforce lawful orders and successfully resolved the
situation, with only minor injuries reported,” said Lee McDaniel, the public
information officer for the detention center. The nature of the chemical
agents was not specified, and the company did not say what caused the unrest.
The facility is locked down — inmates are confined to their cells — while
staff investigate what caused the riot, the release states. McDaniel said the
public wasn’t in any danger and staff contained the incident to one housing
area. Ricky Thomas, the assistant police chief of Eden, said the city police
were called out to control the area outside the center. “We were out in the
front, but they handled everything themselves,” Thomas said. “We don’t go
inside the prison when anything like that happens.” Riots at the detention
center happen “very seldom,” he said. The Corrections Corporation of America,
which operates the detention center facility, has the Eden Detention Center
listed as a low-security facility for men. It has 1,538 beds. The number of inmates
at the detention center, according to census estimates from 2008, exceeds by
about 200 the general population in Eden.
October 15, 2007 San Angelo
Standard-Times
In January, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons notified Mayor Charlie Rodgers that
the $740,000-a-year payment for the Eden Detention Center would end May 1.
For some residents, the loss of that contract meant only one thing:
bankruptcy for the Concho County city of 1,200 residents and 1,400 inmates
some 45 miles east-southeast of San Angelo. The prison is owned by
Corrections Corp. of America. Federal payments to Eden helped cover such
expenses as fire department, ambulance service, streets, water, sewer and the
local library, among other things. The prison continues to operate virtually
unchanged after the CCA successfully submitted the winning bid. Roughly 250
people work at the center. Rodgers, a retired GTE employee serving his third
term as mayor, acknowledged the city has been forced to curtail some
activities but said nobody is throwing in the towel. Last year's $2.1 million
city budget has been slashed to $1.5 million, a more than 25 percent cut.
Subsidies to the volunteer fire department, ambulance service and the library
have stopped. "There's a lot of services affected," Rodgers said.
"The fire department had geared up because of the detention center and
invested over $150,000 for a pumper to meet the needs of the detention
center." The City Council raised water and sewer rates to deal with the
three-month shortfall from May until the July 31 end of Eden's fiscal year.
Minus $20,000 a year, librarian Deanna Beaver had to dismiss her assistant
and cut back three-day-a-week hours to 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. She also took a
pay cut. A nonprofit foundation owns and operates the library, but it counted
on the prison-related revenue for training rooms and interlibrary loans.
"We're going to continue on," said city attorney Dwain Psencik, dispelling talk of Eden's imminent obituary.
"The city is going to provide safety and public health services
necessary for the continued well-being of all citizens." Eden's
situation has been complicated by rumors and misconceptions in the community,
he added, because of the complicated relationship with the prison. In 1985,
Eden signed an intergovernmental agreement with the prison bureau for inmates
at the detention center. That contract ended May 1. Under the agreement, the
city was paid about $1.50 per inmate per day based on actual costs for the
past two years and projected costs for three years ahead. "The BOP would
cut one check each month that was calculated on the number of inmates times
the agreed rate paid to the city," said Psencik,
who also is president of Eden's Chamber of Commerce. "The city would
break that out to the library and fire department. It was a reliable, monthly
cash flow." Then came January's bombshell regarding the bureau's
payments. Similar letters went to Big Spring, Pecos and Post. "I think
CCA may have gotten a bad rap," Psencik said,
adding that he thinks the Nashville, Tenn.-based firm has been a good
corporate citizen. In fact, CCA pledged Oct. 5 to spend $3.3 million toward
the construction of Eden's wastewater treatment plant. "It's not a
simple matter to just reduce our budget and expenditures," he continued.
"We couldn't just snap our fingers and cut the spigot off May 1."
While the number of city employees has been reduced and the city structure
has been reorganized, Psencik said, safety has not
been compromised. After 20 years, the city secretary resigned. After 10
years, the city eliminated the bureau-mandated correctional contracts
administrator. "We are fighting the battle of atrophy of rural
cities," the city attorney said. "We've held our own because of the
federal prison. The main benefit of the prison is the jobs." Fewer than
100 of the 250 employees live in Eden, he estimated. A substantial number
commute from San Angelo. "We're trying to hold our head above water
against the I-35-corridor syndrome," he continued, referring to the
federal highway that connects Laredo to San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and
Dallas. "It's a constant battle." Eden has hired an economic
development coordinator, Genora Young, to marshal
assets and form regional alliances. "This is a burp in the bubble,"
said Psencik. "We're trying to take this lemon
and make lemonade of it. We're still fighting, still being innovative."
September 29, 2005 Casa Grande
Valley News
Several employees at Central Arizona Detention Center used their mid- day
break last Thursday to have a piece of cake and congratulate a colleague on
his birthday. Harry J. Larson celebrated his 80th birthday while on the job
as a correctional officer. CADC Warden Bruno Stolc
presented a plaque to Larson, who has been with the private prison in
Florence since June 2001. The warden recalled in front of about 25 people
assembled, how Larson recently helped pull an aggressive inmate off another
officer. "So Mr. Larson is not just filling a spot. Mr. Larson is a
correctional officer, and we're dang proud to have him," Stolc said. Warden Stolc said
while Larson is the oldest CADC employee, he is not the oldest employee in
CCA. Frank Deloria, an officer at the company's Eden, Texas, prison is 83.
The company also has a part- time registered nurse who is 87, Stolc said.
May 21, 2003
The parents of a former Eden Detention Center inmate have filed a lawsuit
against the privately operated prison, claiming their son died after mental
abuse that included withholding a special diet for his medical
condition. The wrongful death suit, filed by Conrado
Mestas and Rafaela Ochoa Mestas of El Paso, seeks more than $50,000 in
damages and was filed just a few days before a two-year statute of
limitations expired, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported in Tuesday
editions. Conrado Mestas Ochoa was found dead
in his cell on May 20, 2001, according to the suit. The family said the
inmate suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, metabolic derangement and a skin
disorder. He had been in the detention center since April. Lee
McDaniel, the center's public information officer, declined to comment on the
case to the newspaper, referring questions to Corrections Corporation of
America. A CCA spokesman in Nashville, Tenn., did not immediately return a
phone call from The Associated Press on Monday night. Eden Detention
Center is about 35 miles southeast of San Angelo. (AP)
May 5, 2003
Officials at a privately operated West Texas detention center are
investigating the cause of a fray that injured at least 15 inmates.
Officials with Corrections Corporation of America said the altercation
happened Thursday night at the Eden Detention Center, about 35 miles
southeast of San Angelo. The unit remained locked down on Friday.
(AP)
August 23, 1996
A daylong riot in which shotgun-toting guards clashed with 400 boisterous
prisoners at a privately run federal detention center in West Texas has
renewed questions about how well such prisons are operated and
monitored. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said the bureau will review
the way the disturbance was handled by CCA's security force. At least
17 people were hurt in the riot, which began shortly before noon Wednesday
and ended about 2 am Thursday. Guards fired buckshot into the ground
and released pepper gas to quell the disturbance, which reportedly began as a
protest against poor food, inadequate recreation and other prison
conditions. One guard suffered a broken jaw after he was hit by a rock
thrown by an inmate. The detention center is a "low-security"
facility reserved for non-U.S. citizens who have less than three years to
serve. Most, Tracey said, will be deported upon completion of their
terms. The disturbance began about 11 am Wednesday when hundreds of
inmates conducted a sit-in rather than respond to morning roll call.
After negotiations between prison officials and the inmates failed, rowdiness
among prisoners increased. Some threw rocks and other items at security
guards. Guards discharged pepper gas and fired shotguns into the ground
as inmates stormed a fence in an apparent effort to escape. Two inmates
underwent surgery to remove buckshot that reportedly ricocheted. As the
day wore on - temperatures topped 90 degrees - several guards required
treatment for heat injuries and inmates pleaded for water. As prison
guards sought to bring the riot under control, about two dozen state troopers
and Texas Rangers stood by. A Department of Public Safety helicopter
patrolled the area searching for possible escapees. (Houston Chronicle)
El Paso County Jail
El Paso, Texas
Prison Health Services
May 24, 2006 KTSM
Sheriff deputies tell us 47-year old Mario Lopez was arrested today, charged
with violating the civil rights of a inmate and
having improper sexual activity with a person in custody. The Sheriff's
Office say the investigation started after an inmate complained about Lopez.
He is now in the County Jail under a $50,000 bond. The Sheriff's Office says
Lopez is an employee of Prison Health Services, which is under a contract
with El Paso County to provide medical services to prisoners at the jail.
Falls County Jail
Marlin, Texas
Correctional Education Centers
March 28, 2011 NPR
Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble by John Burnett The
country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States
— is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free
enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any
other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails
cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in
the prison business. It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west
Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The
charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would
provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas. For eight
years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners
to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract
inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal
surrounding the suicide of an inmate. Shortly afterward, the for-profit
operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison
jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since. A Hard Sell
"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City
Manager Danny Davis good-naturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour. For
sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security fences,
state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and five
living pods. Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk beds
and stainless-steel furniture. "You can see the facility here. [It's]
pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint, it's
better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale. For the past
two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay the
note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city. A Resident
Burden Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of Littlefield?
"Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well, today that
would probably be the case," Davis says. To avoid defaulting on the
loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer fees,
laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still, the
city's bond rating has tanked. The village elders drinking coffee at the
White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out. "It
was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in their
craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have to
pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they
left us... " "...Holdin' the bag!"
says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence. The
Declining Prison Population The same thing has happened to communities across
Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison
town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over. Some prisons are
struggling outside Texas, too. Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments
after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security
prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled
out its 700 inmates. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total
correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time
in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing
alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are
slashing budgets. The Texas legislature, looking for budget cuts, is
contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half
of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures
from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. "Too many times we've seen
jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to
make money off of it and they end up fallin' on
their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant
director of the commission. The packages look sweet. A town gets a new
detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator
finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates
pay off the debt and generate extra revenue. The economic model works fine
until they can't find inmates. In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million
to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today
because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than
half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now
decline to comment on it. Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who
opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the
deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds
sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take
their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success
of the facility." Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants —
James Parkey and Herb Bristow — declined repeated
requests for interviews. The Inmate Market Private prison companies insist
their future is sunny. A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about
the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases
highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across
the country. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong,
particularly for federal immigration detainees. New Jersey-based Community
Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across
Texas, issued a statement that "the current (jail) population
fluctuation" is cyclical. One of the places where CEC is cancelling its
contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition
is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up
jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate,
we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those
beds," he said. Another place where they're desperate for inmates is
Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its
no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and
an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers
made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The
county's Public Facility Corporation that borrowed the money to build the
lockups owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's
worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to
sweat. "The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two
years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project.
And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says. Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to
privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30
million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got
queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal. "When you put
the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your
dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they
need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor
of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent. When the supply of prison
beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries. The
overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms
out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other
under-occupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston. "It
really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our size,"
says Capt. Robin Kinetsky, who is in charge of
inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs
Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're
getting good deals." Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought
from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake
interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the
newest commodities of the volatile inmate market. Aarti Shahani contributed
to this NPR News investigation and report.
January 18, 2011 Marlin Democrat
Falls County Commissioners met in regular session last Monday with a
multitude of agenda items to ponder including the non-renewal by CEC to run
the Falls County Detention Center. Following the opening of the Falls County
Detention Center in 2000, CiviGenics was awarded a
contract to provide personnel to run the jail and has done so until Community
Education Centers (CEC) acquired CiviGenics in
2007. CEC has chosen not to renew the contract with Falls County and the
detention center will come under the direction of Falls County, sometime in
April. CEC, which has personnel in many jail facilities in many towns, has
moved inmates to other facilities at a lower cost and couldn’t afford to pay
the inmate cost at the Falls County facility. “With new facilities being
built in the CEC service area, detainees are being housed at a lesser cost
than here, so our prisoner count has been declining for several months. CEC.”
Said County Judge Steven Sharp. Sharp said that at the last meeting of the
Commissioner’s Court, “We are working on creating a budget so we can provide
all services at the jail as well as amending the Sheriff’s budget to cover
such expenses. “We won’t loose all the outside
inmates and will still be able to provide services for the local ones. One
good thing to come out of this is that we keep all the profits and not have
to pay private contractors.” Jail capacity is 94 – 95 inmates.” Originally,
the plan projected that it would take 20 years to pay for the construction of
the $3.5 million structure with funds from housing prisoners to defray that
cost, but the county was paying thousands of dollars each month to CEC,
therefore making no profit. The county has eight more years to repay the cost
of building.
September 29, 2009 KWTX
A female guard employed by a private firm that provides security at the
Falls County Jail was fired this week after officials discovered she had
married a male inmate by proxy. Community Education Centers Warden, Mike
Wilson said Chastity Withers, who worked for CEC as an overnight guard at the
Falls County Jail, was married by proxy on Aug. 23 in McLennan County to
Timothy Hargrove, 31, an inmate who was jailed at the time and who was sentenced
this month to 30 years in prison after his conviction on charges of
manufacturing of a controlled substance. Wilson said confidential sources led
to an investigation and to the discovery of the relationship. Withers was
later arrested and charged with prohibited items and substances in a
correctional facility. The charge involves a cell phone, but Wilson declined
to release more details.
Fannin County Jail
BonHam, Texas
Community Education Centers
Apr 22, 2018 heralddemocrat.com
Management group terminating Fannin County Jail contract, employees
The management company that oversees operations at the Fannin County Jail
announced Friday, that it will terminate its contract with the county in 60
days and terminate the more than 100 staff members it employs. But Fannin
County officials said they are confident they can sign a contract with
another management group that will rehire all the employees who currently run
the facility. Florida-based GEO Group, Inc. a privately owned, for-profit
corrections facility management firm, delivered the announcement Friday
morning to its 121 employees who staff the jail. The Fannin County Jail is
comprised of two complexes located in Bonham and currently houses 459 area
and federal inmates. “They announced to all their employees this morning,
that effective June 19, 2018, that GEO would no longer be running the Fannin
County facility, at least out of the management part of it and all the
employees there would be terminated,” Fannin County Sheriff Mark Johnson
said. “But they’re not going to be terminated.” Johnson said he was made
aware of GEO Group’s decision earlier this week and attended the GEO
announcement Friday morning. “The only thing they made a comment about this
morning, was that it was not about the leadership of the jail or anything
like that, it was strictly a business decision,” Johnson said. “That’s all
they would say. They told them it was nothing that had to do with the
performance of the jail, that everybody was doing a good job, operations were
well above standards, (and) they were proud of that. An email sent to GEO
Group, seeking comment, was not immediately returned Friday. Fannin County
Judge Spanky Carter said he learned of the contact
termination roughly six weeks ago and felt the decision was strictly based
upon business. “I think what the problem is, if there is a problem, is that
GEO is just more suited for bigger deals,” Carter said. “They’re a
publicly-traded company and this deal does just not fit their business model.
So, they decided to terminate the contract.” According to the GEO Group
website, the firm currently operates 71 correctional and processing
facilities in America, which house more than 75,000 beds. A search of the
company’s facility directory listed 16 correctional and processing centers in
Texas. GEO group also manages facilities in the United Kingdom, Australia and
South Africa. Carter said the Fannin County Jail was built in 2009 and was
run by another corrections management firm, Community Education Centers,
before 2014, though he could not be more specific. That same year, Carter
said county officials renewed a five-year contact with CEC. GEO Group
acquired CEC in April 2017 for the purchase price of $360 million and has run
the Fannin County jail ever since. Neither Carter or Johnson said they could
provide an estimate on the annual cost of running the jail. Following
Friday’s announcement, Carter said he spoke with jail employees and reassured
them that several prospective contractors whom he has been in talks with,
were receptive to absorbing all the current GEO employees at the Fannin
County. “I went out and told them, 100 percent, nothing is going to change,”
Carter said. ”“Their salary isn’t going to change,
their position isn’t going to change. The only thing that’s going to change
is the operator.” Carter declined to identify the possible contractors, but
said he had no doubt Fannin County would be able to strike a deal with one of
the firms, ahead of the June deadline. Johnson expressed similar confidence,
but said in the unlikely event the county could not lock in new, private
management before GEO’s last day of operations, the Sheriff’s office would
step in. “If we don’t have somebody, we would have to step up and take it
over,” Johnson said. “It would be my obligation. We would have to hire them
(the terminated GEO employees) as county employees.” Carter said if a
contractor was not named within 60 days, the county would only be responsible
for its own inmates, but he did not wish to entertain that specific scenario,
which he described as hypothetical. “I’m not going to let nothing happen,”
Carter said.
February 25, 2012 KTEN
A Fannin County inmate who has been at large for days is now in custody.
Saturday afternoon, Bonham police arrested 45-year-old Jimmy Lee Brock.
Saturday morning around 9:48, deputies got a call about a burglary at Fannin
County Precinct 3 Barn. Numerous items were missing, including chainsaws,
weed eaters, impact wrenches and a truck. Around 4:33 PM, Bonham Police got a
tip that Brock was at a Bonham business. That's where the escapee was taken
into custody. Brock was found in possession of the stolen items at the time
of his arrest. He is also accused of stealing a 2008 Impala, which he used to
escape earlier this week. Deputies later recovered car on FM 38 in Lamar
County. It was found driven into a group of cedar trees. Brock escaped
Tuesday around 8:45 AM while working at Fannin County Precinct 3 Barn near
Honey Grove.
February 21, 2012 KTEN
Fannin County authorities are reporting an inmate has escaped from the Fannin
County Jail. At around 8:45A this morning, the inmate, Jimmy Lee Brock,
walked away from a work detail near the town of Honey Grove. It is believed
Brock left the scene in a gold 2008 Chevy Impala, Texas handicap plate:
LP-9DPKZ. He is 45, 5'7" tall, 160-180lbs, and was last seen in a orange jump suit. Brock was in
jail on cruelty to animals and evading detention charges. According to C.E.C
jail staff, at the time of his disappearance Brock was part of the Inmate
Worker program and he had been for approximately 2 months with no problems.
C.E.C. is a private jail that contracts with Fannin County to hold inmates.
Fillyaw
Correctional Facility
Newton County, Texas
GEO Group (formerly CSC, Bobby Ross Group)
December 21, 2007 KFDM
KFDM News has learned a man cut his throat on razor
wire while trying to escape Friday from the Fillyaw
Correctional Center in Newton County. Sheriff Joe Walker tells KFDM News 40
year old Larry Waylon Metcalf is being treated inside the correctional center
for his injuries. Walker says guards called the Newton County Sheriff's
Office and asked for help with an escape. Metcalf climbed over serpentine
wire, got over the fence and was able to get outside the compound, but Walker
says within minutes his officers and guards caught Metcalf. He says Metcalf
was "cut everywhere," including his throat, and is receiving
medical treatment in the private prison.
Sept. 2, 1997
Two inmates serving time for car theft and forgery were back in custody
Sunday after escaping from a privately run prison in Newton County near the
Louisiana border. The private prison, operated by the Bobby Ross Group
Inc., is the same unit where another inmate escaped last year, kidnapped a
woman and took her at knifepoint to the Mexican border. The prison
increased security measures after the Feb. 14, 1996, escape of Larry Earl
Pagan of Hawaii, who scaled an 8-foot perimeter fence topped with razor wire.
Fort
Worth Transitional Center
Dec 14, 2018 star-telegram.com
Judge rejects halfway house claim that it wasn’t responsible for rapist
who escaped
A judge ruled Thursday that a jury should decide whether a private prison
corporation’s negligence led to a woman’s sexual assault. Avalon Correctional
Services filed a motion asking State District Judge John Chupp
to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of negligence and he said “no.” Avalon owned
the halfway house in the 600 block of North Henderson Street in Fort Worth
that two sex offenders walked away from in 2015. One escapee was found less
than a month later on a South Carolina beach, dead from a self-inflicted
gunshot wound. The other, Charles Sprague, 48, was arrested and sentenced to
four life prison terms in 2016 for the woman’s sexual assault, among other
crimes. A year earlier, Sprague was serving time at the halfway house after
being placed in the Texas civil commitment program, which is for inmates who
have served their prison sentences for sex offenses but have been found to
have a “behavioral abnormality” making them likely to commit more crimes. In
April 2015, Sprague cut off his ankle monitor and walked away from the
halfway house. Just a few hours later, he met a woman identified in court
documents as Jane Doe and threatened to shoot her if she did not have oral
sex with him, according to the lawsuit. Sprague was arrested at WinStar Casino in Thackerville, Okla., two days after he
left the halfway house. Jason Smith, who is representing Jane Doe, said at
Thursday’s hearing that Avalon officials did not call police until three
hours after they found out that Sprague had escaped. Avalon “failed to
recognize the risks that violent sexual predators represented to the
community,” Smith said. “That explains why they did not immediately call the
police.” William D. Wassdorf, who represented
Avalon at the hearing, argued that Avalon’s contract with the state did not
obligate it to control Sprague’s actions and that Avalon had fulfilled its
contractual obligations by notifying state officials that Sprague had
escaped. “I would have called the police 100 percent of the time if I were
housing a violent sexual offender,” the judge said before ruling that the
lawsuit could proceed. “You call the cops to alert the community.” Avalon
negotiated with state officials to receive more money to do a better security
job with violent sex offenders such as Sprague but failed to increase its
security measures, the lawsuit says. Avalon attempted to have the state move
Sprague and similar inmates elsewhere, and when those inmates were not moved,
Avalon continued to house them, according to the lawsuit. Sprague had served
two prior prison sentences for aggravated sexual assault and for aggravated
kidnapping/sexual abuse and was declared a violent sexual offender by the
state. After his release from prison, he was placed in the Texas civil
commitment program. He was sentenced to life in 2016 for violating conditions
of his civil commitment and on kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and
robbery convictions.
Apr 18, 2015 star-telegram.com
A sex offender in the
state’s civil commitment program who walked away from a Fort Worth halfway
house Wednesday morning was arrested Friday at an Oklahoma casino,
authorities said. Charles Sprague, 44, was taken into custody without
incident shortly before 9:45 a.m. at the WinStar
casino in Thackerville, Okla. Sprague was being held at the Love County jail
in Oklahoma on Friday and is expected to be returned to Texas on Monday, said
Sgt. Lonny Haschel, a Texas Department of Public
Safety spokesman. Investigators are talking to Sprague to try to reconstruct
his steps after he cut off a tracking device and walked away from a Henderson
Street halfway house. The facility is operated by Avalon Correctional
Services. Sprague is a twice-convicted sex offender who was placed under
civil commitment after he served prison sentences for his crimes. Sprague has
served two prison sentences since 1991, one for aggravated sexual assault and
the other for aggravated kidnapping/sexual abuse. Sprague is also being
investigated in connection with a carjacking in North Richland Hills on
Wednesday. “There’s a strong connection between the individual that was
arrested and the suspect in the kidnapping,” said investigator Keith Bauman,
a North Richland Hills police spokesman. A gunman confronted a woman in the
parking lot of a call center in the 5200 block of Rufe
Snow Drive and forced her to get into her Toyota 4Runner while he took the
wheel, Bauman said earlier. He drove the SUV around the corner and let the
woman out behind a vacant building in the 6500 block of Iron Horse Drive,
Bauman said. U.S. marshals, the Lighthorse Police
Department in Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol assisted in Spague’s apprehension, Haschel
said.
Frio County Detention Center
Frio County, Texas
GEO Group (formerly CSC)
July 15, 2010 News Express
The GEO Group, a Florida firm that contracts with local governments to
run jails, has agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit
alleging indiscriminate strip searches of inmates at six facilities,
including three in Texas. The Frio County Detention Center in Pearsall, the
Dickens County Detention Center in Dickens and the Newton County Correctional
Center in Newton and jails in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Illinois were
named in the suit, which was litigated in federal court in Pennsylvania. The
suit alleged GEO employed a uniform practice or policy of strip-searching all
pre-trial detainees who entered certain GEO-operated jails, regardless of the
crime or violation for which they were detained, and without making the
legally required determination of whether reasonable suspicion existed to
justify a strip search. Inmates incarcerated at the six jails between Jan.
30, 2006 and Jan. 30, 2008 qualify for a share in the settlement, but they
must call 1-877-234-4512, or visit http://www.multistatestripsearchsettlement.com/index.html.
March 12, 2005 Express-News
An alleged member of the Mexican Mafia who was part of a jailbreak last
summer at the Frio County Jail pleaded guilty Friday to escape. Reymundo Alaniz Flores - one of five inmates who escaped
- entered the plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge John Primomo
in San Antonio. The escape occurred Aug. 6 at the privately run jail in
Pearsall that used to house federal inmates.
Authorities
allege Robert Lee Jack and Randy Wayne Folsom helped the escape by cutting a
hole in a perimeter fence, supplying wire cutters to the inmates and driving
them away.
January 21, 2005 Express-News
A San Antonio man admitted Thursday that he helped five federal inmates
escape from Frio County Jail last summer. At a hearing before U.S. Magistrate
Judge Pamela Mathy, Robert Lee Jack, 32, pleaded
guilty to instigating and assisting the Aug. 6, 2004, escape. Jack admitted
he went to the privately run jail in Pearsall the day of the escape and
tossed a pair of bolt cutters over a perimeter fence to an inmate. Jack also
admitted cutting a hole in an outside fence. He faces up to five years in
prison when he's sentenced May 12. Two of the inmates remain at large.
October 13, 2004 Houston Chronicle
Two
federal inmates who escaped from a South Texas detention facility in August
were captured Wednesday near Laredo, officials said. The men were among five
inmates who fled a Frio County lockup Aug. 6, possibly with the help of the
Mexican Mafia. One of the escapees was caught shortly after the escape. The
two who remain on the loose are presumed to be in South Texas, officials
said. The "Frio Five" were able to flee the jail through holes cut
in security fences, possibly with outside assistance. An investigation
continues into whether they had inside help.
August 13, 2004 Express-News
Federal
authorities are hoping $50,000 will persuade someone to give up the
whereabouts of five inmates who escaped last week from the privately operated
Frio County Jail. LaFayette Collins, U.S. marshal
for the Western District of Texas, said at a news conference today that it is
offering rewards of $10,000 apiece for information leading to the recapture
of the former jail residents, who slipped to freedom Aug. 6 through holes cut
in two perimeter fences. Collins also said
the escape probe continues, including interviewing — and re-interviewing -
jail guards to see what they know. No determination has been made on whether
the inmates — who are said to have ties to the Texas Mexican Mafia gang — had
help inside or outside the lockup, or both. "We suspect everything and
everybody at this point," Collins said. Meanwhile, the Sarasota,
Fla.-based company that runs the jail under contract, Correctional Services
Corp., has refused to publicly explain the foul-up, ordering its local
officials to turn down media interviews and not returning numerous calls
seeking comment.
August 11, 2004
The U.S. Marshals Service has withdrawn 240 inmates from a privately run jail
near San Antonio after the escape last week of five federal prisoners. The
escape happened just five weeks after the Frio County Detention Center in
Pearsall was ruled noncompliant with state regulations because of
overcrowding and understaffing. "The reason they were moved is the U.S.
Marshals Service had security concerns," said John D. Butler, chief deputy
U.S. marshal for the Western District of Texas. "Five prisoners escaped
at one time, and that's the second jail break they've had within the past
year." Four of the five inmates were born in Mexico. The fifth, Reymundo Flores Alaniz, was born in Texas but is said to
be a high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia and has been convicted of
murder. They are all considered armed and dangerous, authorities said. The
240 federal prisoners were removed from the 390-bed jail Saturday. They were
moved to several facilities throughout the region. The firm that runs the
jail – Correctional Services Corp. of Sarasota, Fla. – responded Tuesday by
laying off 35 of the jail's 58 employees, said Pearsall Mayor Roland Segovia.
August 11, 2004
The first round of layoffs began Tuesday at the privately run Frio County
Jail in the wake of last week's broad daylight escape of five federal
inmates. Jose "Nacho" Hernandez, a former detention officer,
said his son, Joel, and a friend were among those who lost their jobs.
He said he didn't know how many detention officers received letters Tuesday
notifying them of the layoffs. But up to 30 employees are expected to
be laid off, County Judge Carlos Garcia said Tuesday. Garcia said
representatives with Correctional Services Corp. advised him the cutbacks
were necessary after the U.S. Marshals Service withdrew its remaining 240
inmates from the jail over the weekend, citing security concerns. The
five inmates that escaped Friday remained on the loose Tuesday.
(Express-News)
August 10, 2004
Big changes at the Frio County Jail, as hundreds of inmates are shipped
out. They were sent to another facility just one day after five
convicts escaped from the jail, and more changes could be on the way.
"What are we waiting for are. Are we waiting for one of these persons to
go into one of these homes and kill somebody?,"
said Mayor Roland Segovia. The mayor of Pearsall is concerned about the
company that runs the Frio County Jail. Segovia says Correction
Services Corporation out of Florida is a good company but, "having six
breakouts in the past eight years and only catching one of the 15 that have
escaped, that's pretty scary," said Segovia. He says on Saturday
about 200 jail inmates were shipped to another jail. "We stand at
only about 40 inmates in the Frio County Jail," said Segovia.
Segovia also says he's heard dozens of Frio County CSC employees are being
laid off as operations are scaled back. "To lose 75 people in a
matter of two or three days that's a lot," said Segovia.
(WOAI.com)
August 8, 2004
After the fifth breakout at Frio County Jail in the past eight years, nearby
residents reacted Saturday with a mix of anger and indifference to the rash
of escapes. Five inmates cut through two fences and walked away from
the jail at about 1 p.m. Friday, before a massive nine-hour manhunt came up
empty and was called off due to darkness, rain and thick brush in the
area. Since the start of 1996, 14 inmates have escaped from the jail in
five incidents. On Saturday afternoon, a bus from the LaSalle County
Detention Center in Cotulla was at the Pearsall jail to transfer some of the
federal inmates out of the Frio County facility. Jail officials declined to
provide details on the number of inmates being sent to LaSalle County.
Some nearby residents complained because they didn't learn of the escape for
hours. Like many Pearsall residents, Judy Stacy, who lives two blocks
from the jail, was incredulous after another escape. "It's
absurd," she said. "How could you cut two holes through the fences
and just walk out? Don't they have people watching them?" Nell
Youngblood lives a block from the jail, but did not hear about the escape for
more than two hours. Then her husband locked all the doors and all but one
window. (Express-News)
August 6, 2004
Five federal prisoners escaped today from a privately run lockup near San
Antonio, according to the Frio County Sheriff's Department. Spokesman
John Butler said the escape from a Correctional Services Corp. facility in
Pearsall occurred around 1 p.m. He said the prisoners were in the custody of
the Marshal's Service office in Laredo, which uses the lockup under
contract. Butler, based in San Antonio, said a headcount was under way
this afternoon to determine who was missing and how dangerous they might be.
Investigators were also trying to determine how the prisoners got away,
though Butler said witnesses reported seeing them crawling under perimeter
fences. (AP)
September 10, 2003
Law officers continued searching today for two federal inmates who escaped
from a South Texas lockup. The prisoners, both Mexican nationals, were
reported missing late Monday morning from the Frio County Detention Center.
Jorge Perez Delgado, 45, and 29-year-old Oscar Herrada
Herrera were held on federal drug charges out of Laredo, said David Sligh,
supervisory deputy U.S. marshal for the Western District of Texas.
Wanted posters for the men were released late Tuesday afternoon. Authorities
suspect at least one of the inmates may be headed for Mexico. The U.S.
Marshals Service said no one was harmed during the escape and there were no
signs of a forced exit. The inmates were last accounted for inside the jail
at 9 a.m. Monday, but were missing when the next count was conducted two
hours later, Sligh said. He said investigators who followed up on
"some good leads" Tuesday believed Herrada
could be headed to Mexico because his last known address was in Nuevo
Laredo. Herrada, serving a 37-month sentence
on a probation violation, was originally convicted of heroin possession.
Perez, whose last known address was in Chicago, was awaiting sentencing on
possession with intent to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to possess with
intent to distribute cocaine. Frio County Sheriff Lionel Trevino
referred questions about the escape from the privately run detention center
to the Marshals Service, which was leading the investigation.
Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. operates the 391-bed detention
center that houses city, county and federal inmates. (AP)
August, 1999
Two inmates escaped by digging a hole behind the toilet in their prison cell
continue to elude authorities. They crawled from the hole onto an unguarded
walkway and then slipped out of the building through an unsecured back door.
(Express-News, August 30, 1999)
September 21, 1996
Prison board Chairman Allan Polunsky ordered Friday
that a private prison company be billed the $2,140 it cost the state to send
23 guards to help quell a convict "standoff" that turned out to be
a false alarm. "It concerns me that our staff was called when
public safety was not in imminent jeopardy," Polunsky
said of the incident that occurred Wednesday at the Frio Detention Center in
Pearsall. The facility is a county jail operated by Dove Development
Corp., a Texas company based in Crystal City. Among its prisoners are
100 state felons from Missouri and Utah who are being housed there because of
crowding in their home state prisons. (Houston Chronicle)
Galveston County Jail
Galveston, Texas
Correctional Medical Services
June 7, 2007 The Daily News
A Missouri firm lost its longtime contract to provide medical care to jail
inmates when county commissioners Wednesday unanimously awarded a $5.5
million deal to the University of Texas Medical Branch. The island-based
medical branch beat out incumbent St. Louis-based Correctional Medical
Services, which had the multimillion dollar contract for nine years. The
contract calls for the county to pay the medical branch about $207,500 a
month for the first 14 months, beginning Aug. 1, and $216,360 for the next 12
months to provide medical care to inmates. The medical branch will offer
inmates medical services that include on-site assessments at intake, chronic
and emergency medical management in the jail and hospital-based care if
needed. If the average daily population of inmates exceeds 1,000, the medical
branch could earn more, based on a pay formula, officials say. Also, the Gulf
Coast Center, a mental-health and retardation facility serving Galveston and
Brazoria counties, will pay the medical branch $14,000 a month for on-site
and on-call services. Galveston County Attorney Harvey Bazaman
said Correctional Medical Services had done an adequate job, but county
officials wanted to see if there were financial savings to be had by putting
the contract out for bid.
January 20, 2006 Texas City Sun
Two county jailers have been suspended, while a third jail employee was
fired after an investigation into an inmate’s suicide in November. Sheriff Gean Leonard declined Thursday to give the name of the
woman who was fired because she was an employee of the company Correctional
Medical Services, not the sheriff’s office. The company could not be reached
for comment Thursday. Deputies Louis Padric Heck
and Kendra Harris were suspended for five days without pay. John Louis Kenney
hanged himself in his county jail cell on Nov. 20. Hours earlier, he had been
booked into the jail on a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from a domestic
dispute. Kenney, who hanged himself with a belt deputies had returned to him
earlier that night, had tried suicide in jail once before.
Garza County Regional Juvenile Center
Garza County, Texas
Cornerstone Programs Corporation
July 29, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Executives of the Colorado-based Cornerstone Programs Corp., which
manages the Garza County Regional Juvenile Center in West Texas, have a
history of involvement in troubled juvenile facilities in other states.
Cornerstone closed its Swan Valley Youth Academy in 2006 after a Montana
State Department of Public Health and Human Services investigation found 19
violations, including neglect and failure to report child abuse and an
attempted suicide. "Intake process was particularly harmful to youth,
and many have been made to vomit due to excessive exercise and drinking large
amounts of water," Montana officials wrote in their findings. According
to Montana officials, the state and Cornerstone had developed a corrective
plan to keep the facility open. "There was a number of charges of abuse
filed against the director of the program and the second in charge,"
said Cornerstone chief executive Joseph Newman. The bad press hurt business
and so it closed, he said. Mr. Newman said state officials later cleared them
of all the abuse charges, but Montana officials said they had no record of
that. In Texas, Cornerstone's Garza facility has been put under corrective
action plans to improve staff training, documenting grievances and group
therapy sessions. But the company has hired a new director and added new
staff to Garza, which it began managing in 2003. In 2005, a 17-year-old
inmate at the facility became paralyzed after falling on his head in an
attempt to do a back flip off a table. A lawsuit by his family against the
facility, settled in 2006, alleged that a guard not only failed to prevent the
stunt, but challenged the youth to attempt it. The officer was fired after
the incident. The Garza County facility consistently has received positive
reviews by the Texas Youth Commission. "The Garza County Regional
Juvenile Center is an exemplary program," a TYC monitor wrote in the
facility's 2006 contract renewal evaluation – the same year Swan Valley
closed. Cornerstone was founded in October 1998 by Mr. Newman and board
chairman Jane O'Shaughnessy, about six months after another company they operated
ran into trouble in Colorado. That other company, called Rebound, operated
the High Plains Youth Center in Brush, Colo., which housed juvenile offenders
from around the country. In December 1995, a University of Illinois at
Chicago psychologist hired by the state's Department of Children and Family
Services issued a damning report on High Plains, and the agency later began
removing its youth from the juvenile prison. "Unit staffing practices
appear to be a numbers game where management attempts to balance the
competing pressures of safety and profit," wrote Dr. Ronald Davidson, a
faculty member in the university's psychiatry department. The facility also
had a "consistent and disturbing pattern of violence, sexual abuse,
clinical malpractice and administrative incompetence at every level of the
program." A Human Rights Watch report later found that High Plains
"fell short of reasonable, even minimal, performance." Colorado
officials closed High Plains in 1998 after a 13-year-old inmate from Utah
committed suicide and a state investigation found widespread problems with
physical and sexual abuse. State officials also had uncovered problems at
other Rebound facilities in Colorado. Rebound's nonprofit Adventures in
Change program did not meet requirements to be licensed for drug and alcohol
treatment nor meet "acceptable standards for habitation," according
to a 1996 state audit. Auditors said the services, such as education, family
counseling, vocational training and employment, "are not routinely
provided." In his resignation letter as the facility's clinical
coordinator, Paul Schmitz wrote: "This is no longer a professional
treatment environment ... and is not supported by the company as such."
In 1997, Florida officials severed the state's contract with Rebound to
operate the Cypress Creek juvenile detention facility after repeated
problems, including reports of disturbances that led to the arrests of
several inmates for inciting a riot. Rebound also had operated in Maryland,
where it ran the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School briefly in the early 1990s. Mr.
Newman was the deputy secretary of Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services
from 1992 to 1994, according to the state. He joined Rebound in 1995. The
Hickey contract ended in 1993 after dozens of escapes, cases of alleged abuse
and other policy violations. Dr. Davidson, the Illinois psychologist, said
the past performance of Cornerstone and Rebound should raise concerns.
"Anyone who had bothered to check the record of this corporation in
Colorado and Florida and Maryland ..... would have easily discovered a
troubling history of incompetence and fecklessness," he said.
Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility
Post, Texas
Management and Training Corporation
October
18, 2013 lubbockonline.com
A
former guard at a private prison in Post on Friday, Oct. 18, received two years probation for accepting a candy bar from an inmate
as a bribe. “You know I’m giving you a break,” U.S. District Judge Sam R.
Cummings said to Cesar Ceja, after defense attorney Rod Hobson suggested a long
probation would achieve the same goals as a prison term would. Ceja replied,
“Yes, your honor, I do.” He faced a maximum prison sentence of two years.
Ceja, a guard at the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility, told investigators
in February 2012 an inmate offered him a bribe to bring contraband into a
prison. In that same interview, he admitted he’d accepted a Snickers candy
bar from an inmate in exchange for chewing gum. Many jails and prisons
classify chewing gum as contraband primarily because it can be used to jam a
lock keyway. The Dalby facility is owned by Garza County and operated by
Management and Training Corp., based in Centerville, Utah. The minimum
security prison is a federal contract facility that houses men who may be
awaiting deportation.
January 17, 2001
Sixteen federal prisoners confined to the Giles W. Dalby Correctional
Facility in Post filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday alleging violation of
due process and their civil rights. The inmates, all immigrant aliens
in the United States, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Lubbock.
Management and Training Corporation runs the private prison, which contracts
with the federal government to house inmates. The lawsuit claims that
Dalby inmate receive inadequate medical care, food, rehabilitation programs
and legal supplies, among other complaints. The plaintiffs seek that
the Dalby prison be closed and permanently barred from operating as a federal
prison. (The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)
August 1, 2000
A corrections officer suffered a concussion in a riot early Sunday morning at
a medium-security prison in Post after being struck by an object thrown by an
inmate, a county judge Giles Dalby said Monday. He said the riot
started on "Main Street," a wide outdoor sidewalk area that splits
the facility's two holding areas. According to Dalby, about 500 inmates
gathered on the sidewalk at about 8:30 pm. Saturday and began loitering
and making demands to the correction officers. "The officers were
able to talk them down to about 250 inmates," Dalby said. "When the
officers told them to lock up at around 12:30 am, some obeyed and some
didn't. A crowd of about 10 inmates stayed in the area." The
inmates then began to break wooden picnic tables and set them on fire.
They also pulled gutters off the side of the building and damaged seven
surveillance cameras, Dalby said. "That is when we pulled our
people back to safety and called the safety response team," Dalby
said. According to Dalby, the number of inmates involved in the riot
swelled to about 200 as the mayhem continued. The facility's response
team was called in at about 1:45 am Sunday and dispersed the crowd in 9
minutes using tear gas, Dalby said. Dalby did not have an exact figure
but estimated the damage to the facility to be sizable. (The Lubbock
Avalanche-Journal)
Harris County Schools
Harris County, Texas
Brown Schools
April 12, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A Harris County program that provides schools for 1,200 juvenile offenders
and youths expelled from their home schools will continue to operate despite
the bankruptcy of the company that runs it, a county official said Tuesday.
Harvey Hetzel, director of the county's Juvenile Probation Department, told
Commissioners Court that the county can temporarily take over management of
the program if necessary. Brown Schools Inc. teaches about 600 youths in
schools at the county's six detention facilities. It also runs a two-campus,
state-mandated program for about 600 students expelled by local school
districts. The Austin-based company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy March 25.
Brown Schools runs boarding schools and educational facilities for youths in
Texas, California, Florida, Idaho and Vermont. Brown officials didn't return
calls. Brown Schools' methods have drawn criticism from state regulators and
resulted in lawsuits against it, the Austin-American Statesman reported.
Hetzel said he did not believe that any of the six legal settlements that led
to $425,000 in unsecured claims listed in the bankruptcy filing stemmed from
Brown School's operations in Harris County. Most of the lawsuits were brought
by former residents of the company's residential treatment programs, not
their school operations, Hetzel said.
Hector Garza Juvenile Detention Center
San Antonio, Texas
Cornell Companies
June 15, 2008 San Antonio Express-News
Sergio Fernández would rather not sound conspiratorial, but he has a hard
time explaining why, despite an existing agreement, the federal government no
longer sends detained immigrants to his San Antonio youth center. Though it's
open for business, the four-story, 12-acre Hector Garza Residential Treatment
Center near U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 on the North Side sits empty. Its last two
residents left nearly two weeks ago. He hasn't been given an official
explanation, but Fernández, the center's director, surmised it may have
something to do with a lawsuit filed against him, his staff and his corporate
parent by eight minors formerly housed at the center who claimed they
suffered physical abuse and neglect. The center is privately owned and
operated by Abraxas Youth and Family Services, the juvenile division of
Houston-based corrections giant Cornell. The 121-bed center, a former
psychiatric hospital, houses youths under state and federal contracts. The
agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is to
temporarily oversee as many as 30 unauthorized immigrant minors pending their
release or deportation. A spokesman for the federal agency did not return
messages for comment on why immigrant youths — whose average stay is two to
three months — are no longer sent to the center. The agency has also failed
to respond to repeated requests in the past three months for tours and access
to staff and residents of Hector Garza and other centers in the San Antonio
area. Unlike other HHS-contracted “shelters” or dormitory-style campuses, the
Hector Garza center is designated “staff secure” because it's a more
restrictive setting meant to handle problematic youngsters. The lawsuit,
filed in federal court in San Antonio in April, came as a result of a brawl
between center residents and staff in February. Staffers called police to
help quell the mayhem, which concluded with four minors under arrest.
According to the suit, filed by Texas RioGrande
Legal Aid, excessive violence used by staff and police symbolized incessant
abuse that minors reported to supervisors to no avail. State and federal
officials are accused of covering up abuse reports. Fernández said the
allegations are ludicrous and malicious — legal and political maneuvering meant
to buy minors more time for their immigration cases while making a for-profit
juvenile detention business look bad. “They don't have one shred of
evidence,” Fernández said Thursday while giving a reporter a tour of the
center. “We're looking forward to seeing this through to be fully
vindicated.” Though he couldn't discuss details of the February fracas for
legal reasons, he already claimed victory after a state investigation cleared
the center of abuse or neglect. The report from the Texas Department of
Family and Protective Services faulted staffers for failing to remove one
minor checking out the fight — a citation Fernández is appealing — but found
no other violations. Pointing to cameras and microphones in the ceiling in
the hallway where the clash took place, Fernández remained confident he'll
win the suit because the fight was recorded. The three residential floors are
split into two wings to separate resident populations — immigrant youngsters
cannot have contact with youths housed under other contracts. Rooms have two
single beds and a bathroom, and doors must remain open except during the day,
when staff lock them while minors attend classes taught by the John H. Wood
Jr. Charter School. Residential wings have classrooms, lounges with seascapes
painted by the youngsters and laundry rooms — residents are encouraged,
though not obliged, to wash their own clothes, Fernández said. The first
floor has an intake area and cafeteria, while outside are picnic tables, a
pool, a small soccer field and a 12-foot steel “no-climb” fence that replaced
another barrier over which five minors had jumped to flee — three were
caught. Fernández said overzealous lawyers preyed on minors' survival
instincts, prompting them to sue the center. Staff and residents had cordial
and even amiable relations before lawyers began showing up, he lamented.
“Sometimes we feel like a pawn in a bigger issue,” he said. “But we're not
about whether government policies are right or wrong. We're about providing a
safe environment for the kids — that's it.”
May 16, 2008 CBS News
A new lawsuit filed against a private contractor who runs an immigrant child
detention center claims nine teenagers were beaten and abused by employees
who work for Cornell Companies. The company has been cited by immigration
officials for safety problems in the past. The Hector Garza facility in San
Antonio handles young immigrant “males with serious behavioral and
psychological impairments”. “I think the general American has no idea these
kids even exist,” said Susan Watson, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid attorney for
the nine plaintiffs, “When our own government treats them this way, they
deserve their day in court,” she said. The plaintiffs claim they notified
authorities of multiple beatings but no action was taken. One of the
plaintiffs is described in court documents as a 16-year-old Honduran male
identified as C.C. Arriving at the border alone, C.C. was put into custody
for a week by Border Patrol agents. He was later transferred to the Hector
Garza Center, where court filings claim a teacher “severely battered C.C.
punching and kicking him, then beating him with a chair as he lay on the
floor.” Lawsuit filings claim C.C. conveyed this to the authorities but
nothing was done. A week later, court documents indicate C.C. came to the
defense of another child who was being beaten. C.C. was hit again, this time
losing consciousness and ended up in the hospital, according to the civil
complaint. A spokesperson for Cornell Companies, Charles Seigel, says the
company strongly denies any abuse, “Every complaint has been investigated by
the company as well as by the state…and none of these have ever found any
evidence of anything that can back up the charges.” Seigel said there was a
time when one of the teenagers went to the hospital but said it was due to
injuries from a fight between the detainees, not from an abusive teacher.
This is not the first time Cornell Companies has been accused of safety
problems. In September, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency
pulled all 600 detainees from an Albuquerque jail run by Cornell. ICE
spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said the agency, “had
great concern over the health, safety and security of our detainees in the
facility” but would not provide any more detail. News reports at the time
described a dirty, crowded facility with excessive heat and poor medical
conditions. Nantel said the agency terminated its
memorandum of understanding with the company this winter. The Hector Garza
San Antonio facility that contracted with the federal Office of Refugee and
Resettlement (ORR) opened one month after ICE pulled their detainees from
Cornell Companies’ care. The Office of Refugee Resettlement declined all
comment citing the pending litigation. Cornell Companies is just one of the companies
that manages 36 ORR facilities nationwide. Documentation of care for
immigrant detainee children in these detention centers across the country is
poor according to a March, 2008 report from the Inspector General for Health
and Human Services. The report found, based on a sampling of case files, that
more than half lacked one or more required assessments for the children. Half
did not contain education records and more than half did not include notes
from counseling sessions. Auditors say this left it unclear whether children
were receiving services at all.
Holden Wal-Mart
Holden, Texas
Group 4
August 28, 2006 Tyler Morning Telegraph
Just days before jury selection was scheduled to begin on Tuesday,
Wal-Mart settled a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed amount with the
parents of Megan LeAnn Holden, a clerk who was kidnapped from the Tyler
supercenter's parking lot and murdered. Attorneys for Ms. Holden's parents,
Sheri Kay Dunlap and James Vincent Holden, said the terms of the Wal-Mart
settlement were confidential. The Wackenhut Corp, which provided security for
the store, was also named in the lawsuit and settled for $1.3 million,
according to court records. Ms. Dunlap, "would like to see this as a
beginning to Wal-Mart making its parking lots safer for its customers and
employees, not just in Tyler, but everywhere," said her attorney, John
"Rusty" Phenix, of Henderson. Jury selection for the case was
scheduled to begin in U.S. District Judge T. John Ward's Marshall court Tuesday,
but, on Friday, Phenix sent a letter to the court announcing the sealed
settlement. Attorney Randell "Randy" Roberts, of Tyler, said his
client, Holden, was "very glad to have this entire matter behind
him." Ms. Holden was abducted Jan. 19, 2005, from the Wal-Mart Supercenter
by Johnny Lee Williams Jr., who pleaded guilty last year to capital murder -
kidnapping, sexually assaulting, strangling and shooting to death Ms. Holden
to death before he allegedly discarded her body in a West Texas ditch. He
also pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and was sentenced to five stacked
life sentences. Surveillance footage released by law enforcement showed
Williams following Ms. Holden to her pickup in the Wal-Mart parking lot,
rushing up behind her, shoving her into the vehicle and driving off. Before
the abduction, the video showed a security guard talking to the suspect.
Hood County Juvenile Detention Center
Hood County, Texas
Management and Training Corporation
February 1, 2006 Hood County News
The now abandoned county juvenile detention center drew attention from two
county judge candidates at the political forum Monday night for candidates in
the March 7 Republican primary. Precinct 2 county commissioner Charles
Baskett placed the blame on county judge Andy Rash for the loss of $837,00 in
operating expenses at the juvenile detention center (JDC). Rash countered
that the county inherited the JDC problem and took action to try and protect
their credit rating. In addition to Baskett and incumbent judge Rash, former
Granbury mayor Rick Frye is also seeking election to the position of county
judge. Baskett said the juvenile detention center was built by an outside
contractor, who then leased the facility to the county. The county then
sub-leased the facility to MTC, the company that ran the facility as a JDC
for about a year. “At the end of a year, they had lost $1.2 million. They
(MTC) cancelled their lease with the county and left town,” Baskett said. “I
tried to find someone to come back in to run the facility as a JDC. No one
was interested. They couldn’t make the numbers work. “Then the juvenile board
came up with a budget, and it was put on the commissioners’ court agenda to
determine whether Hood County should run the facility.” Baskett contends the
center was supposed to be run by a private enterprise, and that the county
had no business getting involved in managing the center. “It was a 3-2 vote
to run the center on our own. We had no obligation to do it,” Baskett said.
“We ran it for a few months and lost $837,000 before we had to discontinue.
We held the lease. We could have given it up. “They said they were worried
about losing our bond rating, and that’s why we should continue to operate
the facility. We lost it (bond rating) anyway. “We should have never tried to
run that facility ourselves. Now our bond rating is BBB.” “Had we terminated
our lease and not attempted to operate, both Standard and Poor, and Moody
threatened to lower our bond rating to BBB-,” he said.
Horizon Detention Complex (Intermediate Sanction
Facility & Multipurpose Facility)
Horizon City, Texas
Avalon
April 17, 2003
A proposal to replace sex offenders with other inmates at the El Paso
Multi-Use Facility in Horizon City was met with outrage by the community at a
public meeting Wednesday evening. Next year, Avalon would like to
change the terms of the contract and stop housing paroled sex offenders, in
favor of pre-parolees of various backgrounds. "Even
murderers?" exclaimed Horizon resident Brenda Carroll. "When
they started, we were told it was going to be white-collar crimes;
not it's sex offenders and, what? Murderers? Our kids are the ones
playing hide-and-seek around here." (El Paso Times)
March 9, 2002
The El Paso County Sheriff's Department responded to a call of a possibly
dangerous escaped prisoner in Horizon City Thursday night, but deputies had
to wait about 45 minutes before prison officials would give them useful
information to start a manhunt, the Sheriff's Department said. He said he
understood that if prison officials suspect that a prisoner has escaped, they
first follow prison procedures before contacting the Sheriff's Department.
But in this case, he said, someone in the prison called the Sheriff's
Department before the prison was ready to give information to the deputies.
When deputies arrived, they had to wait for the prison to finish its escapee
procedure. "A whole 45 minutes went by before we could do our
jobs," Apodaca said. Southern Corrections, a subsidiary of Avalon
Correctional Services of Oklahoma City, runs the Intermediate Sanction
Facility under contract with the West Texas Community Supervision and
Corrections Department. (El Paso Times)
September 3, 2001
Few people can blame Horizon City residents for being concerned about safety
in the wake of two inmate escapes in June. The company in charge of
these private facilities is challenged to assuage resident's fears with an
improved safety performance. The two facilities near Horizon are
privately operated. The jury is still out on the state's, and in fact
the nation's, experiment with private companies operating prisons and
detention facilities. In the bigger picture, taxpayers are left to
wonder if these facilities truly are as secure as state-operated
prisons. (El Paso Times)
August 29, 2001
When two men escaped within one week in June from the private detention
centers near Horizon City, officials said both were freak incidents in a
well-run system. But several former inmates of both centers, one a
combination minimum-security prison and halfway house for parole violators
and one a guarded halfway house for probation violators, said escapes were
commonplace and just one of many problems. During their incarceration,
they said, escaping was easy, as residents took advantage of guard staffing
shortages and the centers' reliance on security cameras to slip away
undetected. Avalon arrived in Horizon City in the early 1990s, part of
the trend to shift responsibility for inmates from public to private
prisons. By cutting back on staff pay rates or replacing positions with
surveillance equipment, the private prisons were able to cut the costs of
housing residents. As residents lined up for their medication or meals,
they would pass time by studying the televisions that displayed the camera
footage used in lieu of live guards. Residents quickly discovered the
dead spots that surveillance cameras did not cover, Estes and other former
residents said. Allegations of intimidation from gangs, mistreatment by
guards and a lack of response to the complaints filed about such issues were
among the list of residents' complaints. Residents attributed most of
the problems to a staff they called inexperienced and underpaid. County
probation officials, who pay the centers to house some of their probation
violators, acknowledged that the $7-an-hour rate for guards leads to frequent
turnover and constant retraining. Avalon officials acknowledged the
high turnover rate, Smith said. But before the company can increase
guard pay, the facilities have to increase occupancy rates to become more profitable.
"That's just something a private company is going to have to deal
with," Smith said. "They won't be able to pay what states
do. We save taxpayers money by charging lower per diem." (El
Paso Times)
June 28, 2001
Two men escaped from a Horizon minimum-security detention complex within the
past three days -- one after climbing a wall and separating razor wire with
his bare hands, the second by simply walking away. The first escapee,
Floyd Ray Smith Jr., escaped Monday and was arrested Wednesday in his
hometown of Kerrville, Texas, about 500 miles away. The second escapee,
Lloyd Jacquez, left the detention complex shortly before 5 a.m. Wednesday and
was still missing. The escapees were residents of a pair of
minimum-security detention facilities on Horizon Boulevard a few miles
outside the limits of Horizon City. One of the buildings is the
Intermediate Sanction Facility and home to about 100 probation
violators. Next door is the Multipurpose Facility, which houses 229
parole violators, including 26 sex offenders. Southern Corrections, a
subsidiary of Avalon Correctional Services of Oklahoma City, runs both
facilities under contract with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and
the El Paso Probation Department. Smith had about eight hours to get
away before facility officials noticed his absence during a head count
conducted about 2 p.m., Lopez said. Six hours later, shortly after 8
p.m., complex officials notified the Sheriff's Department. Private
detention complexes usually do not notify local officials immediately when
inmates escape, as opposed to escapees from public prisons, officials of the
Sheriff's Department said. (El Paso Times)
Houston, Texas
Federal Bureau of Prisons
November 22, 2004 Houston Chronicle
Companies are scouting for sites to build a 190-bed federal halfway house,
but residents of the neighborhood where it could be built might not get to
air their thoughts at a public hearing. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons does not
require such hearings, and federal agencies are not bound by a Texas law that
mandates such hearings be held before state-funded halfway houses open.
Victor Trevino, constable of Precinct 6, where one company had proposed
building the halfway house, said Monday: "Any involvement of government,
whether it is federal, state or HISD — they definitely should have a
responsibility to inform its citizens." Bannum,
a New Port Richey, Fla.-based company that runs 13 federal halfway houses
nationwide, has informed the county that it will bid on the contract, but it
has not disclosed the sites it is considering. Bannum
officials did not return calls. Commissioner Lee, whose precinct includes the
Lee Road location, said Correctional Systems should have done better research
and should have been in a position to explain why it was recommending three
or four sites to county officials. Companies and public agencies "site
these facilities where they'll find the least resistance and the cheapest
land costs," he said.
Houston County School District
Houston, Texas
Community Education Partners
May 7, 2008 Creative Loafing
Patti Welch was living in Douglasville when she went through a divorce
last year. Atlanta was her chance to start over. Weary of her one-hour,
20-minute commute to the northside law office where she works as a paralegal,
Welch found a duplex in the West End only 20 minutes from her job. But the
move also was about her 15-year-old son, Patrick. He was a smart kid, a B
student entering the 10th grade. But he'd gotten into fights. One took place
just off school grounds and involved several kids, so officials labeled it
"gang-related." That meant Patrick would be sent to Douglas
County's alternative school. Even though she was confident her son wasn't in
a gang, Welch didn't bother to appeal the school district's decision. She
thought an alternative school might help him. And she hoped the 10 days
Patrick spent in jail after his last fight would serve as a wake-up call.
Welch knew her son would be sent to an alternative school when they moved to
Atlanta. But she thought it would be temporary. Instead, officials told her
that because Patrick had a gang-related fight on his record, he'd never be
allowed to enroll in a regular school in Atlanta. She tried to make the best
of it. When told he'd be sent to Forrest Hill Academy, she looked at her son
and forced a smile. "Wow," she said hopefully. "They're
putting you in an academy." Six months later, Patrick became one of
eight student plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by the American
Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program in New York City. The suit
alleges that Forrest Hill – which is operated by a for-profit company called
Community Education Partners – is little more than a pathway to prison for
Atlanta's unwanted students. "It would be a stretch to even call this a
school," says Reggie Shuford, an attorney with
the ACLU's Racial Justice Program in New York. "There is little to no
academic instruction, and its students are treated like criminals. It is
nothing more than a warehouse, largely for poor children of color." The
ACLU contends that Forrest Hill students, 97 percent of whom are
African-American, spend most of their days filling out worksheets, for which
they get no feedback. According to state figures, nine out of 10 students at
the school are unable to pass the standardized state test for math
proficiency. The figures also show that Forrest Hill is the most violent
school in Atlanta. "It is a national disgrace that the Atlanta school
system has handed over its constitutional responsibility to a private,
for-profit corporation," says Emily Chiang, the case's lead lawyer.
Forrest Hill wasn't quite the academy that Patti Welch had hoped for. The
idea of putting problem children into an "alternative school" is a
recent phenomenon in the world of education. Before a federal law that took
effect in 1978, public schools had no legal requirement to provide education
to special needs kids. If a child was violent, or continually disrupted the
class, schools could kick him or her out. When the law took away that option,
teachers and school systems faced the chore of trying to tame disruptive
students. The trend of taking those kids out of regular classrooms and
putting them into "alternative" schools began to take hold. That
practice quickly led to allegations that some systems – under increasing
pressure to churn out higher scores on standardized tests – were simply
"warehousing" their undesirable students, out of sight and out of
mind. "Those schools weren't about education, but just getting through
the day," says Eric Freeman, assistant professor of educational policy
studies at Georgia State University. "Those were the 'expendable kids.'
It's no longer acceptable to have schools where kids are warehoused, but we
still have a long way to go." When it was founded in 1996, Community
Education Partners touted itself as a way to get expendable kids back into
the mainstream. From the start, however, there were indications CEP's
considerable political weight was as responsible for its rise as were its
education programs. CEP was formed in Nashville by four men with heavy
Republican connections.CEO Randle Richardson, was
chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party from 1992 to 1995 and oversaw a
1994 electoral sweep in which Bill Frist and Fred Thompson won Senate seats
and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Another
co-founder, John Danielson, would become chief of staff for Education
Secretary Rod Paige under George W. Bush. One of the initial investors, Tom
Beasley, had chaired the Tennessee GOP before Richardson did. Beasley also
founded the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs privatized
prisons. Founded in 1984, CCA has grown to become the sixth-largest prison
system in the country – trailing only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and four
states. But the company also has faced criticism for understaffing, high
turnover and lax security. According to a 1999 state audit, neglect of
medical care and security at CCA facilities in Georgia amounted to
"borderline deliberate indifference." The two companies – CCA and
CEP – have turned out to share some parallels. Both had business plans that
relied on obtaining contracts to operate government services. Both were
started in Nashville by major Republican Party players. And both went to
Texas to make their mark. Texas was a natural entry point for CEP. In 1995,
George W. Bush had become governor, and his administration was brimming with
ideas to reform schools. The bundle of changes would be touted during Bush's
2000 presidential run as the "Texas Miracle." In that environment,
George Scott, president of a Texas nonprofit education reform group, helped
CEP gain a foothold. "I got pulled into it by the former superintendent
for the Houston school department," Scott says. "It's a sinister
manipulation of reality to say that public education is meeting its
constitutional and moral obligation to these children; we throw at-risk kids
into alternative centers and forget about them. Then along came a company
that said it was going to do something different." Scott says he first
used his political connections to help the company land a contract to take
over the education services at a juvenile detention center. He was impressed
by CEP's pitch that its methods could help problem children get up to speed
academically so they go back to mainstream schools. "You have kids in
the ninth grade who can't do fractions," Scott says. "If a kid is
in the ninth grade but is at the fifth-grade level, giving them an algebra
book is useless. Under this program, we would start them at the level where
they are at, and build from there. CEP promised two years of academic growth
for every year a student was in their school." In 1997, Scott says, he
used his relationship with Paige, then Houston's school superintendent, to
help CEP land its first public school contract. Under the future education
secretary's stewardship, the Houston Independent School District was becoming
a cradle of the so-called Texas Miracle. Paige had put a system in place that
held individual principals accountable for dropout rates and test scores.
Then, the district signed a $17.9 million contract to turn the education of
as many as 2,500 children to CEP. Initially, the corporation hired Carl Shaw
– who was the former chairman of the Texas Education Agency's assessment
committee – to develop an independent test to grade the progress of the CEP
students. "I will never forget the day the school board approved the CEP
contract," Scott says. "Randle Richardson and I were walking out of
the building and I told him that not all the kids in this are going to make
two [years of progress] in one. But that is going to be your strength. You'll
say that you're being held accountable for the program." Before CEP's
contract with Houston took effect, however, the first test results from the
juvenile detention facility came back. Scott recalls that they showed the
students weren't making much progress – some had even regressed. CEP blamed
the test, and fired Shaw. Richardson disputes that account. He says Scott let
his friendship with Shaw intrude on his judgment and that the scores showed
20 student inmates had regressed in math but that most had made great
progress. His own expert looked at the test and determined it was flawed, an
opinion seconded by the Texas Education Agency. Whether it was over a principle
or a friendship, the incident left Scott with strong feelings about CEP. He
now says the one thing he's most ashamed of in his professional life is
helping the company get into the Texas schools. The absence of Shaw's test,
he says, left the company devoid of the very thing that had attracted him to
the concept in the first place: accountability. Instead, Scott says, CEP
began to cull its political connections. A sitting Houston school board
member was hired as a consultant. Sandy Kress, who later authored Bush's No
Child Left Behind program, was hired as a lobbyist. And when the company
opened the campus of its first alternative school, in Houston in 1997, former
President George H.W. Bush was at the opening ceremony to offer his
endorsement. "They put together a very powerful, politically juiced
operation in Texas," Scott says. CEP followed its Houston deal with a
five-year, $10 million-a-year contract in Dallas. Then, it moved on to
Florida and Philadelphia. And all along it followed a familiar pattern: It
hired well-connected lobbyists to sell the program and courted elected
officials with generous campaign contributions. CEP claimed it had found the
key to educating a student population that was thought to be beyond help. The
schools used a computer-based education program called PLATO that CEP said
enables students to quickly catch up to their age level in reading and math
skills. The company was swept up in the middle of what became a nationwide
education reform movement. Bush campaigned for the presidency heralding his
"Texas Miracle" of low dropout rates and high test scores. When he
was elected, he named Paige to his Cabinet and pushed through Congress the No
Child Left Behind Act, which instituted high achievement goals for the
nation's public schools. But even as it rode the wave of its association with
Bush's education changes, CEP became a target of criticism. Some parents
complained of prison-like conditions inside CEP schools. Others claimed CEP
was, in reality, doing little more than warehousing problem students. There
were official rebukes as well. An internal evaluation in Dallas found that
"the model of education provided by [CEP] was untenable." "The
reliance on non-certified teachers for the bulk of the student- teacher interaction
was useful for the company to save money, but was not a design in the best
interest of the students," the report went on to say. "Students who
attended Community Education Partners did not do very well
academically." CEP had even refused to provide its budget data to the
school district, the report said, which made it impossible to know just how
it was spending the money it received. In 2002, the Dallas school system
fired CEP. By then, however, the company was developing its relationship with
a new customer: Atlanta. It's unclear exactly how CEP came to acquire a $6.9
million contract to open an alternative school in Atlanta. Richardson says
the school system contacted the company in 2001. Citing the pending ACLU
lawsuit, Atlanta school officials won't even talk about CEP. At the time the
contract was signed, Atlanta officials brushed aside concerns already brewing
in Dallas. They cited a "task force" report that supposedly
recommended the district privatize its alternative schools; when the AJC
requested a copy of that report, however, school officials said they couldn't
find one. It didn't take long for concerns to crop up in Atlanta. In August
2002, CEP opened its alternative school in temporary quarters at the old
Archer High School. Parents of some of the students attended the Rev. Darryl
Winston's southeast Atlanta church. "We were hearing allegations of
mistreatment and a prison environment," says Winston, president of the
Greater American Ministerial Council. "We met with the staff, and they admitted
that 90 percent of what we described had to do with the building. The Archer
High School campus was extremely chaotic. They told us the building did not
give us an accurate picture of what the program was about." CEP even
flew Winston and other community leaders to Houston to tour their schools
there. "We were impressed by what we saw," he says. The company
assured Winston the problem was that the Atlanta school had yet to find a
permanent location. The company prefers a specific design for its schools.
Kids are segregated into male and female classes, and the classes are
isolated inside pods within the building. "In school, kids get in
trouble in the hallway or the cafeteria or going to the restrooms," says
Anthony Edwards, a CEP vice president. "So we control that. There are
restrooms and water fountains in each of the common areas. It eliminates
movement. Kids get in trouble when they're moving." Three properties had
already been identified, but each was scuttled by community opposition to an
alternative school in the neighborhood. CEP asked for Winston's patience, and
he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, the company did
what it could to strengthen its political ties in Atlanta. When school board
members faced re-election in 2005, CEP and its executives gave money in four
races. According to Fulton County records, Randle Richardson made a $250
contribution to Mark Riley, who easily won re-election. He also contributed
$500 to Brenda Muhammad, a former board member who ran successfully to regain
a seat. CEP's chief financial officer, Phil Baggett, contributed another $250
to Muhammad. CEP was more generous in two other contests: Richardson and
Baggett each made three separate contributions to incumbent Eric Wilson that
totaled $2,000, and newcomer Yolanda Johnson received a total of $2,500.
Although Georgia law requires candidates to list the occupations and
employers of their contributors on their disclosure forms, none of the school
board candidates did that for the CEP executives. Muhammad says she had no
idea Richardson and Baggett were CEP executives until CL told her. "If
they were standing in front of me, I wouldn't know them," she says.
"No campaign contribution will influence me from making my decisions
based on the best interest of the children of Atlanta." Riley also said
he was unaware that Richardson led CEP. "That's a little
embarrassing," he says. "I make a point of never accepting
contributions from vendors. I've even returned checks before." Six
months after the school board began its new term, it extended CEP's contract
to 2009. When school opened in August, Patti Welch and her son got their
first look at Forrest Hill. Welch went through a 90-minute orientation, where
the rules of the school were laid out. Patrick wasn't to bring anything onto
campus that was considered contraband. The list included watches, jewelry,
purses, combs, brushes, keys and money in excess of $5. Paper and pens
weren't allowed either; the school would provide everything that was needed,
even tampons for female students. Patrick would go through a metal detector
each morning and be patted down by a security guard to ensure he didn't have
weapons or drugs. Backpacks weren't allowed, and books couldn't be taken
home. In fact, there was no homework for Forrest Hill students. Patrick went
through a weeklong orientation that included tests on the PLATO computer
system to determine where he stood academically. On his first day, he sent
his mother a text message: "This school is so bad." He found the
lessons boring. He complained that the teacher would simply put an assignment
on the board; then the kids would be expected to do it on their own. Once the
students were finished, they were given crossword puzzles to fill out.
"Patrick found it totally uninteresting and totally unmotivating,"
Welch says. "He kept sending me text messages, and I didn't believe him.
He started missing days, so I went up there." What Welch saw alarmed
her. The building was new and well-maintained, but the pods where students were
segregated reminded her of a jail. "There's one steel door to the
classroom, no windows. It looked like a mini-prison." Not long after
that, she heard the ACLU wanted to interview parents with children at Forrest
Hill Academy for a potential lawsuit. Welch decided to talk to the
organization. Two years ago, a special education lawyer in Atlanta called the
ACLU and suggested they investigate the CEP school in Atlanta. "As soon
as we began to scratch the surface, we were so outraged by what we
found," says the ACLU's Chiang. "The standardized test scores are
really shocking. No one was passing." State statistics show the school
has made few strides toward improving its students' academic standing.
According to state Department of Education figures from the 2006-07 school year,
91 percent of CEP's students failed the state's assessment test in
mathematics; 66 percent failed the reading portion. In its latest contract
with Atlanta, CEP agreed to a performance goal of making measurable progress
in 31 categories for the 2005-06 school year, based primarily on results from
the state's Criterion Referenced Competency tests. Of those categories, six
couldn't be measured because there were too few students enrolled to get a
proper study group, and CEP students showed improvement in 11 from the
previous year. But in 13 categories, the students tested worse. In the final
category – ninth grade physical science – there was no change: 100 percent of
the students failed both years. "They cannot deny their standardized
test scores are abysmal," Chiang says. Shirley Kilgore, a former
Washington High School principal in Atlanta who now consults for CEP,
counters that it's unfair to evaluate the program based on state tests.
"Students in an alternative program are transient," she says.
"We had a girl come in here last week. She's been here a matter of days,
but her score belongs to us. Some of these students taking the tests have not
been with us for any length of time." Richardson, the company's CEO,
points out that almost 90 percent of students sent to Forrest Hill are at
least two grade levels behind in reading and mathematics: "You wouldn't
pass it either, if you're reading at the fourth grade level and you're taking
a ninth grade competency test." The ACLU claims the heart of the problem
is that Forrest Hill cuts corners when it comes to academics. The teachers
don't teach, Chiang says, but instead hand out worksheets for the students to
fill out. She also notes that CEP has a practice of hiring inexperienced
teachers. According to state figures, the average level of experience of the
teaching staff at Forrest Hill is less than a year. Kilgore, the CEP
consultant, argues that few quality teachers want to work at an alternative
school. "They are either committed to making a difference," she says,
"or else a new teacher starting out." But at least one other
alternative school attracts far more senior teachers: The average level of
experience at Fulton County's McClarin Alternative
School is 19 years. The ACLU also alleges that students often are manhandled
by the school's staff, that teachers have even thrown textbooks at the
children in their rooms. CEP denies there is any student mistreatment.
"Inexperienced teachers are a recipe for problems," says GSU's
Freeman. "These kinds of schools are special places and full of a
challenging population of kids." Most of CEP's teachers aren't
instructing in their fields of expertise either. According to state records,
of the 76 total core classes taught at Forrest Hill, only 45 percent are
taught by "highly qualified" teachers – those who have majored in
the subject they teach. The statewide average is 96 percent. "We're very
deeply concerned, especially in an alternative school setting where you need
highly-qualified educators to work with the children," says Georgia
Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard, whose group has lobbied
against privatizing schools. "We don't think students should be put in a
situation where a company is trying to make a profit off their
education." CEP says it spends $9,300 per student compared with $12,406
per pupil for the rest of the students in Atlanta's public school system. The
company contends the school saves money because it doesn't have to offer such
activities as sports or music programs that are required in regular school
programs. But Freeman's skeptical. While the savings sound efficient, he
stresses that, in education, you generally get what you pay for: "These
kids need a lot; they're needy kids. You need to spend more money on them
than typical schools. If they are spending less, I'd want to know why it
costs less to educate a student with exceptional needs. Where are they saving
money? What are they subtracting and is it good? Are they saving money by
hiring less experienced teachers who have no training in dealing with these
kids?" Freeman is careful to say he hasn't studied Forrest Hill enough
to make an ironclad assessment. But, he says, "I know people who teach
in alternative schools. It's not an easy environment. It usually requires
very special teachers who can work with those kids. It's a big
challenge." The Rev. Darryl Winston is angry that he sees many of the
same issues raised in the ACLU lawsuit that led him to confront CEP officials
four years ago. And his anger isn't just directed at the company. "We
need a statement from Superintendent Beverly Hall that she takes these
allegations seriously and that the APS is looking into them," he says.
"All we got was a statement from the press person that amounted to kind
of 'dismissing' it. I've been told as recently as last week that the APS
position is to wait and see what comes out in court." What especially
frustrates him is that no one who isn't behind the walls at Forrest Hill can
really know what's going on there. "CEP has denied every one of the charges,
but there's no way to verify that," Winston says. "We need experts.
I've called on the board of education to launch its own investigation and see
if the charges are true. If they can't, they need a task force appointed by
the governor to see what is going on at CEP." As far back as Houston,
CEP officials have had to deal with complaints that the company's performance
needed to be evaluated by independent parties. "We want to be held
accountable for attendance and behavior and academics," insists CEP's Anthony
Edwards. "It's very important to us that we are a standards-based
program." CEP claims students who attended Forrest Hill in the 2006-07
school year were, on average, performing math and reading on the third-grade
level when they arrived. The school claims that students who were at the
school for at least 150 days made remarkable progress: an increase of 3.2
grade levels in reading and four years in math. Under its Atlanta contract,
however, CEP both administers and grades those tests. There's no independent
verification of the results, but longtime educators say making those kinds of
academic strides in one year is virtually impossible. For a certain
percentage of students who are highly motivated, yes, it can be done; for an
entire student population, unlikely. "Kids with emotional and behavioral
problems don't do well in school," Freeman says. "And kids aren't
just going to snap to and start learning." Chiang says lack of progress
on standardized tests make it clear the PLATO test scores are skewed.
Students have told the ACLU that they take the PLATO tests unsupervised and
can ask each other for the answers they don't know. "CEP claims a
pronounced spike in the test scores, but we believe it is because of
PLATO," she says. "In reality, there's no teaching going on."
Edwards downplays PLATO's results. "We are not judged by these," he
says. "It's just a mechanism, a diagnostic tool. The student is given a
grade level of functionality." But the contract with the Atlanta school
system says that Forrest Hill's success or failure will be measured by a
combination of results from PLATO tests and state standardized tests. In
addition, if a student who attends CEP for at least 120 days doesn't show
growth in reading and mathematics of at least one year on the PLATO system,
the contract mandates that CEP must educate that student at no additional
cost to the school district until he or she has reached that level. Patti
Welch says her son continues to struggle at Forrest Hill, and has missed
extended stretches of school because he doesn't want to be there. But she
says his disciplinary problems now seem to be behind him. She plans to take
him out of the alternative school at the end of the year; she wants to
home-school him. But ACLU lawyers say the federal lawsuit – which names the
school system, board members and CEP as defendants – is about more than just
eight kids in one school. It cuts to the heart of a public school's
responsibilities to kids who are in the margins, and it raises questions
about the risks of privatizing public education. "We see it as a broader
national problem, the trend of privatization of government functions and
warehousing kids in a school-to-prison pipeline," Chiang says. For the
students at Forrest Hill, it's also about not being forgotten by the
officials who sent them there. "The problem is that Atlanta didn't build
in an adequate system for oversight and evaluation," Freeman says.
"You want it written into the contract to have a good program
evaluation. It's got to be done by people who know how to do it, people not
connected to the school department or CEP so there's no conflict of
interest." Freeman says there should be an annual independent review of
Forrest Hill. Evaluators would go into the school, see the teaching methods,
and interview students and teachers and the administrators. "I hope the
CEP school is investigated by people who know what they're doing," he
says. "There are good questions to ask, and they deserve good answers.
The school can't answer those question, they can only provide the
information. Somebody else has to be the evaluator."
Houston Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Aramark
June 10, 2002
In
a bold vote in 1997, the Houston Independent School District
privatized the management of its massive food services
program amid a politically charged fight for the lucrative
contract. Part of then-Superintendent Rod Paige's
much-touted reform aimed at focusing district energies on
education rather than business, this battle was
mostly about money. When the dust settled, Aramark, a Philadelphia-based
powerhouse in a joint venture with the local Quality
Concession Foods, won the five-year contract. On Thursday, HISD trustees will vote on
whether to continue with the Aramark team, the sole
bidder. But once again the contract has sparked
political fire, this time from state Sen. Mario
Gallegos, D-Houston, who contends Hispanics, the city's
largest ethnic group, have not gotten an equitable piece of the
action. During the four years of
the food services management contract, says
Gallegos, African-American firms were paid more than $3.7 million.
The bulk of that went to Quality Concession, an MWBE owned
by Darryl King, a former chairman of the Houston Area Urban
League, to help manage food services. Only $15,000 went to
a Hispanic firm. The sole $15,000 Hispanic
contract he cites in the letter went to his longtime
political consultant and ally, Marc Campos. The services rendered:
Campos lobbied for Aramark when it sought the contract in
1997. Campos since has been dropped. But
Aramark and King are in the midst of hiring Powersól Communications, state-certified
MWBE owned by Hector Careño and Frank
McCune to internally market the free and subsidized
lunch program to students and their parents. "I did what any entrepreneur would
do," says King. "I got myself educated,
followed the privatization story and prepared myself for the
opportunity that was coming. "I invited Aramark to partner
with me. They didn't come to town and pick a
politically connected black person." (The Houston Chronicle)
Houston Processing Center
Houston, Texas
CCA
Jun
2, 2020 marketscreener.com
CoreCivic : Statement
Regarding Jane Doe Complaint Filed in Southern District of Texas
We
are committed to the safety and dignity of every individual entrusted to our
care. In this case, attorneys for the plaintiff allege that three men,
dressed in "jeans and plainclothes, with their faces covered,"
sexually assaulted her and two other unnamed detainees at Houston Processing
Center on June 2, 2018. The complaint itself and subsequent public statements
made by these attorneys include numerous inaccuracies, misrepresentations
and false statements, which are unrelated to the plaintiff's claim. These
slanderous statements were designed specifically to smear CoreCivic
and the dedicated men and women working to ensure the safety and security of
detainees in our facilities. CoreCivic will take
swift action to strike these allegations from the complaint and hold the
attorneys who prepared them responsible. CoreCivic
has a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse and sexual
harassment. To ensure we are in full compliance with the Prison Rape
Elimination Act (PREA), all staff receive pre-service and in-service
education and training, and all detainees receive PREA education and training
beginning at initial reception and continuing while they are with us. Anyone
can report an allegation or suspected incident of sexual abuse or harassment,
including detainees, staff and third parties. There are multiple options to
report allegations including (but not limited to) calling the National Sexual
Assault Hotline, notifying a staff member either verbally or in writing,
writing the facility warden, using the PREA hotline numbers posted in
multiple areas throughout the facilities (in English and Spanish), including
information about contacting CoreCivic's EtJun 5, 2020 PCWG watch North Dakota: More revolving
door
May
28, 2020 tucsonsentinel.com
Woman says she was raped at private prison on eve of deportation
HOUSTON — A Mexican woman sued prison contractor CoreCivic
on Wednesday, claiming a man in street clothes beat and raped her in its
Houston detention center and she gave birth to his daughter after she was
deported. After a three-month incarceration at the Houston Processing Center,
Jane Doe was set to be sent back to Mexico on June 2, 2018, she says in her
lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. The Houston site is one of eight CoreCivic prisons where the company houses undocumented
immigrants under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We
are subject to multiple levels of oversight, including regular review and
audit processes and onsite monitoring, and there are currently more than 500
ICE officials assigned to our eight ICE-contracted facilities,” CoreCivic says on its website. The oversight did not help
Doe on June 1, 2018, when she says she and two other detainees were moved
from their regular cell, where they were typically locked up with 20 to 30
other women, to another cell in a dark isolated part of the 1,000-bed prison
Doe had never seen. Doe claims she rarely saw men at the prison because men
and women are held in different wings, and female guards watch over the
female prisoners. She says three men wearing plainclothes with their faces
covered entered the cell around midnight and told them to be quiet. As his
companions attacked the other women, Doe alleges, one man punched her in the
face and twisted her arm. Lying on her back on the floor, she tried to twist
away from him, but she stopped resisting as his blows rained down on her. Doe
says the assaults went on for an hour to 90 minutes before the men left the
cell. “The three women were left crying and terrified; they did not sleep the
rest of the night,” the complaint states. Doe is represented by Michelle
Simpson Tuegel, a Dallas attorney who specializes
in sexual assault cases, and Jose Sanchez of Longview, Texas. Boasting annual
revenues of more than $1 billion, CoreCivic was
founded in Nashville in 1983 as Corrections Corporation of America. It
renamed itself in 2016. Allegations of abuse go back to its early days.
Paralegals who provided legal services for immigrant families at the
company’s detention center in Laredo, Texas in the 1980s say its guards
strip-searched mothers and babies if the mother asked to see a lawyer. And
they were only strip-searched if they requested a lawyer. Doe says in her
lawsuit she and the other two victims were put on a bus the next morning with
a group of immigrants and transported to Laredo. With her face bruised and
swollen from the attack, she claims, she had no money for a bus ride to her
home in rural Mexico. She stayed at a shelter for nine days until the
shelter’s staff gathered enough money to buy her a bus ticket. Suffering from
nausea and vomiting, Doe says, she realized she was pregnant. She knows the
father is the man who assaulted her at the Houston facility because she had
not had sex with anyone else, according to her lawsuit. “When plaintiff
told her family what had happened to her and that
she was pregnant, they were very sad and angry. Plaintiff felt very depressed
and alone as a result of the trauma of the attack
and subsequent pregnancy,” the complaint states. She gave birth to a daughter
in early 2019. She says she lost a lot of blood due to complications with the
C-section and was hospitalized for eight days. “This nightmare has caused me
great harm and stress. I hope the United States government and the directors
of these private jails prevent this violence from happening to others,” Doe
said in a recorded statement. The defendants are the United States of
America, CoreCivic, four CoreCivic
subsidiaries, a Florida company that provides food services for prisons, the
Houston Processing Center’s Warden Robert Lacy Jr. and Assistant Warden David
Price, plus the men who assaulted Doe and her cellmates, identified only as
“assailants.” Doe seeks punitive damages for claims of negligence, negligent
supervision, negligent hiring and retention, premises liability, gross
negligence, assault and battery, false imprisonment, infliction of emotional
distress and malice. According to the lawsuit, ICE awarded CoreCivic a $50 million contract in March to pay for the
Houston Processing Center’s operations into 2030, despite its troubled recent
past. “There were at least eight reported allegations of sexual abuse at the
Houston Processing Center just between March 2016 and March 2017. In 2017,
there were at least eight allegations of employee-on-detainee sexual abuse,
and another four allegations of detainee-on-detainee sexual abuse at the
facility. And since 2003, the Houston Processing Center has reported at least
nine deaths,” the complaint states. CoreCivic
spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist declined to comment on the pending litigation
but said the company is committed to the safety of all its detainees. “We
have a zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse and sexual
harassment. To ensure we are in full compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination
Act (PREA), all staff receive pre-service and in-service education and
training, and all detainees receive PREA education and training beginning at
initial reception and continuing while they are with us,” she said in an
emailed statement.
Feb 11, 2019 gephardtdaily.com
Seven mumps cases reported at ICE detention facility in Houston
Feb. 10 (UPI) — Seven adult mumps cases have been confirmed at a U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in northeast Houston, the city’s
Health Department said. The adults were all detained during their infectious
period and there is no evidence the disease was transmitted to anyone outside
ICE’s medium-security facility, called CoreCivic,
the agency said in a news release Saturday. “Since these individuals were
isolated inside the facility during the period they were infectious, we do
not anticipate these cases posing a threat to the community,” said Dr. David
Persse, Houston’s local health authority and EMS medical director, said in
the release. One person went to the hospital for treatment and the others
received treatment at the facility, KPRC-TV reported. Those with symptoms
were placed in isolation at the facility. Also, anyone who was around a
person showing symptoms went to quarantine. “We have every reason to believe
that the individuals who are sick are still at the facility,” Persse said at
a news conference. Two cases of mumps at the facility were last reported in
2017, according to Persse. The department said it will conduct an on-site
visit in a few days and is working with the facility on infection control
methods. Mumps is a highly contagious disease. It typically starts with a few
days of fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, and loss of appetite and
then swollen salivary glands. Most recover from mumps without serious
complications. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are 97
percent effective for life and one dose is 93 percent effective, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And additional vaccines aren’t
needed over the years. “We’ve been dealing with mumps for hundreds of years.
It’s a common viral illness,” Persse said. “The number of seven is small, but
for this community, that’s an uptick and that’s one of the reasons it has our
attention.” The measles vaccination program started in 1963. Before then,
estimated 3 to 4 million people got measles each year in the United States,
according to the CDC. Last year there were around 2,300 mumps cases. Mumps
cases are usually prevalent in crowded environment, including living in a
dormitory with a person who has mumps or playing on the same sports team. In
2016-17, a large outbreak in a close-knit community in northwest Arkansas,
resulted in nearly 3,000 cases.
July 21, 2010 Courthouse News
In a perfect immigration nightmare, a U.S. citizen claims the Department of
Homeland Security arrested her in her own home, imprisoned, threatened and
intimidated her and denied her food, water and medication unless she admitted
she was someone else. Then it deported her to Honduras, where she was
immediately imprisoned as an illegal alien, held in prison for 3 weeks and
sexually assaulted by "an officer of the Honduran government." Even
after she returned home, she says, U.S. immigration agents continue to harass
her and threaten to arrest her again. Diane Williams, 35, "a
natural-born citizen of the United States," claims she was arrested in
her Houston home on Jan. 18, 2009, by "a Special Agent of the Department
of Homeland Security-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (hereinafter 'ICE')
by the name of Rolando Jimenez, and other unidentified ICE agents."
Williams says she showed the agents her Louisiana birth certificate, but they
arrested her anyway, and accused her of Angelique Bethany Cortez Rodriguez, a
citizen of Honduras. She claims the "ICE officers made no attempt
whatsoever to verify the plaintiff's claim to U.S. citizenship," but
took her to the prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America, on a
contract with DHS. The agents did this though she "repeatedly informed
the arresting officers that she was a United States citizen and offered the
names and contact numbers of several family members who could confirm her
identity," Williams says. Inside the CCA prison, Williams says, she was
denied prescribed medications for seizures, asthma and emotional disorders.
She says that after 3 days she was allowed to take
medication for asthmas and seizures, "but was denied the medications for
her emotional disorders by officials of the Public Health Service." Also inside the prison, Williams says, she "was
interviewed in a hostile, threatening and aggressive manner by various ICE
officers including Rolando Jimenez, Tak Wong, and
other unidentified officers." The complaint continues: "She was
awakened and interrogated in the middle of the night, denied food and water,
and held in holding cells at extremely low temperatures and without
functional plumbing for hours. "Plaintiff was told by Officer Rolando
Jimenez and Officer Tak Wong that she would be
jailed for four years and still deported if she refused to admit that she was
'Angelique Bethany Cortez Rodriguez, and a citizen of Honduras." Afraid
of spending 4 years in prison, "and in an unstable mental state due to
the denial of her medications," Williams says she signed the statement.
Three weeks later she was deported to Honduras. "Plaintiff did not have
legal representation at any point during this process, and was effectively
denied from seeking legal counsel due to her detention and repeated placement
in solitary confinement," she says. Nor did ICE follow the proper
procedure and ask the Honduran Consulate to verify her nationality - which
would have short-circuited her ordeal, she says. The complaint continues:
"Shortly after arrival in Honduras, plaintiff was arrested by officials
of the Honduran government as an alien and held in custody in that country
for approximately three weeks. "While detained by Honduran officials,
she was denied bathing facilities, slept on the floor, was fed irregularly
and was sexually assaulted by an officer of the Honduran government."
Finally, 72 days after her nightmare began, "On March 31, 2009, the U.S.
Embassy in Honduras issued plaintiff a U.S. passport after receiving her
birth certificate from her family in the United States and investigating to
their satisfaction her claim to U.S. citizenship. "She was given a loan
by the U.S. Embassy in Honduras for half of the purchase price of a ticket to
the United States (her family paid the other half), and returned legally to
the United States through the Miami port of entry on March 31, 2009.
"After returning to the United States Plaintiff has been subject to
continuing harassment and abuse by officers acting under the authority of ICE
and other government agencies, in spite of demonstrating evidence of her
status as a citizen of the United States, including the continued existence
of an immigration warrant encouraging her arrest by any law enforcement
agency in the United States." (Parentheses in complaint.) Williams seeks
damages from the United States of America for negligence, false imprisonment,
intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution, abuse of
process, assault and malpractice. She is represented by Lawrence Rushton of
Bellaire, Texas.
June 8, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are preparing to roll out a
series of changes at several privately owned immigration detention centers,
including relaxing some security measures for low-risk detainees and offering
art classes, bingo and continental breakfast on the weekends. The changes,
detailed in an internal ICE e-mail obtained by the Houston Chronicle, were
welcomed by immigrant advocates who have been waiting for the Obama
administration to deliver on a promise made in August to overhaul the
nation's immigration detention system. The 28 changes identified in the
e-mail range from the superficial to the substantive. In addition to
“softening the look of the facility” with hanging plants and offering fresh
carrot sticks, ICE will allow for the “free movement” of low-risk detainees,
expand visiting hours and provide unmonitored phone lines. ICE officials said
the changes are part of broader efforts to make the immigration detention
system less penal and more humane. But the plans are prompting protests by
ICE's union leaders, who say they will jeopardize the safety of agents,
guards and detainees and increase the bottom line for taxpayers. Tre Rebstock, president for Local 3332, the ICE union in
Houston, likened the changes to creating “an all-inclusive resort” for
immigration detainees. “Our biggest concern is that someone is going to get
hurt,” he said, taking particular issue with plans to relax restrictions on
the movement of low-risk detainees and efforts to reduce and eliminate pat-down
searches. The changes outlined in the ICE e-mail are planned for nine
detention centers owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America,
including the 900-bed Houston Contract Detention Facility on the city's north
side. Some of the changes will be implemented within 30 days; others may take
up to six months, said Beth Gibson, ICE's senior counselor to Assistant
Secretary John Morton and a leader of the detention reform effort. Other
major changes include: • Eliminating lockdowns and lights-out for low-risk
detainees. • Allowing visitors to stay as long as they like in a 12-hour
period. • Providing a unit manger so detainees have someone to report
problems to other than the guard. • Allowing low-risk detainees to wear their
own clothing or other non-penal attire. • Providing e-mail access and
Internet-based free phone service. Not about punishment Gibson said the
improvements are part of ICE's efforts to detain immigrants in the least
restrictive manner possible while ensuring they leave the country if ordered
to do so. “When people come to our custody, we're detaining them to effect
their removal,” Gibson said. “It's about deportation. It's not about
punishing people for a crime they committed.” ICE officials have faced
pressure from immigrant advocates and some members of Congress to improve the
detention conditions for the roughly 400,000 immigrants it houses annually.
The agency has relied on a hodgepodge of more than 250 government-run
detention centers, private prisons and local jails to accommodate its growing
population — with roughly one in four detainees held in Texas. At the CCA
facilities that have agreed to ICE's changes, detainees will see more variety
in their dining hall menus and have self-serve beverage and fresh vegetable
bars. CCA also plans to offer movie nights, bingo, arts and crafts, dance and
cooking classes, tutoring and computer training, the e-mail states. Detainees
also will be allowed four hours or more of recreation “in a natural setting,
allowing for robust aerobic exercise.” CCA also committed to improving the
look of the facilities, such as requiring plants, fresh paint and new bedding
in lower-risk units. Advocates pleased Some of the improvements offered at
the CCA facilities counted as hard-fought victories for immigrant advocates,
including plans to improve visitor and attorney access. “A lot of these
measures are what we've been advocating for,” said Lory Rosenberg, policy and
advocacy director for Refugee and Migrants' Rights for Amnesty International.
“Many of these points are very important to changing the system from a penal
system, which is inappropriate in an immigration context, to a civil
detention system.” Union members said they have concerns about the plans,
primarily focusing on safety. Rebstock said some detainees
may be classified as low-risk because they have no serious criminal history
but still may be gang members that “haven't been caught doing anything wrong
yet.” He also said eliminating lockdowns will make it more difficult to
protect detainees from one another. He said reducing or eliminating pat-down
searches could allow contraband into the facilities, including weapons.
Gibson, with ICE, said the agency is developing a sophisticated
classification system and will make sure “that our detainees are still safe
and sound.” “As a general matter, it will be the non-criminals who don't
present a danger to anyone else who are benefitting from the lowest level of
custody,” Gibson said. ‘On the taxpayers' dime' Rebstock
also questioned the cost to taxpayers for the changes. “My grandparents would
have loved to have bingo night and a dance class at the retirement home they
were in when they passed away, but that was something we would have had to
pay for,” he said. “And yet these guys are getting it on the taxpayers'
dime.” Gibson said CCA is making the improvements at no additional cost to
ICE. The agency's contract with CCA for the Houston detention center requires
that ICE pay $99 per bed daily for each detainee, slightly lower than the
$102 average daily rate ICE pays nationally .
March 26, 2009 Houston Chronicle
If you were to stop on a street corner anywhere in America and knowingly
hire an illegal immigrant to do your laundry or clean your basement, you
would be breaking the law. But for years, the federal government has been
paying immigration detainees $1 a day to perform menial work in the nation’s
public and private detention centers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officials insist there is no double standard, saying the Voluntary Work
Program offers detainees a break from the monotony of incarceration and a
chance to earn money while they are locked up. Rutgers University criminal
justice professor Michael Welch called the program a “paradox.” “It’s ironic
that these undocumented immigrants are barred from working legally in the
community, but while behind bars, they are not only allowed but encouraged to
work for a dollar a day,” Welch said. ICE officials have found an eager work
force in their growing network of detention centers, which house an estimated
400,000 immigrants annually. The agency does not track participation in the
work program on a national level, said ICE spokesman Gregory Palmore, though
more than 11,000 detainees participated last fiscal year at one Houston
detention center alone. Immigrant advocates offered general support for the
program, saying it at least gives detainees an opportunity to pass the time
by doing something other than sitting in a cell. But the irony of the program
is not lost on some. “Why can the U.S. government hire undocumented
immigrants? And not only hire them, but get a day’s work for a dollar?” said
Brittney Nystrom, senior legal advisor at the National Immigration Forum, an
immigrant advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. “It really is an absurdity.”
ICE says program legal -- ICE officials say the program is perfectly legal.
There is no specific statute, regulation or executive order authorizing the
program, ICE said in a statement. The program “does not constitute employment
and is done by detainees on a voluntary basis for a small stipend,” according
to ICE. Nystrom had a hard time buying that legal explanation, citing ICE’s
own detention standards, which describe the program as providing “monetary
compensation for work completed.” “That sounds like employment to me,”
Nystrom said. Variety of jobs performed -- At Houston’s Contract Detention
Facility on the city’s north side, about 200 immigration detainees are
currently participating in the work program, performing jobs including
cleaning and washing dishes, laundry, and maintenance of the facility,
according to ICE. Others jobs include working as a barber and helping in the
medical clinic, law library or commissary. ICE officials said no detainees
from the Houston facility performed work outside of the detention center
grounds. The Houston detention center is owned and operated by Corrections
Corporation of America, one of the nation’s largest private prison companies.
CCA’s warden in Houston, Robert Lacy, referred questions about the program to
ICE. Work programs are commonplace in state and federal prisons. The
lowest-paying jobs in the Federal Bureau of Prison system, such as cleaning
and grounds keeping, pay 12 to 40 cents per hour. In its statement, ICE
officials said the program gives detainees “an opportunity to be gainfully
occupied on a voluntary basis.” The agency added that perhaps the most
important benefit from the program is “reducing inactivity and disciplinary
problems.”
February 24, 2005 Houston Chronicle
Houston lawyer Richard Prinz is unhappy because there is no place for
lawyers to talk with their clients in the vital minutes before the court
appearance in the new immigration facility on Greens Road. He says he would
like to see some small space made available near the courtroom. Lawyers
representing immigrants at a new federal facility in far north Houston are
confronting new restrictions on communications with their clients. Before the
courtroom was moved to 5520 Greens Road in January, said Houston lawyer
Richard Prinz, attorneys could talk with their clients in the cellblock
visiting area until they were called to court. "So you'd basically go to
court together and, of course, if you wished to speak to them afterward,
you'd just go right back there and speak to them," he said. The routine
at the new facility, however, is for a lawyer to wait in the small lobby just
inside the building's entrance until a guard escorts the lawyer into the
courtroom. Detainees are brought from cells into the courtroom by another
route. Prinz said there is no opportunity to speak with a client in the vital
minutes before the court appearance or after going inside. He would like to
see some small space made available near the courtroom. "The judge has
not and will not ever let you visit with your client while you're in the
courtroom," he said. A member of Immigration Judge Susan Yarbrough's
staff said the judge is not in charge of the building's layout and would have
no comment on the issue. Luisa Aquino-Deason,
spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, referred questions
to the Corrections Corporation of America. "We simply contract out that
facility," she said. CCA Division 5 managing director Charles Martin
said lawyers can meet with their clients "at a different part of the
building" almost any time they want throughout the week. When they go to
court, however, "they have to be prepared to go on in the
courtroom," he said.
February 27, 1999
A Cuban inmate overpowered a guard and ran out of the front door of the
facility. There appeared to be a white van waiting for the inmate which
took him away. The escapee was convicted of "burglary of a habitation
with intent to commit aggravated rape with a deadly weapon." (Houston
Chronicle, March 2, 1999)
Hunt Count Jail
Hunt County, Texas
CiviGenics
August 31, 2005 Herald Banner
The consideration of a plan to privatize the operation of the Hunt County
Jail came to a sudden halt Tuesday when officials saw that it would be more
expensive to hire Civigenics, Inc. than to maintain
the status quo. Hunt County Judge Joe Bobbitt said the numbers revealed that
Sheriff Don Anderson was running an efficient operation with the resources
allotted him. "The proposal from Civigenics
was a good one, and it included a level of service above what we currently provide,
but it did not prove to be an affordable option at this time," Bobbitt
said. "What they proposed is something we can only aspire to right how." Hunt County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy
Robert White said he was not surprised at the outcome of the talks. "We
felt at the time of the initial offer that there was no way they'd be able to
do it as cheaply as we do it ourselves, but out of fairness we went through
the process and let them work the figures out," White said. He said the
proposals from Civigenics varied from $34 to $37.50
expense per inmate per day, compared to a current cost of $23.61 per inmate
per day under county operations. "They were figuring in some other
things in their costs, but it still was not close," White said.
Jack Harwell Detention Center
McLennan County, Texas
LaSalle Corrections
31
Aug 13, 2019 wacotrib.com
Fresh paint, fresh faces as county prepares Harwell jail takeover
Fresh
coats of paint and fresh faces of leadership are arriving at Jack Harwell
Detention Center, two months ahead of the Oct. 1 takeover by McLennan County
Sheriff’s Office officials. McLennan County Jail inmates began laying down
primer and painting dormitory cells at Harwell on Monday, following work this
month to clean the cells. Staff promotions and plans for new administrative
rankings for Harwell have fallen into place as McLennan County prepares to
reclaim the jail from a private contractor. “I think we will be ready,” said
Major Ricky Armstrong, jail administrator. “We’ve been working to get staff in
place and get the jail cleaned up so it is fresh and
ready for us to move in to the jail.” On midnight Sunday, a total of 768
inmates were housed at McLennan County Jail. Harwell housed 574 inmates,
including 335 McLennan County inmates and 202 federal inmates. Harwell was
built in 2010 and was controlled by Louisiana-based, for-profit LaSalle
Corrections. The jail will be operated by the McLennan County Sheriff’s
Office on Oct. 1 after LaSalle opted not to renew its contract with the
county in May. The decision not to renew the contract came after the county
first saw an increase in payments made to LaSalle last year, from about $6.1
million to $8 million. LaSalle failed three Texas Commission of Jail
Standards inspections in August 2018, November 2018 and last March, resulting
in the state placing a remedial order on the facility. Armstrong, who has
overseen operations at the McLennan County Jail since 2015, was promoted from
a captain to the rank of major in preparation to oversee both jails by
October. He said Sheriff Parnell McNamara promoted a new administration team
to oversee 115 employees, including jailers, medical staff and civilians at
the Harwell facility. “The sheriff asked the (McLennan County Commissioners)
Court to change the rank structure to address the double responsibility,
double amount of inmate capacity,” Armstrong said. Mike Garrett, a former
lieutenant at the county jail, was promoted to captain and will oversee
Harwell jail. His colleague, Karen Anderson, was promoted from lieutenant to
captain and will act as an assistant jail administrator at McLennan County
Jail. “Oh, I think there will be a little separation anxiety, but we are
still going to work together, just be in separate buildings,” Garrett said.
Additional staff promotions were made this month, including promoting five
former jail sergeants to lieutenants, including John Phillips, Casey Boehme,
Joel Barrientos and Sue Tweedle. Lieutenants will
be split between the two jails to help control any issues that may arise
after the transition. Harwell staff was placed back in compliance in May,
shortly after the decision was made to turn control back to the council.
Garrett said his plans include keeping Harwell in compliance. “I am very
excited for the challenge, I want to keep it flowing to keep up with
inspections and keeping it in compliance,” he said. “We are going to run it
as efficiently as we can. Compliance has been an issue, so we need to get
everything cleaned up and keep it in compliance.” McLennan County trusty
inmates worked at the neighboring jail that is connected to Harwell through
its kitchen. Armstrong said while the takeover is a lot of work, he believes
the staff in place for both facilities will be a success. “This week we are
cleaning the cells that are empty, doing some painting and some light
maintenance work just to get the Harwell jail looking better,” Armstrong
said. “I don’t know if we will have it all painted before Oct. 1 when we move
in, but we will be able to move inmates to get the rest of it painted as soon
as possible. County staff plans to expand mental health services with the
move into Harwell and offer reintegration programs. He said it may take six
months to a year to establish programs and get them running, but the move
will be a benefit. “I think we will definitely be ready for October, I
think,” Armstrong said.
Jul
13, 2019 kwtx.com
More
correctional officers needed for local jail takeover
WACO,
Texas (KWTX) The McLennan County Sheriff's Office is in
need of correctional officers ahead of taking over the neighboring
private jail in the Fall. The Sheriff's office wants to hire an extra 100
correctional officers to work at the Jack Harwell Detention Center by Oct.
1--that's when the contract between the county and La Salle Corrections
expires. "It's going to take a lot of work," said Capt. Ricky
Armstrong, Jail Administrator. "We're just ready to get over there and
start seeing what it's going to take to run it." Armstrong said they did
a job study on Harwell to determine how many officers they needed and are
presenting it to county commissioners as they go into budget talks.
"We're looking forward to it, I think it's going to be a good thing for
the county, for the Sheriff's Office, and I also think we're going to save
the county quite a bit of money," said Sheriff Parnell McNamara.
"We're almost doubling the number of inmates that we have."
Currently, the county jail has around 1,000 inmates and Harwell has around
700, about half of which are federal. "If we get to house the federal
inmates in the facility that's already there, with that revenue and our
budget, we should save somewhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million by
operating it ourselves." The moves after a series of failed state
inspections (three in seven months) by Harwell and contract hikes (last year
La Salle's contract spiked by $2 million). Technically, La Salle ended the
contract, sending the county a letter of non-renewal in the Spring. "In
negotiations with La Salle, they agreed that if we wanted our facility back,
then they would send us a letter stating they didn't want to renew the
contract," said Armstrong. "It's just cleaner that way."
"It's cheaper for the county to run the whole damn thing," said
Chief Deputy David Kilcrease. "We can pay our employees more than they
pay their employees and we can run it better than they can." The county
jail hasn't failed inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards since
2008. "We're pretty strict on what we do and how we do it," said
Armstrong. "We try to stay in compliance." Part of the state
inspection process is the physical working of the jail; Armstrong says
they'll only have to do some painting and minor maintenance. "Walking
through the facility, everything looks good, it's operational, everything's
operating now, there's no major mechanical issues that we're aware of at this
time," said Armstrong. The biggest challenge so far, Armstrong says, is
hiring and the 'unknowns.' "The employees at Jack Harwell, the unknown
of if they're going to work for us, they're all upset, and just the unknown,
the uncertainty is scary for people," said Armstrong. "Now, for us,
it's just making sure we have enough people." To do that, MCSO's jail
division is hosting a hiring event July 15 from 9am-12pm at Workforce
Solutions for the Heart of Texas, 1416 S. New Rd., where on-site interviews
will be conducted for people who fill out applications prior to the event.
Applicants should be 18 or older with a high school diploma or GED, have a
calm temper, and be good with people. "To hire 100 correctional officers
in a short time is tough," said Armstrong. "We hope to start hiring
people in August to be fully staffed by October." Armstrong is hoping
many of hires will come from the pool of correctional officers currently
working at Harwell. "We've offered the officers that currently work there jobs," said Armstrong. "We've had,
approximately, between 30 and 50 officers come over and say they're
interested, and we're going to hire all those that we can." McNamara is
confident his command staff at the jail will get the job done and help the
Harwell 'straighten up.' "We're going to do everything we can to
minimize problems at that jail, and there's been some in the past, over and
over, we're gonna do the best we can to eliminate those and run the jail properly
and we know how to do that," said McNamara. "We have administrative
staff that has been at the jail for 25-30 years, so they know what they're
doing, they know how to run the jail, they know how it should be run."
The Sheriff's office is working on a new organizational structure for the
takeover including the promotion of two people, one to head each jail, who
will report to Armstrong. With the addition of Harwell, Armstrong says he
sees endless opportunities for the county and its inmates. "I'm really
looking forward to opening up some more programs because we're out of space
in this facility," said Armstrong. "It's got a lot of
classrooms." He hopes to use Harwell's nine classrooms to provide more
reintegration opportunities for inmates through programs like parenting
classes and teaching vocational skills. "I'm looking forward to the
space and being able to move people around and have these classes," said
Armstrong. They're also looking forward to hiring the staff to make those
programs possible. McNamara says working at the jail is a good stepping stone for other positions in the field. "If
you want to go into law enforcement, now is a good time," said McNamara.
"We want you on the Posse!"
Oct 19, 2018 wacotrib.com
County officials investigating inmate death at private jail
The McLennan County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the death of an
inmate at the Jack Harwell Detention Center, a privately operated jail owned
by McLennan County. Sheriff Parnell McNamara said the 53-year-old inmate died
Friday night from what appears to be natural causes, but investigators are
waiting for autopsy results to be returned from the Southwestern Institute of
Forensic Sciences in Dallas. While no administrators from LaSalle
Corrections, which operates the jail, returned phone messages Wednesday, a
spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service identified the inmate as Lorenzo
Ochoa-Figueroa, of Zacatecas, Mexico. The spokesman said Ochoa-Figueroa was
being held on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer for illegal
entry into the U.S. LaSalle Corrections contracts with the federal government
to house its prisoners. McLennan County Justice of the Peace Brian
Richardson, who ordered the autopsy, said Ochoa-Figueroa’s death appears
caused by natural causes. He said there were no signs of foul play or trauma.
It could be from five to seven weeks before a preliminary autopsy report is
returned, Richardson said. Ochoa-Figueroa’s fiancee,
Micaela Gomez, 54, of Taylor, said Ochoa-Figueroa had lived in Texas off and
on for 20 years but was a Mexican citizen. She said he was jailed in June on
a domestic violence charge against her and was placed in the Williamson
County Jail until he was transferred to the Jack Harwell Detention Center
eight days ago on the ICE detainer. They had lived together two years, and
she considers Ochoa-Figueroa her common-law husband, Gomez said. She said a
deputy called her at 2:30 a.m. Saturday to inform her of his death. “They
didn’t tell me nothing,” Gomez said. “They just said he passed away.” She said
after Ochoa-Figueroa was jailed, officials told him he had high blood
pressure and he was taking medication. She said she suffers from lung cancer
and he was worried about that. The combination of her illness coupled with
his incarceration and likely deportation perhaps produced more stress than
Ochoa-Figueroa could bear, she said. “He was a very sweet man,” Gomez said.
“He was a hard-working man and he was a good guy.” Jail officials notified
the Texas Commission on Jail Standards of the in-custody death, as required,
commission executive director Brandon Wood said. He declined additional
comment because of the pending investigation. The suicide death of an inmate
in November 2015 led to the indictment of three guards at the Jack Harwell
Detention Center and a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the three
former officers and Southwestern Correctional, parent company of LaSalle
Corrections. The parents of Michael Martinez filed the lawsuit last year
after their 25-year-old son, who had attempted suicide two months before he
was jailed, died at the private jail on State Highway 6. Three officers,
Michael Wayne Crittenden, Milton Edward Walker and Christopher David Simpson,
each were indicted on a charge of tampering with government records, a
third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, after an
investigation into Martinez’s death. Officials allege the former guards
altered documents after Martinez’s death to make it appear they conducted
scheduled inmate checks in the hours leading to the suicide. Surveillance
video showed that Crittenden, Walker and Simpson all lied about conducting
head counts in N-Wing in the early morning hours before Martinez’s death,
according to records filed in the case. The criminal case against each former
officer remains pending, as does the civil lawsuit.
Sep
8, 2018 texasobserver.org
Waco Immigrant Mom Sues Private Prison Corporation over Alleged Sexual
Abuse
Estela Fajardo, an immigrant mom and business owner, is suing a private
prison corporation and a prison guard over sexual abuse she alleges occurred
at Waco’s Jack Harwell Detention Center over four months beginning late last
year. Thanks to a nasty tangle of the criminal and immigration systems, the
46-year-old Fajardo has been locked up and apart from her 3-year-old son for
more than two and a half years. Fajardo, who came to the United States at 14
and is undocumented, was a member of the Central Texas Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce and ran a moving company, a small cattle ranch and two hair salons
in Waco before her legal troubles began. The Waco Tribune-Herald once wrote
that she “represent[ed] the American Dream.” Fajardo currently sits in the
McLennan County Jail, adjacent to the Jack Harwell facility, facing a state
jail felony theft charge. The charge stems from allegations that she
knowingly purchased stolen goods in January 2016, a claim that she’s
consistently denied. She can’t bond out, because an immigration detainer
means she’d be transferred immediately into federal custody and potentially
deported away from her four kids. Her civil suit, filed Friday in a McLennan
County district court, demands between $200,000 and $1 million for the
“mental anguish” Fajardo has suffered due to a guard’s “inappropriate remarks
of a sexual nature” and offensive physical “contact.” Defendants in the suit
include the alleged perpetrator and LaSalle Corrections, the private prison
company that operates the Jack Harwell facility. Fajardo detailed her
allegations in a report she submitted to McLennan County officials in March.
Fajardo wrote that a female guard, employed by LaSalle, made sexual comments
toward her, inappropriately touched her breast and buttock and asked her to
“flash her” during multiple incidents between November and March. “I felt
hopeless and desperate, depressed, scared, worried, embarrassed to even talk
about this situation,” Fajardo wrote. “I could not get any sleep for a long
time.” The 816-bed for-profit Harwell facility, which primarily holds inmates
for the county and the U.S. Marshals Service, has faced similar controversy
before. Since 2013, at least three LaSalle guards have been convicted for
sexual misconduct, and LaSalle was also sued over sexual assault in 2015.
Last month, the facility failed its third unannounced inspection in four years.
LaSalle and the accused guard did not respond to requests for comment. County
officials have denied Fajardo’s allegations. In a May report, county
investigator Kimberly King concluded that Fajardo’s claims were all
unsubstantiated or unfounded, citing the account of another jail official and
a lack of witnesses. In June, McLennan County Chief Deputy David Kilcrease
told local news outlets, “It’s obvious here that the whole thing is to try to
enhance her immigration status.” Fajardo, who faces potential deportation
when her criminal case resolves, could qualify for a visa for victims of
crime based on the guard’s alleged sexual abuse. Gerald Villarrial,
Fajardo’s criminal defense attorney, called the county’s investigation an
instance of the fox guarding the henhouse. McLennan County owns the Jack
Harwell facility and pays LaSalle Corrections to hold inmates there. “Someone
other than the Sheriff’s Department should have done that investigation,” he
said, citing the Texas Rangers and FBI as possibilities.
Sep 5, 2018 wacotrib.com
Former inmate sues guard, private jail corporation over alleged abuses
A former inmate at McLennan County’s privately operated jail alleges she
suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of a guard during more
than two years of incarceration there. Estela Fajardo, jailed on a felony
theft charge and an immigration hold, is seeking from $200,000 to $1 million
in a lawsuit filed Friday in 74th State District Court against Southwestern
Correctional, parent company of LaSalle Corrections, and LaSalle guard Charis
Kendricks. Kendricks and Ryan Horvath in the LaSalle legal department at
corporate headquarters in Ruston, Louisiana, did not return phone messages
Friday. LaSalle contracts with McLennan County to operate the Jack Harwell
Detention Center in Waco. The lawsuit alleges that Kendricks “made
inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature to plaintiff, and on more than one
occasion intentionally or knowingly made contact with plaintiff’s person.”
“Plaintiff was emotionally and physically upset by the inappropriate touching
of her body by Kendricks, and by the inappropriate remarks by Kendricks, and
plaintiff suffered embarrassment, humiliation and mental anguish as a result
of such contact and remarks, all of which were offensive and insulting,” the
lawsuit alleges. Fajardo was the subject of a demonstration in June outside
the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office by members of the Waco Immigrants
Alliance. They called for an outside agency to investigate Fajardo’s
allegations. Chief Deputy David Kilcrease pledged at that time to reopen the
initial investigation into her complaints. But he said in June that based on
Fajardo’s own description of what happened and statements she made in
recorded jail conversations, the incidents are not crimes and amount to
routine “textbook pat-downs” by a female officer. “It’s obvious here that the
whole thing is to try to enhance her immigration status,” Kilcrease said in
June. “But ruining somebody’s life so she can keep her life here is not
reasonable. If somebody did something to her, they need to answer for it. But
what she is claiming is just not there. This is a textbook pat-down. There
was nothing wrong with it, or there was certainly nothing illegal about it.”
Fajardo’s attorney, Gerald R. Villarrial,
disagrees. He denies Fajardo’s claims have anything to do with her
immigration status and said the Texas Commission on Jail Standards issued a
failing grade after a recent inspection of the Jack Harwell Detention Center,
its third failure in the past four years. Staff at the facility falsified
logs to make it appear they checked on inmates at the required times, while
surveillance footage shows some of the checks happened at intervals up to
four times longer than the maximum allowed, according to the commission
report. The inspection also found jail staffing was below minimum
requirements and jailers were not in their assigned wings. “I think there is
difference between a pat-down and someone grabbing your breast,” Villarrial said. “And I am not satisfied with the
investigation they did. I can’t help but be skeptical with Kilcrease’s
statement that they are going to reopen the investigation and in the next
breath he says she is just doing this for immigration purposes.” Kilcrease
did not return a phone message Friday. “She was routinely brought out by this
particular guard and brought into areas where the cameras couldn’t see her
and fondled on her breasts,” Villarrial said.
“There were sexual advances made to her, and when she would not reciprocate
to these advances, she had holy hell to pay. She was searched more and
harassed more by this particular guard.” Fajardo has since been transferred
to the McLennan County Jail, where she has a pending state-jail felony theft
case and an immigration hold on her, Villarrial
said.
Jun 12, 2018 wacotrib.com
Detained immigrant alleges sexual assault in Waco jail
Immigrant advocates are calling for the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office to
ask an outside agency to investigate allegations that an immigrant detained
at McLennan County’s private jail was sexually assaulted by a guard and then
subjected to harassment after she reported it. Members of the Waco Immigrants
Alliance and friends and supporters of Estela Briceno Fajardo held a press
conference Monday in front of the sheriff’s office to bring attention to
Fajardo’s plight. Fajardo, 46, has been behind bars for 2 1/2 years on
criminal and immigration charges, separated from her four children, who range
in age from 3 to 21. Now at McLennan County Jail, she is awaiting trial on
the misdemeanor criminal charges. Even if she is found not guilty, she faces
the prospect of being deported to Mexico, a country she left when she was 14,
and leaving a community where she has built two businesses and is known for
her civic involvement. Fajardo claims that before she was transferred to the
county jail this spring, she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a female
guard at the Jack Harwell Detention Center, a privately run jail next to the
county jail. After the transfer to McLennan County Jail, Fajardo claims she
was given the wrong medication and suffered a serious allergic reaction. Hope
Mustakim, director of the Waco Immigrants Alliance,
said Monday that Fajardo was harassed and intimidated after filing her
complaint. Mustakim said Fajardo’s hardships came
after a 20-year marriage in which Fajardo suffered abuse. “Estela has endured
a lifetime of domestic violence and still contributed to this community,” Mustakim said. “She is a member of two churches, is a
self-made businesswoman and is a community leader. Our hope is, first, for
the sheriff’s department to launch a better or another investigation, if not
ask the FBI or Texas Rangers to do that, and for (U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement) to recognize all the abuses involved in Estela’s life
and that she deserves deferred action.” McLennan County Sheriff’s Office
Chief Deputy David Kilcrease has pledged to reopen the initial investigation into
Fajardo’s complaints. But he said Monday that based on Fajardo’s own
description of what happened and statements she made in recorded jail
conversations, the incidents are not crimes and amount to routine “textbook
pat-downs” by a female officer. “It’s obvious here that the whole thing is to
try to enhance her immigration status,” Kilcrease said. “But ruining
somebody’s life so she can keep her life here is not reasonable. If somebody
did something to her, they need to answer for it. But what she is claiming is
just not there. This is a textbook pat-down. There was nothing wrong with it,
or there was certainly nothing illegal about it.” Fajardo was arrested 2 1/2
years ago on felony charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and
burglary of a habitation, and she has languished in jail waiting for her case
to go to court. Recently, she got a new defense attorney, Gerald Villarrial, who said Monday the McLennan County District
Attorney’s office reduced the felony charges against her to a Class A misdemeanor
theft charge. In 2016, Fajardo served six months in a federal facility for
illegal re-entry into the United States and was then returned to the Jack
Harwell Detention Center, a private jail in McLennan County operated by
LaSalle Corrections. She was placed under an immigration hold and faces
deportation after her criminal case is resolved unless attorneys and
supporters can convince immigration officials to exercise discretion in her
case and allow her to remain here with her children, based on the alleged
domestic and sexual abuse she has suffered. Villarrial,
who replaced Fajardo’s first attorney a few months ago, said they are
considering filing a civil lawsuit against LaSalle Corrections based on the
allegations of sexual assault by a female guard. “I knew Estela before all
this happened,” Villarrial said. “She has always
been a well-respected, hard-working businesswoman. I believe in her.” Now
that prosecutors have reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, Fajardo faces a
year in the county jail if she is convicted, and she would likely be
sentenced to time already served if she pleaded guilty. “That is not going to
happen,” Villarrial said. “She won’t plead guilty
because she says she is not guilty. She won’t even hear of pleading because
she said she didn’t do that. It looks like we are going to have to take it to
trial unless the state decides to dismiss it.” Fajardo says the criminal case
began when a man, his wife and their baby approached Fajardo about buying
some jewelry. She said she doesn’t buy gold, but they convinced her that they
needed cash to buy food and diapers for their baby, Villarrial
said. She agreed to buy the jewelry with the understanding that she would
hold it until they came back, returned her money and buy back the jewelry, Villarrial said. She was not aware that the merchandise
was stolen but merely was trying to help the family, he said. Attorney Anali Looper, director of the Waco office of the
non-profit immigration law firm, American Gateways, is helping Fajardo with
her immigration case. She said Fajardo plans to pursue a claim under the
Violence Against Women Act as an abused spouse of a U.S. citizen. It is not
an immigration status, but if they can prove the abuse, it might convince
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to exercise discretion and
allow Fajardo to remain in the country to pursue her civil claims that she
was sexually assaulted in the jail. Fajardo also will seek a U-Visa as an
alleged victim of sexual assault, Looper said. “I have only recently met Estela
but I had heard of Estela long before this,” Looper said. “She was been an
upstanding member of the Waco community, been in the United States since she
was 14 years old and she is just a lovely person. It is a tragedy all the
horrible things that have happened to her and we hope the Waco community
stands by her and does right by her and her family and she is allowed to stay
in the country and be with her children.” Kilcrease said he will ask
investigators to interview four inmates housed with Fajardo at the Jack
Harwell Detention Center who Fajardo’s supporters claim were never
interviewed during the first investigation that they characterized as
“lacking.” “What is important is this sheriff is nationally known for his
stance in protecting illegal immigrants, especially helping them escape from
sexual exploitation,” Kilcrease said. “This sheriff has proven he doesn’t
have a problem arresting officers, especially at Jack Harwell, because he has
done it before. We are not here to cover for officers of LaSalle Corrections,
nor are we here to cover for any officer. I think these people have picked
the wrong sheriff in trying to make these allegations because of his track
record on these issues.” Kilcrease said Sheriff Parnell McNamara was out of
town Monday. Mustakim said Fajardo worked to help
get McNamara elected and used her moving company to help him move into his
new office six years ago. The alliance handed out a photo with McNamara
standing with Fajardo on Monday. “The sheriff would be very disturbed to know
she is in jail and that she is a constituent who is personally known to him,”
Kilcrease said. “But Parnell McNamara doesn’t pull punches when it comes to
family members or friends or anyone else who breaks the law. He just doesn’t
do it.” Every inmate must be patted down or searched when they move from one
area to the jail to another. While it might not be pleasant to the inmates,
what Fajardo described to the investigator was not sexual assault, Kilcrease
said. Besides, Kilcrease said, in recorded jail visits with a friend, Fajardo
never reports to him that she was sexually assaulted. “She talks about her
days and different problems she is having, but she never talks about anyone
feeling her, touching her or coercing her into sex,” Kilcrease said. “The
only thing she mentions about this guard is she is strict, she is
intimidating and she would like to see her out of her area. This is all about
her wanting to get victim’s status so she can override the (immigration)
detainer.” Kilcrease said Jack Harwell center officials said they reviewed a
video of the alleged incident and determined nothing more than a routine
pat-down occurred. He said he wants to discuss policies with jail
administrators because they did not save a copy of the tape showing what happened,
Kilcrease said. “If they have an allegation and a tape that proves the
official did nothing wrong, common sense tell you to save that tape,”
Kilcrease said. “But they allowed it to be recorded over and now we don’t
have it.” Looper said she finds Kilcrease’s comments “very disturbing,” and
said she hopes he takes her allegations seriously and that his department or
another agency conducts a thorough investigation.
Dec 2, 2016 PCWG theeagle.com
Ex-Waco jail employee arrested, accused of orchestrating inmate fight
A former Jack Harwell Detention Center employee was arrested last week
after he allegedly orchestrated a jailhouse fight between two inmates
allegedly to keep one inmate from “picking on him,” an arrest affidavit
states. Wesley James Gillispie, 18, was arrested Wednesday after he misused
his authority as a Jack Harwell Detention Center employee on Nov. 5 when he
felt an inmate was “picking on him,” the arrest affidavit states. Gillispie allegedly gave another inmate access to the
housing area of the inmate that Gillispie was
targeting “for the sole purpose of having (the first inmate) assault” the
inmate that was allegedly “picking on” Gillispie.
The Jack Harwell facility is a private jail that allows overflow inmates from
the neighboring McLennan County Jail to be housed in a secure facility. Gillispie was arrested on a Class A misdemeanor charge of
official oppression and was booked in to McLennan County Jail. He later
posted bond and was released. It was not immediately clear if Gillispie resigned or was fired from his position, but
authorities confirmed that Gillispie is no longer
employed at the Harwell jail.
Jun 2, 2016 wacotrib.com
Officials investigating death of jail inmate
Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are investigating the
death of an inmate at the Jack Harwell Detention Center in McLennan County on
Monday evening. James Duke, warden of the privately operated jail, did not
return phone messages Tuesday, and others, including local and federal
officials, declined comment or referred questions to other agencies. Brandon
Wood, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, confirmed
Tuesday that officials at the Jack Harwell Detention Center notified the
commission about the inmate’s death about 7:30 p.m. Monday. The commission
will review an initial report about the incident from the private jail
officials before determining whether additional action is needed by the
commission, Wood said. County jails and private detention centers are
required to notify the commission of an inmate’s death within 24 hours, he
said. McLennan County Justice of the Peace James Lee was called to the jail
at 3101 E. Marlin Highway after the death. Lee did not return phone calls
Tuesday, and a staff member in his office referred questions to the McLennan
County Sheriff’s Office. Lee also did not respond immediately to a Public
Information Act request for information, including whether he ordered an
autopsy. McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara did not return phone messages
Tuesday. Sheriff’s Office Capt. Ricky Armstrong declined comment, saying the
inmate was a U.S. Marshals Service prisoner and referring questions to the marshals service. Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Bays also
declined comment, saying the matter is under investigation. Bays declined to
provide details of the inmate’s death, his or her identity or suspected
manner and means of death. The jail is operated by LaSalle Corrections, which
manages 18 facilities with a total inmate capacity of 13,000 in Louisiana, Texas
and Georgia. LaSalle Executive Director Rodney Cooper did not return phone
calls to his office Tuesday. A McLennan County grand jury indicted three
former LaSalle Corrections employees in February on charges that they altered
documents to make it appear they conducted scheduled inmate checks following
a suicide in the jail in November. Michael Wayne Crittenden, 24; Milton
Edward Walker, 33; and Christopher David Simpson, 24, each were indicted on a
charge of tampering with government records, a third-degree felony punishable
by up to 10 years in prison. Surveillance video showed that Crittenden,
Walker and Simpson all lied about conducting head counts in N-Wing in the
early morning hours of Nov. 1, according to records filed in the case. A
review was conducted after Michael Angelo Martinez, 25, of Waco, was found
unresponsive in his single-person cell. Martinez’s death was ruled suicide by
asphyxia. Martinez had been in jail since Aug. 18 on charges of unlawful
possession of a firearm and possession of cocaine. He also was being held on
a federal detainer, according to county records. McNamara said in November
that Martinez was in the section of the jail where inmates are to be checked
every 30 minutes.
Feb
18, 2016 wacotrib.com
3 former jailers indicted on tampering charges in suicide
Three former correctional officers at the Jack Harwell Detention Center
were indicted Wednesday on charges that they altered documents following a
suicide in the jail to make it appear they conducted scheduled inmate checks in
the hours leading up to the suicide. A McLennan County grand jury indicted
Michael Wayne Crittenden, 24; Milton Edward Walker, 33; and Christopher David
Simpson, 24, each on a charge of tampering with government records, a
third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. All three were
employees of LaSalle Corrections, which operates the Harwell private jail on
State Highway 6. Waco attorney Phil
Frederick, who represents Simpson, and attorney Will Hutson, who represents
Walker, both declined comment about their client’s case. Court records
indicate Crittenden does not have an attorney. Surveillance video showed that
Crittenden, Walker and Simpson all lied about conducting head counts in
N-Wing in the early morning hours of Nov. 1, according to records filed in
the case. A review was conducted after Michael Angelo Martinez, 25, of Waco,
was found unresponsive in his single-person cell. Martinez’s death was ruled
suicide by asphyxia. Martinez had been in jail since Aug. 18 on charges of
unlawful possession of a firearm and possession of cocaine. He also was being
held on a federal detainer, according to county records. Sheriff Parnell
McNamara said Martinez was in the section of the jail where inmates are to be
checked every 30 minutes. Walker was supposed to conduct “observation checks”
from 1:05 a.m. through 3:25 a.m. as well as 4:35 a.m. through 6:17 a.m. He
signed off on head-count documents at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 31 and 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.
the following morning. “Video surveillance confirmed Walker did not actually
conduct head counts,” an affidavit written by Detective Kimberly King states.
Crittenden and Simpson also are alleged to have failed to perform head counts
during the early morning hours of Nov. 1 and then filling out paperwork that
stated they had done them. McLennan County received a notice of noncompliance
Nov. 5 from the state jail commission because inmates known to be mentally
ill or suicidal were not checked on every 30 minutes, according to a report.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards’ report states observations should be
performed at least every 30 minutes in areas where inmates are known to be
“assaultive, potentially suicidal, mentally ill or who have demonstrated
bizarre behavior.” Brandon Wood, Texas Commission on Jail Standards executive
director, told the Tribune-Herald at the time that the commission reviews
operations at a facility after an inmate death. McLennan County commissioners
in June extended their contract with LaSalle Corrections through June 2018 to
allow the company to continue operation of the Jack Harwell Detention Center.
All three men remain free on bail.
Dec 12, 2015 wacotrib.com
Texas: Sexual assault alleged at LaSalle prison
A former jail inmate alleges she repeatedly was
sexually assaulted at the private Jack Harwell Detention Center, where she
claims a long-standing lack of institutional control has led to an
environment of smuggling, extortion, drug abuse and sexual misconduct. The
30-year-old woman is seeking unspecified damages in a lawsuit filed this week
in Waco’s 170th State District Court against LaSalle Corrections, a private
corrections company that has operated McLennan County’s private jail since
2013.
The Tribune-Herald is not identifying the woman because she alleges she was
the victim of sexual assault. Ryan Horvath, an attorney for LaSalle in
Ruston, Louisiana, did not return phone messages left Thursday seeking
comment for this story. LaSalle Corrections operates 18 facilities in Texas,
Louisiana and Georgia, according to its website. The lawsuit, filed by Waco
attorney Bill Johnston, provides a historical perspective of private jail
operations in McLennan County dating to 1999, when CiviGenics
began operating the now-vacant downtown jail and later merged with Community
Education Centers in 2007. The suit says CiviGenics
did not live up to its promise to the county to house only low-risk offenders
and soon “smuggling and contraband into the CiviGenics-run
jail was commonplace.” ‘Reached a crescendo’ The smuggling and contraband
problems “reached a crescendo,” the suit alleges, in November 2001, when
guards smuggled a cellphone and jail key to inmate Sherman Fields. Fields
escaped from the jail and kidnapped and murdered his former girlfriend, Suncerey Coleman. Fields is now on federal death row.
Because of that incident, officials at the private jail were aware of the
“dangerous consequences of the loss of institutional control” over the
facility, the suit claims. “Negligent acts in jails often lead to intentional
acts and to peril,” the suit says. ”To the defendant, this was foreseeable,
if not predictable, by the fall of 2013.” When CEC took over, “although the
name changed, many of the faces were the same,” according to the suit.
“Employees who had been working at the infamous downtown Waco facility from
which Sherman Fields had escaped began to work at the new facility located on
State Highway 6 south of Waco,” the suit alleges. When LaSalle took over,
many of the same employees and training practices remained in place. “The
history of negligence included all manner of misdeeds, from the smuggling of
contraband, poor training and supervision of employees and sexual misconduct
by employees,” according to the lawsuit. Items allowed to be smuggled
included food, cellphones, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine and other drugs,
including painkillers, the suit claims. Those practices led to the repeated
sexual assault of the plaintiff, the suit alleges. “For a fee, to be paid to
the guard or his outside contact, an inmate could receive smuggled goods and
contraband, or could arrange to have sex with another inmate,” the suit
claims. “Significant sums of money were extorted from the plaintiff and her
family by employees of the defendant. The plaintiff’s mother was actually
instructed to meet and pay extortion payments to employees of the defendant
so that they would smuggle items into the facility or otherwise treat the
plaintiff favorably — or not punish her.” John Spears, a LaSalle correctional
officer, was arrested for having improper sexual relations with the plaintiff
in this case in December 2013, according to the lawsuit. His felony case
remains pending in 19th State District Court. “Female inmates were subjected
to an environment of frequent sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and even
sexual assault,” the lawsuit alleges. “The misconduct of the employees of the
defendant led to a sexually exploitative environment at the Jack Harwell
Detention Center.”
Jan
28, 2015 nbcdfw.com
A
former corrections officer at a privately run prison in Central Texas has
pleaded guilty to having sex with an inmate she was guarding. Melissa Suzanne
Corona of Waco pleaded guilty Monday to having an improper sexual
relationship with an inmate. Prosecutors in Waco have recommended probation
for Corona in a plea deal on the state jail felony charge. The 25-year-old
Corona formerly worked at the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco.
Investigators say Corona in 2013 began the relationship by kissing a male
inmate more than 10 times. She then had improper contact through the bars
while both were clothed, followed by entering the man's cell and performing
sex acts on him. Corona was indicted last March. Further details on the
inmate weren't immediately available.
Aug
29, 2013 wacotrib.com
McLennan
County officials said the 200 detainees U. S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement promised to the county’s private jail didn’t come. Chief
Sheriff’s Deputy Matt Cawthon said ICE told the county the detainees would be
delivered to the Jack Harwell Detention Center on Highway 6 at the end of
July, but none arrived. Harwell warden James Duke said he has offered 300 of
the center’s 833 beds to the federal agency, but he doesn’t know when to
expect them to be filled. “The thing with immigration is this facility is
only an overflow facility. So basically, we can’t expect (detainees) unless
(ICE) needs us for overflow beds, and there’s no way we can predict that,” he
said. “Dealing with (ICE), it’s got to be on their time and on their need.”
Duke said the Harwell center could receive inmates if the five San Antonio
ICE district facilities were filled. LaSalle Corrections, a private company,
took over the Harwell center in May from New Jersey-based Community Education
Centers Inc. because of LaSalle’s reputation for bringing federal inmates to
their facilities, County Judge Scott Felton said. LaSalle’s contract with the
county is three years with the option of an additional two years. LaSalle
managing member Billy McConnell said the company is losing money on the
Harwell contract. He said if there are not enough federal, state or county
inmates to fill the facility, the company would evaluate whether Harwell is
worth keeping open. But McConnell said that isn’t a consideration until the
last year of the contract, and the company meanwhile is actively pursuing
ways to fill its beds. The Harwell center needs the revenue from housing
about 650 inmates for it to cover its bills, McConnell said. Precinct 4 Comissioner Ben Perry said there are about 350 county
inmates now at Harwell. Revenue earned at Harwell first goes to paying down
the county’s $49 million bond. Perry said LaSalle pays about $4.2 million
toward the bond and its interest per year. This delay in housing any federal
detainees continues to strain the county’s budget as it pays for overflow
inmates. The county can house about 931 inmates at the McLennan County Jail
on Highway 6 and when it’s at full capacity, additional inmates stay at the
Harwell center. Perry said if LaSalle could bring in enough inmates to fill
Harwell, then the county’s overflow inmates would go to the county’s downtown
jail, which is closed. LaSalle also would manage the downtown jail if the
Harwell center were full, but the county would get a discount on its overflow
prisoners housed there, Perry said. It costs the county $51 a day to house
prisoners at the McLennan County Jail on Highway 6, and it pays LaSalle
$45.50 a day for prisoners to stay at the Harwell facility. ICE would pay
LaSalle $55 day to house its detainees at the Harwell facility. The county
has spent $2.2 million more than its $3 million 2013 budget for overflow
prisoners, Perry said. County Auditor Stan Chambers said in previous budget
sessions the money allotted for inmate care and indigent defense is enough to
cover July and August, but he is combing the budget to look for excess to pay
September’s bills. At the end of July, there was only about $785,000 left in
contingency, he said. “You need to be very careful about your decisions going
forward because we’re going to need that to fund these two line items,” he
said.
January
30, 2013 wacotrib.com
McLennan
County Commissioner Lester Gibson said Tuesday he remains committed to
finishing repairs at the county’s shuttered downtown Waco jail, arguing the
county has spent too much money on the facility not to reopen it.
Gibson
also said he was tired of keeping a private jail operator “afloat” by
continuing to house inmates from the downtown jail at the Jack Harwell
Detention Center on East Marlin Highway. The operator, New Jersey-based
Community Education Centers Inc., has failed to adequately market the Harwell
center to other entities, making it increasingly dependent on county inmates
to fill beds, he said. The county has spent more than $1.2 million to
renovate the 34-year-old downtown Waco jail, which has been closed since
2010. Rod Aydelotte / Waco Tribune-Herald, file Past agreements to house
inmates from Dallas and Harris counties failed to produce results, Gibson
said. “It’s my opinion that we have burdened ourselves as well as taxpayers
by keeping CEC afloat,” Gibson said during a commissioners
court meeting. Commissioners must decide by this summer whether to renew the
county’s contracts with CEC, which operates the Harwell center and houses
overflow inmates from the county-run McLennan County Jail on State Highway 6.
CEC also is under contract to run the downtown jail, but commissioners voted
in June 2010 to close the facility and transfer inmates to the new Harwell
center. Company representatives did not attend the meeting. In a statement,
spokesman Charles M. Seigel said the company had “spared no expense” in its
efforts to market the facility and fill beds. “However, it is a well-known
fact that over the last several years nationwide prisoner populations have
been declining,” Seigel said. “However, it should also be noted that the
county’s inmate population has been increasing, from an average of 100 to 375
in the past 18 months. CEC remains committed to working with our county
partners in achieving our mutual goals.” The county has spent more than $1.2
million to renovate the 34-year-old downtown jail, and commissioners hoped to
reopen it this year to help ease a budget crisis fueled in part by overflow
inmate housing costs. But County Judge Scott Felton cast doubt on that plan
last week after learning that the jail’s smoke evacuation system needed
potentially costly updates to pass a state inspection. Depending on the cost,
commissioners may want to wait to spend the money until they have a use for
the downtown jail, Felton said. Felton elaborated Tuesday, saying the
county’s current contract with CEC lets the company decide where to house the
county’s overflow inmates. Plenty of beds are vacant at the Harwell center,
so the company probably wouldn’t move inmates downtown if the jail were open,
he said. The 816-bed Harwell center was about 65 percent full Monday, with
410 of the 528 inmates coming from McLennan County. The percentage of county
inmates there has been as low as 25 percent but jumped to between 60 percent
and 80 percent in recent weeks as the federal inmate population declined,
Felton said. Commissioner Kelly Snell said the county should stop sending
inmates from the downtown jail to the Harwell center when the contracts with
CEC expire in June. “That was supposed to be a temporary thing,” Snell said.
“I think the temporary time is up. We need to get our people over here (to
the downtown jail).” Snell echoed Gibson’s critique that CEC had failed to
market the Harwell center to win other housing contracts. Felton disagreed,
saying the company has struggled because the jail industry is overbuilt
nationally. “We need to keep talking about it, keep it in front of us and
look for solutions,” Felton said. “But also, let’s be aware of what the
(business) environment is out there.” The $49 million Harwell center was
built by the McLennan County Public Facility Corp., a governing body formed
by the county to issue revenue bonds without creating a debt liability for
the county. Commissioners transferred inmates from the downtown jail to the
Harwell center so revenue earned from housing them could be applied to the
bond debt. The public facility corporation has met its scheduled bond
payments so far, in large part because the county houses so many inmates at
the Harwell center, County Auditor Stan Chambers said. “So
you could say that our inmates located in the Jack Harwell center are right
now what’s helping to make the bond payments,” he said. In essence, that
means taxpayers are helping to pay the bonds, since the county pays overflow
inmate housing costs through its property tax-supported general fund,
Chambers said.
June 14, 2010 Waco Tribune
After four months of sitting idle, the county’s new jail is finally beginning
to take in inmates. Community Education Centers, the New Jersey-based company
managing the jail, will begin moving about 300 inmates from the downtown jail
to the 816-bed Jack Harwell Detention Center today. About 100 Harris County
inmates also will be transferred to the new jail this week. CEC Warden Mike
Wilson said it will take three to four days to transfer all the inmates. Up
to 50 inmates will be moved at a time — about 100 per day — using three vans
and two buses. “You have to get them all booked in and classified correctly
so that they are placed in the right wing, and that takes some time,” Wilson
said. “You can only process so many in a day.” In the weeks leading up to the
official opening, CEC staff focused on small details to make sure everything
runs smoothly today. The staff prepared hundreds of “bedrolls” — a
pillowcase, sheet, face towel and washcloth rolled into one — that will be
given to the inmates at booking. Jailers also hand-numbered each rubber
pillow and mattress for the beds to track them. One of the eight-bed cells
was laid out as a model setup, from the bed essentials to an unopened box of
checkers, dominoes and deck of cards stacked neatly on the dining table.
Yellow logbooks are stacked on a monitoring desk in the central hallway for
jailers to record interaction with inmates and the operation of the jail. Maintenance
workers also were busy getting the building in shape, from routine cleaning
to installing napkin dispensers in the medical exam rooms. “There’s a lot of
little things that we have to think about and take care of before we open,”
Wilson said. Organization has been the key. Everything from office and
cleaning supplies to jailer radios and cell keys is arranged in neat rows for
easy access and use, a system Wilson plans to keep in place after the jail
begins operations. “That’s the best way to keep up with everything and make
sure we have what we need,” Wilson said. The jail also received some extra
protection for a smooth opening. Wilson said a group of local pastors toured
the jail and visited the chapel where church services will be held, then blessed
the facility. Opening delays -- The Jack Harwell Detention Center jail was
finished in February. The jail originally was planned to help solve
overcrowding issues and an expanding female inmate population at the
neighboring McLennan County Jail, plus earn additional revenue from housing
state and federal prisoners. But the county’s jail population is now below
its maximum capacity of 931, and federal agencies are pulling back plans to
house inmates in local facilities. The facility was counting on that revenue
to repay $49 million in bonds that financed the jail’s construction,
potentially putting the county’s bond rating at risk if the payments could
not be made. The county voted last month to temporarily shut down the
downtown jail and transfer the inmates to the Harwell center. The move allows
CEC to use the money taken in for housing inmates at the downtown jail — $3.5
million in the 2009 fiscal year — and apply it to the debt on the new jail.
The county made roughly $700,000 on the housing contracts in fiscal 2009. It
also means the county would miss as much as $71,000 in net monthly earnings
from its share in the housing agreements for the downtown facility. CEC also
agreed to pay the county $40,000 for each month the downtown jail is closed.
The move is in effect only through Dec. 31 or until the Harwell center
reaches 90 percent capacity, whichever comes first. After that, CEC is
expected to move inmates back to the downtown facility.
June 6, 2010 Waco Tribune-Herald
The county soon may have to pony up $1.1 million for some long-needed
improvements to the downtown jail. Most of the equipment in the jail, which
is operated by New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, was first
installed when the county built the facility in mid-1970s. CEC Warden Mike
Wilson said while the detention company performs about $60,000 annually in
equipment and building maintenance, some of the materials in the jail are
nearly obsolete. “The problem we’re running into with the doors and the
control system is getting replacement parts,” Wilson said. “They’re no longer
commercially available. They no longer manufacture them.” Wilson said CEC has
been using old locks the county had on hand to replace defunct doors in the
jail, but few of those remain. Replacing the 129 doors and locks securing
inmate cells and installing 10 new control panels is the most expensive
project, carrying a $668,473 price tag. Other major work includes replacing
four old elevators, a $298,436 expense; installing a new intercom system;
upgrading the kitchen ceiling and equipment; and replacing the fire system.
Wilson submitted the proposed projects to the sheriff’s office last week.
McLennan County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Randy Plemons discussed the work list
in a budget work session with the county commissioners. The commissioners
court is reviewing major capital projects that it may fund next year to begin
shaping the 2011 fiscal-year budget. Divvying up costs -- The court was split
on whether the county has to pay for the upgrades, because the jail belongs
to the county, or whether CEC should be responsible for some of the repairs.
“We need to sit down and look item by item and decide if we need to do it,
they need to do it, or whatever,” County Judge Jim Lewis said in the budget
work session. One key issue is whether the housing agreement with CEC places
the responsibility for such repairs on the detention company. The contract
the county signed with CEC in October 2003 states that at the end of the
lease, the company “shall return the facility to the county in the same
condition as when leased, normal wear, tear and depreciation excepted.”
However, the most recent agreement signed in November 2008 does not include
that provision. None of the commissioners was aware of the change prior to
the meeting. It was not clear, both in court and meeting minutes, who drafted
the contracts and why the changes were made. Clause and effect -- “I assumed
it was the same contract that we had been renewing and renewing for the past
10 years (since CEC first began managing the jail),” Commissioner Ray Meadows
said. “We probably need to look at that and get at our attorney and see why
it was changed like that.” Commissioner Lester Gibson said even if the
original clause was still in effect, the county is responsible for these
major repairs to the downtown jail. Wilson said the county has not discussed
whether CEC would have to pitch in for some of the repairs. He said CEC
already took care of some upgrades on its own, such as replacing a nonworking
surveillance system and upgrading a portion of the intercom system. CEC is
moving the inmates from the downtown jail to the county’s new Jack Harwell
Detention Center on June 14, along with an estimated 100 Harris County
inmates.
May 14, 2010 KXXV
McLennan County's new Jack Harwell detention facility was completed in
February of this year, but now its 816 beds remain empty. The solution is to
transfer the entire population of the downtown jail to the brand new
facilities on Highway 6. The move is aimed to attract more outside contracts
to send inmates to the Harwell facility, and at the same time begin
generating revenue from the new jail in order to begin paying back the $49
million in bonds it cost to build. But it also means losing revenue generated
by the downtown jail; revenue which goes to the county's general fund, and belongs to the taxpayers. Ken Witt, president of
the McLennan County Sheriff's Office Association, says the action doesn't do
anything to create new revenue. "It's not going to matter whether you
transfer the downtown out there or just pay it straight. It's going to be the
money that was originally already generated and it's not going to be new
money," Witt said. Community Education Centers, the company charged with
managing the jail, has agreed to pay the county $40,000 a month to mitigate
the nearly $60,000 in revenue the downtown jail was earning. But some, like
TEA Party member Marie McClellan, are afraid the agreement is too complex for
taxpayers to understand. "This is our money. I'm not certain who
authorized this and where this is going. Is this a business venture? Are the
taxpayers on the hook for this? If they can't find the population who pays
for this, eventually?," McClellan said. The
Harwell unit will have until December to reach 90 percent occupancy, about
734 inmates, before the downtown jail can be reopened and begin generating
revenue once more. But what happens if the beds still aren't filled? Precinct
One commissioner Kelly Snell, who voted against the action, says it's time
for a Plan B. "Not only have we spent $49 million, but now we're getting
less money than we projected to get to start with. Now we really need to get
an exit plan, because like I said today, what happens if this don't work?," Snell said. McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis
told News Channel 25 by phone that Harris county and a dozen other entities
have already pledged to send inmates to the new jail, and he hopes to have
both jails full and making money within a few months.
May 6, 2010 Waco Tribune-Herald
The county’s treasurer is concerned taxpayers could be forced to repay
construction bonds on the new jail if the company hired to run it cannot.
While the company that evaluates the credit risks of proposed bonds agrees
with this view, confusion remains among county officials over whether the
county will have to pay for a facility that was to be built at no cost to
taxpayers. The Jack Harwell Detention Center was built using $49 million in
project revenue bonds issued by the McLennan County Public Facility Corp., a
seven-member board that includes the county commissioners court. Community
Education Centers of New Jersey, the private detention company contracted to
manage the jail, agreed to repay the bonds using revenue from housing state
and federal inmates. CEC has not lined up any housing agreements, and the
jail remains empty. Bill Helton, county treasurer and member of the public
facility corporation, said the situation raises the question of whether the
county is responsible for the debt if housing revenue cannot cover the bond
payments. The jail belongs to the county and is operated by CEC. “If you
borrow money, you’re expected to pay it back,” Helton said. “The PFC has
indeed borrowed money here by selling the bonds, and I anticipate that the
bondholders are going to want to be repaid.” A matter of obligation -- The
responsibility of repaying the bonds hinges on what party is legally
obligated to pay the debt. The bond document was prepared by investment
banking firm Municipal Capital Markets and outlines the construction project,
projected revenues from the jail and bond repayment schedule for potential
investors. Helton said some language in the bond documents implies that the
county has promised to assist with the debt. In the “risk factors” section of
the bond documents, it states that “the county presently intends to
appropriate other available money of the county, if necessary,” to make the
bond payments. County attorney Herbert Bristow said the county is not legally
obligated to repay the bonds. He points to language in the bond documents
that states the county is not required “to appropriate any money for payment
of its obligations under the lease.” The county only has to budget funds each
year to pay for any county inmates that are housed at the new jail, Bristow
said. He added that the commissioners court could choose yearly to budget
money to help repay the bonds. “It is so crystal clear to me, and it is
crystal clear to the bondholders, that the obligation to appropriate (county)
funds is a discretionary call for the commissioners to make, period,” Bristow
said. But James Breeding, director of Standard & Poors
Rating Services in Dallas, said the bond documents imply that the county
would cover bond payments if housing revenues fell short. “The way the
documents were structured and the way we rated it was that the county would
step in with other funds, if necessary,” he said. Public finance cushion --
By design, the PFC was created to add some level of protection to the county
from the debt. Governmental entities may form public facility corporations to
issue debt for a project without having to gain voters’ approval in a bond
election, according to Kent Gilbreath, Baylor University economics professor.
The arrangement also helps shield the county from officially carrying the
debt on its books. “It is not an indebtedness of the county, and thus the
amount of indebtedness of the county is not increased,” said Gilbreath, a
former board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “The higher the
indebtedness of the county or the city, generally the lower their bond
ratings would be.” Risk ratings -- The rating attached to new bonds signals
how risky the investment would be to potential bond purchasers. Standard
& Poors Rating Services gave the McLennan
County Public Facility Corp. a AA- rating for the
jail project. The company cited McLennan County’s tax base, previous
financial performance, and low debt load as evidence of the project’s
“general trustworthiness” and “rating stability.” Gilbreath said the county’s
rating was used to show investors that the bonds were secure investments. “If
I’m going to buy one of those bonds, I’m not just going to look at the entity
that’s issuing it,” Gilbreath said. “I’m going to look at the deep pockets
behind it, and thereby make a more informed decision about the credit
worthiness of the bonds I’m buying.” Breeding said if the project goes into
default, the county’s bond rating in future projects would be affected. CEC
is still working to find inmates to fill the beds. The company is negotiating
a contract to house Harris County prisoners. CEC also intends to apply for a
housing contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons that will be awarded
later this summer. CEC Senior Vice President Peter Argeropulos
wrote in a letter Monday to the county that it needs at least 525 inmates in
the jail to produce enough revenue for operating and debt costs. Argeropulos told commissioners previously that CEC would
not open the jail until it was guaranteed enough inmates to cover its
expenses. While CEC has money on hand to make its debt payment in June,
revenue is needed for the next $1.9 million payment due in December. U.S.
Bank National Association is trustee of the bonds. The bank collects interest
payments made from the public facility corporation and distributes them to
bondholders. The bank will also be responsible for pursuing payment if the
bonds go into default. Bristow said the bonds would only go into default in a
“doomsday scenario” in which no prisoners are ever placed in the jail. The
reserve fund provides at least one year of cushion for CEC to secure housing
agreements, Bristow said. County Judge Jim Lewis said if payments were not
covered by housing revenues, the bondholders would simply have lost their
investment. “It’s like if you were to buy stock in General Motors for $10,
and then the price of the stock drops to $1, then that’s your loss,” Lewis
said. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Bonds work similar to that.” Helton said
while he hopes the county will not have to pay the bonds, it is difficult to
believe that all the parties can walk away from the debt if revenues aren’t
generated. “If somebody walks up to you and says ‘Here, you can borrow this
money, but if things don’t work out you don’t have to pay it back,’ it just
doesn’t sound right,” Helton said. “I believe our legal counsel is a skilled
attorney, and I hear what he’s saying, and I look on the other side, and I
understand it, too, but the two — I can’t reconcile that in my own mind.” Court
opinion split -- Members of the commissioners court
have different views on how much protection the county has from the debt.
Commissioner Kelly Snell, who was not on the court at the time that the jail
project was approved, said Bristow repeatedly assured him the county would
not be responsible for the debt. “He is the attorney that represents the
county. You gotta kind of go with your legal
representation,” Snell said. “If they tell you ‘this is what it is’ then that
should be it.” However, Commissioner Joe Mashek
said despite Bristow’s assertions, he has wondered how the county would be
able to evade liability for the debt if CEC defaulted on repayment. “If we do
not do it, we lose the jail, we lose the property, and our bond rating goes
down so bad that we won’t be able to get any loans anymore,” Mashek said. “I feel, and I think Bill (Helton) does,
too, that even though we may not to be responsible for these bonds, it would
probably be in the best interest of the county to go ahead and pay the debt.”
May 2, 2010 Waco Tribune-Herald
McLennan County commissioners are split on whether to help a private
detention company locate inmates to fill the vacant new jail. Community
Education Centers of New Jersey has been unable to secure any contracts to
house inmates at the new 816-bed Jack Harwell Detention Center. Commissioner
Ray Meadows said he plans to tap into his contacts in other counties to see
if officials across the state would be willing to send inmates to the center.
“I’m going to continue to work on that,” Meadows said. “I’ve been saying to
folks, ‘We’ve got jail space, boys, if you need it.’ It’s a good situation
for both (CEC and the county) to get that thing open — the quicker the
better.” Meadows said he spoke with other county commissioners during a state
conference Friday to gauge their need for detention beds. Meadows and County
Judge Jim Lewis accompanied CEC officials to a meeting in Houston last week
to discuss housing Harris County inmates at the facility. But Commissioner
Lester Gibson said it is CEC’s responsibility to hunt for inmates, and the
county should not be involved in any housing negotiations. “Why should we be
involved? CEC is under the contractual obligation to provide (inmates),”
Gibson said. “We’ve built the facility, so we’ve done all that was expected
of us in the contract.” Funding for facility -- The $49 million in revenue
bonds that fund the project were issued by the McLennan County Public
Facility Corporation, a seven-member board that includes the commissioners
court. The board was formed to shield McLennan County from the responsibility
of repaying the debt, county attorney Herbert Bristow said. Lewis said
although the court cannot speak on behalf of CEC in housing talks, members do
have the ability to encourage prospective clients to consider using CEC’s
jails. The court approves all CEC contracts after the company completes
negotiations, Lewis said. “The county can’t speak for CEC, just like the CEC
can’t speak for the county,” Lewis said. “But all these years that we have
(worked with) CEC, whenever I’m at a state meeting or I run into somebody
from another county, I always say, ‘If you ever have an overflow, you can
send your inmates to our facility.’ ” Commissioner Joe Mashek,
who voted against the jail with Gibson, said he would not court contracts for
CEC. “I was told this thing was all set, and now things are turning in
another direction,” Mashek said. “I don’t know
what’s going on, so I’m not going to get involved with it. I hope it is
successful, even though I was against it, for the county’s sake.” Gibson said
if the court were to become involved in CEC’s housing negotiations, the
contract with CEC would have to be amended to give the county that authority.
That change would have to be approved by the court, he said. The
commissioners have all expressed concern about what will happen with the new
jail if CEC cannot fill the beds. CEC has $1.9 million on hand to make the
first payment on the bonds, due in June. However, future payments will
require revenue from housing inmates. CEC Senior Vice President Peter Argeropulos said the company would likely not open the
jail until it had 600 inmates. That population would produce enough revenue
to cover CEC’s operating expenses and meet debt payments, which are due every
six months. A reserve fund of $4 million would cover payments for about a
year, but it can only be accessed if the jail remains empty for an extended
period. Commissioner Kelly Snell, who was not on the court when the project
was approved, said there should have been provisions built into the contract
with CEC in case its housing projections were not met. “Getting in on the end
of the deal, after everything has pretty much been set on, I just couldn’t
believe there’s not an exit plan in place, or contingencies for if this does
happen, what would we do,” Snell said. “That’s something we should have had
to start with.”
April 23, 2010 Waco Tribune-Herald
The new jail on State Highway 6 has an impressively low detention population:
zero. The 816-bed Jack Harwell Detention Center officially was completed in
February. But Community Education Centers, the New Jersey-based detention
company under contract to manage and operate the jail, has been unable to
secure agreements with state and federal agencies to house inmates.
Meanwhile, CEC must begin repaying the $49 million in project revenue bonds
that financed the construction of the jail. The $313,000 monthly debt service
is to be paid using revenue from housing inmates, placing the company under a
crunch to fill beds. While funds already have been set aside for the first
payment of $1.9 million due in June, CEC must begin making revenue soon or
risk defaulting on the bonds. Doing so would mean the county loses the new
jail. CEC wants some relief from the county to cover the financial
obligation, but some commissioners say getting involved could end up costing
taxpayers. County Judge Jim Lewis, Commissioner Ray Meadows and former
Commissioner Wendall Crunk voted for the
construction of the new jail. Commissioners Lester Gibson and Joe Mashek voted against it. Fewer inmates -- Feasibility
studies conducted in 2008 showed the county would need 1,296 beds by the end
of this year, slightly above the combined 1,260 capacity between the McLennan
County Jail and the downtown jail. While the county faced severe overcrowding
in 2008, there were only 860 inmates in the county jail Thursday afternoon,
with 20 inmates at the CEC-run downtown jail. Peter Argeropulos,
CEC senior vice president, reported the dilemma to the McLennan County
Commissioners Court on Thursday. CEC began reaching out to agencies in the
fall only to find that few prison facilities were housing inmates outside
their facilities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example, scrapped
plans for a new fugitive apprehension unit in Waco. The Texas Department of
Criminal Justice began pulling its inmates from private detention centers in
August. “What we expected and what the studies had indicated have not
materialized at this point,” Argeropulos said.
Solutions debated -- One option Argeropulos
suggested was to close down the 329-bed downtown jail and transfer the staff
and inmates to the Jack Harwell Detention Center. The move would help CEC pay
debt service but also cause the county to lose as much as $400,000 from the
operation of the downtown jail. “Your plan’s not working, and it’s not
working because you can’t get the prisoners, so you’re coming to the court
wanting concessions that are going to cost the taxpayers money,” Commissioner
Kelly Snell said. “That’s where I have a problem.” CEC Warden Mike Wilson,
who oversees the downtown jail and would head the new jail, said moving the
inmates would help address safety concerns at the facility. “All of a sudden,
once you get a new car, that old car you got isn’t worth driving anymore,
that’s the bottom line,” Snell said. Argeropulos
also asked the court to temporarily waive an administrative fee of $2 per
inmate per day CEC is to pay to the county until revenue exceeds operation
costs. “I don’t see why the county has to be asked to bend over and do all
the compromise,” Gibson said. “I think that some of the burden should be upon
your side to do what you can to ease the burden.” Another option Argeropulos raised is to sign an interlocal agreement
with Harris County, which is battling serious overcrowding issues. Harris
County has transferred about 650 inmates to Newton County, with another 450
housed in Bowie County and 200 in Louisiana. CEC had a six-month agreement to
house 320 Harris County inmates that expired in February. But CEC did not get
any inmates during that period. Argeropulos said
Harris County was willing to pay only $45 per person per day to house inmates
at the Jack Harwell Detention Center, lower than the $54.50 rate CEC
originally expected. “Right now, it’s a buyers’ market,” Argeropulos
said. “As beds become vacant, people can become a little more
picky in terms of who they want to negotiate with and what’s the best
rate they can get.” Argeropulos said CEC intends to
apply for a bid to house federal inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is
expecting to need up to 3,000 beds later this year, a proposal that may
likely net higher housing revenue, he said. “It’s not a new revelation, it’s
been in newspapers nationwide that facilities are lacking prisoners,” Lewis
said. “It’s not an ideal situation, but anybody who’s been in this business
knows that there’s ups and downs on it. . . . The
population will go up not only here but nationwide. The industry just keeps
on growing.” Long-term outlook -- Still, Argeropulos
said CEC would not open the jail until it had secured enough inmates to
sufficiently cover the debt service and operational costs. The bond package
includes a $4 million reserve fund that will cover about a year of payments.
However, that fund can only be accessed if there are no inmates in the
facility, Argeropulos said. CEC exercised an escape
clause last month to pull out of managing Johnson County jails with one more
year to go on a three-year contract. Argeropulos
said Johnson County’s jail population had dropped by 25 percent, causing CEC
to lose money. Herbert Bristow, attorney for the county, said if CEC
defaulted on repaying the bonds, the county would not be liable to make
payments. The McLennan County Public Facility Corp., a seven-member board
including the commissioners court, issued the bonds in 2009. “It was done by
design to insulate the county,” Bristow said. “But the end result is if it’s
a doomsday deal, and we can’t find any prisoners to put in it . . . the
bondholders have the right to take the property back and get whatever value
there is in it.” Argeropulos said he would bring
the court a formal proposal for action later this month. Mashek
said the discussion reinforced the concerns he expressed in 2008 when he
voted against the new jail. “It looks like they’re trying to cover up
problems they’re having and wanting the county to bail them out, and I’m not
in a position to bail anybody out, especially CEC,” Mashek
said.
Jefferson County Downtown Jail
Beaumont, Texas
GEO Group (formerly Correctional Service Corporation), NaphCare
Dec
16, 2016 kfdm.com
Supervisor at private jail convicted in federal court of providing cell
phone to prisoner
From U.S. Attorney's Office-A jury has found a 43-year-old Beaumont,
Texas man guilty of federal violations in the Eastern District of Texas,
announced Acting U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston today. Donald Roy Kelly was
found guilty by a jury of providing a prison inmate with a prohibited object
and bribery of a public official following a three-day trial before U.S.
District Judge Marcia Crone. The jury reached its verdict around 6:30 pm on
Dec. 14, 2016. According to information presented in court, Kelly was an
evening shift supervisory corrections officer at the LaSalle Unit (downtown
Jefferson County jail) in late 2014 and early 2015. Juan Saenz-Tamez, then leader of the Gulf Cartel was brought to the
LaSalle Unit pending his trial for federal drug trafficking offenses in
October 2014. Once at the LaSalle Unit and in the custody of Kelly, Saenz-Tamez was approached by Kelly and corruptly offered a
cell phone to the inmate in exchange for money. Kelly engaged other
individuals to assist him in the scheme. A cell phone was purchased by
another individual and given to Kelly who provided it to Saenz-Tamez. Additionally, fast food was brought into the
LaSalle Unit at Kelly’s direction for Saenz-Tamez.
Saenz-Tamez had individuals attempt money transfers
to Kelly in payment for his corrupt acts. Ultimately the cell phone was
seized from Saenz-Tamez on Jan. 3, 2015. Kelly was
indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2016. Under federal statutes, Kelly
faces up to 15 years in federal prison at sentencing. The maximum statutory
sentence prescribed by Congress and is provided here for information
purposes, as the sentencing will be determined by the court based on the
advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. A sentencing
hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation
by the U.S. Probation Office. This case was investigated by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, and the Drug
Enforcement Administration. This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S.
Attorneys John Craft and Christopher T. Tortorice.
February 19, 2010 Beaumont Enterprise
Jefferson County officials will discuss today how to get a new private
company to operate the vacant downtown Beaumont jail at the courthouse. Jeff Branick, assistant to Jefferson County Judge Ron Walker,
said county officials plan to discuss how they will to seek bids from private
companies who might want to utilize the empty jail. The jail closed at the
end of last year after operator Geo Group Inc. terminated its contract with
the county to run the jail. A month before the group pulled out of its
contract, it signed an agreement that would have allowed Jefferson County to
house about 400 of Harris County's overflow inmates. That contract was
estimated then to be worth $2.5 million. Branick
said if the county gets another jail operator it could reopen discussions
with Harris County and with other agencies who might be interested in using
the jail.
November 12, 2009 KBMT 12
The private company that operated a downtown Beaumont jail facility has
ended it's contract with
Jefferson County. Officials say the facility has been temporarily closed. The
Geo Group announced the move on Monday, November 9, 2009 and county officials
are now seeking bids for a replacement company. The jail has earned the
county more than a million dollars a year in revenue, and sheriff Woods says
there could be repercussions for a county contract to house Harris County
inmates.
September 15, 2009 Beaumont
Enterprise
Jefferson County has less than 60 days to find an operator for the jail at
the courthouse in Beaumont if it wants to keep a contract to house Harris
County prisoners. The contract, signed last month, called for Jefferson
County to house about 400 of Harris County's overflow inmates in the downtown
Beaumont jail at the courthouse. The jail operator, Geo Group Inc., was to
charge Harris County $42.50 per inmate per day. Of that money, Jefferson
County was to receive $9 for each inmate per day. The total contract was
estimated to be worth $2.5 million. Geo notified the county last week that in
60 days it will terminate its contract to run the jail. Room for the Harris
County inmates was available after the state removed inmates it housed in
Beaumont as beds were made available in state facilities. The moving of state
inmates left the downtown Beaumont jail "grossly overstaffed" and
in a "very negative cash flow," Rugg said. The decision leaves the
100 Geo Group guards without jobs and the Harris County inmates nowhere to go
in Jefferson County.
October 19, 2007 KFDM
A federal jury has ruled in favor of Jefferson County and two other
defendants in a lawsuit filed by a former inmate. 47 year old Ronnie Tejeda
filed the lawsuit against the county, NaphCare,
Inc., the health-care provider at the county jail, and GEO Group, which
manages the private jail downtown. Tejeda claimed a lack of medical care at
the county jail, and an attack against him at the private jail, caused
medical problems and injuries that led to the amputation of his legs. The
plaintiffs argued Tejeda's health problems led to the amputations. County
Attorney Tom Rugg tells KFDM News he's gratified by the jury's decision.
"It was the single most significant lawsuit I've tried in 20 years in
terms of the potential impact on the county," said Rugg. "If we'd
lost, it would have cost the county multiple millions of dollars." Rugg
said it was a tragic set of circumstances that cost Tejeda his legs, but Rugg
says the plaintiffs believed all along Tejeda had been treated appropriately.
October 17, 2007 The Enterprise
Sheriff Mitch Woods, testifying Tuesday in a civil trial against
Jefferson County and its jail health-care provider, declined to give an
opinion about renewing the provider's contract. Defense testimony began
Tuesday and could conclude today in Ronnie Tejada's civil lawsuit against the
county, health care provider NaphCare Inc. and the
private corrections company GEO Group. Tejada claims his leg amputations were
required because officials ignored his diabetes for the 10 months he was
awaiting trial on aggravated assault-family violence charges at the Jefferson
County jail on U.S. 69. The 47-year-old man was rushed to Beaumont's Christus
St Elizabeth Hospital in critical condition Oct. 5, 2005. Defense attorneys
have argued no evidence exists the defendants knew of Tejada's deteriorating
medical condition and chose to ignore it. "Every time Mr. Tejada put in
a request he was seen, we responded to every complaint that he had," NaphCare's health services administrator for the jail, Dyni Brookshire, testified Tuesday. Documents shown to
jurors indicate Tejada filed at least eight requests for medical treatment.
Medical experts testifying for the plaintiffs have said jail medical
officials missed or ignored signs Tejada was suffering from uncontrolled
diabetes. When Tejada was admitted to the jail he told officials he had a
history of diabetes but was not taking medication for the condition. An
economist who testified Tuesday by deposition said lost earning capacity
resulting from Tejada's amputations, combined with lifetime medical and
housing costs, amounted to between about $4 million and $5.1 million dollars.
The man's medical bills since he left the jail amount to $1,182,558.28.
Tejada's attorneys have tried to prove the county should have known of NaphCare's alleged shortcomings, introducing evidence of
two inmates who died of diabetic complications in the years before Tejada's
hospitalization. "When you learned of this, did you suggest against
renewing NaphCare's contract?" Tejada's
attorney Jan Fox asked the sheriff, referring to the two deaths. "No
ma'am," Woods said. Woods, the only witness called by Jefferson County
Assistant District Attorney Tom Rugg, said he did not learn of Tejada's
condition until he was reached by the inmate's ex-wife after guards rebuffed
her attempts to visit Tejada in the hospital. She eventually was granted
limited visitation. Under questioning from Fox, Woods said the county did not
review the circumstances leading to Tejada's hospitalization or revise
procedures to prevent such an event from recurring. NaphCare,
the firm the county has paid about $12 million for providing jail health care
since 2002, is seeking to renew its contract with the county. Jefferson
County commissioners on Oct. 1 granted a one-month extension to review
proposals from NaphCare and other providers. Fox
appeared incredulous when Woods said he had not given commissioners his
opinion on renewing the contract. "I will have some recommendations at a
later time," Woods said. "Are you waiting to see what these people
decide?" Fox asked Woods, gesturing to the jury. "No ma'am,"
the sheriff said.
August 10, 2007 Beaumont Enterprise
A corrections officer accused of trying to bring vodka into the downtown
Beaumont jail was indicted Thursday by a Jefferson County grand jury. Roy Lee
Cooper Jr., 22, who had not been arrested Thursday, told a Jefferson County
investigator the alcohol was for personal use and not for an inmate,
according to a probable cause affidavit. Lt. Benjamin Solis with The GEO
Group, a private company that runs the jail at the Jefferson County
courthouse, found the alcohol July 10 after searching Cooper when he arrived
to work, a customary practice for corrections employees there. Solis found
cigarettes on Cooper during the search and while Cooper was returning the
cigarettes to his car, Solis noticed the seal on the guard's water bottle had
been broken. "Solis reported removing the cap and smelling the contents
of the bottle, which he described as smelling like 'vodka,'" according
to the affidavit signed by sheriff's Lt. Michael D. Pieper. Cooper, according
to the affidavit, told Pieper the half-liter water bottle was filled with a
half-and-half mixture of water and vodka.
July 3, 2007 KFDM TV
Just how realistic was the paper gun deputies say an inmate used to take at
least one hostage yesterday? Tonight we're getting our first look at what's
left of it. Authorities say 45-year-old Andre Leffebre
tore up the fake gun after a swat team surrounded the room where Leffebre was holed up yesterday morning. Authorities say
the inmate wrapped paper around batteries and used silver tape to make it
look like a real gun. In addition, Leffebre somehow
managed to get a cell phone that he also showed to authorities. It all
happened about 8:30 yesterday morning in a privately run jail inside the
Jefferson County courthouse. As Jennifer Heathcock
reports, some elected officials who work in the courthouse are repeating the
call for additional security. “Everybody in this office heard a different
story yesterday. Didn't know if they were supposed to evacuate. It was kind
of chaos yesterday,” says District Clerk Lolita Ramos. Chaos as people ran
out of the courthouse, and SWAT members ran in. No one knew why they were
evacuated from the building, but they did know they were scared. “It wasn't
in the courtrooms or in the jury impaneling room, but it does bring to light
this need that if something like this happens, it happens in an instant,”
says District Attorney Tom Maness.
July 2, 2007 KFDM TV
A federal inmate has given up after using a fake gun to take hostages in
the private jail in the courthouse building in downtown Beaumont. The inmate
is identifed as Andre Leffebre,
who is awaiting sentencing in connection with a September, 2004 robbery of
the Bank One on Dowlen Road in Beaumont. There have
been no injuries. The incident began unfolding at about 8:30 a.m. Monday. In
live reports from the scene, KFDM reporter Jessica Holloway spoke with law
enforcement officers, witnesses and former U.S. Attorney Bob Wortham. Law
enforcement officers have determined the inmate fashioned the gun out of
paper. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and Beaumont Police blocked off
the area while the search for the gun continued. Some courthouse employees
were told to remain in their offices while the search for the gun took place.
August 10, 2005 The Enterprise
Three guards at a privately managed downtown jail have been fired after
authorities decided their mistakes led to the escape last month of three
dangerous prisoners, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. The inmates were
recaptured within 25 hours of their July 10 escape. On Tuesday, the U.S.
Bureau of Prisons listed the men as being in custody at the Beaumont federal
penitentiary. Jefferson County Sheriff Mitch Woods, who ultimately controls
the jail managed by Correctional Services Corp., said CSC's internal
investigation pointed to human error in handling inmates as the cause of the
escape, as is often the case. The inmates - Todd Christian, David Lee Jackson
and Arzell Gulley - took advantage of their chance
to leave their floor of the jail and found an open gate when they arrived
downstairs, Woods said. The sliding gate had been left open in preparation
for the arrival of inmates, Woods said. Without the open gate, the prisoners
would not have been able to leave the jail, Woods said. The escape also
prompted meetings between the CSC warden and Beaumont police officials.
Beaumont Officer Carman Apple said police were unable to get color photos and
full information about the escapees immediately, which made for a less
effective search.
July 12, 2005 AP
Authorities have now captured all three federal prisoners who escaped from a
private jail in downtown Beaumont, police said. Todd Christian, 26, was
captured about 10:30 p.m. Monday after he knocked on the door of a home in
Beaumont's South Park section and asked to use the telephone. Beaumont
Officer Crystal Holmes, police spokeswoman, told Beaumont television station
KFDM that the homeowners managed to stall Christian until police
arrived. Arzell Gully, 34, was nabbed by
police at the Port of Beaumont seven minutes after the escape Sunday
night. The second inmate caught, David Jackson, 45, was arrested Monday
morning near a hospital in Beaumont after he was spotted by hospital security
guards, Holmes said. Jackson gave police a false name but was taken
into custody and later identified by the warden, Holmes said. The
inmates at Correctional Services Corp.'s jail used pepper spray and a shank
to overpower the guards, she said. All three men were federal inmates
awaiting trial who were involved in the killing of another prisoner in 1999.
Holmes said she did not have details about the killing and whether the
inmates had been convicted of other crimes.
Joe Corley Detention Center
Conroe, Texas
GEO Group
May
6, 2015 texasgopvote.com
The Real Story of the Joe Corley Jail We are in the midst of a
disagreement about the County Road Bond. We believe it is useful to revisit
the last major county project, what they were told and how that project was
handled to have an idea of what we as taxpayers are being asked to believe
about this road bond. That project was the Joe Corley Jail. The Jail, which
had been occupied since approximately August of 2008, entered the public
conscience when it did not have a sufficient amount of County Prisoners to
satisfy the IRS requirements for County Prisoner Occupancy to maintain the
tax exempt status of the bonds issued for its construction. In early 2013, it
was stated or implied that the Joe Corley had to have at least 30% occupancy
by County Prisoners by August. The Commissioner’s Court announced that
because of this situation, in order to not forfeit the favorable tax status,
they were exploring selling the Jail. We beleive in
the principle of Occam’s razor which says that the simplest solution is often
the best and started asking questions as to why they didn’t just transfer the
required amount of prisoners from the County Jail to Joe Corley. We received
explanations that Joe Corley was not configured to either have County
prisoners or configured to have both Federal and non-Federal Prisoners. That
because of this configuration problem, there was insufficient time between
January and August 2013 to reconfigure the Joe Corley to continue the
favorable tax status. At the time, we thought, “How could they miss this”? and
“Who missed this”? Since the Montgomery County Jail Financing Corporation
(MCJFC) was responsible for financing the Joe Corley, we expect that would be
the place where responsibility lay. In reality, the ultimate responsibility
rested with The Commissioner’s Court since the MCJFC was, by its Articles of
Incorporation, the members of the Court. We decided to look into it using the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). What we found was deeply disturbing. we came to the conclusion that the Court was either totally
incompetent or willingly entered into or were manipulated into a scheme to
benefit GEO, the operator of Joe Corley while the County owned it. They are
now the new owner of Joe Corley. This sordid tale begins with the County Jail
which at the time was approaching legal prisoner capacity. It was determined
that a second jail needed to be built which would handle the excess capacity
from the County Jail. We would use it for our overflow prisoners and any
excess capacity would be used by mainly Federal prisoners either from the US
Marshal or from Immigration (ICE). Concurrently, it was decided to pursue tax
favorable status for the Bonds that were to build the Joe Corley. In order to
get that status, the County/MCJFC would have to seek a letter ruling from the
IRS determining that the way the building was being used was not, in effect,
a “business enterprise”. That would mean being used for County needs and not
just to sell space to others who needed prison capacity. You will see that
this tax favorable status permitted a gradual filling of the Joe Corley by
County Prisoners. The First step for the County was to request from the IRS a
“Private Letter Ruling”. They do this by disclosing the planned usage of the
Joe Corley that would justify their getting tax favorable status. In this
September 2006 letter, the County and MCJFC requested through their
Attorneys, Fulbright Jaworski, that the IRS grant them this status based on
the following key representations: County’s rate of population growth will
continue. “County’s detention facilities are approaching maximum capacity”.
“County will enter into a development agreement…to construct…a detention
facility with approximately 1100 beds”. “The Jail will be constructed and
operated in accordance with both the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and
all federal prison standards. As a result of meeting these standards, the
Jail will be capable of housing BOTH LOCAL GOVERNMENTAL AND FEDERAL
PRISONERS”. (Emphasis O'Sullivan's) “During the first five years of the Jail,
County expects that federal prisoners will occupy an average of 70% of the
beds in the Jail …” “After this initial five-year operating period, County
expects that the number of County prisoners or prisoners of other local
governmental entities in County (“non-federal prisoners) housed in the Jail
will exceed 30% of the beds.” “…NO PORTION OF THE JAIL (emphasis
O'Sullivan's) will be designed or constructed to meet needs peculiar to the
housing of federal, as distinguished from non-federal prisoners.” “The Jail is
being financed to serve long-term needs of the County, and is not being
financed for a principal purpose of providing the Jail for use by the Federal
Agency”. “The principal purpose of providing the Jail is not for use by
Federal Agency, but rather to accommodate the expected future increases in
the number of county prisoners”. Please note the use of quotes. These
representations by the County to the IRS were taken directly from the
Fulbright Jaworski letter to the IRS. As you can see, the County never was in
the dark about the required County inmate population in the JCJ being at 30%
of the BEDS, that the facility was to be the additional jail capacity the
County needed for the future and the jail was always to be utilizable by both
County (Non-Federal) and Federal Prisoners. In other words, we were telling
the IRS that this is how we were going to do it and asked if it was
satisfactory to get a favorable tax status. Four months later, the IRS laid
out the acceptable representations made by the County to receive and maintain
that tax favorable status. The IRS apparently reached some agreement with the
County on changes to their representations in the Fulbright Letter. Here are
some of the key requirements set out in the IRS Letter Ruling: “To meet its
increasing demand for detention facilities, County will construct a new
detention facility within its borders.” “…to finance the construction costs
Facility as well as to purchase the land (NOTE: VERY IMPORTANT) on which
Facility will be located”. “Because Facility will be constructed and operated
in accordance with all State and federal prison standards, facility will be
able to house local government prisoners and federal prisoners”. “At the time
construction of Facility is completed and Facility is placed in service,
County expects that County prisoners or prisoners of the local government
entities (the’ non-federal prisoners’) will occupy at least 30% of Facility
BEDS (emphasis O'Sullivan's). (NOTE: Day one of the operation of JCJ required
330 County and non-federal prisoners. It’s percentage of beds - not prisoners
- which is determinant.) After Facility’s first five years of operation,
County expects that federal prisoners will occupy less than 50% of the beds”.
That means August of 2013. (NOTE: This number goes down to less than 10%
before expiration of the 20 year bond.) “County represents that Facility is
being constructed to serve the long-term needs of County, and is not being
constructed for a principal purpose of providing the Facility for use by
Federal Agency”. “The ruling contained in this letter is based upon
information and representations submitted by County and accompanied by a
penalty of perjury statement executed by an appropriate party”. Item #7
certifies that the County knew exactly their responsibility to always have
dual use of the JCJ by Federal and County prisoners and that on day one they
needed to have 330 County and “non-federal” prisoners in the Joe Corley. To
our knowledge, if there has ever been a County or “Non-federal” prisoner in the
JCJ, they have been few and far between. Why ignore the IRS Agreement? Well,
if you never intended to keep the Joe Corley Jail for future growth in jail
population, saying “The IRS made me sell it,” works as well as anything else.
Even though compelling the County to sell it was never the case with the IRS.
Why would you deliberately not keep the Joe Corley? Answer, someone else
wanted it. Earlier, in the IRS letter Item #2 above, we talked about the
importance of the purchase of the land where the Joe Corley was to be built.
The County purchased it from someone who most assuredly wanted to build a
prison on it. However, this was a private company. It did not have the
advantage of being a government entity. This would introduce the concept of
“Not in my Back Yard” or NIMBY where local interests prevent the introduction
of something undesirable to their community. A private jail would have to
overcome resistance from the public to put a private jail near the County
Jail. This would be a Jail which would not serve County needs but house
prisoners often not from Montgomery County. That land was owned by GEO. When
the smoke cleared after the County’s failure to live up to the bargain with
the IRS that they themselves constructed, GEO owned the Jail that they wanted
on the land where they intended it to be constructed. On top of that - and
this is a big Plus for GEO - they were granted a commitment of
non-obstruction to build another Jail on other land near the Joe Corley that
they had quietly purchased recently. Again, this Jail would likely have few
Montgomery County prisoners or even Texas prisoners. This means that we will
have two additional jails that we did not need or likely would not want in
Conroe. Was there an alternative solution to selling the Joe Corley to GEO
and what would be the cost? The County could have elected to lose the “Tax
Exempt” status of the Bonds. To do so would involve a payment to the
Bondholders due to loss of that status as they would have to pay taxes on the
interest received from the bonds where they don’t now. We inquired what that
amount was and submitted a FOIA request for that purpose. He does not have
the exact figures yet but he has been told by someone who would know that it
was less than $10 Million and perhaps even less than $5 Million. The reason
for the difference is it would have to be determined whether they had to pay
from August 2013 forward or from the initial issuance of the Bonds in 2008.
These Bondholders were not individuals but Institutions. The Bonds were sold
on the Private Market not the Public one. These were big players. If the
County lost the “Tax Exempt” status, the prisoner mix could be anything they
wanted in the two County jails. We would have retained the Joe Corley.
Instead of opting for this less than $10 Million penalty, they decided to
sell the Joe Corley which gives the County the need to build a new jail to
handle their prison over capacity. It also gives the County two more jails
owned by GEO holding roughly 2500 mostly non-County inmates. What is the cost
of the new jail we have to build? The County went out to get estimates and
selected and hired a consultant, Broaddus Planning, to produce those
estimates. Though we don't know, we would suspect, that this consultant knew
something about building jails to currently required specifications. Broaddus
quoted two numbers. One number was to build the County Jail up by adding more
floors. The second was to build an entirely new jail at a new location which
would hold all County prisoners including those currently in the County Jail.
To do it either way, they advised, would cost approximately $200 Million. Now
County Leadership is protesting this number as too high. They may think this
Consultant is incompetent to come up with this figure. However, it would be
their vetted, “incompetent” consultant. Until there is a new number issued by
a different source with more competence, this is the only prudent cost that
can be used. On top of that you would have to pay the interest on the bonds.
There is one more “Wild Card” in all of this. Only the County Sheriff as
“Keeper of the Jail” can determine the acceptability of a jail where he is
responsible for County Prisoners. The Court cannot compel him to move
prisoners. Not securing his pre-approval of the Joe Corley mixed use deal was
either incompetent or par for the course. The choices for the Court were
clear. On the one hand you could absorb the less than $10 Million it would
cost to continue operating the Joe Corley as presently run and transition it
to all County Prisoners over the next twenty years OR, choose the option that
favored GEO. That option included two GEO run private jails with few County
Prisoners and building a new Jail at the current cost of $200 Million plus
interest. They chose the GEO option. Earlier we talked about Occam’s razor
which posed that the simplest solution is usually the best. The simplest
solution was to pay the penalty. They didn’t choose it. Instead they
incredibly opted for the solution that benefited GEO. Why? The reader will have
to decide which option they would have taken and why the Commissioners opted
to do what they did.
Dec
21, 2013 gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com
In
Montgomery County, the commissioners court this morning will discuss
potential lawsuits against a former county commissioner, a consultant, and a
private prison developer for sweetheart deals involving two correctional
facilities. The former commissioner received loans from the developer that
weren't disclosed at the time the county entered into contracts. The larger
of the two facilities lost its tax-exempt status after county inmates
projected to fill it never materialized. The story from the Conroe Courier
(Dec. 14) opened: In three separate letters, Montgomery County Attorney J D
Lambright has demanded the repayment of almost $13 million he says are the
financial damages to the county due to a “breach of fiduciary duty” relating
to the construction of two county facilities. The letters, sent Dec. 6,
allege former Precinct 3 Commissioner Ed Chance, former county
employee/consultant Linda Breazeale and Jim
Galloway, with Conroe-based developer Alliance Development LLC, all benefited
from the overcharges related to the Joe Corley Detention Center and the
Montgomery County Mental Health Facility. They further state that Chance and Breazeale, along with Alliance’s “schemes, fraud and
misrepresentations” knowingly caused the financial damages. The letters
demand Chance pay the county $500,000, Breazeale
pay $242,275 and Galloway pay $12.2 million. Each was given 30 days to pay
the debt or risk a civil suit. As of Friday afternoon, Lambright said he had
not heard from any of the parties regarding the letters. ... Precinct 3
Commissioner James Noack said he read the letters and supports Lambright’s
decision to recoup the costs. “I think it is dead on,” Noack said. “I think
these people knew exactly what they were doing. This was a well planned, well executed maneuver by power hungry,
greedy, untrustworthy individuals.” However, Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike
Meador disagreed. “We haven’t proven any damages yet,” he said. “I think it
is premature to add Ed and Linda in. … If it is proven we had damages, we can
re-talk it.” In particular, reported the paper, "Lambright said Chance,
who served as county commissioner from 1986 to 2012, never disclosed to the
county that he accepted payments from an Alliance-related entity in excess of
$500,000." The letter to Chance declared that, “While the county was
overpaying for facilities, you were personally profiting,” alleging a "pattern
of misrepresentation and corruption of the process." A law firm
representing Chance "said the $500,000 the letter states his client owes
was in fact two loans Chance received from Galloway for an unrelated real
estate venture." This is yet another situation where a Texas county
unwisely launched a speculative, entrepreneurial jail scheme that was
supposed to generate extra revenue but went bust when they couldn't find
contract prisoners to fill the beds. Reported the Courier: The Corley Center,
which houses 1,288 beds, opened in 2008 and was financed with approximately
$44.8 million in bonds. The 100-bed MCMHTF opened in spring 2011 and was
financed through the sale of $33 million in bonds. However, the jail bonds
lost their tax-exempt status in August after the county couldn’t fulfill its
commitment of 30 percent local inmates at the Corley Center. In May, county
commissioners unanimously agreed to sell the Corley Center for $65 million in
cash to Florida-based The GEO Group Inc. In June, commissioners decided to
sell the MCMHTF for a minimum bid of $38.5 [million]. Last month, GEO offered
the county $35 million, but the county rejected that bid. That item is
scheduled for discussion Monday in executive session by commissioners.
March
27, 2013 yourhoustonnews.com
When
Montgomery County commissioners voted to put the Joe Corley Detention Center
up for sale in January, County Judge Alan B. Sadler expressed confidence the
jail would attract several suitors in spite of its $55 million asking price.
Since then, eight corrections companies have shown a preliminary interest in
the 1,288-bed facility, and three firms on the county’s “plan holders” list
have inspected the jail within the past two weeks. The GEO Group has operated
the detention center for Montgomery County since opening in 2008. Meanwhile,
officials from Corrections Corporation of America, Community Education
Centers and LaSalle Corrections have toured the jail. Sadler is not surprised
with the response. “It (the Joe Corley) is a quality facility,” he said.
Quality notwithstanding, the Joe Corley – opened in August 2008 – is for
sale. Financed with $44.8 million in tax-exempt bonds, the jail was built on
projections of growth in the inmate population in Montgomery County. Those
assumptions haven’t panned out, however, so commissioners have advertised a
minimum bid of $55 million to cover the jail’s outstanding debt (slightly
less than $38 million) and to pay any fines from losing the tax-exempt status
of those bonds. The county also would profit approximately $10 million from
the sale, county officials have stated. The Joe Corley center, located at 500
Hilbig in Conroe, houses federal prisoners from the
U.S. Marshal’s Office and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The county
received its tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service when it
promised local inmates would account for 30 percent of the Corley’s
population by August of this year. That isn’t expected to happen. Regarded as
the world’s leading provider of correctional, detention and community
re-entry services, The GEO Group is regarded as the likely buyer. It operates
96 facilities with approximately 72,000 beds and 18,000 employees around the
globe. GEO Care is a subsidiary that operates the Montgomery County Mental
Health Treatment Center. Both facilities have been the focus of an
investigation for alleged financial misconduct. April 5 is the deadline for
submitting proposals to the county, Director of Infrastructure Mark Bosma said. Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections
Corporation of America houses more than 80,000 inmates in more than 60
facilities, including 44 that are company owned, with a total bed capacity of
more than 90,000. CCA partners with all three federal corrections agencies
(The Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement), 16 states, more than a dozen local municipalities, and
Puerto Rico. Although headquartered in West Caldwell, N.J., Community
Education Centers operates 17 jail and detention facilities with a combined
capacity of approximately 9,000 male and female beds. More than half of the
facilities are in Texas, including the Liberty County Jail.
November 7, 2010 Daily Mail Reporter
Bloodied and bruised, this is the shocking picture of cricket tycoon Allen
Stanford after a beating by jail inmates. His neck in a brace, his eye
bleeding and half-closed and his head bandaged. The final humiliation for
Stanford, 60, awaiting trial accused of masterminding a $7billion fraud, was
his feet and hands were shackled as he was taken to hospital. Attacked: The
tycoon sits on a hospital trolley with his neck in a brace, his eye half-shut
and a bandage wrapped around his head after the assault by jail prisoners in
Texas. Shackled: Allen Stanford is bound hand and foot at the hospital near
Houston. Once he posed with a perspex case
containing $20million at Lord's cricket ground. after being hailed as the saviour of English cricket. But that counted for nothing
at the private prison in Conroe near Houston, Texas, and the inmates sharing
his cell. 'I was on the telephone and some of the other people in the cell
didn't like it,' he told a friend who visited him, according to the Sunday
Times. 'They said something to me and then two of them jumped me and kept
punching me and kicking me in the head. 'I lost consciousness, but at one
time I came round and grabbed one of them by the leg. That just set them off a again'. The guards burst into the cell and shackled
Stanford before taking him to a hospital where he underwent an operation
while still chained up. Stanford suffered fractures to his eye socket, cheek
bones and severe bruising to his body. He has lost all feeling in the right
side of his face. No one has been punished for the attack and he spent three
weeks in solitary confinement. before being moved to another prison. The
assault happened in October last year in a cell holding 14 other men. It was
designed to hold eight inmates and at the time had no electricity, air
conditioning and was in virtual darkness. The friend claimed the inmates were
'on edge' with each other because of the cramped conditions. Stanford, who
faces 21 charges at his trial which begins in January, had made three
requests to be moved to another prison.
April 6, 2010 The Courier of
Montgomery County
An inmate at the Joe Corley Detention Facility is in critical condition
in a local hospital after being found hanging by the neck in a jail dorm
room. Around 4:40 p.m. Tuesday, a male prisoner, whose identity was not
released, was discovered hanging in an otherwise empty room used for inmate
sleeping, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Norris said. All other
prisoners were outside the building in the recreation area. Officials did not
release what item was used or whether it was an attempted suicide. A guard
who discovered the man called for assistance and started CPR until relieved
by emergency response personnel. An ambulance transported the man to a local
hospital. Warden Chris Strickland declined comment. Calls to the GEO Group,
the facility’s operator, were not immediately returned.
September 26, 2009 Houston Community
Newspapers
Jailed Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford remains under medical care after
being injured during a fight with another inmate at the Joe Corley Detention
Facility. The fight occurred mid-morning Thursday and Stanford was
transported to a hospital for treatment, Deputy U.S. Marshal Alfredo Perez
told The Courier Saturday. Perez declined to name the hospital. Perez said he
doesn’t know what triggered the altercation between Stanford and the other inmate.
“An incident report was sent to the U.S. Marshals office on Friday,” Perez
said. Perez said none of Stanford’s wounds were life-threatening. He expects
the 59-year-old Mexia native to be returned to the
Joe Corley facility either today or Monday. Stanford’s court-appointed
attorney, Kent Schaffer, of Houston, said he wants Stanford removed from the
private jail owned by Montgomery County and operated by the GEO Group, but
it’s a matter of logistics. “Since his defense is funded by the public, it
would be much more cost-effective to have him close to his lawyers and the
court in Houston,” Schaffer said. Stanford is in jail for allegedly scamming
investors of his now defunct Stanford Financial Group of more than $7
million.
July 27, 2009 Bloomberg
R. Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of directing a $7 billion
Ponzi scheme, complained that his cell often lacks light and air
conditioning. For the past week, Stanford, who’s in a cell in Conroe, Texas,
with from eight to 10 other men, has endured heat and intermittent lack of
power when outside temperatures reached 100 degrees or more, his lawyer, Dick
DeGuerin, said yesterday in a motion asking that his client be transferred to
a downtown Houston jail. “For part of the time last week, they were in total
darkness,” DeGuerin wrote. “The cell has been without air conditioning for at
least a week. There are no windows for light or ventilation, and the
conditions are intolerable.” U.S. District Judge David Hittner
in federal court in Houston on July 15 denied Stanford’s original request to
be transferred while he awaits trial. The financier is being held without
bail at the privately run Joe Corley Detention Center, about 43 miles north
of Houston. In his new motion, DeGuerin repeated his argument that Stanford’s
defense is hampered because the Corley facility doesn’t allow the use of
electronics. The fact-finding in the case is being done “by electronic
means,” DeGuerin said. He reiterated the transfer request “both because of
the oppressive conditions under which he is suffering, as well as the
impossible conditions for preparing for his complex trial.” Diabetic Cellmate
-- In a letter to the U.S. Marshal Service attached to the motion, DeGuerin
wrote that one of the men in the cell with Stanford is in his late seventies
and suffering from diabetes and another has a heart condition. “There are
serious medical conditions of several of the men in the cell,” he wrote. The
detention facility is operated by Boca Raton, Florida- based GEO Group Inc.,
according to its Web site. Pablo Paez, a company
spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a question on the jail’s conditions.
Stanford pleaded not guilty to criminal charges and also has denied any
wrongdoing in a civil lawsuit against him. He is asking a U.S. Appeals Court
in New Orleans to review Hittner’s order confining
him until trial. Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in
reply to a request for comment, “We will respond in court filings.” The case
is U.S. v. Stanford, H-09-342, U.S. District Court, Southern District of
Texas (Houston).
Johnson County Law Enforcement Center
Johnson County, Texas
Community Education Centers
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
March 25, 2010 Grits For Breakfast
As the Webb County Sheriff pushes construction of a massive new jail for the
purpose of housing federal immigration prisoners, their commissioners court
should look to Johnson County to understand how that might not pan out like
they hope. According to a story in the Cleburne Times-Review ("CEC
bailing out," March 24): Johnson County Law Enforcement Center should
have a new private subcontractor no later than Sept. 15 after the recent
decision of Community Education Centers to end its agreement with the county
to run the jail. CEC signed a three-year contract with the county in
September 2008. CEC used an escape clause, County Judge Roger Harmon said
Tuesday, extending the county six months notice of
contract termination. CEC warden James Duke could not be reached for comment,
but CEC officials told Johnson County commissioners that the corporation was
losing money in its operation of the jail. Johnson County entered the
contract with CEC on the assumption that a near-endless wave of immigration
detainees would fill up as many jail beds as they could build. As it turned
out, that wasn't the case: CEC expected to make the bulk of its money by
filling unoccupied beds with immigration detainees. “The average population
is 450 to 500,” Duke said last year. “There are empty beds. That’s attractive
to us. We take those empty beds and help the county get contracts with other
entities such as Immigration Customs Enforcement. Corrections 2 [block] has
176 beds. We put ICE detainees in those beds. ICE pays Johnson County, and
the county reimburses us. “The county makes $5 off every detainee. The county
makes money, and we make money.” That wasn’t the way it worked out, Harmon
said. ... “When CEC contracted with us, we were running about 600 inmates per
day,” Harmon said. “Nobody knows why, but the numbers recently have been
running around 400 per day. Incarceration numbers are down statewide and
nationwide, from what I understand. You wouldn’t think it would be that way
with high unemployment, but it is.” As of March 1, according to the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards, Johnson County had just 338 inmates in the
jail, so the supposed profitmaker has now become a
money suck. By contrast, Cameron County entered into a similar scheme and
encountered the opposite problem: Their jail has so many federal prisoners
they now must send pretrial detainees three hours away to be housed by other
counties at higher costs. So Texas counties have been burned by these deals
coming and going. It's never as simple or cheap as it sounds up front when
it's pitched. Never.
Jones
County Prison
Jones County, Texas
Community Education Centers
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
July 28, 2011 Abilene Reporter-News
The Bill Clayton Detention Facility in Littlefield went on the auction block
Thursday, but Jones County officials are still optimistic that their prison,
which has never been used, won't meet the same fate. "It's been a timing
thing," said Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin.
"It's going to eventually be used and bring about 200 jobs to the
area." The Littlefield prison, run by the GEO Group, closed in 2008 after
Idaho removed prisoners sent there. GEO, which also operates a prison in Big
Spring, withdrew from the facility, taking with it 100 jobs. The facility has
been vacant since. In the past couple of years, the country has seen a
decline in prison population, but the numbers are beginning to tick back up, Spurgin said. The $35-million Jones County prison, which
was completed in May 2010, lacks only a population, said Spurgin.
The 1,112-bed prison has a two-year contract with the state with three
one-year options and an operating agreement with Community Education Centers
that will be activated as soon as the prison receives inmates. Community
Education Centers, based in New Jersey, operates 20 facilities in Texas,
including the Therapeutic Community Walker Sayle
Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility in Breckenridge. One possibility
for the prison is to receive inmates from the Central Unit in Sugar Land,
which is scheduled to quit receiving state funds at the end of August. State
legislators had considered moving the 800-plus prisoners to privately run
prisons in the state. Spurgin had earlier said the
medium-security prison could be used for that transfer. Another possibility,
said Spurgin, could be to take prisoners from
California. A California Supreme Court decision this summer ruled that the
California prisoners were overcrowded and the system had to alleviate the
problem by either releasing or transferring 46,000 inmates. "I know the
governor's office has contacted California to see if they're interested in
transferring prisoners here," said Spurgin.
The Jones County prison near Anson was built without taxpayers' money, being
financed with privately invested revenue bonds.
Karnes County detention center
Karnes City, TX
Geo Group
Mar
30, 2020 ksat.com
Inmate
escaped jail in Karnes County with help of lover; both apprehended after
100-mile chase, officials say
SAN
ANTONIO – An inmate’s escape from a private jail in Karnes County led to a
chase reaching speeds of 100 mph and two arrests on San Antonio’s northwest
side, authorities said. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said the inmate
and a woman, believed to be his “significant other,” led law enforcement on a
chase, driving from Karnes County through Wilson County and into Bexar
County. The man, who was facing a federal charge for drug possession, escaped
the Karnes County Detention Facility, about 70 miles southeast of where they
were captured, Salazar said. Teen sustains life-threatening injuries in
shooting that also wounded father on East Side. The chase started on Highway
281, continued onto I-37 and eventually ended up on Loop 1604 West,
authorities say. Officials say the driver then pulled off
of Babcock Road and headed to Camp Bullis
Road, where the pursuit ended, Salazar said. Law enforcement immediately took
both the inmate and the woman into custody. In total, the pursuit was over a
100-mile stretch of road. Salazar said the car the pair was driving is
registered to an address in the area where they were detained. He said it’s
likely they were trying to make it to a private residence. The woman believed
to be the man’s lover will face a charge related to aiding an escape, Salazar
said. The inmate escaped a private facility that typically houses federal
prisoners, according to authorities. Officials say the inmate will now be
turned over to Karnes County. U.S. Marshals are investigating. No one was
injured in the chase.
May
30, 2019 tpr.org
Lawsuit Claims GEO Guards Illegally
Separated 13 Fathers And Sons
A San Antonio non-profit that provides
legal services to immigrants is suing the private prison company that runs
Karnes County Residential Center. The lawsuit claims the company's employees
illegally separated detained immigrant fathers and their sons, causing
extreme emotional distress. The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education
and Legal Services, or RAICES, and two private law firms claim 13 immigrant
fathers and sons were separated at the border in June 2018. They were then
reunited under a federal district court order, only to be illegally separated
again two months later. RAICES Director of Litigation Manoj Govindaiah said the migrant fathers are suing GEO, the
prison company that runs Karnes and employs its guards on behalf of the
federal government, for the second separation. Govindaiah
says not only was it illegal, it was unnecessarily forceful. “They dragged
several of the dads from their rooms with such force that in a couple of
situations the dads’ shoes were pulled off by the dragging,” Govindaiah said. “They used plastic, zip-tie handcuffs on
the dads to force them out of their rooms and into a separate holding area.” Govindaiah says the tactics were intended to terrify the
fathers and children. “The dads reported armed guards. They reported guards
with bullet proof vests. They reported guards with masks, suggesting some
sort of chemical agent might be used presumably to subdue any families that
were resisting,” Govindaiah said. The lawsuit
further claims GEO guards then traumatized the fathers and sons, who were
traumatized by the June separation at the border, by claiming they would
never see each other again. The fathers were taken to a detention center in
Pearsall for two days, then returned to Karnes and reunited with their sons.
But Govindaiah said the damage was done, and the
fathers want GEO to be held accountable. “We are seeking damages for GEO's
actions. We are alleging that by reseparating these families in violation of
that federal court order, that GEO committed intentional and negligent
emotional distress, that they committed assault and battery against these
families, false imprisonment...that they committed infractions of medical
ethics,” Govindaiah said. The GEO Group issued a
statement on the lawsuit saying they “deny the baseless allegations” made
against their staff. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also issued a
statement saying the organization does not comment on pending litigation. GEO
has several weeks to respond to the lawsuit in court.
Aug 22, 2018 wral.com
Texas Deputy Accused of Molesting 4-Year-Old Is Found Dead in Jail,
Officials Say
A Texas sheriff’s deputy charged with sexually assaulting a 4-year-old
girl and accused of threatening her immigrant mother with deportation if she
reported him was found dead in his jail cell, apparently of suicide,
authorities said Tuesday. The man, Jose S. Nunez, was found in his cell at
Karnes County Correctional Center at 5:45 p.m. on Monday, said Sgt. Elizabeth
Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. She said the
Karnes County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Ranger Division were
investigating. Gonzalez said Nunez had been held at the jail since June 17. Nunez,
47, was arrested that day in Bexar County after the girl’s mother said that
her child made an “outcry” about the abuse, and she reported him to a fire
station, Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a news conference that month. Nunez
was charged with super aggravated sexual assault of a child, a first-degree
felony because of the girl’s age, Salazar said. In the event of a conviction,
the charge carries a prison sentence of at least 25 years. The girl’s mother
entered the United States illegally from Guatemala, and authorities believed
that Nunez used that information to “place the mother in fear that she would
be deported” if she spoke out, Salazar said. Nunez, who worked as a detention
officer at the Bexar County jail in San Antonio for 10 years, was suspected
of touching the girl inappropriately on numerous occasions at her home, and
investigators were looking into whether the abuse could have lasted several
years, Salazar said in June. Nunez had been on unpaid leave since his arrest.
Calls to the Karnes County Sheriff’s Office and to Audrey Louis, the district
attorney for the 81st Judicial District, were not returned. The jail, which
is in Karnes City, Texas, is operated by the GEO Group, which did not respond
to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday. On Tuesday, Salazar said that
“at this point, we have to wait for the medical examiner.” He said
authorities had not been given any indication that there was foul play. Law
enforcement officials have expressed worries that unauthorized immigrants are
afraid to report crimes out of fear that they could be deported or separated
from their children.
Aug
3, 2018 mysanantonio.com
Immigrants in S. Texas detention center mount hunger strike, advocates say
The hunger strikers are being held at Karnes County Residential Center,
one of ICE’s three family detention facilities. Immigrant fathers formerly
separated from their sons are on a hunger strike at a South Texas detention
center, advocates said, apparently to seek release from government custody
and authorization to remain in the U.S. The hunger and activity strike at an
Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Karnes County started
Wednesday, and more families joined Thursday, according to the Refugee and
Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, a local
advocacy group that has been in contact with dozens of detainees there in
recent days. Leticia Zamarripa, a spokeswoman for
ICE, disputed the account, saying a group of fewer than 50 fathers and
children staged a “brief sit-in” Thursday but that “there has been no mass
protest or hunger strike.” Zamarripa said in an
emailed statement that the protesters dispersed after an ICE supervisor
explained immigration processes to address concerns they had raised about
their cases. But Jennifer Falcon, communications director for RAICES, said
about 300 men and 300 boys are participating in an ongoing protest, with adults
not eating or drinking and children declining to participate in school
activities. Zamarripa said the facility’s school
has had “no unusual absences.” Conditions at the facility couldn’t be
independently verified because ICE hasn’t granted the media access to it. “We
are desperate, we are tired of being incarcerated and we want to be released
with our sons,” Jorge wrote in the letter, dated July 31. He said he wrote
“to let the media know the unfairness we separated fathers are going
through.” The families are among more than 2,500 that were separated this
year after illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico under the Trump
administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. Under
pressure, President Donald Trump ended the family separation program with a
mid-June executive order. The men on the hunger strike are asking to be
released with their children and allowed to stay in the U.S. The families “do
not deserve to be deported” after their “suffering,” Jorge wrote in the
letter. The hunger strikers are being held at Karnes County Residential
Center, one of ICE’s three family detention facilities. It’s run by the GEO
Group, an operator of private corrections and detention facilities in the
U.S. and other countries. Advocates for the detainees said they don’t know
why families are being held at Karnes while others have been released. “There
seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why these people were detained and
others were released,” said Manoj Govindaiah,
RAICES’ director of family detention services. At least some of the detainees
signed English-language documents agreeing to be deported. They’ve since told
attorneys that they thought the documents were to gain the return of their
children, RAICES’ Falcon said. These and other reunified families haven’t
been deported because of a July 16 order from U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw pausing the deportations of recently reunified
families. This came amid concerns from the American Civil Liberties Union
that parents signed deportation agreements they didn’t understand. A nearby
ICE facility that the advocacy group estimated is holding about 100 reunified
women and their children, the South Texas Family Residential Center in
Dilley, is also facing increased scrutiny. An immigration lawyers group said
Wednesday that a young child died shortly after release from the center.
Gregory Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration
Lawyers Association, said the group had confirmed that a toddler died soon
after being released from government custody in the Dilley center, but he had
no other information about the child.
Nov
24, 2015 texastribune.org
Judge:
No "Emergency" to License Detention Centers
The
state of Texas can't claim an emergency to quickly grant licenses for two
private detention centers holding undocumented immigrant families for the
federal government, a state district judge has ruled. The ruling last week by
state District Judge Karin Crump of Travis County handed a victory to a
watchdog group pursuing better conditions for the roughly 2,000 undocumented
women and children being held after arriving during the surge of unauthorized
migration last summer in the Rio Grande Valley. In September, the Texas
Department of Family Protective Services posted notice that it would issue
the detention centers in Karnes City and Dilley licenses as residential
centers under emergency rules that don't allow for public comment. The
agency's move came after a federal district judge ruled in July that the
government was holding the undocumented immigrants in “deplorable”
conditions, violating a provision of a 1997 settlement called the Flores v.
Meese agreement. That settlement requires that undocumented children be held
in places that protect their overall well being.
The government has appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In
October, Austin-based nonprofit Grassroots Leadership filed suit claiming
that the state's rush would allow it to license the centers without publicly
detailing how it would ensure the health and well-being of the immigrants
detained within their walls. Crump agreed, saying in her ruling that the
agency must go through its regular process and allow public comments on its
efforts to license the centers. Crump ruled “no imminent peril to public
health, safety or welfare exists” justifying that emergency action. She said
the defendants, including the Texas Health and Human Services Department,
“utilized the emergency rule power for administrative purposes rather than to
address a true emergency.” The Geo Group operates the center in Karnes City,
and Corrections Corporations of America operates the facility in Dilley,
under contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In an email,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Adelina Pruneda
said the agency is not in a position to comment on pending litigation. But
she said that the Department of Homeland Security has worked diligently to
ensure "compliance with all aspects of the [federal] Court’s Order”
issued in July. The health commission
deferred comment to the family services agency, whose spokesman said the
agency is aware of the ruling and had no further comment. When the lawsuit
was filed last month, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins cited an agency fact
sheet that stated: “The court determined that while detained by [Immigration
and Customs Enforcement], families must be in state-licensed facilities to
provide ‘essential protection of regular and comprehensive oversight by an
independent child welfare agency.' Although the ruling did not require DFPS
to license the facilities, it did highlight a gap in the oversight of the
children at these types of facilities. The new DFPS rule closes that gap by
requiring state licensing.” In her ruling however, Crump said that the
emergency ruling would have exempted the centers from rules limiting room
occupancy and governing whether children can share a room with unrelated
adults or children of the opposite sex. While the ruling doesn’t prevent the
agency from moving forward with the licensing procedures, it allows opponents
the opportunity to have their concerns with the process officially noted. “It
makes the state abide by its own laws and actually have hearings and go
through the process,” said Grassroots Leadership Executive Director Bob Libal. “We submitted a letter [in opposition] with 140
organizations and child care [advocates] and never got a response.” Crump
said in her ruling the emergency rule allows for “less oversight” of family
residential centers than the state's current minimum standards for
residential operations. But Libal said he feared
the regular licensing method would also lower the standards of care, which
public comment would help address. “I think there is a lot of opportunity to
show these facilities can’t meet the standard even though it is a lower
standard,” he said. “I would love it if formerly detained people got to speak
on this. If the goal is to ensure the safety of the children, you don’t put
the Texas seal of approval on these facilities.”
Advocates
Say DHS Covered Up Sexual Abuse In Family Detention
A
group working with detainees says the government won’t hand over records that
might contain incriminating evidence. In this July 31, 2014, file photo, a
Spanish and English welcome sign is seen above a door in a secured entrance
area at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas. An
advocacy group is suing to force the federal government to hand over key
records from an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at a family
detention center in Texas. RAICES, a nonprofit based in San Antonio, Texas,
filed a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security in federal
court Friday, accusing immigration authorities of illegally withholding the
records demanded under a Freedom of Information Act request first submitted
in April. Several women lodged complaints of sexual abuse at the Karnes
Family Residential Center last year, accusing at least three guards of
promising detained mothers legal help or money in exchange for sexual favors.
An internal investigation by the DHS Office of the Investigator General,
based on a review of surveillance videos as well as interviews with dozens of
detainees, concluded that no abuse had taken place. The report says that a
security camera filmed two people having “inappropriate physical contact,”
but they were both employees of the facility, which is run as a for-profit
enterprise by the private prison contractor GEO Group. Both employees lost
their jobs. “Review of over 360 hours of time lapsed surveillance video
footage of the laundry room and day room areas failed to confirm that any of
the detainees were escorted to those areas after hours by Detention
Officers,” the report says. But the complaint filed Friday says that simply
reviewing the security footage does not necessarily disprove the allegations,
because according to some women detained at Karnes, there is a wall obscuring
a large part of the laundry room. “According to former detainees familiar
with the allegations, the sexual assaults by guards happened quite intentionally
in a ‘blind spot’ that would not have been captured by a security camera,”
the complaint reads. “A former detainee drew a schematic depicting this blind
spot as follows.” Two women who spent months detained at the Karnes facility
each independently told The Huffington Post that a security camera mounted in
the corner of the room to the right of the entrance was in plain view, and
that a wall made it impossible to see into the location where the abuses
allegedly took place. “There’s no way a camera could get there,” Kenia Galeano, a former Karnes detainee, told HuffPost.
“There’s a wall in the way." Galeano said that
during her time at Karnes, she heard rumors that guards took advantage of
detained women in the laundry room, but said she never personally saw
anything. Still, she said she generally believed the rumors, because she
alleges that a GEO employee once asked her how much he would have to pay her
in order to fondle her. “He disrespected me,” Galeano
said. “So I’m sure that these things do happen.” Another former detainee,
Yanira López, said that she also heard rumors of sexual abuse but never
personally saw it happen. However, she added that security cameras didn’t
capture what happened in the entire room. “It was a big room,” López told HuffPost.
“To the right of the entrance, there was a camera. There was a space where it
couldn’t record, and that’s the spot where the washing machines and dryers
were. There was a wall in the way.” Andrew Free, the attorney who filed the
FOIA lawsuit, said the internal investigation was couched in language that
made its conclusions unclear. “I find it hard to believe that anyone who
works for GEO and knows where the cameras are located would molest women in
front them,” Free told HuffPost. “They couldn’t show that anybody was
‘escorted’ by an officer. That’s a very odd dodge. It doesn’t say that there
aren’t any detention officers in the room with detainees after hours, and it
should." “I don’t have any reason to assume that they didn’t do what
they said they did in this investigation, other than the really odd language
they used in this report,” Free told HuffPost. “But I don’t know. That’s what
we want to find out.” A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, a division of DHS, declined to comment on the FOIA lawsuit
Friday and reiterated the original conclusions of the internal investigation.
The DHS Office of the Inspector General did not respond to multiple requests
for comment. In a statement emailed to HuffPost, GEO Group denied that any sexual
abuse took place at the Karnes facility. "Our company has consistently
and strongly denied these allegations, and the Office of Inspector General
for DHS concurred in a comprehensive review that such prior allegations were
unfounded," Pablo Paez, a spokesman for GEO
Group, wrote. "Our company stands by our prior statements and strongly
refutes these allegations as we have consistently done in the past." The
immigrant detention system, like the prison system in general, has been
plagued by sexual assault allegations. A worker at the T. Don Hutto detention
facility in Taylor, Texas, was charged in 2010 with sexually assaulting three
women while driving them to the airport to be deported. He was removed from
the facility when the allegations came to light, but activists say it was far
from an isolated incident. There were 185 reports of sexual abuse in
immigrant detention centers between 2007 and 2011, according to the American
Civil Liberties Union. Immigrant women are considered especially vulnerable to
abuse, since they may fear that reporting a guard or staffer could have
implications for their removal case. Some women say they have been assaulted
while on the way to be deported -- a situation where it would be difficult
for them to report the incident at all. Language barriers exacerbate the
problem. The Obama administration largely did away with family detention in
2009, but expanded it again last year after some 68,000 mothers traveling
with their children crossed into the United States illegally. That sudden
influx coincided with the arrival of tens of thousands of other minors
unaccompanied by any family. The sex abuse allegations from last year kicked
off a series of other complaints of mistreatment -- including alleged
retaliation against mothers who protested their children’s detention, as well
as accusations of medical neglect -- at the family detention centers where
the Obama administration has locked up women and children crossing into the
U.S. illegally. Most of the detained families come from violence- and
poverty-plagued Central American countries and are seeking asylum or other
forms of humanitarian relief. The expansion of family detention has come
under sharp legal scrutiny in recent months. In February, a federal judge
ordered that the Obama administration could not lock asylum seekers in family
detention solely for the purpose of deterrence. In response, DHS updated its
guidelines for detaining families and initiated a review of cases to expedite
the release of qualified asylum seekers. Attorneys say the vast majority of
the women and children in family detention qualify for asylum or other
humanitarian relief because of the persecution they face in their home
countries, often from gangs. Last month, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found
that the Obama administration’s family detention policy violates the 1997
Flores Agreement, a settlement that requires undocumented children to be
placed in the least restrictive setting possible and for DHS to generally
follow a policy of releasing them. In a response filed last week, the
government argued that it needs to be able to detain families for an average
of up to three weeks so it can assess whether a family qualifies to apply for
asylum or other relief. Government attorneys also said that immigration
policies have changed so much in recent months that Gee’s order to release
the mothers and children needs to be reassessed.
Jul
27, 2015 mcclatchydc.com
Exclusive: Family detention social worker speaks out
Oliva
López thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a
group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention
center. But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were
unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging.
A former social worker at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas said
migrant mothers and children were placed in isolation after complaining about
poor conditions. A former social worker at the Karnes County Residential
Center in Texas said migrant mothers and children were placed in isolation
after complaining about poor conditions. “I walked in and thought, ‘oh my
Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said. In an exclusive interview with
McClatchy, López shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the
Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy
over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a
facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses
falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal
officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents. WHAT
IS HAPPENING THERE IS TANTAMOUNT TO TORTURE. Oliva López, former social
worker at Karnes County Residential Center The facility is operated by the
nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, Boca Raton, Fla.,-based
GEO Group, and overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. López’s
story is a troubling counter narrative to the accounts given by federal officials
and company representatives who describe the facility as a safe and
comfortable place where mothers and children can stay during their asylum
proceedings. There is state-of-the-art medical equipment, yoga for the moms
and soccer and video games for the children. But López said nothing changes
the fact that the children were locked up and under the threat of being
deported at any moment. She met a 3 year old who regressed to breastfeeding
and a 5-year-old girl who was wearing diapers. “It might look like they’re
having fun playing soccer, but that’s certainly not the narrative of their
lives,” she said. “They know where they’re at. They know they’re in a prison.
They know they can’t leave.” The Obama administration this month began to
release hundreds of migrant mothers and children – some of whom had been
locked up more than a year -- under intense congressional and media scrutiny.
Approximately 1,700 parents and children continued to reside in three family
detention centers in Karnes and Dilley, Texas and Berks County, Pa. Geo
officials did not address López’s specific charges, but said they “strongly
refuted” the allegations. Spokesman Pablo Paez
declined an interview request, but said in an email to McClatchy that the
facility provides “high-quality care in a safe, clean and family-friendly
environment.” He noted the Karnes facility operates under the guidance of
on-site ICE officials and cited a Homeland Security inspector general report
that found no evidence of sexual abuse and harassment at the Karnes center.
“Since its activation, the Karnes County Residential Center has, under
direction and guidance from ICE, created an open and transparent policy of
allowing visits to the Center by the public, elected local and national
officials, federal officials from ICE and other government agencies, as well
as nongovernmental organizations,” he wrote. While announcing the end of
long-term detention, ICE officials emphasize that they will continue to place
families at the facilities, which they describe as an “effective and humane
alternative” and a way to keep families together as they go through
immigration proceedings. Spokeswoman Nina Pruneda,
while declining to answer specific questions, said in a statement that the
facilities include medical care, play rooms, social workers, educational
services and access to legal counsel. “ICE takes very seriously the health,
safety and welfare of those in our care,” she said. “The agency is committed
to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers receive
timely and appropriate medical health care.” But López’s account corroborates
allegations made by many past and current detainees who reported threatening
treatment and being placed in isolation for speaking out and separated from
their children. SINCE ITS ACTIVATION, THE KARNES COUNTY RESIDENTIAL CENTER
HAS, UNDER DIRECTION AND GUIDANCE FROM ICE, CREATED AN OPEN AND TRANSPARENT
POLICY OF ALLOWING VISITS TO THE CENTER BY THE PUBLIC, ELECTED LOCAL AND
NATIONAL OFFICIALS, FEDERAL OFFICIALS FROM ICE AND OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES,
AS WELL AS NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS. Pablo Paez,
The Geo Group, which operates the detention center. When she was hired in
October, López, 67, saw working at Karnes as a dream opportunity. She has
been passionate about immigrant rights for decades. She grew up with migrant
workers near Modesto, Calif., where her father – also a migrant worker –
helped run an alfalfa and corn farm in the Central Valley. Her masters’
thesis looked at the living conditions of immigrants. Her dissertation for
her Ph.D. focused on immigrant women and health. She was not naive to the
mothers’ immigration status. She knew many would be deported, but López felt
she could make a positive difference by helping them with the transition
either back home or into the United States. It was not her expertise that
company officials sought, she said. They hired her to help give the
appearance of a well-supported medical unit, she said. Several initiatives
she launched were met with fierce opposition, she said, including
establishing an open-door policy for detainees, sharing with them geographic
information about where the facility was and improving documentation of the
mothers’ care and concerns. “Social work is different here,” she said she was
told. If a mother expressed a problem, the only thing she could write was
that the detainee asked and was informed about how to access services. The
real goal, she soon learned, was a clean paper trail. The facility was often
the subject of audits of various agencies and organizations. The company
didn’t want any evidence that could draw more attention, she said. “If a
document is clean, there aren’t any follow-ups,” she said. “The audit stops
at the document.” But she did write down what she learned, albeit in a personal
notebook. In a Dec. 22 entry in the yellow notebook, she wrote a directive
from her boss regarding the government agency. “ICE: We don’t tell them
anything.” She said she once treated a mother whose 5-year-old daughter, a
victim of sexual assault during the journey to the border, suffered from
nightmares and refused to eat. López said the girl lost four pounds and
started wearing a diaper. But when she reported the conditions to her boss, a
psychologist, he discharged the girl with a note saying she was sleeping and
eating better. When López later submitted a note that the girl had lost
weight, another supervisor took the note and chart. She returned telling
López that the girl had actually gained weight. At a weekly staff meeting
with ICE, the psychologist once told ICE agents that a group of women who had
crossed together all had similar stories, which therefore must be fabricated,
López said. The psychologist didn’t say the women’s names, but the agents
said they could figure who the detainees were based on the dates they
arrived. “You just put a nail in their coffin,” López said she told him.
Advocates such as Mohammad Abdollahi, advocacy
director with the Texas-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and
Legal Services, said López’s account proves what the mothers have been saying
all along about poor conditions and being held in solitary confinement.
Earlier this year, dozens of the women at the Karnes facility launched a
hunger strike to protest conditions. Several of the leaders of the demonstration
reported being placed in isolation in the medical unit with their children. A
deported teen mom who cut her wrist at the Karnes facility told McClatchy
about how she was taken from her young son, put into isolation and then
hidden at a hotel before being deported to Honduras. “They just clearly do
not have the capacity or the infrastructure to run such a facility,” Abdollahi said. “What this facility is, in reality, it’s
an internment camp.” During the strike, López remembers her supervisor announcing
that the warden wanted the leaders placed in isolation. She said it was
common practice. They were often isolated with their children, but not
always. If a mother was deemed a suicide risk, even under questionable
circumstances, the children would be removed and placed in another room under
the care of guards who, Lopez said, had no training or licenses as child care
providers. The children could be separated from their mothers for up to four
days with only brief opportunities to see each other on the last two. Lopez
sees the treatment as child abuse. She should have reported the company to
Child Protective Services, she said. She didn’t report the allegations to ICE
because, she said, they were involved in the mistreatment. On Tuesday, she
will travel to Washington, D.C., to speak to House Democrats about her
experience. López said she quit in April because she could no longer work in
a facility that asked her to withhold information from federal officials,
punished residents who required medical treatment and required her to follow
policies that she said were in violation of her license. “What is happening
there is tantamount to torture,” she said.
|Jun
9, 2015 huffingtonpost.com
Mother who attempted suicide at GEO prison deported
A
mother who attempted to commit suicide last week while locked up in a family
detention center in Karnes City, Texas, was deported Tuesday along with her
4-year-old son. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had prevented
the woman, Lilian Yamileth Oliva, 19, from meeting
with her attorneys, according to Javier Maldonado, one of the lawyers working
on her case. He added that Oliva had a strong case to avoid deportation
because she had faced domestic abuse and death threats in her home country of
Honduras. Maldonado, who took over the case from another attorney, told The
Huffington Post that before he could move forward, he needed to obtain the
copy of the Board of Immigration Appeals decision that was in Oliva's
possession and to interview his client. He says he was unable to do either
before Oliva was deported. “ICE knew that lawyers were ready to represent her
and ICE knew we were doing everything possible to talk to her and file the
necessary paperwork -- and throughout the last six days, they blocked access
to her,” Maldonado said. “They were aware of the threats she faced at home.
All we needed were a couple of days and access to her, and they prevented us
from doing that.” An ICE official confirmed by email that Oliva and her son
had been deported, saying that she had exhausted "all of her legal
appeals before ICE, the Executive Office of Immigration Review and the Board
of Immigration Appeals." The official said ICE allowed Oliva to speak
with a lawyer by telephone before deporting her. At the age of 13, Oliva had been
forced into a relationship with her former partner, the father of her son,
Maldonado said. She had her son at age 15. Oliva tried to flee the
relationship several times, the lawyer added, but feared for her and her
child's safety. In May 2014, Oliva left her child with her mother and entered
the United States illegally through Mexico, only to be deported soon after.
She returned with her son in October, and immigration authorities placed both
of them in the Karnes County Residential Center -- a detention center for
mothers and children that is run as a for-profit enterprise by GEO Group, a
private company. Last week, the immigration advocacy group RAICES, which
works with women detained at the Karnes family detention center, said Oliva
attempted to commit suicide in the bathroom on Wednesday. Citing privacy
concerns, ICE officials declined at the time to confirm the identity of the
detainee, but said someone at the Karnes center was under medical observation
after being found with a “surface-level abrasion to one wrist.” It was
unclear how much psychiatric treatment Oliva received following the suicide
attempt. Fatima Menendez, one of the attorneys working on Oliva's case, said
she was able to speak with Oliva by phone on Friday evening around 7 p.m. "She
said that day they had only checked on her that morning and that was
it," Menendez told HuffPost. "I’m not sure if that was a mental
health evaluation or if that was them just checking on her wounds.” An ICE
official said Oliva received a psychiatric evaluation before she was
deported. Because of the prior deportation on her record, Oliva did not
qualify for asylum, but Maldonado said he had been helping her to apply for
"withholding of removal" -- a protection from deportation that is
similar to asylum. The practice of detaining migrant families has come under
intense scrutiny in recent months. The Obama administration had largely
curtailed family detention in 2009, but expanded it once again after a
massive uptick in the number of women crossing illegally in the United States
with their children. Last year, roughly 68,000 mothers with children crossed
into the country illegally, the vast majority of them coming from the
violence-plagued Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras. Like Oliva, these mothers often presented themselves to immigration
authorities and pursued asylum claims. Late last year, the Obama
administration expanded family detention capacity at the Karnes City facility
and constructed a second, 2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
Administration officials argued that detaining families would deter other
migrants from attempting to cross into the United States. The Karnes City
center has been the site of repeated protests and allegations of mistreatment.
Several dozen women, including Oliva, launched a hunger strike ahead of the
Easter holidays to protest their and their children's detention. At least
three of the women said that they and their children were placed in isolation
as retaliation and that guards told them they would be separated from their
children if they continued to refuse food. A second, smaller group of women
again refused food in protest later in the month of April. GEO Group, which
runs the detention center, denies any wrongdoing and has questioned whether
any hunger strikes occurred there at all. “The Karnes County Residential
Center provides high quality care in a safe, clean, and family friendly
environment, and onsite U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
personnel provide direct oversight to ensure compliance with ICE's Family
Residential Standards,” GEO Group said in a statement.
Jun
4, 2015 huffingtonpost.com
Immigrant Mother Attempts Suicide At Family Detention Facility
WASHINGTON
-- An immigrant woman being held at a family detention facility in Karnes
City, Texas, attempted on Wednesday to commit suicide after being denied
parole and asylum, according to an attorney and an immigration advocate
working on her case. The woman, 19-year-old Lilian Yamileth,
was detained last October with her 4-year-old son after they crossed the
U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Yamileth has said she
faced severe abuse, including rape and death threats, in her native Honduras,
and she is seeking relief to stay in the U.S. "These are individuals who
have gone through some awful, violent circumstances," said Javier
Maldonado, one of the attorneys working on her case. "Putting them
behind walls is not proper care." Maldonado told The Huffington Post
that another mother in detention called the immigration advocacy group RAICES
Wednesday and told them Yamileth had been found in
a bathroom after a suicide attempt. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
declined to confirm the identity of the woman for privacy reasons, but ICE
spokesman Richard Rocha said an adult being held at the Karnes facility
"is being observed by mental health professionals after staff
encountered the individual with a surface-level abrasion to one wrist."
"The individual was evaluated by medical professionals onsite who
confirmed that the minor injury was not life-threatening, but that the help
of specialized mental health care providers was appropriate," he said in
an email. "ICE takes the health, safety, and welfare of those in our
care very seriously. ICE is closely monitoring the situation and continues to
investigate the circumstances." Yamileth was
denied asylum in February and her appeal was denied in mid-May, according to
Mohammad Abdollahi from RAICES. Yamileth
had also applied for parole that would allow her and her son to leave the
facility while their case was being adjudicated but the parole application
was denied in March, Abdollahi said. Abdollahi said they plan to take additional steps to
fight for the release of Yamileth and her son,
including a circuit court appeal. In an interview with an asylum officer, Yamileth said her child's father, her former partner,
raped, abused and threatened to kill her, according to a transcript. She also
said she was raped by three men and went to police, but they did nothing. Yamileth said she was afraid her former partner would
kill her if she was deported to Honduras. President Barack Obama's
administration restricted the use of family immigrant detention early in his
presidency, but opened two new facilities last year in response to an influx
of unaccompanied minors and families crossing the southern border illegally.
Along with the Karnes facility, ICE opened another in Dilley, Texas. Both are
operated by private prison companies; Karnes is run by GEO Group and Dilley
is run by Corrections Corporation of America. Some of the women at the Karnes
facility, including Yamileth, participated in
hunger strikes in protest of family detention earlier this year. The expanded
practice of detaining undocumented immigrant families has come under increasing
pressure from Democrats and human rights advocates, who say that the physical
and mental health of women and children could be damaged by keeping them in
such facilities. Many of the families apprehended along the border are
seeking asylum as victims of violence or abuse in their native countries,
most often Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. In a letter sent Monday to
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who oversees ICE, 33 senators in the
Democratic caucus said they are "deeply concerned" that detaining
young children could hurt their physical and mental health. The senators'
letter followed a similar one from 136 House Democrats last week. "For
nearly one year we have been closely following the troublesome conditions of
confinement, due process issues, and serious developmental and medical
concerns of those being detained," the members of the House wrote,
adding, "We believe the only solution to this problem is to end the use
of family detention." After the senators' letter, DHS spokeswoman Marsha
Catron told HuffPost the "well-being of detained families, particularly
of children, is of paramount importance to DHS" and that the agency was
working to respond to concerns from advocates. "ICE family residential
centers currently operate in an open environment that includes play rooms,
social workers, educational services, comprehensive medical care, and access
to legal counsel," she said in a statement Tuesday. "ICE will
explore ways to further enhance these conditions." ICE announced new
policies last month for family detention, including a new advisory committee
that will include "experts in the fields of detention management, public
health, children and family services, and mental health."
Apr
25, 2015 huffingtonpost.com
Three
immigrant women who say they were punished for joining a hunger strike in a
Texas family detention center on Thursday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and GEO Group, the company that operates the facility. The
lawsuit, filed in federal court against ICE Director Sarah Saldaña and personnel at the Karnes County Residential
Center, seeks to prohibit ICE and GEO from putting women and their children
in isolation as punishment for protesting, and from threatening to separate
mothers from their children. “All we’re asking is that under the First
Amendment, for ICE officials and GEO officials to stop retaliating against
the women and allow them to peacefully protest,” said Ranjana Natarajan, an
attorney with the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, which filed the
lawsuit on behalf of the women. The women were part of a wave of some 68,000
family units that crossed illegally into the United States last year and
presented themselves to border authorities asking for asylum. A roughly equal
number of unaccompanied minors crossed illegally into the U.S. last year as
well, prompting concerns of a humanitarian crisis at the border. The vast
majority traveled by land from the violence-plagued Central America countries
of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. As the Easter holidays approached, 78
mothers detained with their children at the Karnes detention center signed a
handwritten open letter, saying they would refuse food over their continued
incarceration. According to the letter, many of the women had been in
detention for more than six months, despite passing “credible fear”
interviews, a key first step toward establishing an asylum claim. Several of
the women allege that detention center guards punished them by locking them
in isolation rooms with their children. They also say guards repeatedly told
them that if they continued to refuse food, they would be considered
incompetent to take care of their children and would be separated from them.
“They were using the most powerful threats to silence them, which is threatening
to remove their children,” Natarajan told The Huffington Post. “The law is
pretty clear that people have the right to express their views and these
women have been peacefully protesting. Nobody has been put in any danger, so
the ICE and GEO reaction has been nothing short of excessive bullying.” Some
hunger strikers wrote out the word “libertad,”
Spanish for “freedom,” using one letter each on a series of sheets of paper,
and chanted the word in front of guards, according to the lawsuit. In
response, a GEO employee asked the women to sign a note saying that they had
committed “insurrection” and that the signs were used to alert a helicopter
that would rescue them from detention, according to the complaint. “Plaintiff
and the other sign-holders were not attempting to escape via helicopter,” the
complaint says. Detainees at the facility are generally permitted to work for
up to three hours daily, earning $3, which many detainees use to buy phone
cards. The complaint says guards prohibited women who refused to abandon the
hunger strike from working. “GEO guards told some hunger strikers that if
they continue protesting, things would look very bad in their immigration
case,” the complaint says. “GEO guards told some hunger strikers they would
be deported if they continued their strike. Deporting an asylum-seeker means
sending her back to life-threatening violence she was attempting to escape
with her children." The ICE director visited the detention center last
week and said it was running smoothly. “Director Saldaña
has every confidence in the staff and contractors at the Karnes facility to
maintain a healthy and safe environment for residents in which issues and
concerns are addressed quickly and appropriately as they arise,” ICE said in
a statement emailed to HuffPost. GEO questions whether hunger strikes
occurred. The company emailed a statement to HuffPost, saying: "The
Karnes County Residential Center provides high quality care in a safe, clean,
and family friendly environment, and onsite U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) personnel provide direct oversight to ensure compliance
with ICE's Family Residential Standards." Delmy Cruz, one of the
detainees who filed the lawsuit, told HuffPost that she had been placed in
isolation with her 11-year-old son for a day. She said neither could go to
the bathroom during that time because they felt embarrassed using the open
toilet in front of each other. “We came here looking for help,” Cruz said.
“But they treat us like criminals.”
Apr
1, 2015 houstonchronicle.com
Women
refuse food to protest detainment Facility housing immigrants claiming asylum
compared to 'living in a jail'
Demonstrators
rallied Tuesday at the San Antonio Mennonite Church where they announced that
80 immigrant women held at the Karnes County Residential Center while their
court cases are pending went on a Holy Week fast to protest their long
detention and conditions at the center. SAN ANTONIO - About 25 women held in
a Karnes County immigration detention center - some of whom have been in government
custody for almost a year - are refusing to eat, according to a local
advocacy group and a woman in the facility. Most of the women were part of
last year's border surge, when tens of thousand of
Central American women and children illegally crossed the Rio Grande in South
Texas then claimed asylum. They are protesting the Obama administration's
decision to detain them while their court cases are pending. "We will
keep refusing food until our demands for release are recognized," Kenia,
a 26-year-old woman from Honduras who did not give her last name. "We
will fight until we are granted our liberty. We're tired of the treatment
we're receiving here," she said by phone from the detention center.
"Our children are all losing weight because they've lost their
appetites. It's like we're living in a jail." ICE investigation
Advocates, including representatives of Refugee and Immigrant Center for
Education and Legal Services, said as many as 40 to 45 women initially joined
the hunger strike Monday. Three women, including Kenia, were put in isolation
in the medical clinic, they said. Kenia said she was put in
"isolation" at 3 p.m. Monday and was released at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.
In a statement, ICE said Karnes does not have an isolation area and pointed
out that detainees are able to move around the facility, which has playrooms
and areas with snacks and drinks, as well as educational and recreational
opportunities. ICE is not aware that any of the residents have actually
agreed to participate in a hunger strike," the statement said. "ICE
is investigating claims from residents at the Karnes facility who allege a
visiting member of a non-profit group encouraged residents to stop eating at
the facility to protest their detention." Kenia said the hunger strikers
were not encouraged to fast. 'Shameful policies' A spokesman for Geo Group
Inc., the private prison company that operates the Karnes County detention
center, did not answer e-mailed questions. Instead, the company provided a
statement virtually identical to one it issued in February, when the
Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General announced it
didn't find evidence of sexual misconduct by employees at the detention
center. "The Karnes County Residential Center provides high quality care
in a safe, clean, and family friendly environment, and on site U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel provide direct oversight to
ensure compliance with ICE's Family Residential Standards," the Geo
Group said in its statement. "Our company has consistently, strongly
denied allegations to the contrary." ICE has faced criticism for its
decision to detain asylum seekers, which immigration activists say is a
departure from past policy. The same people who have cheered President
Obama's policies granting work permits to some people here illegally have
been very critical of the government's decision to convert the
more-than-500-bed detention center in Karnes to hold families and build a
2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley. "This is Holy Week, a season
of freedom, when the Israelites were freed from the pharaoh's oppression
centuries ago," the Rev. Rob Mueller, pastor of the Divine Redeemer
Presbyterian Church, said at a rally Tuesday in front of the San Antonio
Mennonite Church. "Those of us here today identify with the suffering of
these women at Karnes, who are seeking their freedom. We're here to protest
the shameful policies of the Obama administration and ICE."
Mar
29, 2015 texasobserver.orgTexas
Karnes
County Residential Center photographed in 2014, during its change of name
from a "Civil Detention Center" to a
"Residential Center." First of all: No, she does not regret
writing it. “It” being “Seeking Asylum in Karnes City,” which ran in the
February issue of the Observer. The 4,500-word story reported Victoria
Rossi’s firsthand experience as a paralegal assisting Austin immigration
attorney Virginia Raymond inside the Karnes County Residential Center in
Karnes City, 50 miles southeast of San Antonio. When the detention center
opened in 2012 it was hailed by the Obama administration as a model for a
more humane, less penal facility for holding immigrants. The facility has 532
beds for women and children awaiting processing of asylum claims or
immigration cases. It’s operated by the private prison company GEO Group
under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The
residential center—originally named a “detention” center—is rarely the
subject of firsthand reporting, and access is tightly controlled. In January,
for instance, ICE denied the Observer‘s request to photograph at the facility
in conjunction with Rossi’s story. Now, possibly as a result of that story,
Rossi, a former Observer intern, has herself been denied further access to
Karnes. As befits any attempted navigation of the overlapping bureaucracies
of a non-transparent public-private governmental entity, the story is of
course convoluted. There is a process for applying for access to Karnes, and
in this case the process is managed by Raymond, who handles a pro bono load
of immigration cases related to Karnes residents, and who employs Rossi as a
part-time paralegal. In October, Raymond submitted a security clearance
application for Rossi in her capacity as a paralegal. In response, ICE
approved a categorically distinct clearance for Rossi as an interpreter—an
apparent clerical error on ICE’s part that neither Raymond nor Rossi noticed
at the time. Once that clearance was granted, Rossi, per standard protocol,
was further required to fax to Karnes intent-to-visit notices 24 hours in
advance of her visits to the facility. Those notices included a copy of ICE’s
original clearance, and specified the time of Rossi’s visits and the names of
the clients she planned to speak with. “It’s straight-up interference with
access to counsel. It’s an intimidation tactic.” On Jan. 15, having faxed her
intent-to-visit notice as usual, Rossi arrived at the facility to face
officers—Rossi isn’t certain whether they were employed by ICE or by
GEO—questioning the purpose of her visit. The Observer had recently requested
access to photograph at Karnes, making staff aware that Rossi was working on
a story. The officers examined Rossi’s ICE-granted permission and determined
that it allowed her access not as a paralegal, but only as an interpreter—a
category of access that Raymond had never applied for and a job at which
Rossi had never been employed. Rossi was denied entry and told that she would
have to reapply for a new security clearance as a paralegal. That
re-application was complicated and delayed by the fact that Rossi had to
first reapply for and receive a lost passport, but once she had that document
in hand—along with the also-required driver’s license and Social Security
number—Raymond put the security-clearance application in process. On Monday,
March 23, Rossi got the news that her re-application had been denied. The
denial letter, dated March 19, gave no reason. But neither Raymond nor Rossi
has much doubt about the why. “I’m hoping it’s just a technical error, but
the timing of it, I worry that it’s reactive to the article,” Rossi says.
Raymond is less circumspect: “It’s straight-up interference with access to
counsel. It’s an intimidation tactic.” Per the letter’s recommendation,
Raymond got on the phone with Hilario Leal, ICE’s supervisory deportation and
detention officer at Karnes, who disclaimed any knowledge of the decision and
said he’d have to look into it. Raymond says that Leal later called back and
explained to Raymond and Rossi that Rossi was being denied clearance to visit
Karnes as a paralegal because she had previously visited Karnes as a
paralegal while having been approved only as an interpreter. As recently as
Friday, March 20, Rossi visited Karnes with Raymond and was allowed access.
In retrospect, Rossi isn’t sure why she was let in. Leal did not immediately
return a phone call seeking comment. It remains unclear whether Rossi may
still access Karnes as an interpreter for Raymond, though, again, that’s
never been the purpose, stated or otherwise, of Rossi’s visits. Regardless,
she apparently is not allowed to visit Karnes unaccompanied, which by itself
constitutes a major impediment to Raymond’s work. “It’s very damaging,”
Raymond says. “I can’t do this by myself. I’m a solo practitioner. One of the
two main reasons why I hired [Rossi] is she’s an outstanding interviewer. So
[now] she can’t do that. It’s a lot of work to prepare asylum applications,
and a lot of it has to be done at Karnes.” Raymond is clear that Rossi’s job
is not at risk, but she’s equally clear that the ICE decision will have a
negative effect. “It hurts the clients,” she says. “It hurts the children and
women refugees at Karnes when ICE and GEO throw up additional roadblocks to
legal representation.” Raymond is appealing the decision up the dual chains
of command at Karnes—GEO and ICE—and spreading the word among the legal
community. “We are going to fight this thing,” she says. “And I feel
confident that when it gets to someone high enough, they’ll realize it’s not
right.” Rossi says she’s experienced a supportive response from activists and
lawyers, but she remains “very worried that after some of the sense of
outrage has died down, it’s going to become a huge burden on Virginia.” That
aside, she has no regrets about writing about her experience, and about the
view afforded her by access, however fleeting, to the world of immigrant
detention. “From what I can tell,” she says, “it’s been very difficult for
journalists to get access to these new family detention centers they’re
opening up, and I think it’s important for anyone to write about what they
see inside there.” To that point, she notes that some residents of the Karnes
facility have begun writing their own stories, some of which are available at
endfamilydetention.com. For instance, a recent “Statement by 20 Families Held
at the Karnes Family Prison in Texas” reads, in part: Please help us, we
don’t want to return to that life of violence in our countries, we want to
live in peace with our children. We seek refuge in this country because we believe
that this country has laws that are upheld and that violence doesn’t exist in
the same way it does in our countries. Raymond points out that “refugees who
have legal assistance are far more likely to persuade judges to grant them
asylum,” and says she’s “disturbed that ICE is impeding our provision of
legal services to these women. “Whether ICE is retaliating against Victoria
for her writing, or arbitrarily preventing her from coming as a paralegal,
the people who are really hurt by this are the refugee families.”
Feb
7, 2015 houstonchronicle.com
SAN ANTONIO - The Homeland Security Department has found no wrongdoing by
guards who were accused of sexually abusing women held at an immigration
detention center in Karnes County. The Mexican American Legal Defense Fund
and other advocates contended in September that guards in the Karnes
detention center, which last summer was converted to hold women and children
from Central America, had sex with detainees, along with other misconduct.
The DHS inspector general investigated the center and found no evidence of
misconduct, a report issued Friday says. The investigators interviewed more
than 33 witnesses and viewed more than 380 hours of surveillance tape, the
report states. "We found no evidence to substantiate the allegations and
were unable to identify a victim or suspect in this matter," the
inspector general wrote. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement welcomed
the report. The agency has been buffeted by criticism since it began
detaining large numbers of women and children from Guatemala, El Salvador and
Honduras last summer. Secondhand reports ICE has added hundreds of beds to
hold families in response to a surge of tens of thousands of families and
unaccompanied children from those three countries who crossed the border
illegally last year in the Rio Grande Valley. "This report is a
testament to work and efforts by ICE employees who remain committed to
providing a safe and secure environment to all individuals in custody,"
the agency said in a statement. "ICE holds its employees to the highest
standards of ethical conduct and takes any allegations of misconduct
seriously and if warranted, takes action immediately." The investigation
focused on reports from a detainee "who had no firsthand
information" that guards were taking women to the detention center's
laundry room to have sex. The report did find that two detention center
employees involved in a romantic relationship "engaged in inappropriate
physical contact in the laundry room area while on duty." The report did
not say if they had been disciplined. Victims not present? The private prison
company that operates the facility, GEO Group Inc., did not respond to a
request for comment Friday afternoon. David Hinojosa, a MALDEF attorney,
questioned whether the investigators interviewed the right people.
"Based on what we know, at least one of the victims may have been
deported from the country," he said. "Another one or two bonded out
already. So were those people interviewed? Were victims' attorneys present?"
About 500 immigrants are being detained at Karnes, and plans are in the works
to double its capacity. A family detention center under construction in
Dilley will be one of the largest in the country, with capacity to hold 2,400
immigrants.
Keller School Board
Keller, Texas
Aramark
November 14, 2008 Keller Citizen
Three years after assuming management of the maintenance and operations
departments in the Keller school district, officials are lauding improved
upkeep of facilities and savings from preventative measures and green
initiatives. In September 2005, the school board voted to terminate a
contract with Aramark Education to manage district maintenance, custodial and
grounds workers. A survey of facilities and payroll practices showed very
little preventative maintenance performed, equipment in poor condition and
widespread abuse of overtime among workers. The district’s lawsuit against
Aramark, filed in February, is ongoing. Aramark generally denies the
district’s accusations of negligence. Shortly after the contract was ended,
district administrators put an in-house management team in place and created
a plan for the upkeep of facilities and systems. They limited the amount of
overtime and more closely monitored employees. "It is 100 percent better
than it used to be," deputy superintendent Mark Youngs said. "There
is an attitude of customer service. They actually want to be of service, and
the principals are giving them high marks." Youngs said that an outside
management team can benefit by minimizing services, but the district’s
in-house directors are trying to do as much as they can within their
department budgets. David Farmer, a trustee since 1997, said he didn’t hear
nearly as many complaints about facility upkeep as he heard during Aramark’s tenure.
"With it being in-house, our staff members are much more directly
involved in day-to-day requests," Farmer said. "There was a
disconnect in the past of what needed to happen and what was happening."
In an October report to the board, officials said that maintenance and
operations departments are achieving improvements without a large increase in
funds. The 2006-07 budget year included $1.4 million for operations; the
current budget year has $1.3 million set aside for the department. Board
President Bob Apetz said he was encouraged that the
department could find ways to save despite the growing district. "They
are looking outside the box to curtail costs and still provide all the
services," Apetz said.
September 20, 2005 Star-Telegram
Keller school trustees voted unanimously Monday to fire Aramark Management
Corp., a company paid more than $1 million annually to supervise custodians,
grounds and maintenance in the district. Aramark has 30 days to leave the
district, and district employees will take over, Assistant Superintedent Bill Stone said moments after the vote. The
company was hired in September 1999 to oversee district employees, including
custodians, groundskeepers and maintenance workers. Their five-year contract
was renewed for another five years in 2004. But in recent months, complaints
from district employees and trustees have grown. And on Aug. 17, Veitenheimer sent a letter to the company saying the
district "is considering termination of the agreement." According to the
letter, about one-third of the money paid to Aramark does not cover anything
tangible, but is for an "added value" the company will bring to all
tasks. That value has not been realized, officials say. Custodians voice "an almost constant
complaint" that they do not have the supplies and materials they need to
keep buildings clean. And district officials are not certain they are getting
what they pay for. The district paid Aramark just over $25,000 to furnish
cleaning equipment needed at Liberty Elementary School, the district's newest
campus. But guidelines suggest the typical cost for equipping a new
elementary school runs $5,000 to $10,000 less, according to the letter.
Kerrville State Hospital
Kerrville, Texas
GEO Group
Mar
29, 2015 grassrootleadership.org
Agency
Cancels Terrell Hospital Privatization Plan After Audit Reveals Major Flaws
Advocacy Organizations Call for Legislative Authority and Oversight Before
any Future Privatization - Mental health advocacy organizations, civil
rights and civil liberties groups, and state employees today reacted to a
damning audit of state hospital privatization plans. The State
Auditor’s Office reviewed a tentative award for operation of the Terrell
State Hospital to for-profit prison corporation GEO Care (now known as Correct
Care Recovery Solutions). While the audit acknowledges that some procurement
processes were indeed followed, other significant breaches to protocol
occurred. The opening paragraph to members of the Legislative Audit Committee
boldly states that “the Health and Human Services Commission (Commission) did
not ensure that its decision to tentatively award a contract to GEO Care, LLC
to manage selected operations at Terrell State Hospital provided the best
value to the State. The Commission and the Department of State Health
Services (Department) did not fully comply with the Commission’s contract
planning and procurement processes.” “The audit makes clear that the state’s
contracting woes extend to privatization of state hospitals,” said “Eshe Cole, mental health and criminal justice coordinator
for Grassroots Leadership. “Lawmakers should increase scrutiny of
privatization of state hospitals and make sure that patient safety and
taxpayer dollars don’t come at the expense of profits for prison companies looking
for new markets.” Some of the specific fumbles found in the audit include
failure to conduct a preliminary needs assessment and a
cost-benefit-analysis, tardy purchase requisitions, and failure to adequately
verify the background, qualifications, and experiences of vendors. In
addition, there were a number of discrepancies in the bid evaluation process
including inconsistencies in scoring, lack of a minimum qualifying score, and
failure to receive non-disclosure agreements prior to negotiations. “Mental Health
America of Texas advocates for open and accountable government,” said Lynn
Lasky Clark, President & CEO of Mental Health America of Texas. “We are
glad that the State Auditor's Office shined a light on a seriously flawed
process related to privatizing Terrell State Hospital.” In 2012, Texas
Department of State Health Services Commissioner Dr. David Lakey rejected GEO Care’s bid to privatize the Kerrville
State Hospital after a coalition of organizations warned that privatization
would have negative impacts on patients and the community. Lakey concluded that savings in the proposal were
achieved “primarily through reductions in staffing and benefits to a degree
that would put both our patients and the State of Texas at risk.” Even with
this conclusion, HHSC chose to move forward with solicitation to privatize
Terrell State Hospital in 2014. However, the agency has responded to the
audit by acknowledging that it will no longer pursue privatization of the
Terrell State Hospital. “We must continue to make sure that those who
operate our state health facilities provide high standards of care and do not
put the state at risk of litigation” said Terri Burke, Executive Director of
the ACLU of Texas. While the audit has rendered current attempts to privatize
Terrell State Hospital momentarily dead, concerned advocates and stakeholders
are calling for legislative authority and increased transparency and
oversight prior to future attempts to privatize state hospitals in Texas.
“We’re glad that the Auditor’s Report has brought to light the many flaws
with HHSC’s rush to privatize the hospital in Terrell.“
says Seth Hutchinson, Vice President of the Texas State Employees Union.
“Now, the state needs to stop trying to turn over care for the mentally ill
to profit-hungry corporations, and should instead start investing in patient
care and the state employees who are hard at work in these hospitals.”
Oct
10, 2012 The Current
State
rejects GEO's bid for psych hospital. What
exactly was it that tanked the GEO Group's proposal to take over management
of the Kerrville State Hospital? Was it the patient found dead in a scalding
bath at a South Florida GEO-run psychiatric hospital, his body discovered
with skin "sloughing" off his face? The rehab programs at GEO's
Montgomery County psychiatric facility, which the Texas Department of State
Health Services recently described as "bedlam"? Or the company's
management of a juvenile lockup in Mississippi, which a federal judge claimed
"allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions
to germinate"? None of the above. And the real reason DSHS last week
rejected GEO's bid to privatize the Kerrville State Hospital gives us some
insight into just how companies like GEO manage to cut costs for states
looking to save cash by privatizing jails, psych hospitals, and youth
correctional facilities: by slashing staffing levels at the expense of care.
Following the Lege's directive last year to solicit
bids to privatize one of the state's psychiatric hospitals, GEO Care, a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the private-prison behemoth, was the only company
that submitted a proposal, saying it could run the Kerrville facility at 10
percent below current costs. In a letter sent to the Legislative Budget Board
and Gov. Rick Perry's office last week, DSHS Commissioner David Lakey outlined why the agency rejected GEO's proposal.
"Although many of the issues identified in the proposal could possibly
be addressed, the savings in the proposal were achieved primarily through
reductions in staffing and benefits to a degree that would put both our
patients and the State of Texas at risk," he wrote. To lower costs, the
GEO proposal would have cut facility staff by 21 percent, from 542 hospital
staffers to 428. GEO also would have cut psychiatric nursing assistant staff
from 167 to 118, a 29 percent reduction. "It is my belief that these
staffing levels are not sufficient to serve the individual needs of patients
at this facility or to ensure a safe environment for patients and
staff," Leaky wrote. In a summary assessment of the GEO bid DSHS sent
the Current last week, the agency said the proposal "did not ensure
compliance with fundamental requirements of operating a facility as indicated
in the RFP and as required by law." GEO's submitted policies didn't live
up to the rules governing state mental health hospitals, as outlined in the
Texas Administrative Code, the agency noted. The agency also expressed
concern that GEO's proposal woudln't meet minimum
staff-to-patient ratios mandated for the state's psychiatric hospitals.
Current state hospital staffing patterns, including those at Kerrville, were
implemented due to a federal class action lawsuit filed in 1974 accusing the
state of an array of serious violations at its psychiatric hospitals. The
case was settled in 1997 after Texas implemented new staffing patterns to
ensure quality care and patient safety. The GEO Care would have saved the
state an estimated $3.4 million, largely through layoffs and reduced benefits
for GEO staff. The company also planned to cut spending on patient medical
care and client services, according to the proposal.
October 04, 2012 Texas Observer
This
story was produced as part of a joint venture with Reporting Texas, an online
publication at the University of Texas-Austin’s School of Journalism. The
Texas Department of State Health Services announced Wednesday that it would
not accept GEO Care’s bid to privatize the Kerrville State Hospital, citing
concerns over the company’s plans to cut operating costs at the state
psychiatric hospital. GEO Care, a subsidiary of the infamous prison operator
GEO Group, was the only company to submit a bid to privatize a mental health
treatment facility earlier this year. While the bid met the main proposal
requirement, promising to generate ten percent savings over 2011 fiscal year
costs for a minimum of four years, DSHS Commissioner David Lakey criticized the bid for lacking detail. In a letter
to Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislative Budget Board, Lakey
expressed concern that main cost reductions would be “achieved primarily
through reductions in staffing and benefits to a degree that would put both
our patients and the State of Texas at risk.” DSHS said in a report that the
programs GEO Care proposed were not appropriate for the long-term care needed
at the Kerrville State Hospital. Furthermore, DSHS did not believe that the
proposal would ensure staffing requirements required by law. GEO Care
proposed cutting overall staffing from 542 to 428— a 21 percent reduction—and
decreasing psychiatric nursing assistants 29 percent, from 167 to 118. The
staff to patient ratio, set by a 1997 settlement in a federal class-action
suit against the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, would
not have been maintained with GEO Care’s proposed changes. Wednesday’s
decision is a win for advocacy groups that had long opposed privatization of
the state psychiatric hospital by GEO Care, whose parent company GEO Group
has a troubled history of prison operations in Texas. “This is a testament to
the role that advocacy can play in shaping decisions,” said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership. His
organization, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the
Center for Public Policy Priorities, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and
the United Methodist Church stated their opposition to GEO Care’s bid in a
letter to DSHS, the Legislative Budget Board, and Gov. Rick Perry earlier
this year. “The reason the proposal was rejected is telling of the problems
with privatization—you make your money by cutting staff and paying them less
while the care of your patients suffers,” Libal
said. In his letter, Lakey stated that DSHS will
continue to support legislative efforts “to find innovative, effective and
efficient models of providing psychiatric care” for the mentally ill in
Texas, working with elected officials and community groups to balance cost
and effectiveness.
October 3, 2012 Daily Times
The Kerrville State Hospital will remain under state management — at least
for now. Texas state commissioner David Lakey
rejected GEO Care’s proposal to privatize the state hospital. The Daily Times
received an internal email from acting superintendent Jay Norwood sent to
employees today that confirmed Lakey rejected GEO
Care’s proposal, which was to privatize the Kerrville State Hospital.
August 23, 2012 Kerrville Daily Times
Details of proposals submitted to the state to privatize one of its mental
hospitals have not yet been released, but GEO Care, the lone company to
submit a proposal, already has ties to the Kerrville State Hospital through
one of parent company GEO Group's corporate employees, former Kerrville State
Hospital superintendent Stephen Anfinson. The
Department of Health and Human Services Commission sent out a request for
proposals in April, asking private corporations to submit bids on one or more
of six Texas state hospitals. Anfinson served as
the Kerrville State Hospital's superintendent for five years before leaving
April 1, 2011, to become GEO Care's facility administrator for the Montgomery
County Mental Health Treatment Facility in Conroe. Since then, he has been
promoted to coordinator with GEO Group's corporate office. According to
Carrie Williams, director of media relations for the Texas Department of
State and Health Services, Anfinson toured the
Kerrville State Hospital on April 23 as a GEO Care representative. GEO Care
representatives also toured a few other mental health facilities before
submitting a bid, Texas state representative Harvey Hilderbran said. Tim
Sorrells, counsel for the Texas Ethics Commission, said Anfinson's
association with GEO Group and its bid for privatization does not appear to
be violating any state "revolving door" laws, since a hospital is
not an agency that makes laws or regulates activity. However, Public
Citizen's Texas state director Tom Smith said Anfinson's
involvement in the bidding process may be unethical because of his previous
employment with the hospital. "The standards of good ethical practices
say that if you have insider information from your former job as a state
employee, you shouldn't participate in activities that would give your new
employer the benefit of that insider knowledge," Smith said.
Kinney County Detention Center
Brackettville, Texas
Community Education Centers
Jun 21, 2018 bondbuyer.com
IRS wants to reclassify bonds used for detention center on Texas border
WASHINGTON – Tax-exempt bonds issued in 2010 to finance a detention
center near the Texas border with Mexico are under audit by the Internal
Revenue Service for reclassification as taxable private activity bonds. The
Kinney County Public Facility Corp. issued the $9.23 million in project
revenue bonds to finance the acquisition and construction of the warehouse
style building with 384 beds for adults. The detention center is just outside
the county seat of Brackettville which, in turn, is about 45 miles from Del
Rio, a Texas border community along the Rio Grande River. The detention
center is used by the U.S. Marshals Service to house prisoners, according to
the website of the Geo Group Inc., the for-profit prison company that has a
contract with Kinney County to operate the facility. Kinney County Public
Facility Corp. filed a public notice of the IRS audit Monday on the Municipal
Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA database. The county said it “intends to
retain qualified tax counsel to respond to the IRS notification" and
that it does not know “at this time what the outcome of the IRS exam will
be.” Kinney County had a 2010 population of 3,274 and listed the U.S. Border
Patrol as its largest employer with 141 employees followed by the Bracketville Independent School District with 114 and the
Kenney County Detention Center with 98. The 2010 official statement for the
bond issue said the county initially would pay its private contractor $35.50
per bed per night to manage the detention center. Other detention centers and
prisons operating near the U.S.-Mexico border have undergone similar IRS
audits the last couple of years in which issuers have agreed to convert their
bonds from tax-exempt to taxable. Two cases last year involved the Otero
County, New Mexico Jail Project and the Baker Correctional Development Corp.
in Florida. The Otero County settlement involved $62.3 million in revenue
bonds sold in 2007. The Baker County Correctional Development settlements
involved $36.3 million in outstanding first mortgage revenue bonds that were
part of the $45 million sold in 2008. Unlike state and local governments which
are categorized as governments, the federal government is considered to be a
private party under the federal tax code. That means that prisons or
detention facilities that are used for federal prisoners or detainees are
considered to be under a private use. The tax code classifies a bond as a
private activity bond if more than 10% of the proceeds are used for private
use and more than 10% of debt service payments are from private parties or
secured by private parties. PABs are tax exempt only if they fall into one of
several categories, none of which include jails or correctional facilities.
Kinney County Attorney Todd Durden did not immediately respond to a request
for comment nor did J. Nicholson Meindl, a senior
attorney for Hunton & Williams in Dallas who
served as bond counsel.
October 26, 2009 Norfolk Crime Examiner
On Friday, a member of the notoriously violent Mexican Mafia escaped from the
Kinney County Detention Center in Brackettville, TX. Kinney County Sheriff’s
deputies, along with the Texas Rangers and U.S. Border Patrol are still
searching for Manuel Guardiola, 33. However, the search may be rather futile
considering the fact that the jail is only 30 miles from the Mexican border.
The Kinney County Sheriff’s office told reporters that they do not know how
Guardiola escaped. The escaped fugitive is 5-foot-4 and weighs about 180 lbs.
He has black hair, but could have shaved his head and his upper body is
covered in tattoos. He may be wearing glasses. Anyone with information on the
whereabouts of Manuel Guardiola is asked to call the Texas Department of
Public Safety at (512) 424-2000. In December 2008, the privately-run Kinney
County Detention Center experienced a riot when 30 prisoners refused to
return to their cells from, and set fire to mattresses and clothing. The
Mexican Mafia is a very powerful prison gang which began in 1950 in
California. Today, the gang controls large drug distribution, extortion and
murder-for-hire operations, both in and outside of prison. They are closely
aligned with the Aryan Brotherhood.
Kleberg County Jail
Kleberg County, Texas
Premier Management Enterprises
November 8, 2007 Caller-Times
A new commissary company started this week in Kleberg County Jail after
Premier Management Enterprises and the county mutually ended Premier's
contract. Premier was investigated in Bexar County for buying a trip to Costa
Rica for former Sheriff Ralph Lopez. Lopez resigned and pleaded no contest to
three charges related to the trip. Premier, based in Lafayette, La., also
operated in Kleberg County since former Sheriff Tony Gonzalez signed the
contract in fall 2004. Sheriff Ed Mata said last month he wanted to end
Premier's contract because of the Bexar investigation and because of
performance issues. Keefe Commissary Network, based in St. Louis, began
providing commissary services Monday to the Kleberg County Jail. The one-year
contract gives the county 24 percent of net sales, defined as gross sales
minus non-commissioned items such as stamps. Keefe was chosen over Swanson
Sales Corp., which said in a proposal it could offer up to 30.25 percent of
net sales. Commissaries, which supply snacks and some toiletries, are
considered privileges for inmates. Texas law gives sheriffs sole discretion
over the contracts. A county's proceeds must be spent on items or activities
that contribute to inmates' well-being, such as education, libraries, writing
materials, clothing and hygiene items, according to state law. Kleberg Chief
Deputy Willie Vera said Keefe offered the better overall package despite the
lower commission. Some items will be marked up to make up part of the
difference. Plus, the company offered a one-year contract, while Swanson
initially wanted five, then agreed to three, Vera said. Premier had signed a
five-year contract with Gonzalez, and Vera said the current sheriff isn't
willing to sign such a long contract. "We have a year to evaluate this
company," Vera said. "If he needs to go out and search for another
company the door is still open." Keefe also recently began service to the
Nueces County Jail, making it easier for the company to add Kingsville to its
routes, Vera said. Keefe made the transition smoothly and the Kleberg County
Jail was never without commissary services, he said. Premier ran the Nueces
County Jail commissary under a contract signed by former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez until Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin
terminated the agreement after taking office in January, citing performance
issues. Keefe gives Nueces County a commission of 39 percent of net sales.
Mata and Kaelin have said their staffs told them
their predecessors, Gonzalez of Kleberg County and Olivarez of Nueces County,
went on that trip to Costa Rica in August 2005. Neither Mata nor Kaelin has documentation corroborating the reports.
Gonzalez left office in 2004 after losing an election to Mata, and Olivarez
resigned in January 2006 to run for county judge. Gonzalez and Olivarez have
not responded to requests for interviews. Premier's principals, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, also own LCS Correctional Services, which is building a
private prison to house federal inmates near Robstown.
October 1, 2007 Caller-Times
Two local sheriffs are distancing themselves from their predecessors'
decisions to award jail commissary contracts to a company involved in a criminal
investigation in Bexar County. Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata said last week
officials are researching ways to end that county's five-year agreement with
the company, Premier Management Enterprises. Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin gave Premier a 30-day termination notice on Jan.
24, after taking office. Former Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez resigned and
pleaded no contest to accepting a trip to Costa Rica from the principals of
Premier. The Lafayette, La., based company runs the county jail commissary.
Neither Kaelin nor Mata has documentation
corroborating what their staffs have told them -- that their predecessors,
Larry Olivarez of Nueces County and Tony Gonzalez of Kleberg County, went on
that August 2005 trip. Neither Gonzalez nor Olivarez has responded to
requests for comment. There is no known investigation in Nueces or Kleberg
counties. "At this point no case has been submitted to me," Kleberg
County District Attorney John Hubert said. "If something is submitted to
me, I take every case on its own merits. I don't have any information other
than what I've read in the papers and -- no offense to anybody -- that's not
really evidence." Nueces County District Attorney Carlos Valdez was out
of the office late last week, and the Bexar County District Attorney's Office
did not respond. The FBI would not comment. Olivarez signed a contract with
Premier five months after the Costa Rica trip involving the former Bexar
County sheriff. Gonzalez signed a contract in September 2004. Premier's
principals, Patrick and Michael LeBlanc, also own LCS Correctional Services,
which is building a private prison to house federal inmates near Robstown. A
receptionist at Premier referred all questions to the company's chief
executive officer, Chris Burch, who did not respond. An attorney for the
company, Tonya Webber of Corpus Christi, said her clients have not been
commenting because of the open investigation in Bexar County. She said she
would check with her clients for comment on the local contracts but did not
respond after that. Kaelin and Mata both cited
performance issues with Premier as reasons for terminating the contract. Mata
said the Bexar investigation also played a part. "What I'm trying to do
is just protect this county," Mata said. "I'm not trying to pass any
judgment if something was done wrong." Kaelin
said his decision was based solely on Premier's performance. He met with
Premier officials about complaints before ending the agreement, according to
correspondence the Caller-Times obtained under the Texas Public Information
Act. Kaelin and Premier also tangled over payments.
A new contract, with Keefe Supply, also is potentially more lucrative for the
county. The Premier contract gave the county $130,000 or 31 percent of net
sales, whichever was greater. The new contract gives a minimum of 39 percent
with the possibility of 41 percent after the first year. Texas law gives
sheriffs sole discretion over commissary contracts. Commissaries supply
snacks, such as chips, candy bars and soda, as well as certain toiletries,
for inmates. Friends and family put money in an inmate's account to spend on
commissary items. A county's proceeds must be used for commissary staff,
social needs of inmates (such as education or counseling), libraries, writing
materials, clothing, hygiene items or other programs that contribute to
inmates' well-being, according to state law. Kaelin
said he uses commissary profits to buy newspaper subscriptions, televisions
and uniforms. Kaelin said inmates frequently
complained about Premier's service. Under that system, inmates would order
items to be packed into bags, shipped from San Antonio and handed out the
next day. Kaelin said his office received numerous
complaints about items being damaged or wrong. Keefe stores items at the
Nueces County Jail McKenzie Annex and brings items around on a cart twice a
week so inmates can choose and receive items immediately, Kaelin
said. Premier's accounting system also allowed inmates to buy on credit, and
as a result some inmates would leave custody owing money to Nueces County, Kaelin said. Keefe's system charges inmates' accounts
directly by scanning a bracelet inmates wear. An inmate can't buy items
unless there is enough money in the account.
September 9, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez and some of his friends weren't the only
ones in South Texas who enjoyed the benefits of helping Premier Management
Enterprises secure lucrative jail commissary contracts, according to
interviews and records examined by the San Antonio Express-News. Like Lopez,
the sheriffs of two other counties awarded contracts to the Louisiana jail
services company, and either they or their associates reaped financial
benefits. Those sheriffs, now out of office, also boasted to their staffs
about going on a golf and fishing trip to Costa Rica with Premier officials,
the same trip that last week forced Lopez to resign. Here in Kleberg County,
then-Sheriff Tony Gonzalez, a close friend of Lopez, gave Premier a contract
to run his jail commissary when he was in office in 2004 and has been paid by
the company for consulting work of an unknown nature. "I've done some
consulting for them here and there," Gonzalez told the Express-News
during a brief interview at his ranch-style home on the outskirts of
Kingsville, declining to elaborate. "I'm just down here keeping my nose
clean." In Nueces County, one associate of former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez, another Lopez friend, reaped rewards after helping Premier win a
jail commissary contract there in 2005. The associate, a commercial real
estate broker who was appointed by the sheriff to an ad hoc committee that
awarded the contract, later earned a commission from the sale of 56 acres
where LCS Corrections Services Inc., another company owned in part by
Premier's principals, is building a private detention center, the
Express-News has learned. In addition, the former sheriff's chief deputy won
political backing from LCS when he ran as a candidate to replace Olivarez,
who had stepped down to run for county judge. Premier, which has come up
repeatedly in an ongoing public corruption investigation in Bexar County for
doing favors for influential people in a position to help the company, has
denied any wrongdoing. That investigation, so far, has narrowly targeted only
individuals in Bexar County, such as Lopez and his longtime campaign manager,
John Reynolds, and Reynolds' financial relationship with the sheriff's wife.
Lopez, Reynolds and at least one of their associates helped Premier land the
local jail food commissary contract in 2005. As part of an immunity deal with
Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, the sheriff resigned, effective
Sept. 19, and pleaded no contest Tuesday to three misdemeanor charges, two of
which were related to the Costa Rica golf outing he accepted from Premier.
The deal protected him from further state prosecution; his wife wasn't
indicted. Reynolds, who played a key role in awarding the contract to
Premier, is suspected by Reed of bribery, extortion, theft, money laundering
and campaign finance violations. He also went on the Costa Rica trip and
received checks totaling more than $30,000 from Premier and one of its owners
for consulting and donations to fake charities Reynolds set up. An associate
of both Reynolds and the sheriff, John E. Curran, voted with Reynolds on a
jail board to give Premier the commissary contract, then won a contract
himself from Premier to provide temporary workers for the operation. Largely
unexamined is the broader picture of how Premier, its owners, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, and LCS conducted a business expansion with local government
partners throughout South Texas. A closer look at some of those operations
reveals similarities in conduct with local officials that have drawn none of
the law enforcement or media scrutiny seen in Bexar County. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who succeeded Olivarez, is
among those who have been watching the news from San Antonio with keen
interest because LCS is about to open an 800-bed prison in his county. So
far, no law enforcement agency has contacted him, Kaelin
said. Close relationships -- LeBlanc-run companies Premier and LCS operate
jail-related businesses in five South Texas counties. The first started in
Brooks County in 2000. They have embarked on an aggressive expansion in recent
years that has capitalized on tighter federal immigration control policies.
In addition to the work at Bexar County Jail, the companies also operate
jails, commissaries or full-scale prisons in Brooks, Kleberg, Hidalgo and
Nueces counties. They also run four jails in the LeBlancs'
home state of Louisiana and one in Alabama. Current Texas law makes sheriffs
key gatekeepers for contracts such as those sought by Premier and to a
certain extent by the prison-building LCS. Under current law, Texas sheriffs have
almost unchecked authority to contract management of their commissaries with
no competitive bidding. County commissioners must approve deals to build
private prisons but often keep their sheriffs closely in the loop as resident
overseers and advisers. Premier, LCS or sometimes both arrived in counties
served by sheriffs who maintained close personal relationships with one
another and with Bexar County's Lopez, according to interviews with personnel
in several offices. Lopez's office calendar for the past few years shows he
often traveled to visit Kleberg's Gonzalez on weekends for golfing and that
Gonzalez traveled to San Antonio. The calendar also shows a number of trips
to visit Olivarez in Corpus Christi, where he still lives in a house near a
golf course. At the Kleberg County Sheriff's Office, Gonzalez's former
staffers say the three were often joined in golfing and hunting outings by
other sheriffs and elected officials in counties where Premier or LCS are
doing business today. Among them was Balde Lozano
of Brooks County, who did not return three calls for this story. "He
kept a close-knit circle of friends," said Yvonne Barbour, Gonzalez's
former office administrator. "I know Tony was a big golfer." Those
relationships would later prove mutually beneficial for the Louisiana
companies and the sheriffs or their friends. Gonzalez, for instance, used his
relationships in Nueces County to help Premier and LCS gain entrance there.
Assistant Deputy Chief Peter B. Peralta, who worked in the office when LSC
first began courting county business, remembered that it was Gonzalez who
made the introductions. Later, Gonzalez approved giving Premier a food
commissary contract for his jail during his final weeks in office. At some
point either before or after Gonzalez left office in late 2004, he accepted
private consulting work from Premier's owners, he and a company official
acknowledged. When Gonzalez transferred the commissary contract to Premier,
two lifelong Kingsville residents, brothers who run a small local grocery,
felt the pain. Betos Community Grocery had held the
contract since the 1970s and had come to rely on the modest commissary
revenue as competition from large grocery stores cut into Betos'
bottom line. They were told they should only bid for the contract if they had
a sophisticated computer system. "We didn't even get one computer until
last year," said Juan Garza, who co-owns the grocery with his brother
Albert and supported Gonzalez's last failed re-election bid. "It
hurt." It remains unclear what kind of consulting work Gonzalez did for
the company or when it started. But former five-term Brooks County Judge Joe
B. Garcia recalled one occasion — after Gonzalez lost his election — that he
came calling, apparently after hearing that Garcia had begun agitating for
Brooks County to renegotiate better terms from its LCS detention center
contract. It was during this time that Gonzalez phoned Garcia wanting to meet
for lunch and talk about local LCS operations. "I've known Tony for a
while. But I didn't want to talk to him about my contract with LCS,"
Garcia said. Garcia remembered another story he found disturbing, when
Michael LeBlanc himself showed up at his office, accompanied by the man
Garcia had just beaten in the election. That LeBlanc would travel to South
Texas was not unusual; he often has personally tended to his business
affairs. But Garcia said what he heard made him feel uncomfortable.
"They said if I had a campaign debt, they would contribute to my
campaign," Garcia said. He said he told them he had no campaign debt to
pay off and wouldn't have accepted the offer even if he did. "A lot of
people try to do those type of things," Garcia said. "I've always
been the type who, hey, I've worked hard for my education. I don't have fancy
cars, no ranches." Attorneys for LCS and Premier have declined all
requests for interviews regarding the ongoing investigation in Bexar County
or for this report. Last year, the LeBlancs sued
the Express-News, alleging they were libeled in articles the paper published
in late 2005. The lawsuit is pending. But Chris Burch, chief executive
officer of Premier, acknowledged that Gonzalez had done some consulting work
for the company under an arrangement with a predecessor, Ian Williamson, who
is no longer with the company. Burch said he was not privy to any details
about that work. Gonzalez still may be working for the company as a paid
consultant, Burch said. "I do know he has done some consulting work, but
I'm not the one who put this together." Benefits and campaign -- Like
Gonzalez, then-Nueces County Sheriff Olivarez helped Premier land a
commissary deal in his jail during his final days in office in late 2005. He
then quit, as required, to run for county judge. During his time as sheriff,
LCS had a "pass through" contract with Nueces to refer federal
prisoners to its other Texas facilities, and it advanced a proposal to build
the 800-bed detention center, now nearing completion. The project is expected
to generate $800,000 for the county in inmate transfer payments, plus
$350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. The Express-News has learned an ally of
Olivarez benefited financially from LCS' effort to build the detention center
— after helping the sheriff give the jail commissary contract to Premier.
Corpus Christi commercial real estate broker and developer Tim Clower served in late 2005 on an ad hoc selection
committee the sheriff appointed to examine bids for the commissary management
job, according to the office of Kaelin, the current
sheriff. In February 2006, several months after Clower
voted for the commissary contract, he brokered a real estate purchase of 56.6
acres on behalf of LCS for the $20 million detention center. The property's
seller, Patricia Ann Bernsen, said Clower's company
approached her and brokered the purchase of her farmland for $4,000 an acre,
or $225,000. "He did get a commission, that's for sure," Bernsen
said, declining to say how much. "It was a good commission." On
average, commercial real estate agents earn between 6 percent and 10 percent,
according to one South Texas commercial real estate broker. At the time of
the sale, the 2006 sheriff's primary race was heating up. Clower
co-signed for a $20,000 campaign loan to Olivarez's former chief deputy,
Jimmy Rodriguez, whose opponent at the time was publicly criticizing him for
helping bring LCS to town. LCS went to Rodriguez's aid by lambasting his
opponent. At one point in the campaign, LCS went public with a threat to halt
construction of its detention center if Rodriguez did not win the Democratic
primary. "We're not going to work with or for someone who doesn't
respect our company," Michael LeBlanc was quoted in the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times as saying about Rodriguez's opponent. "If Mr. (Pete)
Alvarez wins, we're out of Nueces County — plain and simple," LeBlanc
said. Rodriguez won the primary but lost the general election. Last week, he
insisted that he was paying off the $20,000 bank loan he said Clower co-signed. "He's been a friend for a long
time," Olivarez's former chief deputy said of Clower.
"He had a long history with the department before we even got
there." Clower did not return repeated calls
seeking comment about the loan or his commission on the LCS land purchase.
Traveling together -- The Express-News could not substantiate or refute comments
from those in the Sheriff's Office that Olivarez, while he was sheriff, went
on the same Costa Rica trip in August 2005 with Lopez, Reynolds and Premier
officials. Olivarez did not return numerous phone calls or respond to a
message left during a visit to his home. Kaelin
said Olivarez boasted of the Costa Rica trip and a separate hunting trip to
employees who remain on staff. Kleberg's Gonzalez, while in office, also told
some of his staff of going on the same Costa Rica trip, said Kleberg Sheriff
Ed Mata, who beat Gonzalez in the 2004 election. Mata conceded that he can't
prove the story, but he wondered why no one has investigated as in Bexar
County. Gonzalez, during the recent interview at his home near Kingsville,
was asked several times if he would deny going on the trip. He declined each
time. The Costa Rica trip was not the only reputed benefit Kaelin heard about in regard to Olivarez. Shortly after
taking office, Kaelin said, a staff person phoned
him to report that Olivarez had appeared with a small group of businesspeople
seeking to tour the detention center project. Kaelin
said he was told that Olivarez had represented himself as an "unpaid
spokesperson for LCS." Kaelin called LCS
officials to inquire as to whether Olivarez might have been hired to run the
detention center, a prospect Kaelin worried would
undermine his office's working relationship with it. But he was told Olivarez
had no known connection to the company or employment prospects. Bexar Sheriff
Lopez's office calendar indicates he planned to attend the detention center
groundbreaking with Olivarez on Feb. 23, 2006, after Olivarez had left office
to run, unsuccessfully it turned out, for judge. Today, Olivarez works as a
manager for the Corpus Christi branch of CGT Law Group International,
according to a woman who answered the phone there. Richard Harbison, a vice
president in charge of LCS' Texas operations, is certain that Olivarez has
had no financial relationship with LCS. As he was preparing to take his own
vacation to Costa Rica, Harbison also said by phone that he was unaware of
any paid trips involving sheriffs in Texas and the LeBlancs.
Burch, of Premier, said he was not working for the company at the time of the
August 2005 trip. In Bexar County, where the public corruption investigation
has been in high gear lately, District Attorney Susan Reed has said she is
mainly interested in prosecuting local individuals such as Reynolds, whom she
called "rotten fruit." None of Premier's San Antonio offices have
been searched, Reed acknowledged. "I'm not finished, so I'm not ready to
make any definitive determination yet" about Premier, she said. The FBI
and Texas Rangers, which have been involved in the Bexar County
investigation, aren't commenting. Patrick LeBlanc, who last week formally
became a candidate for the Louisiana Legislature, is running in part on a
message that he will fight against political corruption that "robs us of
our confidence in government." Last week, he told the Lafayette Advocate
that he has been cooperating with investigators in Bexar County but couldn't
elaborate. "We haven't done anything wrong," he told the newspaper.
"I would never, ever risk my integrity over selling candy bars and
potato chips."
Kyle
Unit
Hays County, Texas
Management and Training Corporation
March 16, 2008 Austin American-Statesman
Two men who escaped from a Kyle private prison were apprehended this
afternoon, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The two men
were apprehended while walking on County Road 158 about three miles east of
the facility, according to Jason Clark, a public information officer with the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Jeremy Trevino, 21, and Justin Doty,
23, escaped from the Kyle Unit in Hays County over a wall in the recreation
yard shortly before 10 p.m. Saturday. Clark said the two men were imprisoned
there for parole violations. “Anytime an offender escapes, we always work
quickly to get them back into custody,” Clark said. “You just don’t know what
they’re capable of.”
Laredo Detention Center
Laredo, Texas
CCA
November 23, 2007 Laredo Morning Times
The former warden at an immigration processing facility in Laredo is
suing the company that administers the facility, alleging he was wrongfully
terminated. Jose L. Hinojosa was the warden for the Corrections Corporation
of America's processing center in Laredo, a 350-bed unit on East Saunders St.
that handled Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detainees from 1987
to 2006, according to court documents. The lawsuit, filed in federal court,
alleges Hinojosa was ordered to resign as warden because he is a
Mexican-American man who, at the age of 62, told superiors he intended to
keep his job for 10 more years. This was done in violation of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the lawsuit
alleges. Hinojosa is asking for more than $3 million in damages. An answer
filed on behalf of CCA denies any wrongdoing by the company and denies that
Hinojosa is entitled to any relief. The reply states that employment decisions
regarding Hinojosa were legitimate, non-discriminatory and not based on
Hinojosa's "alleged protected classes." An investigation by the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was unable to determine if CCA
had violated any federal statutes, according to court documents. Attorneys
for Hinojosa and CCA were not available for comment. Margaret Fernandez, a
company spokeswoman, said she could not comment on pending litigation. Juan
Diaz, 52, took over as the facility's warden in 2006.
July 19, 2007 The Capital Times
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. "One night
after midnight, I was sleeping and a whole bunch of people showed up. They
tied me up and beat me," Contreras, his voice catching, told a forum on
immigration issues in Whitewater last week. Contreras appeared with a
"Reality Tour" of the state organized by Voces de la Frontera -- a
rally at the State Capitol in Madison, a forum in Whitewater, a stop in
Milwaukee -- to tell of what he calls abuses in U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. "Every time I get into what was
going on back there, what happened to these people, it breaks me,"
Contreras said in a recent interview at his family's east side carpet
cleaning business. The experience took 90 pounds off his 260-pound frame, he
said, weight that he's putting back on since he was released following an
order by a federal judge on March 30. Contreras was taken into custody in
early January after a computer check at the border as he and his family were
returning from Mexico. The check turned up a 1989 arrest in Illinois, where a
trace of cocaine was found in the car in which Contreras was riding. He said
he paid a $250 fine and was told he would have no record. Although he has
lived legally in the United States since 1964, Contreras is not a U.S.
citizen, so his drug conviction was a deportable offense under a 1996 law. He
has crossed the border without incident many times since then, but ICE
recently upgraded its computers at the border, which may be why he was
detained this time. Tough Texas treatment: Contreras was held at three ICE
facilities in Texas run by private companies under contract with the federal
government. 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. He saw fights among detainees and unprovoked force used by guards on
detainees. His objections to rough treatment by guards of other detainees
brought threats of retaliation, he said. Contreras launched a hunger strike
and encouraged others to join him in protest of treatment there, as his wife,
Carmen, gave reports on the protest to Spanish-language media. Contreras said
in an interview that he and six other men who challenged guards' treatment of
detainees were shackled and beaten as they were transferred to another
facility. He said after he was awakened in the middle of the night and yanked
from his bunk, his wrists and ankles were shackled to his waist, and he was
prodded repeatedly -- hard -- by a guard wielding a police baton. Because
their shackled feet could not step up high enough to get into a transport
van, Contreras said, he and others we picked up and thrown in. "They
tossed us all in there like animals." Contreras said the incident left
bruises on his legs and arms, and his arms were cut when guards used tools to
snap off the plastic restraints. He was transferred to Corrections Corp.'s
Webb County Detention Center, also in Laredo, where he continued his hunger
strike. After a letter from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin to ICE officials,
solicited by Contreras' family, he said he was transferred to the South Texas
Detention Complex in Pearsall, run by the international GEO Group Inc. After a
dispute with a guard about an assignment to a lower bunk, which Contreras
said was made by GEO's medical unit, he said he was put in a 5-foot-by-6-foot
isolation cell. He stayed in the metal cell, with bunk, toilet and sink, for
two weeks, he said. The prescribed periods of release, for showering,
exercise and visits, sometimes were not given because there weren't enough
guards on duty, he added. Steve Owen, Corrections Corp.'s director of
marketing, referred requests for comment to ICE, saying that was ICE's
policy. Nina Pruneda in ICE's public affairs office
in San Antonio said she could find no record in Contreras' file "of the
things he said he witnessed and endured. We are looking into the
matter." GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said as a
matter of policy, the company does not comment on "third party
allegations" like those made by Contreras, but said that all of GEO's
facilities are run in accordance with the American Correctional Association's
standards for humane treatment. A spokesperson in Baldwin's office said they
had received no further requests from Contreras since his release, but said
Baldwin would ask the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to
"investigate issues raised by the Contreras case in its review of
possible civil liberties violations and its review of the consequences of
privatizing basic government services." The committee, under Chairman
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is reviewing Bush administration practices and
policies. Waxman's office said that on Baldwin's request, the committee would
look into it. "If she thinks this is an important issue, the committee
will treat it very seriously," Waxman said in a prepared statement.
Contreras said he and six others held in the detention centers are preparing
a federal suit. The San Antonio attorney he said was representing them did
not return calls seeking comment. Contreras said the suit will seek to force
the government to improve conditions at the prison. "I'm not doing it
for the money. I'm doing it so they treat people right," Contreras said.
"Somebody has got to say enough is enough.' "
LaSalle County Jail
La Salle, Texas
Emerald Correctional Management
September 27, 2003
A lawsuit set for trial today over the La Salle County Commissioners'
handling of public access to information about a controversial jail project
has been settled after a marathon negotiating session. "The lawsuit was
filed because they weren't giving us information about the project,"
said Donna Lednicky, of Encinal, one of the
plaintiffs who attended the 13-hour mediation session that ended late
Wednesday. "We sued because they violated the Texas Open Meetings Act,
and they have admitted this," she said of one element of the settlement.
The suit was filed last year by several residents of Encinal, a small community
in southern LaSalle County where the county commissioners unanimously voted
to build a 500-bed jail to hold U.S. Marshals Service prisoners. Critics of
the $24 million jail project accused the commissioners of holding meetings
without giving proper notice, withholding public documents about the project
and refusing to answer questions in public forums about it. Originally filed
in hope of blocking construction of the jail, the suit was settled short of
that goal. The agreement calls for former LaSalle County Judge Jimmy
Patterson to be replaced on the Public Facilities Corporation by current
County Judge Joel Rodriguez and for all public documents relating to the jail
project to be filed with the LaSalle County Clerk. The county also has agreed
to post notices of its meetings in Encinal. Before this, Encinal residents
had to drive 30 miles to Cotulla to read postings at the county courthouse.
In addition, the county agreed to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees and court
costs. "It's still a terrible deal, but since the bonds were approved by
the attorney general, it's uncontestable. We think we got more in the
settlement than going to court," Lednicky
said. (Express-News)
September 20, 2003
The U.S. Marshals Service soon will narrow the list of proposals from South
Texas counties wanting to partner with the agency to build a 2,800-bed
federal detention facility near Laredo — the largest private prison project
in the nation. Details are sketchy but at least two counties — LaSalle
and Webb — are interested in landing the deal for what competitors for the
contract have called a "superjail."
Florida-based Wackenhut Corp. has submitted two sites in Webb County, where
it says it could build the facility with the county's help. Another
private prison corporation, Emerald Correctional Management of Shreveport,
La., wants to expand an already controversial project in Encinal to give the
federal agency the number of beds it seeks. Emerald has an agreement
with the LaSalle County Public Facilities Corp. to manage a 500-bed federal
detention center in Encinal, population 629. Construction of the center is
under way, Sheriff Jerry P. Patterson said. LaSalle County Judge Joel
Rodriguez Jr., who recently was elected and isn't a member of the public
facilities corporation, opposes any plans to expand the detention
center. Rodriguez is a vocal critic of the center itself, saying the
prior administration issued high-interest bonds to pay for it without public
input. He said the county is in no position to handle more prisoners,
considering it's still waiting to hear from the Bureau of Customs and Border
Protection on a possible contract to build a separate 1,000-bed facility.
Frio County also is being considered for the BCBP project. "That
would increase five times the population of Encinal," Rodriguez said.
"The city doesn't have the infrastructure to support a 2,800-bed
facility." Officials with Emerald Correctional Management couldn't
be reached for comment Friday. Encinal resident Sean Chadwell said he
doubts the U.S. Marshals Service will seriously consider any proposal from
LaSalle County to build the "superjail,"
because of the turmoil it generated by approving the 500-bed facility.
Chadwell is among a group of Encinal residents who have filed a lawsuit
against LaSalle County for improperly approving that $27 million deal. County
officials have denied the suit's allegations and a mediation hearing is
scheduled for Wednesday in San Antionio. At
one point, the federal agency suspended funding for the project because of
complaints that residents weren't being included in the decision-making
process. The money was later reinstated. "I don't think they
really stand a chance," said Webb County Judge Louis Bruni of LaSalle
County's effort to net the 2,800-bed facility. "The lack of
infrastructure up there would (increase) the cost." But Bruni said
there are other competitors within Webb County that he would need to fend off
in order for the county's joint venture with Wackenhut to win. The U.S.
Marshals Service won't identify the entities vying for the contract, or even
say how many are competing or where they propose to locate the center.
"Everybody wants a piece of the pie," Bruni said. "It would be
a tremendous gain." The judge estimates 500 new jobs would be
created in the county if the facility were to be built there. But even
in Laredo, opposition already has sprouted. On Thursday,
representatives from the Austin-based Texas Criminal Justice Reform Coalition
spurred about a dozen students at Texas A&M International University to
fight the project. "Do we want Laredo to seem like a giant holding
cell for prisoners?" asked the coalition's Carlos Villareal. (San
Antonio Express-News)
July 21, 2003
Backers of a controversial jail financed with $21.8 million of taxable,
high-yield revenue bonds have sued the top official in LaSalle County, Tex.,
claiming he interfered with a $25 million contract to build the 500-bed
facility under construction near the Mexican border and endangered millions
of dollars worth of similar projects. The
plaintiffs include Dallas-based bond underwriter Municipal Capital Markets
Group Inc., Shreveport, La.-based private prison operator Emerald
Correctional Management, and the architectural firm Corplan
Inc. of Dallas. The lawsuit, filed in LaSalle County District Court on July
14 by San Antonio attorney Troy S. Martin 3d, alleges that county Judge Joel
Rodriguez has disrupted plans to build a series of jails near the Mexican
border. The lawsuit alleges that Rodriguez, who is the top county commissioner,
made false statements about the deal to reporters. "If Rodriguez is not
prevented and restrained from engaging in threatening activities and
communications with third persons, there is a substantial likelihood that
these entire multimillion dollar projects will fail," the lawsuit
states. In a separate lawsuit, former county Judge Jimmy P. Patterson,
who remains head of the LaSalle County Public Facilities Detention Corp. that
issued the bonds on Nov. 7, is suing Rodriguez for defamation. A third
lawsuit, filed by a LaSalle County citizens group, accuses the county
commissioners of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act by withholding
information about the deal. Under the contracts, Rodriguez said the
county stands to lose $373,808 in the first year, $1.2 million in the second,
and more than $1.9 million afterward from the new 500-bed Encinal detention
facility. The district attorney for LaSalle County is also leading a
search for records on the bond deal, Rodriguez said. Although a
preliminary official statement for the revenue bonds stated that county
attorney Elizabeth Martinez had reviewed and approved the contracts, she
denied that, saying she was not hired by the authority and did not sign the
deal. (The Bond Buyer)
May 12, 2003
The honeymoon between new LaSalle County Judge Joel Rodriguez and the four
incumbent county commissioners — if ever there was one — has ended with a
nasty thud. Saying he is weary of begging the commissioners for
financial information about past county projects and also fearful the county
is just weeks from going broke, Rodriguez this week took an extreme
step. "I'm asking the county attorney to file misdemeanor
(criminal) complaints on public information violations and bid violations
against the commissioners," said Rodriguez, who served two terms as
county treasurer before being elected judge. Rodriguez says he's most
worried about contracts the county signed last year with a Louisiana company,
Emerald Correctional Management Corp., to operate two facilities. One
is a 48-bed county jail that houses federal prisoners, and the other is a
576-bed detention center that also will house federal detainees. The larger
facility will open next spring near Encinal. Rodriguez claims the
contracts, negotiated without the oversight of a lawyer, are bad for the
county. He said the county already is losing thousands each month on
the jail because it must house its own prisoners elsewhere. He predicts the
situation will get worse when the larger facility opens. He said the commissioners
have ignored his pleas to hire an outside lawyer to review the contracts with
an eye toward renegotiating them. The project, rushed through late last
year with a minimum of public input or disclosure, has triggered two lawsuits
from residents complaining about the process. It was financed with
high-interest debt issued through the county's nonprofit Public Facilities
Corp. The four commissioners, along with former County Judge Jimmy Patterson,
are the board members of both the PFC and another nonprofit entity that
backed a large county project. (San Antonio Express-News)
December 12, 2002
A
lawsuit filed by a group of citizens in La Salle County, Tex., seeks to
halt a controversial private jail near the Mexican border financed
with nearly $22 million in high-yield bonds, and accuses county officials of
violating the state's open-meetings law in approving the
project. The project, designed to
create jobs in the poor, sparsely populated county, has come under siege
since the bonds were sold on Nov. 7. The official statement for the taxable
bonds cited approval on some legal questions by county attorney
Elizabeth Martinez, but Martinez has said she never signed any documents
concerning the jail. County Treasurer Joel
Rodriguez, who defeated outgoing county Judge Jimmy P. Patterson
and will take office Jan. 1, has vowed to stop the jail. In Texas, the county
judge is the top administrative official and leads the commissioners'
court. The suit filed on Monday asks
the state district court in Cotulla to halt any commissions and use of bond
proceeds, and to also declare the nonprofit issuer of the bonds -- the La
Salle County Public Facility Detention Corp. -- "null and void."
The corporation was created and is managed by the county commissioners and
county judge. The U.S. Marshals
Service, which was expected to be the major customer for the 500-bed jail,
last week suspended a $3 million grant for the project pending
an investigation and hinted that it could back out of the
project. Although Patterson and others
on the commissioners' court claim they have made all documents available in
meetings, Rodriguez and others dispute that. Rodriguez said he had to
file a freedom of information request to get the documents, even
though he serves as the chief investment official of the county. Attorney H.C. Hall 3d, representing Greg
Springer of Encinal, last month wrote a letter to Judge Martinez seeking an
investigation of the commissioners and claiming business involving
the jail was conducted in private. "My
client, as well as other landowners in La Salle County, believe that all
required public notices and requirements incident to the project
have been ignored and/or purposefully avoided," Hall wrote. "It is
apparent that the entire transaction has been purposefully conducted behind
closed doors." (The Bond Buyer)
December 6, 2002
A
tense and heated Thursday commissioners court meeting left many in
the audience unsatisfied with answers provided by attorneys, consultants,
bond underwriters and La Salle county officials. The facility would house 300 federal
inmates daily for 15 years, as per an agreement with the U.S. Marshals and
the non-profit La Salle County Public Facility Detention Corporation. The county judge and four commissioners
make up the non-profit corporation, which was created in October 2000 to
secure financing for the project.
County Judge Jimmy Patterson and three of the four commissioners
present held the meeting in response to the recent suspension of a $3 million
federal grant by the U.S. Marshals.
Concerns raised by the Marshals in a Nov. 22 letter revolve around
providing opportunities for public comment and verifying the county's bidding
and procurement process on the project.
At the beginning of the meeting, audience members asked specifically
about the contract between La Salle and Emerald, th
private corporation out of Louisiana that will manage the facility. Questions
also centered on the financial liability of the county, should there be a
default in payment on the $22 million high-interest revenue bonds sold by the
county's nonprofit corporation.
"The taxpayers of Encinal and La Salle County have no financial
liability on this project at all. Zero," bond co-underwriter Stan Crouch
stressed. Michael Harling, the other
co-underwriter (Municipal Capital Markets of Dallas), fielded similar
questions and became defensive at one point early in the meeting. One audience member asked if the county had
worked with an auditor in putting this project together. Patterson said "no" since La
Salle only has a treasurer. County
Treasurer Joel Rodriguez, county judge-elect, however, stood up to list the
concerns he has with the project.
Though the project has already been finalized, Rodriguez said he
barely received a packet from Akin Gump that day with signed documents. He asked County Clerk Peggy Murray if the
bond indenture contract and lease agreement had been filed with her
office. She replied no. "No, none of that information has been
available," Rodriguez said, stating that he has had to make numerous
open records requests to obtain documents and information. He explained why he was concerned with any
potential financial liability.
"The county's broke," Rodriguez said, noting that La Salle
"hardly has enough money to make payroll." Encinal residents Donna Lednicky
and Sean Chadwell later asked who provided legal counsel on the actual
contract. Martin of Akin, Gump said
his law firm had reviewed the bond contract, but Lednicky
and Chadwell demanded to know who had represented the county when negotiating
the terms of the contract. Afterward,
Encinal rancher Greg Springer said he left the meeting unsatisfied. "They keep saying the county is not
liable. True, but unfortunately if the county defaults, and it already has
with federal loans for an affordable housing project, the
reality is that its bond rating will be severely impacted,"
Springer said. (The Times)
December
5, 2002
The U.S. Marshals have thrown a wrench into construction plans for the
proposed $25 million Encinal detention facility. On Nov. 22, the Marshals
issued La Salle County Judge Jimmy Patterson a letter stating that the $3
million federal Cooperative Agreement Program grant, which was awarded July
29, would be suspended until certain demands are met. At 6:45 p.m., the judge
and four commissioners will convene as the La Salle County Public Facility
Detention Corporation. They formed this private nonprofit corporation for
financing purposes of the $25 million, 500-bed facility, which they want to
use as an economic development tool. However, due to a public outcry by
Encinal ranchers and businessmen, the incoming La Salle County Judge (Joel
Rodriguez, who is the county treasurer) and incoming treasurer (Marisa
Mancha, an Encinal council member), the Marshals put the CAP grant on hold.
"The U.S. Marshals Service has received numerous telephone calls and
written correspondence concerning the feasibility of La Salle County
undertaking such a project," the Nov. 22 letter reads. "Also, we
have learned that now there is a corporation involved with this project that
has an action filed against them by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development," it states. In 1999, La Salle County officials formed a
similar nonprofit corporation (La Salle County Housing Finance Corporation),
but defaulted on nearly $1 million in U.S. Housing and Urban
Development-backed home loans. HUD has since issued sanctions against the
housing corporation, County Judge Patterson and Commissioners Albert Aguero
and Raymond Landrum. The Encinal facility would be managed and run by a
private company called Emerald Correctional Management, L.L.C. of Shreveport,
La. In early November, the Texas Attorney General's office approved the sale
of $22 million in high interest revenue bonds for the project. (Laredo
Morning Times)
November 27, 2002
For Jimmy P. Patterson, the recent sale of nearly $22 million in lease
revenue bonds to build a privately managed jail is about bringing jobs to a
poor Texas county near the Mexico border. The outgoing county judge says the
jail will provide badly needed jobs while attracting other businesses to La
Salle County. In addition, the county has a deal with the U.S. government to
provide funding and prisoners for the lockup. But County Judge-elect Joel
Rodriquez Jr. fears the deal could ruin the sparsely populated county. He
claims Patterson pushed it through without enough community input and before
other LaSalle officials - including the county attorney - could sign off on
the bonds, in possible violation of securities regulations. In addition, a
spokesman for the U.S. Marshal's Service says it is still evaluating whether
the county is actually the proprietor for the jail as would be required for a
valid Intergovernmental Agreement like that cited in bond documents for the
deal. Emerald Correctional Management of Shreveport, La., would operate the
jail, which is tentatively scheduled to open in April. Construction has yet
to begin, following an official groundbreaking on Sept. 25. In Texas, county
judge is the title for the top administrative official, who is not a judge in
the legal sense. Patterson, who has served in county government for 24 years
and whose brother, Jerry Patterson, is sheriff, says he stands by the jail
plan despite the controversy over the project that he admits may have
contributed to his defeat by Rodriguez, the county treasurer. But Rodriquez
says the county is in no position to engage in high finance, even through a conduit such as the Public Facility Detention
Corp. In some years, debt service on the bonds will surpass $2 million, which
equals the current operating budget of the county, he says. The official
statement says the county will be required to make rental payments sufficient
to pay principal, premium and interest on the bonds when due solely from
revenues of the jail. But if the U.S. Marshal's office backs out of its deal,
where will that leave the county? Rodriguez asks. He says he will try to stop
the project as soon as he takes office Jan. 1 and assumes leadership of the
PFDC as well. "This is a doomed deal," said Rodriquez. "It's
like real estate speculation, basically. Speculators come in and sucker
counties like ours and make them think they've struck gold, then the whole
thing collapses." Rodriguez, who claims he had to file Freedom of
Information Act requests to obtain basic information about the deal despite
his role as the county's chief investment officer, says the official
statement contains misleading statements. He says the OS contains an opinion
by the county attorney on the legality of the bond issue, but the county
attorney never provided such an opinion. Attorney Elizabeth Martinez said she
knew nothing about the jail project until Nov. 4, three days before the bonds
were sold at rates ranging from 10% to 12%. Then, she said, she was given 24
hours to sign an opinion that she considered beyond her expertise. She said
she never signed the opinion. "I didn't appreciate the fact of being
brought in at the last minute and my name being used without my being
informed about it," Martinez said. "I am counsel to the county, but
I have never been appointed counsel to the corporation." Some officials
say a misstatement involving a county attorney opinion could constitute a
violation of Section 10(b) of the Securities Act of 1934, Rule 10b-5."A
10b-5 violation involves a misstatement or omission of a material fact,"
said Martha Haines, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's
Office of Municipal Securities. Patterson said he and Rick Reyes, a former
commissioner from neighboring Webb County who recently became an adviser on
bond issues, were the first to discuss the idea of building a jail. Reyes is
a consultant to the county and stands to make $700,000 for his work based on
a percentage of the bond proceeds. (The Bond Buyer)
La Vernia, Texas
October 13, 2006 Express-News
La Vernia became the second city in Wilson County to balk at plans to
build a 500-bed detention facility after a groundswell of opposition from
residents. City Council members unanimously voted Thursday night not to
continue studying the proposal, which would have established a privately run
detention center to house undocumented immigrants from countries other than
Mexico for the Department of Homeland Security. "We did our research on
it and found out it wasn't a good fit for our community," La Vernia
Mayor Brad Beck said Friday. Developer Richard Reyes, who tried to interest
both La Vernia and Floresville in the project, couldn't be reached for
comment Friday. Reyes operates Innovative Government Strategies, a consulting
firm in Boerne. The La Vernia City Council voted on the issue immediately
after convening for its meeting Thursday, pre-empting several planned
speeches critical of the project, said Kathy Crisp, a local real estate
agent. Crisp was one of two residents who spoke after the vote, thanking the
council for its support. Crisp said the town of about 1,000 rallied against
the proposal because residents didn't want La Vernia's image to be that of a
prison town. "This was something we were just adamant about," she
said. "We did not want it close to our schools. We did not want it in
our community."
Leidel Comprehensive Sanctions Center
Houston, Texas
Cornell
December 15, 2009 AP
A former contract guard at a Houston halfway house has been sentenced to
five months in federal prison for sexual abuse of a person in detention. U.S.
Attorney Tim Johnson said 30-year-old Nathan Jones of Houston was sentenced
to prison on Tuesday. He will serve five months in home confinement after
completing the prison sentence. Jones was convicted over the summer of the
federal felony offense. He admitted that in 2007, while employed at Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center, he engaged in a
sexual act with a female federal prisoner in his office.
February 15, 2006 Dallas Morning News
A man who police say escaped a Houston halfway house and killed three men in
Fort Worth claims to have killed a man in Albuquerque in 1995, New Mexico
authorities said. Christopher Chubasco Wilkins, who aligns himself with white
supremacists, was arrested in November and charged with fatally shooting
three men in Fort Worth. Mr. Wilkins, 37, of Houston told authorities he
killed as many as 12 people in two states who owed drug debts, officials
said. According to federal court records, Mr. Wilkins escaped from Harris
County on Oct. 2 after he was issued a religious pass to attend church. Mr.
Wilkins was serving a five-year sentence for felony gun possession at the
Houston-based Cornell Corrections Facility, a privately operated halfway
house contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
November 23, 2005 Houston Chronicle
Reacting to the capture of a Houston halfway house escapee now suspected in
three slayings in North Texas, Mayor Bill White's crime victims advocate on
Wednesday denounced as outrageous that anyone could walk out of a community
corrections center without the public being notified. Andy Kahan said the
incident opens a "Pandora's box" of issues related to how escapes
are handled. "This is a public safety crisis," said Kahan.
"How many other fugitives have escaped from a halfway house that the
public is not made aware of?" Federal officials responded that employees
at the low-security halfway house followed policy the day Christopher
Wilkins' walked away, and that nothing in the inmate's behavior indicated he
was a particular threat or that he had any plans to slip out. He is now
charged in connection with the Fort Worth slayings. Wilkins' capture on Nov.
5 ended a monthlong taste of freedom for the federal inmate. He is being held
on $1 million bail in the Tarrant County Jail in connection with the Oct. 26
shooting death of Gilbert Vallejo, 47, and the slayings two days later of
Mike Silva, 33, and Willie Freeman, 40. He also is charged in a series of
crimes committed within just 11 days of Vallejo's slaying, including
aggravated assault and two auto thefts, Fort Worth police said. "If
there had been a warning and a media alert and the public was informed to be
on the lookout for Wilkins, you can certainly speculate that his crime spree
may have been prevented," Kahan said. Wilkins, 37, received a pass to
attend church on Oct. 2 but did not return to Leidel
Comprehensive Sanctions Center in downtown Houston. The halfway house is
operated by Cornell Companies Inc., which has a contract with the Bureau of
Prisons. Officials at the center would not comment on the escape. According
to a federal arrest warrant, the staff contacted local police and hospitals
the day of Wilkins' escape but could not find him. He was officially listed
as an escapee at 5 p.m. His whereabouts were unknown until his capture in
Fort Worth.
November 23, 2005 Dallas Morning
News
A criminal who police said may have ties to white supremacy has been charged
in the slayings of three men during his escape last month. Christopher Chubasco
Wilkins, 37, of Houston, already jailed on unrelated charges, was arrested on
suspicion of murder and capital murder. He is jailed in lieu of bail
exceeding $1 million. Mr. Wilkins is accused of gunning down Gilbert Vallejo,
47, on Oct. 26 as he left the Lady Luck Lounge on South Jennings Avenue near
downtown. Mr. Vallejo was shot numerous times, police said. Mr. Wilkins also
is accused of fatally shooting Mike Silva, 33, of Hood County and Willie
Freeman, 40, of Fort Worth. They were found Oct. 28 lying in a ditch off the
roadway in the 9600 block of Old Weatherford Road in west Fort Worth. Both
were shot in the head, said Fort Worth police spokesman Lt. Ralph Swearingin. Police do not have a motive but are looking
into Mr. Wilkins' background. He was serving a 60-month sentence at the
Cornell Corrections Facility, a privately operated halfway house contracted
by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. U.S. marshals filed a criminal complaint this
month charging Mr. Wilkins with escape.
November 22, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A federal felon now charged in the slayings of three men in Fort Worth
escaped from a halfway house in Houston last month after telling officials he
was going to church. Christopher Wilkins, 37, is being held on $1 million
bail at Tarrant County Jail in the Oct. 26 shooting death of Gilbert Vallejo,
47, and the slayings two days later of Mike Silva, 33, and Willie Freeman,
40, Fort Worth police said. On Oct. 2, Wilkins slipped out of Leidel Comprehensive Sanctions Center, 1819 Commerce,
after receiving a pass to attend religious services, according to the federal
arrest warrant. Local police were notified after he failed to return by 1:15
p.m. Wilkins was officially listed as an escapee at 5 p.m., the federal
affidavit said. The facility in Houston is operated by the Cornell Companies
Inc. Officials with the halfway house could not be reached for comment late
Tuesday. After his escape, Wilkins made his way to Fort Worth where he has
been charged in an 11-day violent crime spree - including aggravated assaults
and home burglaries, in addition to the slayings.
Liberty County Jail/Juvenile Center
Liberty, Texas
GEO
Jan
10, 2020 bluebonnetnews.com
2
jailers arrested, 2 others facing charges related to 2019 jailbreak
Two
former correctional officers at the Liberty County Jail – Debra Korhorn, 61, and Teri Smith, 32 – have been arrested and
charged with Tampering With a Government Document
stemming from the Aug. 20, 2019, escape of two prisoners. “They were part of
the shift that was on duty the night of the escape and were working in the
area when the two inmates escaped,” said Inv. Shandalynn
Rhame with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. Korhorn, Smith and two other correctional officers were
placed on administrative leave and later terminated by The GEO Group, which
manages the county jail. Arrest warrants have been issued for the other two
correctional officers but they are not in custody at
this time, according to Rhame. “These four signed
off on the count sheets, stating that they did a population count at the
jail. They were assigned to certain dorms and are supposed to check on the
prisoners within a certain time period. They said they had checked on them
but the surveillance video from that night says otherwise,” Rhame said. “Their actions put the county at a greater
risk.” Rhame said that five prisoners were
initially planning to escape but two whole dorms of prisoners potentially
could have escaped. “The guards endangered the citizens of Liberty County by
not doing their jobs,” Rhame said. The two escapees
– Clay Sterling Harvey, 44, and Chance Marshall Hunt, 28 – had only a
half-day of freedom before they were re-arrested in San Jacinto County on
Aug. 20, 2019. Harvey remains in the Liberty County Jail awaiting trial for
Escape While Arrested or Confined, Manufacture or Delivery of a Controlled
Substance and a parole violation. He also is being held on charges out of San
Jacinto County for Evading Arrest or Detention With
A Vehicle, Tampering or Fabricating Physical Evidence and Manufacture or
Delivery of a Controlled Substance. Hunt was sentenced to 15 years in prison
for Escape While Arrested or Confined and three years for Manufacture or
Delivery of a Controlled Substance. Bluebonnet News will report on the
arrests of the two other correctional officers when more information is
available.
Sep
26, 2019 chron.com
Commissioners
question private contractor after suicide, escapes at Liberty County jail
The
Liberty County jail was one of the new acquisitions by The GEO Group, a
publicly traded company that has managed the Liberty County jail for the last
year. Questions about their management will determine whether they will
finish the contract for the next two years.
A
cascade of serious events has county officials rethinking their association
with The GEO Group, Inc., the Florida-based company retained by contract to
run the Liberty County Jail. In the last 60 days, there have been two felony
escapes, one of their correctional officers was arrested for stealing from
inmates while on duty, and most recently, there are questions surrounding the
death of a prisoner who hanged himself while in their custody. Apart from those
instances, they have also flunked two jail inspections this year, one on
April 22 and the second on June 28, Liberty County officials said. On both
dates, the deficiencies were sent to Warden Raye Carnes and a Notice of
Non-compliance was issued on April 23 and July 2 by the inspector. “It is
concerning to us,” said County Judge Jay Knight. “The county is not
responsible for the day-to-day operations of the jail, it’s GEO alone, but by
statute, the sheriff is over the jail,” Knight explained. There are no
sheriff’s deputies in the jail since operations are overseen by The GEO
Group, he said. GEO officials have not responded to numerous requests and
calls to the jail for an interview. At its regular meeting of the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards on Aug. 1, the commission granted Executive
Director Brandon Wood the authority to issue a Remedial Order to reduce the
capacity of the Liberty County Jail to 144 beds if the facility did not
request a re-inspection prior to Sept. 1 and was still in non-compliance. The
order would force The GEO Group, Inc. to find beds outside of Liberty County
to house prisoners. “Any amount of that above our current contract with them
would have to be paid by GEO, including the transportation costs,” said
County Attorney Matthew Poston, who said the contract was clear concerning
those points. “Our contract requires them to follow federal and state laws,
including the jail standards,” Poston said. The jail population is currently
213, meaning close to 70 prisoners would have to be shipped off to a
different detention center or jail under the order, Poston said. However,
after some phone calls by the county judge, a stay was issued early Tuesday
afternoon and a re-inspection was ordered before the commission meets again
in November. There was an emergency special meeting of the commissioner’s
court to update them on the situation by Poston. In the executive meeting, it
appeared that the new interim warden, Jackie Edwards, was called in to the
session. Nothing was announced by commissioners once they adjourned from the
meeting except to take no action, however, a meeting was posted for Thursday,
that included the court’s consideration to approve the Liberty County
purchasing agent to send out Requests For Proposal for a new Liberty County
Jail contract. Now comes the announcement that in the last week, the GEO
chief at the jail resigned and the warden took sick leave the same day for 30
days. According to Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader, the new interim warden
said the jail was down five positions that he hoped to fill with a new class.
“The pay is low, and they have rookies at most positions,” Rader said. “They
are down five employees, which is not bad, but with the ratio of guards to
inmates, they should be okay,” he said. On July 16, Mayra-Gallegos-Balderas,
23, was charged with theft of property. The former correctional officer faces
a felony charge after she was accused of stealing nearly $1,500 from inmates
at the Liberty County Jail while on duty. She had served in her capacity as a
correctional officer with GEO since October of 2018. One month later, Clay
Sterling Harvey, 44, and Chance Marshall Hunt, 28, escaped from the Liberty
County Jail on Tuesday, Aug. 20. There have never been any statements issued
by GEO on how they escaped from the jail, but authorities later discovered a
hole in the eastern portion of the outer fence. They were taken into custody
again hours later in Shepherd, about 50 miles away. Then on Thursday, Sept.
12, GEO officers found 35-year-old Cristian David Sarmiento hanged by a bed
sheet in the jail. He was rushed to Liberty-Dayton Regional Hospital in
Liberty where he was pronounced dead. Sarmiento was arrested on Aug. 4 for
aggravated assault and was on a hold for immigration officials. He was out on
bond for a Driving While Intoxicated charge in early July. The Texas Rangers
are continuing their investigation. The first inspection on April 22, 2019
discovered four violations, according to a report filed by the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards. In a walk through the facility, the inspector
discovered that inmates were being held in holding cells in excess of 48
hours which exceeds the time limit, the report noted. While reviewing inmate
medical files, the inspector William Phariss
determined that jail staff are not completing required forms including
documenting notifications, magistrate, and when required by the Screening
Form for Suicide and Medical/Mental/Developmental impairments. They are also
required to check each inmate upon intake into the jail against the
Department of State Health Services CCQ system and there was no evidence that
the queries are being performed. Preventative maintenance issues also arose
where lock panel mechanisms were loose and exposed, intercoms not properly
secured to the wall or damaged, and minor offenses with a leaking toilet
button when flushed, exposed metal edge on a telephone partition among
others, Phariss said in the report. Throughout the
facility, light fixtures were missing vandal resistant screws to the point
that light housings were not fully secured as designed and light housings
have been damaged to allow access to wiring as indicated by multiple burned
and melted light covers, the investigation determined. Numerous areas were
missing tile in the bathroom, shower, and one tile was missing in the kitchen
flooring. At the second inspection on June 28, the inspector found six
violations, many of the same maintenance issues had not been resolved, the
report stated. While reviewing medical files, Phariss
discovered one inmate had their prescription medication reviewed after eight
days in custody and another inmate did not have a documented review on the
inspection, 24 days after intake. Another inmate was not receiving medication
in accordance with a doctor’s order. Once again, jail staff were not
documenting notifications, including magistrate as required by CCP 16.22,
when required by the Screening Form for Suicide and
Medical/Mental/Developmental impairments, he noted. During the walk through,
numerous contraband items were observed by the inspector including bobby
pins, pills, razor blades, tattoo gun, water weights, pornographic photos,
and a homemade sterno flame.
Aug
21, 2019 bluebonnetnews.com
UPDATE:
The two escapees from the Liberty County Jail have been captured. They were
taken into custody in the last hour in the Shepherd area. As soon as more
information is available, an update will be posted to www.BluebonnetNews.com.
During
a routine bedcheck this morning at the Liberty
County Jail in Liberty, it was discovered that two prisoners had slipped away
from the jail sometime between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. The inmates are
identified as Clay Sterling Harvey, 44, of Nederland, and Chance Marshall
Hunt, 28, of Beaumont. “When an inspection was made of the jail facility, it
was found that a fence on the east side of the jail perimeter had been cut
open. It appears this was the escape route of both Harvey and Hunt,” said
Capt. Ken DeFoor, spokesperson for the Liberty
County Sheriff’s Office. Harvey is described as a white male, 5 feet and 5
inches tall, weighing 193 pounds with short blonde hair and blue eyes. He was
in jail for a parole violation and for Manufacture and Delivery of a
Controlled Substance, 200 to 400 grams. He was held on a $100,000 bond. Hunt
is a 6-foot tall white male weighing 170 pounds. He has brown hair and blue
eyes. Hunt has a lengthy criminal history with the most recent charges in
June 2019 when he was arrested for Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle,
Burglary of a Coin-Operated Machine and Unlawfully Carrying a Weapon. He was
being held without bond. According to DeFoor,
tracking dogs with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will be used to
search for the two prisoners. Texas Rangers are also assisting the sheriff’s
office. If anyone sees the prisoners, do not attempt to apprehend them. Call
911 and report their location. The Liberty County Jail is under contract and
operated by the GEO Group.
Jul
21, 2019 kwtx.com
East Texas jailer accused
of stealing cash from inmates
LIBERTY, Texas (AP) An
East Texas jailer has been charged with stealing hundreds of dollars from
inmates who surrendered the cash when booked. The Liberty County Sheriff's
Office says 23-year-old Mayra Gallegos-Balderas was arrested Tuesday on a
theft of property warrant and freed on a personal recognizance bond.
Gallegos-Balderas worked for GEO Group, which operates the Liberty County
jail, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Houston. The charge is a state
felony because Gallegos-Balderas was a public servant. Three people released
from jail reported that some or all of the cash they
had, documented during booking, wasn't returned. Capt. Ken DeFoor says Gallegos-Balderas allegedly stole nearly
$1,500. Online jail records didn't list an attorney representing
Gallegos-Balderas, identified by DeFoor as a
now-former correctional officer. The GEO Group didn't immediately return a
message Saturday.
Aug 14, 2018 chron.com
Dispute over Liberty County jail contract ends without litigation
A jail management company that had planned to pull out of its Liberty
County Jail contract early has retracted that decision after an Aug. 7
meeting with county officials. County officials had been prepared to sue The
GEO Group if it canceled the contract before its term was up, which would
have cost the county $1-2 million. “I’m glad they saw that the right thing to
do was to honor the contract,” said County Judge Jay Knight. Knight said GEO
officials will issue a letter retracting the cancellation of the contract,
and continuing the current contract as is. County Attorney Matthew Poston was
at the ready to file the lawsuit if the meeting didn’t go well. “My assistant
was ready to file the suit right after the meeting,” he said, “but they walked
in and immediately withdrew their action and said they didn’t want to have
the reputation of folks that didn’t honor contracts." County
commissioners, believing GEO might walk, approved a packet for Request for
Proposals two weeks ago to secure a new contractor. The RFP process ends
after 30 days. Poston also did a little saber rattling to let GEO know that
the county would litigate if the contract was canceled. The county attorney
described GEO's plan in legal terms as an "efficient breach." “Sometimes
it makes better financial sense just to breach the contract and suffer the
loss, than it does perform,” he said. “For GEO it’s all about dollars and
cents from their perspective and their bottom line,” and he understood their
position. The company’s bottom line depends on the number of inmates in the
jail and those fluctuate in Liberty County. “The jail numbers go up and down
and that’s scary for a company that operates on a per diem, especially when
they get a higher rate with the U. S. Marshal’s office and the detention
centers,” Knight said. “I’m glad they had a change of heart and stayed with
us,” he said. The county is currently under a 5-year contract—a solid
three-year contract with a two-year option on the county’s side if they
wanted to renew. The county did renew the contract earlier in February of
this year. GEO acquired the previous owner of the contract, Community
Education Centers on Feb. 22, 2017. The company gave notice of cancellation
of the contract a few months ago, after the county had renewed on the final
two years. GEO operates 139 facilities world-wide with 23,000 employees.
Poston said the company mostly focuses on federal and immigration detention
centers, where the cost is usually twice per day per inmate than is paid for
Liberty County. Federal inmates and immigration detention centers can bring
the rate closer to $100 per day. “We knew immediately it would be a mounting
problem for us,” he said, if the county had to go to trial and to replace GEO
before the next budget cycle. Poston said the jail management services
contract for housing inmates is one of the largest line items in the county’s
annual budget. Knight confirmed that he had budgeted approximately $3.9
million in the hopes of coming in under budget at $3.4 million. That’s a whopping
10 percent of the county budget annually. “We work hard to keep our jail
population low,” Poston said. The rate for the first three years of the
contract was $46.85 per inmate per day. When commissioners voted to take the
optional two additional years, the rate was graduated for cost of living
increases to $47.79 the first year and $48.74 for the second year of the
extension. “We knew that we would be in for a long litigation and it was
going to be a rough go of it had we gone to trial,” Poston said. The county
attorney estimated that for every $10 increase per person per day, it would
translate to $1 million added to the annual budget. “Some of the numbers we
were hearing, looking at other counties, was significantly more,” he said.
GEO didn’t leave empty-handed. The company presented some maintenance issues
at the jail they wanted the county to address. GEO officials said they would
send a list of their needs within the next two weeks.
Oct
15, 2015 houstonchronicle.com
Inmate
escape among troubling incidents this year at Liberty County Jail
Liberty
County Jail's most recent incident raising concerns from civil rights
advocates
Phillip
Henry Freeman, 38, was last seen about 11 a.m. in the jail's kitchen area,
where he had been assigned, Liberty County sheriff's officials said. Freeman
is still on the loose after escaping from Liberty County jail on Tuesday. The
escape this week of an inmate from the Liberty County Jail is the latest in a
string of troubling incidents in recent years at the privately run facility.
Earlier this year, two inmates died within a week of each other, prompting a
review of the jail by state inspectors, who found a slew of deficiencies,
including infrequent inmate observations, incomplete suicide prevention
screening and improper distribution of medication. In annual visits from 2010
to 2015, state inspectors found the jail noncompliant with minimum jail
standards every year, with the exception of 2012. Violations have included
inmates lacking access to drinking water in some dorms and cells with broken
locking mechanisms. Other inspections found inmates were not receiving the
minimum amount of exercise mandated by law and described facilities with
broken toilets and showers. Follow-up inspections show the jail took steps to
fix the areas where it had been noncompliant, according to records from the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Late Wednesday, authorities were still
looking for Phillip Henry Freeman, who last was seen about 11 a.m. Tuesday.
The 38-year-old man was in the jail's kitchen area, where he had been
assigned, according to officials with the Liberty County Sheriff's Office.
Staffers spent about four hours searching for him at the jail. Freeman, who
had been convicted of a home break-in and was scheduled to be transferred
within days to the state's corrections department, was listed as an escapee
about 3 p.m. The facility, which holds up to 285 inmates, is run by New
Jersey-based Community Education Centers. Raye Carnes, the jail's warden,
declined to comment on the escape, referring questions to CEC's spokesmen.
Officials did not respond to requests for more information about Freeman's
escape. Ken DeFoor, spokesman for the Liberty
County Sheriff's Office, could not be reached for additional comment
Wednesday morning. The last time an inmate escaped from the facility was in
2009, according to Brandon Wood, the jail commission's executive director.
Earlier this year, Liberty County officials considered transferring jail
operations to the sheriff's office but decided a private contractor remained
the most economical method, based on a recommendation from an Austin-based
consultant. In their review and cost analysis of the facility, MGT of America
Inc. also found that staff vacancies appeared to be a "common
occurrence" and noted that the jail's staff turnover-rate was three
times higher than the statewide average in November 2014. The review also
found that during the first nine months of 2014, jail was staffed only at 59 percent
or 84 percent of the facility's authorized level. "The CEC staffing plan
does not recognize a relief factor," the review noted. "A minimum
number of staff are assigned to each shift and when staff are unavailable to
fill a post assignment, the initial response often involves having the
sergeant assigned to the shift fill the line position, expand existing staff
responsibilities beyond the post description, hire staff to fill the post at
an overtime rate or a combination of the three." News of the escape
raised concerns from criminal justice advocates and civil rights advocates.
The incident "seems to encapsulate all of problems of turning a jail
over to a for-profit prison corporation," said Bob Libal,
executive director of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based civil-rights
organization and an outspoken opponent of the private prison industry.
"Including incentivizing high rates of incarceration, staffing at a very
low level to maximize profits, which lead to operational outcomes like you've
seen - failed inspections and escapes. These things are all preventable, but
symptomatic of for-profit prison corporations operating jails as for-profit
and not for rehabilitation or public safety, frankly." Wood, with the
TCJS, said the jail had contacted the jail commission, as required in deaths,
escapes or other high-profile incidents. The two deaths within one week
earlier this year were among those incidents. One was a suicide and the other
was a natural death. When asked about the staffing issues, Wood said they
could be a factor in the commission's investigation. "There's no margin
for error," he said. "Even in best circumstances, you have to be
perfect when operating a jail."
September 22, 2012 The Courier of
Montgomery County
Two top administrators at the Liberty County Jail have been terminated by
the Community Education Centers, the firm hired by the county to manage the
jail. Liberty County Judge Craig McNair confirmed that the two jail employees
are Warden Timothy New and Chief Kenneth Reid Nunn. The decision to terminate
the two men comes just days after a notice of claim was sent to Liberty
County authorities and CEC’s headquarters in New Jersey by a Texas City law
firm, Paul Houston LaValle and Associates, on behalf of Brandy Nichole
O’Brien. According to the documents, O’Brien recently was incarcerated in the
Liberty County Jail for failure to make timely child support payments. “My
client was repeatedly subjected to assault and battery, sexual assault,
deviant sexual assault, humiliation, degradation and intentional infliction of
emotional distress at the hands of Chief of Security Kenneth Reid Nunn and
others,” LaValle wrote. “Further, when Chief Nunn was repeatedly caught
violating my client’s civil rights by other members of the jail staff or
sheriff’s office, my client was threatened, coerced and coached on the
statements she gave to investigators by Warden Tim New and others.” LaValle
could not be reached for comment. CEC’s statement about the terminations of
New and Nunn suggests that the complainant was working with law enforcement
to investigate the prison officials.
October 18, 2011 Houston Community
Newspapers
A 25-year-old Daisetta, Texas, man has pleaded
guilty to federal charges in the Eastern District of Texas, according to U.S.
Attorney John M. Bales. James Allen Roach pleaded guilty before U.S. District
Judge Thad Heartfield on Tuesday, Oct. 18, to
attempting to provide a federal inmate with a prohibited object. According to
information presented in court, on Feb. 24, 2011, Roach, a correctional
officer for the Liberty County Community Education Center (CEC), was arrested
for arranging to deliver marijuana and tobacco into the Liberty County CEC to
a federal inmate in exchange for money. Roach was indicted by a federal grand
jury on March 2, 2011 and charged with federal violations. Roach faces up to
five years in federal prison at sentencing. A sentencing date has not been
set. This case is being investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service, the
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety and
is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall L. Fluke.
May 6, 2010 The Vindicator
Liberty County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Steve Greene
recently reported ongoing investigations regarding contraband found in the
Liberty County Jail. The jail is managed by a contractor, Civigenics,
a subsidiary of Community Education Centers, Inc. Greene said “Basically, we
have been getting information that there was a lot of contraband in the jail,
and some of it was being brought in by corrections officers. Thursday, (April
29) we searched the evening shift as they were coming in and we had a drug
dog pass by their cars. For those cars that the dog alerted on, we asked for
consent to search. We searched the vehicles. We have ongoing investigations
regarding a couple of guards. Two or three were terminated.” Back on
approximately April 8, one guard was arrested by US Marshals for taking
contraband into the jail. He is being held at a detention facility in
Beaumont, on charges equivalent to “prohibitive substances in a correctional
facility”.
February 22, 2010 Eastex Advocate
A jailer at the Liberty County Jail was arrested for shoplifting on Friday,
February 19, at the Cleveland Wal-Mart. Ashley Trasha
Ligons, 26, of Cleveland has been charged with
Class B misdemeanor theft. It is alleged that she shoplifted CDs and a DVD. Ligons was taken into custody by Cleveland Police
Department and transported to the city jail, where she was booked in. She was
later transported to the Liberty County Jail, where she had been employed as
a jailer. The jail is operated by Civigenics and is
under the management of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office.
January 14, 2009 Cleveland Advocate
It was business as usual for the Liberty County Commissioners Court. After paying
the month’s bills they approved payroll changes resulting from the
inauguration of the new sheriff and county attorney. The largest change is
that former candidate for county attorney Tommy Chambers transferred from
First Assistant to Second Assistant. Chambers’ transfer came about because
newly inaugurated County Attorney Wes Hinch brought
in Karen McNair to be his First Assistant. Additionally the commissioners
addressed a complicated item regarding payments for repairs to the County
Jail. At issue were repairs that had to be performed to the Liberty County
Jail after the change in management that occurred in 2007. “The company that
ran the jail until 2006 hadn’t made some repairs so we held onto the payment
in exchange for the repairs,” said County Judge Phil Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald
stated that the county was releasing the funds to Community Education Centers
(CEC), the company that used to run the jail, because they paid Civigenics, the company that now runs the jail, to make
the repairs. The release of the funds came after a court case involving Civigenics, CEC and Liberty County.
July 8, 2008 Houston Community
Newspapers
Angelia Perales, 43, Techa Fowler, 24, and
Tynisha Pierre, 30, were all C.E.C./Civigenics
correctional officers who were employed at the Liberty County Jail. That is
until they were arrested July 2 by deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff’s
Office. The women are all being charged with Violation of the Civil Rights of
a Person in Custody. The Texas Penal Code states that violating a prisoner’s
civil rights is a State Jail Felony. If convicted all three women could face
anywhere from 180 days to 2 years incarceration and
a fine not to exceed $10,000. The charges stem from a six week investigation
conducted by LCSO and CEC/Civigenics into
allegations that employees at the jail were having sexual relations with
inmates. According to LCSO spokesman Hugh Bishop the allegations involved
sexual activity between the three women and “more than one inmate.” Although
Bishop was unable to say exactly how many inmates were involved
he was sure there was more than one. Perales, Fowler and Pierre’s arrest is
the latest incident in what is becoming a problem plagued year for CEC/Civigenics. Six weeks before the arrests of the three
women, Marquise Dushun Hunt, 21, another CEC/Civigenics employee pled guilty for trying to bring drugs
into the Bowie County Jail in Texarkana. Hunt was indicted in January by a
grand jury for trying to bring three plastic sandwich bags full of marijuana
into the jail. Hunt’s plea bargaining came on the heels of another sex
scandal at the Liberty County Jail. On April 29 an unnamed female CEC/Civigenics correction officer resigned after questioning
by LCSO Deputies. The officers were investigating allegations that the unnamed
guard had been having sex with an inmate. According to Bishop the
investigation and arrests of Perales, Fowler and Pierre were “not related to
the other case.” Even though investigators are treating the latest sex and
drug cases as unrelated incidences the sheer volume of them can’t be ignored.
This past spring LCSO officers arrested the warden of Liberty County Jail on
charges of stalking and sexual harassment. In January two more female CEC/Civigenics corrections officers Manitra
Taylor, 41, and Shondalyn Jones, 25, were arrested
for trying to bring drugs into the Liberty County Jail. Officials at CEC
failed to respond to requests for comment.
May 7, 2008 The Vindicator
A female guard at the Liberty County Jail resigned Tuesday, April 29,
following accusations she had sex with an inmate, Sheriff Greg Arthur said.
The guard, an employee of CiviGenics, offered her
resignation when Liberty County Sheriff's Office investigators questioned her
about the alleged affair. CiviGenics is the private
company the county hires to run operations of the jail. The guard could now
face criminal charges stemming from the investigation. The Liberty County
District Attorney's Office accepted the case and will present evidence to the
grand jury, which meets on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.
The next meeting will be May 14. After hearing the case, the grand jury could
return an indictment for violation of civil rights of a person in custody by
having sex with that person. The charge is a state jail felony. Punishment
for a state jail felony can be confinement for a period of 180 days to 2
years in a state jail and a fine not to exceed $10,000. The names of the
guard and the inmate were not released.
May 4, 2008 Houston Community
Newspapers
A female employee of CiviGenics who works as a
guard in the Liberty County Jail resigned Tuesday, April 29, after being
questioned by Liberty County Sheriff’s Office investigators about having sex
with an inmate, according to Liberty County Sheriff Greg Arthur. The case has
been accepted by the Liberty County District Attorney’s Office and will be
presented to a grand jury. The grand jury could return an indictment for
Violation of Civil Rights of a Person in Custody By Having Sex With That
Person. This is a State Jail Felony, punishable by confinement for a period
of 180 days to two years in a state jail and a fine not to exceed $10,000.
January 23, 2008 Houston Chronicle
Two guards were charged Tuesday with conspiring to deliver marijuana and
Ecstasy to a federal inmate housed in the Liberty County Jail. Shondalyn S. Jones, 25, of Dayton, and Manitra L. Taylor, 42, of Cleveland, both employed by the
corporation that runs the county jail, were taken into custody about 11:45
a.m. after they accepted the illegal drugs and $1,000 from an undercover
agent in a parking lot at the intersection of Main and U.S. 90 in Liberty,
investigators said. The cash was payment for delivering the drugs to the
federal inmate, Liberty County Sheriff Greg Arthur said. Neither guard
offered any resistance and both were immediately fired by CiviGenics
Corp., which operates the facility, Arthur said. The unidentified federal
inmate who was buying the drugs was the informant who tipped authorities
about the delivery. He is one of 150 inmates being held temporarily at the
county jail for the U.S. Marshals Service, Arthur said. Jones and Taylor were
taken to a facility in Beaumont to await arraignment in federal court, Arthur
said. The marijuana and Ecstasy delivery charges are each punishable by up to
40 years in prison. "Anyone, especially an employee, trying to deliver
contraband into our facility is taken very seriously," Arthur said. The
investigation involved sheriff's deputies, CiviGenics
officers, Texas Department of Public Safety narcotics officers, Liberty
County narcotics task force members and U.S. marshals.
December 30, 2004 Houston Chronicle
A man who gave himself some yuletide cheer by escaping from the Liberty
County Jail early Christmas morning was recaptured Thursday in southeast
Houston. Arthur Lavel Jones, 32, of Dayton was
apprehended about 10 a.m. by Harris County Precinct 6 Constable deputies.
December 29, 2004 Houston Chronicle
A man who is at large after escaping from the Liberty County Jail has
probably received help since he fled on Christmas morning. Officers also
think the escapee, Arthur Lavel Jones, 32, of
Dayton, is now armed. Jones, who was being held on charges of assaulting a
police officer and evading arrest, escaped from the jail about 2:15 a.m.,
said Liberty County sheriff's Capt. Billy Tidwell. Jones and inmate Anthony
Fowler, 20, who was in jail on a drug charge, were painting the lobby of the
jail when the guard left the pair alone for a few moments. Tidwell said the
jail is operated by Corrections Corporation of America. The escape was the
second time this year inmates have fled the facility. At least five other
jailbreaks have occurred at the Liberty County facility since it was
privatized.
August 5, 2004
Two correctional officers have been fired and another suspended without
pay following an investigation into the June 23 escape of three inmates from
the Liberty County Jail. Liberty County Sheriff Greg Arthur did not
disclose the names of the disciplined jailers. The suspended jailer, however,
had previously been identified in news reports as Chris Coleman. Arthur
said a shift captain was fired for violating jail policy after he ordered a
correctional officer to remove eight inmates from a high-security segregation
unit at the same time — rather than move them one by one — and allow them to
watch television in the day room. (Houston Chronicle)
June 26, 2004
The three Liberty County Jail inmates who escaped earlier this week were
arrested Friday with a woman who had been hiding them in an east Harris
County home, authorities said. It remained unknown Friday how long the
escapees had been at the home. At least five other prison breaks have
occurred at the Liberty County Jail since it was privatized.
Authorities could not be reached for comment about the frequent escapes.
(Houston Chronicle)
June 24, 2004
Three Liberty County Jail inmates, who escaped after overpowering a guard,
stripping him and locking him in a cell, remained at large late
Wednesday. The jailbreak took place about 1 a.m. Wednesday, when Redden
and Rivera overpowered a jailer in the day room, threatened him with a steel
pipe and punched him a few times, the sheriff said. (Houston
Chronicles)
June 23, 2004
Deputies are searching this morning for three inmates of the Liberty County
Jail who overpowered a guard and escaped overnight. They are considered
dangerous. A spokeswoman for the Liberty County Sheriff's Department
said that around 1 a.m., the trio subdued the guard in a struggle, forced him
to strip and locked him in a cell. Although bruised, he was not seriously
injured. One of the prisoners was a burglary suspect, and the other two
were being held for the U.S. Marshals. (Houston Chronicle)
September 24, 2003
County Treasurer Janet Harrelson abused her authority by orchestrating the
moving of her convicted son from a prison in Beaumont to a county jail closer
to her, District Attorney Mike Little said Tuesday. In opening
statements before visiting state District Judge David Walker, Little said
Harrelson, 50, submitted applications for warrants for permission to transfer
her son, Jeffrey Paul Hale, to Liberty County under false pretenses.
"She wanted her son in Liberty County for her convenience," Little
told jurors. Little said that once Harrelson arranged to have her son
moved to the Liberty County Jail, she traveled with a deputy in a county
vehicle to retrieve him. On the way back to Liberty, the three stopped at
Harrelson's Dayton home for lunch. Defense attorney Mike Turner said
Harrelson acted as a private citizen and concerned mother, not as country
treasurer. Harrelson, who has been temporarily removed from office, is
on trial for abuse of official capacity, forgery and two counts of tampering
with government documents. (Houston Chronicle)
August 29, 1999
Two Texas inmates escaped from the CCA-operated jail by climbing through an
air vent in a bathroom. One inmate broke both ankles and was caught early on,
but the other, charged with auto theft and burglary had a previous escape
charge and was found 5 days later. This is the fourth escape since CCA took
control of the facility in 1995.(Houston Chronicle, Sept. 4, 1999)
Limestone County Detention Center
Limestone County, Texas
CEC (bought CiviGenics)
Sep
1, 2020 wacotrib.com
Limestone
County aims to sell detention center to for-profit operator
Four
months after Limestone County made deep concessions with LaSalle Corrections
to keep operating the county’s 1,000-bed detention center, officials are
hoping the private prison company will buy it. Limestone County Judge Richard
Duncan said county officials are “trying to get all our ducks in a line” to
request proposals from private detention firms to buy the 25-year-old
facility in Groesbeck, which is costing the county about $15,000 a month to
maintain. LaSalle has expressed interest in buying the facility, and Duncan
said it’s likely that the firm, which has run the
detention center for the past four years, will submit the lone proposal to
buy it. “We are getting the packet together,” Duncan said. “We have
authorized an appraisal, we are getting a survey and
we are putting it out for proposals. The main thing is the jobs, so if we
sell it, we don’t think we will sell it without some
kind of economic development package that would ensure jobs, somewhere around
80 to 100 jobs. If we do sell it for X number of dollars, we would want to
make sure they were on the hook for the next five or 10 years to make sure we
continue to have local people out there.” The county renegotiated its
contract with LaSalle in May in a bid to save 150 jobs after the
Louisiana-based firm threatened to pull out of the county. The facility had
previously closed from 2013 to 2016 because of lost federal contracts. The
facility has the capacity to hold 1,000 inmates, but Duncan said maintenance
issues have reduced that number to about 700. On Monday, the facility held
560 federal prisoners, but the diminishing number of U.S. Immigration and
Enforcement inmates has made it less profitable for LaSalle, a for-profit
correctional firm that manages 18 facilities with a total inmate capacity of
13,000 in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. The firm also ran McLennan County’s
Jack Harwell Detention Center until last year, when the county took over
operations. The COVID-19 pandemic also has affected LaSalle’s bottom line
because it has forced the U.S. Marshal’s Service to limit the frequency with
which it transfers federal prisoners, Duncan said. To help convince LaSalle
to stay in Groesbeck, Limestone County officials reduced LaSalle’s monthly
payments to $15,000, down from a monthly average of $28,000 to $35,000 when
the total was based on higher inmate counts. The county also agreed to pay
for maintenance or repairs for projects more than $5,000, Duncan said.
However, in recent months, the county has been paying close to $15,000 a
month in maintenance costs, the judge said. “The building is well past its
prime,” Duncan said. “So the good news is we are not
really losing a lot of money, but the bad news is we are not making a lot of
money. But we do have those jobs and those were the most important things to
the county commissioners. We can do a break-even situation as long as we keep
those jobs.” A corrections job at the facility starts at $18.50 an hour with
full benefits, Duncan said. The contract negotiated with LaSalle in May runs
through June 2023, but LaSalle can cancel it with 60-day notice. Duncan
declined to disclose a sale price for the center, saying he doesn’t want to compromise the county’s negotiating
position. “I think they are interested in buying it,” Duncan said. “They
obviously are looking for a good price. They had a new facility they bought
not long ago in the $4 million range. It was newer and had about the same
number of beds.” Commissioners plan to open proposals on the detention center
purchase on Oct. 5.
May
20, 2020 wacotrib.com
New
contract keeps private jail company LaSalle Corrections in Limestone County
Limestone
County commissioners have negotiated a new contract with a private company to
continue operating the county detention center, making deep concessions to
save the center’s 150 jobs. LaSalle Corrections administrators told Limestone
County officials earlier this month that the company would not renew its current
contract and end its six-year affiliation with the county on June 27. So
Limestone County Judge Richard Duncan, county commissioners and Waco attorney
Herb Bristow went to work negotiating with LaSalle officials to see what it
would take to keep the company operating in Limestone County with its
$20-an-hour correction center jobs. “It was very important to myself and the commissioners, primarily for the jobs,”
Duncan said. “I can’t really think of any other reason. We are giving up
almost any revenue we are making. We are making very little, but 150 jobs is very large for Limestone County, not to mention they
are good-paying jobs with benefits.” The facility, which opened about 25
years ago, has the capacity to hold 1,000 inmates. However, on Monday, there
were 363 prisoners, including 201 being held for U.S. Immigration and
Enforcement and 162 being held for the U.S. Marshals Service. The diminishing
number of ICE prisoners has made it less profitable for LaSalle, a for-profit
correctional firm that manages 18 facilities with a total inmate capacity of
13,000 in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. And the U.S.
Marshal’s Service is limiting the frequency with which it transfers federal
prisoners during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To help convince LaSalle to
stay in Groesbeck, Limestone County officials reduced LaSalle’s monthly
payments to $15,000, down from a monthly average of $28,000 to $35,000 when
the total was based on higher inmate counts. The county also agreed to pay
for maintenance or repairs for projects more than $5,000, Duncan said. The
new contract will be in effect through June 28, 2023, but LaSalle has the
option of canceling it with 60-day notice. The monthly payment to the county
will increase after one year and revert to the original plan based on inmate
count, Duncan said. LaSalle corporate spokesman Scott Sutterfield
did not return phone messages from the Tribune-Herald. “There was a time when
the private prison was a golden goose for Limestone County,” said Sheriff
Dennis Wilson. “It brought in $3.5 million a year for the county. But that
was when demand was high. It was very profitable for the county, but if you
stay in this business long enough, that ball swings to the right and swings
to the left and back and forth. I’m not sure we will ever get back to seeing
the demand we saw 20 years ago.” Under the current contract with LaSalle, no
state or county inmates can be housed at the detention center. Both Wilson
and Duncan attribute the decline in ICE detainees held at the facility to
President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. “I think in time
it will be good for the county,” said Wilson, who is retiring to conclude a
45-year law enforcement career at the end of the year. “You have to look at
what it does for our local community. When the prison is up and running good, we reach out to local vendors in our community and
they benefit as well. Most of the guards live in Limestone County and they
shop at local stores. LaSalle wants to be good partners,
and keeping those jobs here is important. And those are good
federal-wage level jobs.” Several private correctional companies over the
years have operated the facility, which sat vacant from 2013 to 2016, Wilson
said. LaSalle operated the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco for a number of years before McLennan County took over
operations late last year. The facility had been operated by private,
for-profit companies since the county built it with proceeds from a $49
million bond package issued in 2009. Before LaSalle agreed to let its $8
million contract with McLennan County expire, the facility failed three of
its last inspections, resulting in the State Commission on Jail Standards
placing a remedial order against the facility in May 2019. LaSalle was cited
for failure to keep a minimum ratio of jailers to inmates, failure to conduct
visual checks and failure to have proper identification procedures for
inmates. Wilson and Duncan say they have received no complaints about LaSalle
management at the Limestone County facility. Anali
Looper, director of the Waco office of American Gateway, a nonprofit
immigration legal service provider, said LaSalle officials recently invited
her group into the Limestone County detention center to help detainees with
asylum applications and bond and parole requests. “We were hoping to get in
there, so it is nice to be invited,” Looper said. “It was nice to see them
recognize that it is mutually beneficial when detainees there are getting
adequate services. It helps everyone out.”
Jan 26, 2016 kwtx.com
Limestone County: Feds delay detention center decision
LIMESTONE COUNTY (January 25, 2016) Limestone County officials are looking
for alternative ways to reopen the county’s 1,000-bed private prison, which
has been closed since the summer of 2013. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons was
expected to make a final decision on re-awarding a contract to reopen the
center and restore the 250 jobs that were lost in July of 2013. "We were
told that we have an excellent opportunity for another contract with the
Bureau of Prisons based on the history of our facility...but they have
delayed the decision now till October,” Limestone County Judge Daniel Burkeen said Monday. But Burkeen
still believes the county still has a good chance, "So we're just kind
of at the mercy of the federal government as they make that award,” he said. Burkeen said the county is talking to Immigration and
Customs Enforcement to see if hundreds of newly detained immigrants can be
housed in the large complex. "That could happen any day, but we'd need
them to stay more than just a few months and it would take some time to bring
the facility up to standard,” he said. Willy Johnson who owns and operates
Mary's Breakfast and Burgers and is running for County Commissioner says he's
lost a lot of business since the prison shut down, and hopes the county can
find some way to reopen the prison, "I used to have a whole table of
correctional officers here at 6 a.m. every day and now there's nothing....
The whole town has suffered...it’s not just us, it's everybody." The
Limestone County Detention Center was built by the county 30 years ago and a
private contractor ran the facility, carrying out the daily operations and
hiring all the employees. If the county wins the BOP contract, Management and
Training Corporation (MTC) has an agreement with the county to reopen and
operate the facility.
July
22, 2013 kwtx.com
LIMESTONE
COUNTY (July 22, 2013 kwtx.com)—Management Training Corporation, the
Utah-based company with which Limestone County contracted to operate the now
empty 1,000-bed county owned Limestone County Detention Center, said Monday
its contract with the county is still in effect, contradicting what a
spokesman said last week. MTC, which under an agreement with the county is
supposed to pay a minimum of $62,500 a month to rent the complex, said on
July 15 it was closing the center, laying off 130 employees, pulling out, and
discontinuing its contract. But in an e-mail Monday, Issa Arnita, the
company’s director of corporate communications, said the contract remains in
place. “We’re working together (with the county) to look at other options to
market the facility for other customers as soon as possible,” the e-mail
said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided to stop sending
suspected illegal immigrants detained at the border to the center, opting
instead to return them to their home countries, Limestone County Judge Daniel
Burkeen said. As a result, the last prisoners were
removed on July 12 from the privately-run detention center and on July 16,
the center’s 130 employees picked up what they were told were their final
paychecks. The loss of the jobs is a financial blow to the county and the
loss of the payments from MTC, which accounted for about 5 percent of the
county’s annual revenue, could impact the new budget officials are now
drafting, Burkeen said earlier.
March
21, 2013 kwtx.com
Limestone
County is having to look at new options of how to run the county detention
center. Community Education Centers notified the county recently that the
Bureau of Prisons will no longer fund the privatization contract between CEC
and Limestone County. CEC has been running the private jail which holds about
1,035 male inmates. County Judge Daniel Burkeen
told News 10, the county is working to confirm why the funding is cut. Burkeen says he was told CEC sent out notices to 227
employees who work for the Limestone County Detention Facility that on May
31st, they will no longer be employed by CEC. When the jail was run by the
county before, about 160 people were employed at the detention center. The
County Judge said the county will plan to run the center like before, but, he
wasn't sure on how many employees will be kept. Burkeen
says other options are being explored.
September 26, 2009 Waco
Tribune-Herald
When the new Jack Harwell Detention Center is ready for prisoners, McLennan
County Sheriff Larry Lynch will be responsible for up to 800 additional
inmates, but the stipend he is paid in the contract with the private
detention company that will operate it will not increase. The extra $1,000 a
month that Lynch is paid by the county in its contract with Community
Education Centers has been a source of contention since before CEC acquired
the former CiviGenics and before Lynch became
sheriff. By statute, a private detention company cannot set up shop in a
county without the authorization of the sheriff. And in some of those
counties, the company pays a stipend to the county, which is passed on to the
sheriff as part of his salary. The practice was questioned again last year during
spirited debates among county officials about whether to build the privately
run facility on State Highway 6 and whether to allow CEC or another company
to take all of the county’s jail operations private. Lynch and his
predecessors, Bob Mitchell and Jack Harwell, have all collected the extra pay
through the private jail contract. All have said that it gave them extra
responsibilities to see that all detention facilities in this county that
hold county prisoners are in compliance with state standards and run
properly. Critics of jail privatization in general, and the sheriff stipend in particular, include the largest law enforcement
union in the state, Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT). A
bill to ban such stipends did not pass in the last legislative session. “What
we have done is legalize something that is ethically and morally wrong,”
CLEAT spokesman Charley Wilkison said of the
stipend. “It constitutes a clear financial interest between the sheriff and
the for-profit companies. Can he take money from the people who provide vests
to the deputies? Can he take money from the fleet dealer who sells cars to
the county? Can he take money from any of the food vendors? If that had
happened, a grand jury would be visiting on this issue right now.” Despite
taking on more responsibilities with the opening later this year or early
next year of the new 816-bed private jail adjacent to the county jail, Lynch
said the county’s contract covering the new facility does not include more
funds for him filtering down from CEC. Lynch’s regular salary is $92,881, and
the county pays him $12,000 a year in the CEC contract and $140 a month in
longevity pay. Lynch declined to discuss the stipend, saying it is old news.
He was more eager to talk about the breathing room his department will have
when the new facility opens, finally putting an end to the constant juggling
act county officials perform because of jail overcrowding. The county jail
population was 1,009 on Friday. Capacity at the State Highway 6 jail is 930,
while capacity at the CEC-run McLennan County Detention Center downtown,
which the county has used to hold prisoner overflow, is about 300. The new
facility will hold federal detainees, primarily, said Lynch and County Judge
Jim Lewis. However, the county also will house overflow prisoners there and
at the downtown facility, they said. CEC also plans to contract with other
agencies to house prisoners. A bill that would have made it a state jail
felony for a sheriff to accept a stipend in a contract with a private
detention company made it out of the House County Affairs Committee during
the past legislative session but died on the House floor without a vote, Wilkison said. CEC operates a 1,000-bed facility in
Limestone County. Sheriff Dennis Wilson, whose county annual salary is
$49,457, is paid a $24,000 stipend yearly by the county in its contract with
CEC, Wilson said. CEC spokesman Bob Prince, a retired Texas Ranger captain,
said not all CEC contracts with Texas counties include stipends for sheriffs.
“That is entirely up to the commissioners court to decide,” Prince said.
“That is not a road we go down. The original contract we had in Waco, that
was put in and that was what was agreed to.” Recently, Adan Munoz Jr.,
executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, sent out a memo
warning counties to pay strict attention to contracts with food vendors,
noting that sheriffs in Potter and Bexar counties hit legal snares recently
in their dealings with food vendors. He said a state representative asked him
to send the memo about food vendors. However, it could have included warnings
in many other areas, including dealings with private detention companies,
Munoz said. “We suggest that they consult with local attorneys about any
potential conflicts,” Munoz said. “It is based on appearance and suspicion.
Unfortunately, many people react on mere appearance without knowing the full
story.”
December 5, 2006 Athens Review
The Henderson County Commissioner’s Court on Monday tabled a requested
increase in the fee to house Henderson County’s prisoners in Limestone County
until more information regarding the agreement between the counties could be
gathered. Limestone County and CiviGenics, the
company that operates the Limestone County jail, sought a hike of $2 — from
$42 to $44 — per prisoner per day, effective Jan. 1, 2007. Limestone County
Judge Elenor Holmes, in a letter to Henderson
County Judge David Holstein, said the change was needed because of increased
salaries CiviGenics must pay detention officers in
order to keep fully staffed in Texas’ competitive job market. CiviGenics has operations in 14 states and is the
nation’s second-largest privately-held corrections operator. “Prisoner beds
throughout the state are becoming very sparse. The supply is dwindling
because of prices going up,” Holstein said. Of the proposed agreement, Pct. 3
Commissioner Ronny Lawrence asked, “How long was the last one (contract) we
had with them? Can they come back and change it again? “I make a motion that
we table this until we have more time to look into it.” The commissioners
voted unanimously to table the request.
August 31, 2005 Tyler Morning
Telegraph
The firm that houses Smith County's overflow jail inmates will soon ask to
increase its fee by $1.50 per inmate, per day, to cover rising fuel costs,
Sheriff J.B. Smith learned on Wednesday. During a trip to the Civigenics-run facility in Limestone County where Smith
County inmates are now housed, Civigenics officials
told Smith they'd soon seek to raise the per diem to $42, up from the current
$40. But Smith said he was able to haggle Civigenics
down some. Based on a current average number of prisoners Smith County sends
to Limestone County and the Civigenics-run facility
in Falls County - 175 - the budgetary impact on Smith County would be about
$96,000, from $2.55 million to $2.65 million. But Smith says a more realistic
average is 200 prisoners, raising the impact to $109,000, from $2.92 million
to $3.03 million. That $1.50 on the per diem is an increase of 3.8 percent.
May 20, 2005 KWTX
What authorities called a disturbance broke out at about 10 a.m. Friday
in a unit of the privately run Limestone County Detention Center. The
incident was under control by noon, authorities said. The unit housed almost
50 inmates, but the Limestone County Sheriff’s Department said not all of
them were involved in the incident. Several area law enforcement agencies
responded to the disturbance. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The detention center houses more than 750 inmates and has room for more than
850 medium to maximum security prisoners. The facility houses inmates from
the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and counties
throughout the state, according to CiviGenics, the
company that operates the detention center.
Lockhart Unit
Lockhart, Texas
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
February 16, 2009 Permian Basin 360
A Midland woman says her son was moments away from dying. He’s an inmate at a
prison South of Austin that’s run by the GEO Group, the same company that
runs the Reeves County Detention Center. Lately, after two riots in Pecos,
the company has been getting a lot of flack.
Accusations of poor medical care and food have been made against GEO Group by
family members of inmates at the RCDC. Price’s son Ramsey Mitchell is a
prisoner at Lockhart Secure Program Facilities. Mitchell is doing time for a
robbery conviction and other charges. During April 2007 he was dealing with
stomach pains. But, Price says the medical services told Mitchell he had food
poisoning, and had to suck it up.” He had a case of acute appendicitis,”
mother Sandra Price said. But, no one from the facility called Price to tell
her Mitchell had a life threatening condition and was having emergency
surgery. "I received a letter from another inmate that my son had been
rushed out of the facility and in ambulance,” she said. Price says her son
was very healthy person growing up. “He was active, no major illnesses
growing up or anything of that nature. He had a few childhood injuries but
never had to go to the hospital,” Price said. She also says her son was
severely dehydrated. His cell mate saw him go into a state of shock, into
delusions and alerted a guard for help. Price believes inmates don’t have
easy access to medical care. She says they’re responsible for paying for
their medical services. "People believe they can stroll in and go to the
doctor at any point. But they don’t even have a doctor in the facility at
all," she said. Price says she’s still concerned about her son’s health
because no one contacted her about his condition. She thinks they just tried
to rubber stamp him out of the way. But, Price says she is really proud of
the man her son has become while behind bars and she believes he will be one
the few that gets out of prison and turns their life around.
September 14, 2006 Houston Chronicle
Penny Rayfield's 35 assembly workers get neither vacation nor sick pay.
Their salaries are barely above minimum wage. But they show up on time and
don't hunt for work elsewhere. They seem happy to have a job, even one that
pays about $4 less per hour than what assembly workers make, on average,
elsewhere in Texas. Rayfield's company, Onshore Resources, has a sweetheart
deal. It pays Texas exactly $1 a year for the sprawling building where it
makes electronic circuit boards. It has no need to foot health insurance for
the employees because the state provides their medical care. The for-profit
business is tucked inside a private prison in this rural community 30 miles
south of Austin. The issue pits those anguished by the erosion of
middle-class jobs, many of which have gone overseas, against those trying to
rehabilitate inmates and enhance prison security. "This is not meant to
displace workers in the free world, it is meant to reduce recidivism,"
said Randa Taylor, spokeswoman for the Geo Group,
which operates the minimum-security Lockhart Unit, site of the largest PIE
operations in the state.
Jan. 26, 1997
Authorities were searching for a man nearly finished with two 30-year
burglary sentences who escaped from a private jail Friday, a state prison
official said. Cecil Comans, 35, is believed
to have fled the minimum security Lockhart Unit operated by Wackenhut
Corrections by climbing over a back fence during heavy fog. (Houston
Chronicle)
Lubbock County Jail
Lubbock County, Texas
Mid America
January 9, 2008 Avalanche-Journal
Lubbock County commissioners said there is nothing illegal about the
county's contract with the food services provider at the county jail, but
they will remain watchful of the pending criminal case against the company
and its president. Commissioner Bill McCay said
Lubbock County is open and transparent and if commissioners find any illegal
contacts or attempts to make illegal contact were made, the county would get
out of the contract. Food service company Mid America Services, Inc. and its
president, Robert Wayne Austin Jr., are under indictment on bribery charges
in Potter County stemming from allegations of campaign donations by the
company to the Potter County sheriff to secure a bid as the jail food service
provider for that county. For the time being, however, Lubbock County will continue
to use Mid America. "Everything (in Lubbock County) was 100 percent
copacetic," McCay said, adding commissioners
will keep an eye on the Potter County situation. "We'll be watching
those proceedings with great interest," he said. Lubbock County commissioners
awarded the jail food service bid to Mid America last summer, with the
contract going into effect October 1. McCay said
Aramark and Canteen competed against Mid America for the bid, but Lubbock
County had experienced mixed results with Canteen and Aramark in the past.
"They started out great and then deteriorated," McCay
said of the two previous food service providers. When it came time to
negotiate a new contract, McCay said an advisory
committee directed commissioners to go with Mid America. "They weren't
the lowest bid, but they were the best bid," he said. Commissioner
Ysidro Gutierrez said the bidding process required the committee to evaluate
the contractors based on food quality, delivery and service, personnel and
supervision and security, sanitation and safety. Sixteen days after the
contract went into effect, a Potter County grand jury indicted Mid America
and Austin on bribery charges. Also indicted were the Potter County sheriff
and chief deputy on corruption charges. The indictments claim Austin and Mid
America offered benefits in return for hiring and retaining the company's
contract as food service provider for Potter County. "When I first read
that it made me nervous as a cat," McCay said.
"My initial reaction is no, they're not guilty,' but where there's
smoke, there's fire." If Mid America and its president are found guilty,
Gutierrez said the county commissioners will review the contract and
procedures surrounding that contract. While statute mandates the county enter
contracts for one-year periods, the contract with Mid America has a four-year
renewable clause, meaning commissioners can reassess the contract each fiscal
year and decide whether to continue using Mid America. "The real
important thing is everyone deserves their day in court," Gutierrez
said.
Lytton Springs, Texas
Emerald Corrections
January 5, 2008 Austin American-Statesman
A company has canceled plans to build a detention center in Caldwell
County for immigrants awaiting deportation in the face of strong opposition
from residents concerned about their safety, county officials said. About 150
people attended a public meeting about the project Dec. 27 in Lytton Springs,
and at least 90 percent of them opposed the project, Caldwell County Precinct
4 Commissioner Joe Roland said. "They were pretty forceful," he
said of the residents. On Dec. 10, Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional
Management LLC, which manages three correctional facilities in Texas, pitched
the idea of a $30 million, 1,000-bed facility to be built in northeastern
Caldwell County to county commissioners. Residents of the sparsely populated
area were concerned about the dangers of living near a detention center. Some
questioned whether there would be enough water to serve the center and
whether Emerald would be able to fill all the jobs there, Roland said. Mike
Moore, Emerald's director of business development, told the Statesman in
December that money to construct the center would come from private sources.
The facility would be a staging area for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement. Adult men and women would be housed separately, he said, and no
children or families would be held there. Moore said federal immigration
officials in San Antonio had told him that the agency needed a 1,000-bed
facility within a 30-minute drive of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
and of Interstate 35. The proposed facility would have a $4 million to $5
million annual payroll and generate 200 to 225 jobs in Caldwell County and an
additional 200 jobs in the region, Moore said in December. Moore did not
return calls Friday. Commissioners will vote on formally ending discussion of
the project at their Jan. 14 meeting, Roland said.
Maverick County Detention Facility
Eagle Pass, Texas
GEO Group
February 12, 2009 Fitch Ratings
In the course of routine surveillance, Fitch Ratings has downgraded the
following ratings for Maverick County, Texas' (the county): --$11.8 million
combination tax and revenue certificates of obligation (COs), series 1996-B,
1997, 1998, 2000, 2004 to 'BB' from 'BB+'; --$505,000 tax notes, series
2003-A to 'BB' from 'BB+'. Fitch has also revised the Rating Outlook to
Negative from Stable. The Negative Outlook reflects the potential for added
financial pressure on the county's weakened general operations as the result
of debt obligations issued by the county's public finance corporation (PFC)
for a detention center that may require additional financial support under
certain scenarios. In 2007, the Maverick County PFC issued $43 million in
lease revenue bonds (secured by project revenues and not rated by Fitch) for
a 688-bed detention facility that opened December 2008. Currently operated by
GEO Group Inc, the facility is expected to house primarily U.S. Marshals
Service prisoners. The downgrade to 'BB' reflects the county's negative
general fund balance, thin to negative balances in other major funds,
prospect of a multi-year financial recovery, and poor debt management. The
rating also incorporates the county's limited albeit growing economic base,
high unemployment, low wealth levels, and exposure to economic fluctuations
in Mexico. Some progress is evident in the county's financial recovery plan,
most notably in the current year's budget that has allocated a portion of the
tax levy for deficit reduction. However, success of the plan is partly
contingent on the receipt of community impact payments from the private
operator of the new detention center whose own revenues can experience lags
in payment. Furthermore, the failure to attain sufficient inmate occupancy levels
could threaten the PFC's ability to make timely base rental payments, further
complicating the county's prospects for stabilizing its credit profile.
Consecutive operating losses, due mostly to delayed federal reimbursements
for court costs and public safety spending pressures, led to an accumulated
negative fund balance of $3.6 million in fiscal 2006, equal to a very high
33% of spending. Significant budget actions in fiscal 2007 reversed the
negative trend, reducing the deficit by over $800,000. Preliminary fiscal
2008 projections point to another $800,000 reduction in the deficit. Notably,
the fiscal 2009 budget allocates a portion of the tax levy for additional
deficit reduction purposes in the general fund and other county funds.
However, the budget also anticipates $400,000 in community impact payments
from the private operator of the detention center which opened in December
2008. Delays in such payments would prolong the county's financial recovery
plan past its current four year schedule. Located on the U.S-Mexico border,
Maverick County encompasses roughly 1,300 square miles; its population has
increased steadily during the past decade. Over half of the county's
estimated 2007 population of 52,000 live in the city of Eagle Pass, the
county seat. Area wealth levels as measured by per capita income are very
low. Increasing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) international
trade activity has spurred commercial/retail development, resulting in annual
average tax base growth since fiscal 2004 of almost 8%. As a result of the
expanded commercial activity, job creation in the county has improved. While
still well above state and national averages, the county's unemployment rate
has declined significantly from annual averages of more than 20% in previous
years. The county's 2007 annual unemployment rate was 11.3%, slightly above
November 2008's rate of 11%.
McLennan
County Detention Center
Waco, Texas
CEC (bought out CiviGenics)
September 16, 2012 KWTX
A local sheriff's deputy is throwing up a red flag regarding safety and
security issues within the McLennan County Jail. Weeks ago, News 10 revealed
that inmates living in dormitory cells have access to microwaves. According
to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, it's all legal as long as a jailer
is available to supervise inmates while they are using the microwaves. But
according to Ken Witt, a McLennan County Sheriff's Deputy who has worked in
the jail for 14 years, supervising inmates who use the microwaves in the A
and B wing of the jail is a difficult task. "There are no cameras in
that part of the jail, and it's impossible to just stand in front of 12
different tanks to watch them use the microwaves," Witt said.
"There's no way you can safely monitor them using the microwaves."
We asked the McLennan County Jail Supervisor, John Kolinek,
if microwaves inside the jail could be used as weapons. "I guess you
could say that you could use them as a weapon," Kolinek
said. "But they can use their shoe, take it off, and hit someone or
throw it." Witt claims he's seen inmates use the microwaves in the past
to hurt others in the jail. "We had a problem where one inmate put oils
and hygiene items in water, microwaved it, and threw it in the face of
another inmate. It severely burned him, I mean, you can still see the scars
on this inmate's face," Witt said. But the microwaves aren't the only
thing Witt has a problem with. Some items on the jail's commissary list
(items available for inmates to purchase inside the jail) have caught Witt's
eye. "There are some major safety problems we're selling with this
commissary. For instance, we should be handing them a razor blade to let them
shave, then turn around and take it back," Witt said. "I mean
they're allowed to buy disposable razors, you can pop the blade right out of
that with no problem at all." Witt went on to say that inmates
constantly abuse their commissary privileges. "We had one guy who went
into another inmate's crate, started eating this inmate's food, and the
inmate went and bit his ear off," Witt said. In a previous interview, we
asked Sheriff Larry Lynch if the McLennan County lockup was a hotel or a
jail. "We control their movements, we control their visits, and we
control their activities everyday," Lynch
said. "They don't do what they want in jail...it's a jail." After
spending years on the inside, Witt disagrees. "They get to watch the
ball games, they gamble with their commissary, they pop popcorn, and they get
to cook desserts," Witt said. "Don't tell me it isn't a hotel. I
mean we're going to wait on you, bring you what you want, and if we don't
then we're going to get in trouble." In the past three years, inmates
going in and out of the McLennan County jail have spent a little over half a
million dollars on commissary items. Bell county's commissary list is only
one page. It offers similar items, seems less excessive, and offers no razor
blades. "It feels like this administration's attitude about this is to
give them what they want so they will be happy and won't sue us," Witt
said. Witt is the current President of the McLennan County Sheriff's Officer
Association. On September 13, he formally filed a complaint with the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards regarding the safety and security of microwaves
being used in the A and B wing of the jail. He also questioned the safety of
certain commissary items. "It's time someone finally knows about what
goes on in the McLennan County Jail," Witt said. "There needs to be
a change, and we can't wait for someone in another administration to come
along to do it. It needs to be done now." The Texas Commission on Jail
Standards will review Witt's complaint and will decide whether or not to
investigate.
August 31, 2012 Grits for Breakfast
In McLennan County, reported the Waco Herald-Tribune ("County okays new
DAs post, cuts health care funding," Aug. 15), subsidies to a
speculative, extra jail built through a public-private partnership spurred
county commissioners to slash indigent healthcare funding to finance their
ill-conceived jail-building boondoggle. The article attributes the costs to
"jail overcrowding" but in truth the county has plenty of empty
jail beds. However, the county will: spend at least $3 million next year on
outside inmate housing because of jail overcrowding. The cost of inmate care
is a major driver of the proposed tax increase, which would raise the
county’s property tax rate by 3 cents, to 49.43 cents per $100 valuation.
Commissioners are looking for savings to help offset the cost. Commissioners
Joe Mashek and Kelly Snell on Monday proposed
reducing the county’s annual contribution to the Family Health Center, which
serves 50,000 low-income patients. Funding for the health clinic was cut to
1999 levels, the paper reported. "Dropping below that level could
jeopardize the center’s grant funding because the federal government wants to
see evidence of local support, said Dr. Roland Goertz, the center’s executive
director." Despite aiming to stave off large budget hikes, which are
mostly attributed to rising jail costs, commissioners approved a new
prosecutor position hoping to move misdemeanor cases more quickly through the
process: Commissioners agreed to add a prosecutor with a maximum salary of
$72,000, despite their focus on cutting spending to reduce a proposed 6.5
percent tax rate increase for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. District
Attorney Abel Reyna sold the position as an effort to streamline case flow.
The prosecutor would be assigned to the office’s intake division, which now
has two attorneys and two support staff members who screen felony cases.
Reyna asked to add a third attorney to the division to screen and file
misdemeanor cases, a job now handled by the office’s misdemeanor trial teams.
To understand what's going on requires some backstory: Long-time readers may
recall that the McLennan Commissioners Court partnered with private prison
operator Community Education Centers to build a speculative jail which was
supposed bring in profit, but when contract inmates never materialized they
closed their downtown jail and shifted all the inmates to the contract
facility, an arrangement which was extended earlier this summer. The result
has been nearly $3 million per year in extra costs, an outcome which was
predictable as the sunrise, and in fact predicted on Grits. (See also a local
Waco-based blogger recently blasting the arrangement as "corporate
welfare.") Bottom line, the county is slashing the healthcare budget and
other county services and still must raise taxes and hire an extra prosecutor
to mitigate the commissioners court's flawed decision to partner in a
speculative jail building scheme. Grits wrote a couple of years ago that
"watching this McLennan County private jail project has been like
observing a train wreck in slow motion ... the outcome was so obvious but the
engineer just kept plowing forward. " The "engineer," though,
is exiting the train. The County Judge and Sheriff who got them into this
mess are both retiring this year, just as the chickens are coming home to
roost on this financial and managerial debacle. Convenient, that. Thomas
Paine said that time makes more converts than reason, and this episode
provides a great example of that truth. It never made sense to build a third
jail unit the county didn't need and couldn't afford. That's clear to
everyone, now, but the realization came too late to do county taxpayers any
good.
March 27, 2012 KXXV
The McLennan Co. Commissioners Court approved a $285,000 budget amendment
today to help the Sheriff's Office with their inmate care budget shortfall.
However, after already blowing through their $1 million budget for the fiscal
year, the sheriff's office expects they will need even more money very soon.
The commissioners believe that they need to find a way to move the prisoners
that they pay a premium on at the CEC (Community Education Centers) run Jack
Harwell facility to the downtown jail, which they have the option to run, to
stop this budget problem. The county will not be able to do that anytime soon
though because nearly every cell in the downtown jail requires maintenance.
The CEC, who the county contracted to repair the building, is spending six
days a week fixing hundreds of problems regarding safety issues in that jail.
Unfortunately for the county, the CEC nor the sheriff's office has any idea
when the downtown jail will be ready to pass the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards inspection. "There's some additional work that needs to be
done that they're waiting for," said McLennan Co. Commissioner Lester
Gibson. "As soon as [the downtown jail] is completed it would do a lot,
give a lot of relief to the cost and to our inmate management." In prior
years the county did not see this many issues with their inmate overflow or
budget.
March 28, 2011 NPR
Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble by John Burnett The country
with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is
supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free
enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any
other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails
cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in
the prison business. It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west
Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The
charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would
provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas. For eight
years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners
to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract
inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal
surrounding the suicide of an inmate. Shortly afterward, the for-profit
operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison
jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since. A Hard Sell
"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City
Manager Danny Davis good-naturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour. For
sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security
fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and
five living pods. Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk
beds and stainless-steel furniture. "You can see the facility here.
[It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint,
it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale. For the
past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay
the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city. A
Resident Burden Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of
Littlefield? "Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well,
today that would probably be the case," Davis says. To avoid defaulting
on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer
fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still,
the city's bond rating has tanked. The village elders drinking coffee at the
White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.
"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in
their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have
to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they
left us... " "...Holdin' the bag!"
says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence. The
Declining Prison Population The same thing has happened to communities across
Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison
town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over. Some prisons are
struggling outside Texas, too. Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments
after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security
prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled
out its 700 inmates. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total
correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time
in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing
alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are
slashing budgets. The Texas legislature, looking for budget cuts, is
contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half
of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures
from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. "Too many times we've seen
jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to
make money off of it and they end up fallin' on
their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant
director of the commission. The packages look sweet. A town gets a new
detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator
finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates
pay off the debt and generate extra revenue. The economic model works fine
until they can't find inmates. In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million
to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today
because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than
half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now
decline to comment on it. Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who
opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the
deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds
sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take
their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success
of the facility." Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants —
James Parkey and Herb Bristow — declined repeated
requests for interviews. The Inmate Market Private prison companies insist
their future is sunny. A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about
the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases
highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across
the country. Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong,
particularly for federal immigration detainees. New Jersey-based Community
Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across
Texas, issued a statement that "the current (jail) population
fluctuation" is cyclical. One of the places where CEC is cancelling its
contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition
is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up
jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate,
we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those
beds," he said. Another place where they're desperate for inmates is
Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its
no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and
an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers
made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The
county's Public Facility Corporation that borrowed the money to build the
lockups owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's
worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to
sweat. "The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two
years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project.
And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says. Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to
privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30
million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got
queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal. "When you put
the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your
dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they
need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor
of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent. When the supply of prison
beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries. The
overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms
out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other
under-occupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston.
"It really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our
size," says Capt. Robin Kinetsky, who is in
charge of inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs
Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're
getting good deals." Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought
from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake interviews.
The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the newest
commodities of the volatile inmate market. Aarti Shahani contributed to this
NPR News investigation and report.
December 22, 2010 KXXV
It's been open just under a year, and McLennan County's new jail hasn't come
close to breaking even. Less than half full and hemorrhaging cash, jail
administrators are searching far and wide for inmates to fill its beds. Since
the jail's completion in February of 2010, Community Education Centers has
struggled to fill less than half of the Jack Harwell detention center's 816
beds. Deals with other Texas counties like Harris and Dallas have yielded
handfuls of inmates, but not enough to come close to begin repaying the $49.9
million price tag for construction. But California's jails are bursting at
the seams. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing a ruling by a panel
of federal judges ordering California to cut the state's prison population
down from 200 percent to 137.5 percent capacity. It would mean a reduction of
around 40,000 inmates. With Jack Harwell facing imminent crisis, on Tuesday
CEC Senior Vice President Peter Argeropulos
suggested a new plan offering to soak up the surplus from the Golden State.
June 6, 2010 Waco Tribune-Herald
The county soon may have to pony up $1.1 million for some long-needed
improvements to the downtown jail. Most of the equipment in the jail, which
is operated by New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, was first
installed when the county built the facility in mid-1970s. CEC Warden Mike
Wilson said while the detention company performs about $60,000 annually in
equipment and building maintenance, some of the materials in the jail are
nearly obsolete. “The problem we’re running into with the doors and the control
system is getting replacement parts,” Wilson said. “They’re no longer
commercially available. They no longer manufacture them.” Wilson said CEC has
been using old locks the county had on hand to replace defunct doors in the
jail, but few of those remain. Replacing the 129 doors and locks securing
inmate cells and installing 10 new control panels is the most expensive
project, carrying a $668,473 price tag. Other major work includes replacing
four old elevators, a $298,436 expense; installing a new intercom system;
upgrading the kitchen ceiling and equipment; and replacing the fire system.
Wilson submitted the proposed projects to the sheriff’s office last week.
McLennan County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Randy Plemons discussed the work list
in a budget work session with the county commissioners. The commissioners
court is reviewing major capital projects that it may fund next year to begin
shaping the 2011 fiscal-year budget. Divvying up costs -- The court was split
on whether the county has to pay for the upgrades, because the jail belongs
to the county, or whether CEC should be responsible for some of the repairs.
“We need to sit down and look item by item and decide if we need to do it,
they need to do it, or whatever,” County Judge Jim Lewis said in the budget
work session. One key issue is whether the housing agreement with CEC places
the responsibility for such repairs on the detention company. The contract
the county signed with CEC in October 2003 states that at the end of the
lease, the company “shall return the facility to the county in the same
condition as when leased, normal wear, tear and depreciation excepted.”
However, the most recent agreement signed in November 2008 does not include
that provision. None of the commissioners was aware of the change prior to
the meeting. It was not clear, both in court and meeting minutes, who drafted
the contracts and why the changes were made. Clause and effect -- “I assumed
it was the same contract that we had been renewing and renewing for the past
10 years (since CEC first began managing the jail),” Commissioner Ray Meadows
said. “We probably need to look at that and get at our attorney and see why
it was changed like that.” Commissioner Lester Gibson said even if the
original clause was still in effect, the county is responsible for these
major repairs to the downtown jail. Wilson said the county has not discussed
whether CEC would have to pitch in for some of the repairs. He said CEC
already took care of some upgrades on its own, such as replacing a nonworking
surveillance system and upgrading a portion of the intercom system. CEC is
moving the inmates from the downtown jail to the county’s new Jack Harwell
Detention Center on June 14, along with an estimated 100 Harris County
inmates.
February 19, 2010 Waco
Tribune-Herald
A Texas attorney general’s opinion that a county sheriff is not authorized to
accept an “administrative fee” from a private organization has no bearing on
McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch, who receives a $12,000 annual salary
supplement for monitoring the county’s privately run jails, county officials
say. The opinion issued by Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office Wednesday
was prompted by a question from state Rep. Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas, chairwoman
of the House Committee on Urban Affairs. While the request, submitted in
September 2008, did not specifically mention contracts between any county or
sheriff, the letter was prompted by a high-profile state law enforcement
union’s dispute with McLennan County. The union, the Combined Law Enforcement
Associations of Texas, had battled the county as officials deliberated
whether to renew its contract with Community Education Centers (formerly CiviGenics) to operate the county’s downtown jail and to
contract with CEC to operate a new jail on State Highway 6. McLennan County
Judge Jim Lewis and McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest said the opinion will not affect operations here
because the salary supplement Lynch is paid comes from the county, not CEC. Segrest said “this opinion has no bearing whatsoever on
the situation in McLennan County,” based on his knowledge of the CEC contract
and from his discussions with county officials, including county auditor
Steve Moore and county attorney Mike Dixon. “The private contractor does not
pay the county anything,” Segrest said. “The county
pays them. So clearly, there is no administrative fee paid by the private
contractor who runs the jail. “It appears to me that the broad opinion was
based on a question designed to get a certain answer and it comes from the
same people who put up the billboards that said Waco is the murder capital of
the world.” Group’s protests -- Segrest was
referring to officials from CLEAT. The group asked for the opinion while
organizing protests to McLennan County privatizing its jail system. CLEAT
also had been involved in putting up billboards on Interstate 35 highlighting
Waco’s crime rate. The move came amid local police association officials’
frustration with the city about pay, staffing and other issues. CEC contracts
with the county to operate jails here, and the county contracts with the
federal government and other counties to house their prisoners. The $12,000
supplement the county pays Lynch is for additional administrative and
monitoring duties associated with the private jails, Lewis and Segrest said. A private jail company cannot operate in a
county without the authorization of the county sheriff. That $12,000 annual
fee is on top of Lynch’s annual salary of $92,881. The supplement has been in
place since the late Jack Harwell was sheriff and the county first leased the
downtown jail on Columbus Avenue to CiviGenics in
1999. Charley Wilkison, political and legislative
director for CLEAT, challenged Lynch, based on the AG’s opinion, to write a
check today and give the money back to the private contractor. That would
prove he is an “honorable man and a man of integrity,” Wilkison
said. Lynch did not return phone messages left at his office or on his cell
phone Wednesday or Thursday. Dixon, the county’s attorney, said CLEAT
continues to play fast and loose with the facts. “I fail to see why the
sheriff would need to send a check to CEC when he has never received any
money from or on behalf of CEC,” Dixon said. Wilkison
said the supplement, which is common in all counties with private jails
operating in them, “just never passed the smell test.” ‘Fish bait’ -- “This
opinion is a great victory for the regular people of Texas, and the reason is
that this goes to the cornerstone, to the fish bait, that private jail
companies use to get into a community and get their hooks into the taxpayers
and get their hands into their pockets,” Wilkison
said. Wilkison said the opinion makes it clear that
the salary supplement is not proper and should stop. Lewis said he doesn’t
think the AG’s opinion applies to McLennan County because it involves a
question about an “administrative fee” that is paid based on the number of
prisoners in jail. “The sheriff is paid a salary supplement,” Lewis said.
“There is a difference. He is paid the same salary supplement every year. “It
is not a fee based on jail population. This is no secret. We post our
salaries once a year and it is very clear that it is a supplement approved by
the commissioners court,” Lewis said. Dixon agreed. He said the AG’s opinion
request was based on erroneous information. “Instead of requesting an opinion
pertaining to actual facts of which this group was well aware,” Dixon said,
“the request was based on fictitious assertions that have been repeatedly alleged
by the group, the goal being to use the resulting opinion to further assail
the sheriff, even though the facts underlying the opinion would bear no
relationship to the situation in McLennan County.” Ken Witt, president of the
McLennan County Sheriff’s Office Association and a CLEAT member, said
whatever the county calls the sheriff’s pay bump, it is wrong. “Whether you
call it a fee or a supplement, it amounts to word games by Judge Jim Lewis,”
Witt said. “It is clear that the sheriff is funneled money from CEC. “If not
directly, indirectly through the commissioners court. It doesn’t matter how
the sheriff receives his piece of the private pie.”
February 18, 2010 KXXV
A ruling by State Attorney General Greg Abbott Wednesday could revive the
controversy over extra money Sheriff Larry Lynch receives from McLennan
County Commissioners for overseeing county jails. A private company, Civigenics, runs the downtown jail by contract from the
county, as well as a new jail on Highway 6 that should start housing inmates
in the next thirty days. Sheriff Lynch is paid $12,000 a year to oversee
those facilities, in addition to his regular salary. Other counties in Texas
have similar arrangements, and their Sheriff receives extra money – sometimes
significantly more -- from the private jailer. Abbott's ruling was a response
to a request from Yvonne Davis, the Chair of the State House Committee on
Urban Affairs. The Attorney General said "The commissioner's court may
not contract with a private organization in which a member of the court or an
elected or appointed peace officer who serves in the county has a financial
interest … A contract made in violation of this section is void". It
also said "regardless of county population, county sheriffs must be
compensated on a salary basis. A sheriff, paid on a salary basis, ‘receives
the salary instead of all fees, commissions, and other compensation the
officer would otherwise be authorized to keep." "While article XVI,
section 61 requires that a fee of office earned by a county officer ‘shall be
paid into the county treasury,' it is not a grant of authority for the
acceptance of a fee," the ruling continues. In summary, Abbott concluded
such payments are illegal, "Neither the Texas Constitution nor Texas
statutes authorize the person holding the office of county sheriff to be paid
an administrative fee by a private organization." McLennan County Judge
Jim Lewis told News Channel 25 the ruling was based on a "fee"
opinion and not a "supplement" opinion, and a fee is based on the
number of inmates being housed in the jail. "The supplement doesn't
matter whether you have one or one thousand inmates, so that's the difference
is what our attorneys tell us," Lewis explained. When asked if the
attorneys said that after today's ruling, Lewis answered "No, that's
what they told us all along". Lewis also said Sheriff Lynch isn't paid
by Civigenics, "the fee is not paid to him by
the company, the fee is paid to the County and the Commissioners Court
selects to supplement the Sheriff's salary. It's important to understand
that," Lewis said. "He's not receiving a fee by any stretch of the
imagination." The County Judge said applying Wednesday's ruling out of
Austin to McLennan County's situation is like "comparing apples to oranges".
"We're doing everything the attorneys are telling us to do," Lewis
added. The annual supplement, as Lewis called it, has been a source of
controversy for years from critics of Lynch and candidates for the Sheriff
position in election years.
September 26, 2009 Waco Tribune-Herald
When the new Jack Harwell Detention Center is ready for prisoners, McLennan
County Sheriff Larry Lynch will be responsible for up to 800 additional
inmates, but the stipend he is paid in the contract with the private
detention company that will operate it will not increase. The extra $1,000 a
month that Lynch is paid by the county in its contract with Community
Education Centers has been a source of contention since before CEC acquired
the former CiviGenics and before Lynch became
sheriff. By statute, a private detention company cannot set up shop in a
county without the authorization of the sheriff. And in some of those
counties, the company pays a stipend to the county, which is passed on to the
sheriff as part of his salary. The practice was questioned again last year
during spirited debates among county officials about whether to build the
privately run facility on State Highway 6 and whether to allow CEC or another
company to take all of the county’s jail operations private. Lynch and his
predecessors, Bob Mitchell and Jack Harwell, have all collected the extra pay
through the private jail contract. All have said that it gave them extra
responsibilities to see that all detention facilities in this county that
hold county prisoners are in compliance with state standards and run
properly. Critics of jail privatization in general, and the sheriff stipend in particular, include the largest law enforcement
union in the state, Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT). A
bill to ban such stipends did not pass in the last legislative session. “What
we have done is legalize something that is ethically and morally wrong,”
CLEAT spokesman Charley Wilkison said of the
stipend. “It constitutes a clear financial interest between the sheriff and
the for-profit companies. Can he take money from the people who provide vests
to the deputies? Can he take money from the fleet dealer who sells cars to
the county? Can he take money from any of the food vendors? If that had
happened, a grand jury would be visiting on this issue right now.” Despite
taking on more responsibilities with the opening later this year or early
next year of the new 816-bed private jail adjacent to the county jail, Lynch
said the county’s contract covering the new facility does not include more
funds for him filtering down from CEC. Lynch’s regular salary is $92,881, and
the county pays him $12,000 a year in the CEC contract and $140 a month in
longevity pay. Lynch declined to discuss the stipend, saying it is old news.
He was more eager to talk about the breathing room his department will have
when the new facility opens, finally putting an end to the constant juggling
act county officials perform because of jail overcrowding. The county jail
population was 1,009 on Friday. Capacity at the State Highway 6 jail is 930,
while capacity at the CEC-run McLennan County Detention Center downtown,
which the county has used to hold prisoner overflow, is about 300. The new
facility will hold federal detainees, primarily, said Lynch and County Judge
Jim Lewis. However, the county also will house overflow prisoners there and
at the downtown facility, they said. CEC also plans to contract with other
agencies to house prisoners. A bill that would have made it a state jail
felony for a sheriff to accept a stipend in a contract with a private
detention company made it out of the House County Affairs Committee during
the past legislative session but died on the House floor without a vote, Wilkison said. CEC operates a 1,000-bed facility in
Limestone County. Sheriff Dennis Wilson, whose county annual salary is
$49,457, is paid a $24,000 stipend yearly by the county in its contract with
CEC, Wilson said. CEC spokesman Bob Prince, a retired Texas Ranger captain,
said not all CEC contracts with Texas counties include stipends for sheriffs.
“That is entirely up to the commissioners court to decide,” Prince said.
“That is not a road we go down. The original contract we had in Waco, that
was put in and that was what was agreed to.” Recently, Adan Munoz Jr., executive
director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, sent out a memo warning
counties to pay strict attention to contracts with food vendors, noting that
sheriffs in Potter and Bexar counties hit legal snares recently in their
dealings with food vendors. He said a state representative asked him to send
the memo about food vendors. However, it could have included warnings in many
other areas, including dealings with private detention companies, Munoz said.
“We suggest that they consult with local attorneys about any potential
conflicts,” Munoz said. “It is based on appearance and suspicion.
Unfortunately, many people react on mere appearance without knowing the full
story.”
February 7, 2009 Tribune-Herald
The warden of a privately operated jail in Waco says his staff had corrected
all but one deficiency noted in a December inspection before he met this week
with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Despite the improvements, the
commission still placed the downtown McLennan County Detention Center under a
remedial order until officials from Community Education Centers, which leases
the jail from McLennan County, take further corrective measures and another
inspection is conducted. Warden Mike Wilson said the only issue remaining
that needs to be addressed is replacing an intercom system. He said CEC will
pay $9,950 for the new system, adding that he will not ask McLennan County
officials to foot the bill. “Everything that they cited us for, with one
exception, was corrected before we ever went down to Austin on Thursday,”
Wilson said. “Everything else has been corrected and we are in good shape.”
The county has leased the Columbus Avenue jail to a private company since
1998. In the past year, the county also has been using the jail as an
overflow facility when the county jail on State Highway 6 becomes filled
beyond capacity. The most serious issue cited in the remedial order was that
CEC officials failed to properly maintain a 1-to-48 staff-to-inmate ratio.
The order limited the number of inmates the facility could house before it
hired more guards, thus cutting profits from CEC’s contracts with federal
agencies to house prisoners. Wilson said the order stemmed from several
weekends on the night shift in October and November when the jail was
short-staffed. Additional officers were hired immediately to fill the void,
putting the jail back into compliance, the warden said. Last month, an
18-year-old former CEC guard was indicted for providing contraband to inmates
for reportedly allowing two of his former high school buddies who landed in
jail to use his cell phone. Other citations that have been corrected, Wilson
said, was a determination that inmates were placed in cells before they were
properly classified to assess their threat levels and that water pressure and
water temperature were insufficient in certain areas of the jail.
January 29, 2009 Herald-Tribune
The state prison system apparently is not alone when it comes to
prisoners getting access to cell phones. A McLennan County grand jury
Wednesday indicted a former guard at the privately operated McLennan County
Detention Center on Columbus Avenue on a charge of giving contraband to
inmates at a secure facility, a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10
years in prison. Michael Ray Hamilton III, an 18-year-old former jail guard
known as “Big Mike” to inmates, was indicted for allowing two prisoners,
Morgan Dyer and Chris McWilliams, to use his cell phone to make calls in
October, authorities said. The use of cell phones by inmates is prohibited in
detention centers, according to records filed in the case. Hamilton and both
inmates gave written statements to McLennan County Sheriff’s Office
investigators about use of the phone, an affidavit to support Hamilton’s
arrest said. A man who identified himself as a warden at the downtown jail,
which is operated by Community Education Centers in a lease agreement with
McLennan County, referred questions about Hamilton to the sheriff’s office.
He declined to give his name.
November 18, 2008 Waco Tribune
Construction of the new jail on State Highway 6 has already been delayed
as the volatile U.S. financial market threatens financing for the project.
The commissioner’s court on Tuesday delayed issuing project revenue bonds to
finance the new jail for the third consecutive week because of currently high
bond interest rates. New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which will
build and operate the new jail, would be responsible for paying the interest
on the bonds that the county sells to third party financial houses. County
Judge Jim Lewis said the county had hoped to break ground for the new jail in
November. However, the county is waiting to see whether the financial markets
stabilize, allowing for reasonable bond interest rates. In the meantime,
Lewis said, the project cannot go forward.
October 20, 2008 Tribune-Herald
McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch is facing off once again with Charles
Hutyra, a West resident who has long voiced
criticism of how the sheriff’s department operates. Hutyra
previously ran for sheriff as a write-in candidate in 2000 and again as the
Democratic nominee in 2004, winning about one-third of the vote. One issue
the candidates disagree on is jail privatization. After weeks of outcry by
jailers concerned about the impact of privatization on their jobs and
retirement benefits, the McLennan County Commissioners Court voted for the
sheriff’s office to continue to run the jail on State Highway 6, while New
Jersey-based Community Education Centers would continue to lease and operate
the downtown jail. “We were in need of more space to meet our growing inmate
population, especially our rising female (inmate) population,” Lynch said. “I
don’t think they can get the jail built fast enough.” Hutyra
said he is opposed to jail privatization and said he would work to reverse
the CEC contract on the downtown jail. He said he would also try to stop the
construction of the new jail on State Highway 6. “If the taxpayers have
already paid for the jail downtown, why not utilize something you already own
instead of leasing it out to someone else?” Hutyra
said. “Then in three years we could look at it and see if we need a new jail
and then start the process to look for bids, because with this thing, only
one bid (was) submitted out of 14 companies (contacted for bids), it’s so
obvious what’s going on.” Hale Mills Construction Ltd., the builder of the
new jail, has already submitted a preliminary building schematic to the jail
commission. Lynch drew criticism from jailers for his absence at the commissioners court meetings and for not speaking out
against the privatization. However, he said it was not his decision to make.
“It was out of my hands,” Lynch said. “It was up to the courts to decide what
to do with the jails, and I could only wait and see what would happen.” Rick
White, vice president of the McLennan County Sheriff Officer’s Association,
said jail management is still a critical issue in the sheriff’s department.
Many jail workers are concerned that the county plans to privatize all of its
jails in the future, he said. “The detention service is a big part of the
sheriff’s responsibility,” White said. “I think that folks working in the
jail need some reassurance that their jobs are not in jeopardy and that they
can continue to go on the career path that they’ve chosen in providing
services to the county.” Hutyra said he also takes
issue with the sheriff receiving an extra $12,000 each year from CEC through
the privatization deal on the downtown jail. The contract bonus was
negotiated when the late Jack Harwell was the sheriff. “If you can’t live off
the $87,585 that the taxpayers are giving you, you need to get another job,” Hutyra said. “I would tell the county to take the extra
$12,000 and donate it to Caritas.”
October 1, 2008 Waco Tribune
Curious: A county pays a contractor to run a jail. Then the contractor
pays the county for oversight of it. Curiouser: The sheriff, who must
authorize such a contract, gets the money. This is the case with McLennan
County’s agreement with Community Education Centers (formerly CiviGenics) to operate its downtown jail and build a
Highway 6 jail right alongside the 22-year-old county-run jail. Thanks to a
pass-through payment from CEC, the county pays Sheriff Larry Lynch $12,000
extra, above his $87,558 annual salary, because of the administrative and
monitoring duties associated with the private jail. McLennan County isn’t
alone in doing this. Many counties do. Lynch’s predecessor, Jack Harwell, got
an increment under comparable terms. State Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, who
chairs the Texas House of Representatives committee on urban affairs, has
asked the Texas attorney general to rule on the legality of such payments. If
upheld by the A.G., lawmakers need to stop the practice when they convene in
January. No sweeteners should be in play when contractors seek to perform a
public function. Yes, supervising the work of a contractor takes time for a
sheriff. Whatever the demands, the cost should be factored into whatever
savings the county projects it will realize from contracting. Such payments
don’t necessarily cloud a sheriff’s judgment on privatizing. But the
appearance of conflicts of interest alone should be sufficient reason for the
Legislature to act. Lynch told the Trib editorial
board Monday that privatization “is a fact that’s here.” Not necessarily.
Indeed, the county should always keep its options open, as it did when
considering contracting out its entire jail operations. It got only one
bidder — CEC. With jailers in an open revolt, commissioners voted not to proceed.
However, CEC will be building the new Highway 6 jail while it continues to
operate the downtown jail, where it houses federal prisoners and overflow
occupants of the county jail. Privatization presents any number of problems
that should make it a less-than-automatic call for governing boards. One is
the potential that the contractor will cut corners to increase profit and
undermine the quality of its services. One is public information withheld
when a contractor can blunt inquiries because they pertain to proprietary
matters. And there’s the possibility that contractors can buy into public
officials’ good graces with under-the-table or over-the-table inducements.
Privatizing should hinge on its merits alone, not on other considerations.
September 21, 2008 Waco
Tribune-Herald
The chairman of the Texas House of Representatives committee on urban
affairs has asked the state attorney general to determine whether it is legal
for a sheriff to accept a fee for work with a private detention company that
contracts with his county to operate a county jail. While the request from
Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, does not mention any sheriff or county by name, the
letter was generated after recent deliberations by McLennan County over
whether to renew its contract with Community Education Centers (formerly CiviGenics) to operate its downtown jail and to contract
with CEC to build a new jail on State Highway 6. Such contracts cannot be
executed without the authorization of the county sheriff. About 50 members
from the McLennan County Sheriff’s Association asked Sheriff Larry Lynch in
July to say no to the contracts. Lynch did not return phone messages seeking
comment for this story. McLennan County commissioners voted to extend the
contract with CEC to operate the downtown jail and are negotiating a contract
with CEC to build a new jail. “We think there is a legitimate question about
it,” said Charley Wilkison, political and
legislative director for Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.
“Since the sheriff is the only person who can decide if a privatization issue
is moving forward, then can take money that has simply been cleaned up in the
process of budgeting but is identical and numerically the same, can you in a
straightforward manner determine privatization in that county?” Wilkison said CLEAT officials asked Bailey to seek the
attorney general’s ruling. The county pays Lynch $12,000 extra, above his
$87,558 annual salary, because of the additional administrative and
monitoring duties associated with the private jail. That salary supplement
has been in place since the late Jack Harwell was sheriff and the county
first leased the downtown jail to CiviGenics in
1999. Mike Dixon, a Waco attorney who represents the county, said the salary
supplement has never been a secret and is noted in annual newspaper
advertisements the county is required to run to list the annual salaries of
elected officials. “It would be nice if they actually put the right facts in
the request instead of their one-sided facts,” Dixon said. “The real facts
are that any payments are meant to be a recoupment by the county of
administrative expenses, and those are paid to the county, not to the
sheriff. The county determines in the budget whether or not to give the
sheriff those additional monies as part of his salary. They are trying to say
the sheriff gets paid directly from the operators. That does not occur. “They
obviously have their stingers out for him over all the jail deals, and they
haven’t bothered to inconvenience themselves with the truth. They have asked
for an opinion based on a skewed set of facts,” Dixon said. Wilkison said at the heart of the matter is whether the
sheriff has a financial interest in the private contract because of the
salary supplement. The Texas Government Code says
“the commissioners court may not contract with a private organization in
which a member of the court or an elected or appointed peace officer who
serves in the county has a financial interest.” Bailey’s letter asks for
clarification. “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 organization’s 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.” Regardless of the ruling, Wilkison says, he thinks the debate will spawn new
legislation, if only to clear up any questions. “Somebody down in Austin is
going to fix this,” he said. “This is almost like a bad Western movie. A
big-money stakeholder is deciding indirectly what is going to happen.” The
attorney general’s office has asked interested parties, including CLEAT and
the Texas Sheriffs Association, to file briefs on the matter, Wilkison said.
August 11, 2008 Waco Tribune
A spokesman for the state’s largest law enforcement association is
calling for state and federal investigations into dealings between McLennan
County officials and a private detention corporation as the county continues
to negotiate jail contracts. “First of all, we don’t believe anything that
officials in McLennan County say anymore,” said Charley Wilkison,
political and legislative director for the 16,500-member Combined Law
Enforcement Agencies of Texas. “The credibility gap in this county is
incredible.” McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis, county commissioners and
Sheriff Larry Lynch have been wrestling for years with the county’s jail
overcrowding problem. County officials say they sought proposals from 14
companies nationwide on a variety of options, including privatizing the
entire county jail system and building a new, 1,000- bed jail. The county
received proposals from just one company, CEC, which has had a contract to
operate the downtown county jail since 1999. CEC contracts with several
agencies, primarily federal, to keep prisoners at the downtown jail. The
company’s McLennan County contract, which pays Lynch $12,000 above his county
salary of $88,000 to oversee the downtown jail, expires Oct. 1. Commissioners
voted last week for the sheriff to maintain control and operation of the
county jail on State Highway 6, on a recommendation from Lynch and after
weekly protests from about 50 jailers. Precinct 3 Commissioner Joe Mashek has called for the county to take back operation
of the downtown jail to help alleviate overcrowding and give the county more
time to study the situation. Wilkison said he will
ask Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to investigate whether Lynch violated
the Texas Public Information Act by failing to respond to CLEAT’s open
records requests for all correspondence between Lynch and CEC officials. He
said he also is seeking state and federal investigations about whether Lynch
lawfully and ethically can accept money from the private vendor or whether it
is a conflict of interest when he helps decide the fate of the jail system.
“The sheriff has taken $91,000 of personal money that goes into his bank
account, and then he says, ‘I am still able to decide. I am still OK deciding
whether it is in our best interest to privatize.’ That old dog won’t hunt. Nobody
here believes that.” The contract between the county and CEC, then called CiviGenics, originated when the late Jack Harwell was
sheriff. The part of the contract which calls for payments to the sheriff,
Lewis says, has not changed, although it has been renewed since Lynch took
office. Lynch did not return phone calls to his office or cell phone today. Wilkison also charges that county officials should come
up with more efficient ways to clear out the jail, especially of non-violent,
first-offenders. He claims the CEC contract pays Lynch more for more
prisoners. “We think inmates are being kept in jail to create an artificial
public safety crisis so the hue and cry for a new jail can come and the new
jail can be privatized and built by CEC,” Wilkison
said. Lewis scoffed at that notion and said that Wilkison’s
claims are off- target. He said Lynch is paid the same in the contract with
CEC whether there are 300 prisoners or none. “It is still his responsibility
to oversee that jail,” Lewis said. “By statute, it is the sheriff’s
responsibility, whether it was Jack or Larry. That contract has not changed,
and up until 20 months ago, we didn’t have a prisoner in that jail. So does
that logic make any sense?” Wilkison also charged
that Lewis’ office is using “stalling tactics” by asking for an attorney
general’s opinion about whether his office has to release 170 pages from
CLEAT’s open records request that Lewis claims are attorney-client privilege.
Wilkison said Lewis’s office has released 1,300
pages to CLEAT pursuant to the request. “We believe somewhere in that 170
pages will be some of the information that will tell the tale about how you
get only one bid on a private prison,” Wilkison
said. “If they have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to worry about.
If they have done nothing wrong, then they should release it anyway.” Lewis
said attorney-client communication is privileged and exempt from open records
requests. “That is just as standard as everything,” Lewis said. Commissioners
will continue to discuss jail proposals at their weekly meeting Tuesday
morning.
July 30, 2008 Waco Tribune-Herald
The McLennan County Sheriff’s Office is investigating complaints from two
former female downtown jail inmates that guards at the privately operated
McLennan County Detention Center are selling drugs and having sex with female
inmates. The investigation was launched earlier this month after a
29-year-old inmate at the downtown jail facility reportedly was caught with a
marijuana cigarette in her bra. While investigators were trying to find out
how she got the drugs into the jail, the woman, who has at least two felony
convictions for drug possession, reported that guards are having sex with
female inmates and selling drugs to inmates, four sources familiar with the investigation
told the Tribune-Herald. The 329-inmate facility is operated by Community
Education Centers, formerly CiviGenics, in a
contract with the county that expires Oct. 1. The investigation is being
conducted as the county negotiates solely with CEC to build and operate a
new, 1,000-bed facility next to the county jail on State Highway 6, retain
operation of the MCDC on Columbus Avenue or several other options being
considered by the county to help ease its burgeoning jail population. Since
the woman reported her allegations, another female inmate also has given a
statement with similar claims to sheriff’s investigators, the sources said.
After speaking to investigators, that woman, who was being housed at the
downtown detention center while waiting to begin a five-year state prison
term for delivery of drugs, was shipped off to prison this week, the sources
said. George Vose, senior vice president for
operations at the New Jersey-based CEC, said Tuesday that he could not
comment on any pending investigation, saying it would be improper to
interfere with the work of the sheriff’s office. “Certainly, it is our intent
and history to cooperate with any kind of law enforcement investigation, as
we often do,” Vose said. Sheriff’s office Chief
Deputy Randy Plemons would neither confirm nor deny reports that his
detectives are investigating the two women’s claims of improper sex and drug
dealing among MCDC guards. “I am not going to comment on an ongoing
investigation. We have to substantiate if this is even going on,” Plemons
said, adding that felons often do not tell the truth. Plemons would not
speculate about how often such accusations surface but said the Highway 6
jail has two full-time detectives to investigate crimes committed in jail and
grievances filed by inmates. Sheriff’s investigator Joe Scaramucci wrote in a
sworn complaint charging one of the women with possession of a prohibited
substance in a correctional facility, a third-degree felony, that the woman
said she found the marijuana cigarette July 12 under her bed. The woman since
has been transferred to the Highway 6 county jail. “She stated that she
believed the substance was left by another inmate as payment for assisting
the other inmate with moving,” according to the affidavit. “She stated that
she placed the substance in her bra so that, at visitation, she could trade
it for commissary or obtain a lighter.” The affidavit did not specify with
whom the woman wanted to trade the drugs. No other charges have been filed,
but the investigation continues, sources said. Three guards at a CEC-operated
facility in Liberty County recently were arrested on charges of having sex
with inmates, and two others were arrested on allegations that they sold
drugs to inmates, according to published reports. In November 2001, Sherman
Lamont Fields escaped from the MCDC, then operated by CiviGenics,
and killed Suncerey Coleman, a young mother of
three children, after bribing a guard to help him escape. Fields, a federal
prisoner at the time of his escape, was captured and given a federal death
sentence. Fields escaped from the downtown jail when Benny Garrett, a jail
guard, slipped him a key to the fifth-floor fire escape door after Fields
promised to give Garrett $5,000 after his escape. Garrett, 26, formerly of
Marlin, pleaded guilty to aiding Fields’ escape, testified against Fields and
was sentenced to four years in federal prison.
May 7, 2008 Tribune-Herald
McLennan County commissioners authorized the hiring of 12 new jailers
Tuesday in response to an unfavorable order from the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards. Commissioners voted to hire the new jailers after a two-hour,
closed- door meeting with the county’s attorneys, Herb Bristow and Mike
Dixon. The jail has been teetering on its maximum capacity for several years
and has been operating with variances from the jail standards commission.
McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis said recent changes in the membership of the
commission in Austin might explain why the panel’s once- patient attitude
changed, producing the “remedial order” dated May 1. Jail commission
officials told county commissioners they would be required to transfer
prisoners to other facilities if they remained out of compliance with the
48-to-1 prisoner-to-staff ratio as required by state law. Lewis said county
officials authorized the 12 additional jailers in this year’s fiscal budget
but delayed hiring them. He said the county has been using funds from what
would have been their salaries to pay CiviGenics, a
private detention company that operates the county- owned downtown jail, to
house about 85 overflow inmates from the county’s Highway 6 jail. Now the
county will pay roughly $203,000 to hire the dozen new jailers plus
continuing to pay CiviGenics for holding inmates.
Still, county officials say, that’s cheaper than building a new county jail
or adding onto the existing one, which could be inevitable. “The remedial
order is addressing our staffing needs,” McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch
said. “So once we get the staff in place, we will be
in compliance, and we will ask that the remedial order be removed.” The
commission’s order states that the Commission on Jail Standards inspected the
Highway 6 jail on Dec. 18, 2007, and issued a notice of noncompliance then.
As of April 11, 2008, McLennan County officials hadn’t responded to the
notice of noncompliance, the order claims. County officials have wrestled
with jail overcrowding for years. They hired a jail magistrate this year to
try to set bonds faster and ease overcrowding. They also have asked for an
attorney general’s opinion to answer a number of legal concerns about the use
of ankle monitors, proposed to help clear out the jail while monitoring
alleged offenders. On Tuesday, there were 965 inmates in jail, Lynch said,
adding that capacity is 931. The sheriff said he couldn’t predict when the
dozen new employees could be hired, trained and ready to go to work. “That is
something we are working on as we speak,” he said. While the jail population
and staffing levels fluctuate daily, Lynch said the inmate-to-staff average
ratio was closer to 53-to-1 when the jail was not in compliance. Jail
overcrowding is not unique to McLennan County, and that likely is why the
Commission on Jail Standards has been more flexible over the past couple of
years, Lewis said. Harris County incarcerates 600 inmates at a private
detention center in northeast Louisiana and recently asked for permission to
send another 1,130 inmates to Louisiana facilities. At $38 per inmate per
day, those additions could bring the annual cost for housing inmates outside
Harris County to $24 million, according to published reports. McLennan County
pays $27.50 a day for each of the first 50 inmates housed in the CiviGenics facility on Columbus Avenue. The rate goes to
$28.50 a day for 51 to 70 inmates, and $31 for each inmate from 71 to 90.
After 91 inmates, the rate jumps to $41.95 a day, officials have said. Asked
why McLennan County commissioners met behind closed doors on the matter,
Lewis initially cited litigation or potential litigation. When it was pointed
out that no one was suing the county, the judge insisted the commissioners
court has the right to meet behind closed doors with attorneys anytime it
chooses.
February 17, 2008 Waco Tribune
McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch is being challenged by one of his former
colleagues, a computer services contractor who said he resigned from the
sheriff’s office the day Lynch was sworn in. Lynch, who has been sheriff
since 2000, is opposed in the March 4 Republican primary by Randy Gates, a
Moody resident who worked at the sheriff’s office 10 years before starting
his own computer business. The winner will face Democratic nominee Charles Hutyra in November. Gates, 41, started his law
enforcement career with the Hewitt Police Department in 1989 and went to work
for the sheriff’s office as a jailer the following year. He worked five years
as an investigator and a year as a county drug task force member. Lynch, 61,
who is seeking his third term, says he won’t discuss why Gates left the
sheriff’s office, citing “personnel matters.” Gates says he and Lynch didn’t
see eye to eye about certain issues and says it was time for him to move on.
“I was in narcotics at the time and I needed a change, and that change was
the new sheriff,” Gates said. “I was the very first one out the door. I just
kind of saw the handwriting on the wall. I already had another job lined up.”
Jail criticisms -- Like many politicians trying to unseat an incumbent, Gates
has gone on the offensive, attacking Lynch for county jail overcrowding and
recent operational deficiency citations by the state Commission on Jail
Standards. He also has accused the sheriff of “empire building” after the
city of McGregor recently considered — and then rejected — dismantling its
police department and having the sheriff’s office assume its role in local
law enforcement. “He has made those allegations at two public forums now,”
Lynch said. “He doesn’t understand the situation. I was approached by the
city of McGregor and was asked if the sheriff’s office would be the law
enforcement agency for their city. I said, ‘Sure, we will take a look at it.’
” The McGregor City Council later voted against the proposal, but Lynch said
he made it clear that city leaders had to be unanimous in their request or it
would not work. “We looked at it and determined it was a feasible project,
but it had to be a unanimous decision. If we were to come in, we bring more
experience, more resources, but it had to be unanimous,” Lynch said. “We’ve
got plenty of work to do, but when citizens ask us to look into a situation,
that is what we do.” Gates, who won the Precinct 6 justice of the peace post
abolished through redistricting, says that as sheriff, he would try to
strengthen ties with local law enforcement entities. He remains critical of
Lynch’s role in the proposed McGregor deal. “I think the objective is to
forge relationships with the municipal departments, not replace them,” Gates
said. “The sheriff should provide the same level of service to every citizen
of McLennan County. It is not for sale to the highest bidder. Whenever you
propose to build an empire by eliminating municipal law enforcement agencies,
that is not the way to forge relationships with those people.” Private salary
objection -- Gates says he also objects to Lynch’s salary being boosted by an
extra $12,000 a year and paid by CiviGenics, a
private detention company that has been leasing the downtown county jail
since before Lynch became sheriff. He said he couldn’t understand how the
county jail can be so overcrowded with 250 beds available for county use
downtown. “It clarified the issue for me when I found out the sheriff is
getting $12,000 a year from the company leasing the jail,” Gates said. “I’m
not going to accept funds from a private entity. I’m will use that money to
set up a fund to provide criminal justice scholarships here in Central
Texas.” Lynch countered that the stipend he receives was part of a contract
approved between the vendor and the commissioners court and started a decade
ago with the late Sheriff Jack Harwell.
October 4, 2007 KCEN TV
The McLennan County Juvenile Justice Center in Waco is on lockdown. Just
before 8:30 p.m. someone inside the facility on Gholson Road called Waco
police to report four or five inmates fighting in the gym. According to
police, three inmates pushed through ceiling tiles in the facility and are
playing a "cat and mouse" game with officers. Officers said the
inmates are in the attic. Police are planning to bring in K-9 dogs to get
them out of the attic, and say tear gas will be last resort.
March 31, 2007 Waco Tribune
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed
the federal convictions and death sentence of Sherman Lamont Fields,
convicted in the 2001 jail escape and shooting death of the mother of three
small children. In a 129-page opinion, Circuit Judges Carolyn King and Jerry
Smith ruled that the more than 20 points of error raised by Fields on appeal
should be rejected and his death sentence and multiple convictions relating
to his escape and murder of Suncerey Coleman should
be affirmed. Circuit Judge Fortunato Benavides wrote in a dissenting opinion
that he would have affirmed the convictions but granted Fields a new
sentencing hearing based on evidence presented during the punishment phase
that he was unable to confront. Fields, currently on federal death row,
claimed in his direct appeal that prosecutors improperly introduced hundreds
of pages of documents relating to Fields’ lengthy criminal record, including
juvenile delinquency records, that were filled with hearsay statements from
guards, counselors, probation officers and others. Fields claimed his rights
were violated because he was unable to properly dispute some statements in
the records because those who made them were not subject to
cross-examination. “Sherman Lamont Fields was sentenced to death based on
testimony that he was never able to confront,” Benavides wrote. “That is
precisely the evil that the Confrontation Clause was meant to protect
against.” Fields’ appeal now goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fields escaped
from the downtown Waco jail operated by CiviGenics
after jail guard Benny Garrett slipped him a key to the fifth-floor fire
escape door. Fields had promised to give Garrett $5,000. Garrett pleaded
guilty to aiding his escape and was sentenced to four years in federal prison
in March 2004. Coleman, Fields’ former girlfriend, was at Hillcrest Baptist
Medical Center with her premature baby when Fields showed up at the hospital
after his escape and convinced her to leave with him. Trial testimony
revealed that Fields was angry because he thought Coleman was seeing other
men. They drove to an area near Downsville, south of Waco, and Fields shot
her twice in the head and dumped her body along the side of the road. Fields
was sentenced to death in April 2004 after a trial in Waco’s federal court.
July 15, 2004
An employee with a private detention company that operates the former
McLennan County Jail in downtown Waco was indicted Wednesday on charges that
he had sex with a female jail inmate. A McLennan County grand jury
indicted Jonathan Tate, 23, for improper sexual activity, a state-jail felony
punishable by up to two years in jail. The indictment alleges that on
April 5, Tate had sex with an inmate at the McLennan County Detention Center
on Columbus Avenue. Tate, a guard, was hired by CiviGenics,
which has a contract with McLennan County to operate the jail. The facility
is used primarily to house federal inmates waiting transfer to federal
prisons and those suspected of immigration violations. (Waco Tribune)
June 28, 2004
A McLennan County Detention Center guard and an inmate were listed in
critical condition Monday after a highway accident Saturday. A van
carrying two detention center guards and 13 inmates rolled several times
outside Abilene, sending everyone aboard to the hospital, said Trooper
Gilbert Ruiz of the Department of Public Safety. The wreck occurred on
Interstate 20 in Callahan County at about 12:30 a.m. while the prisoners were
being transported from Odessa to Waco, Ruiz said. The van was eastbound on
I-20 when a tire blew out, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle,
Ruiz said. The van then rolled several times. (Waco Tribune)
February 5, 2004
The McLennan County Commissioners Court and district attorney were subpoenaed
to appear before a Dallas County grand jury investigating the owner of jail
food service company and his relationship with officials in several Texas
counties, a newspaper reported. County Judge Jim Lewis and Commissioner
Ray Meadows have already testified before the grand jury in Dallas. They were
to testify again Friday, along with the rest of the commissioners and
District Attorney John Segrest, the Waco
Tribune-Herald reported in Thursday editions, citing unnamed sources.
Prosecutors also have subpoenaed records from the McLennan County Sheriff's
Office and Commissioners Court, the newspaper reported. The grand jury
began investigating Jack Madera of Mid-America Services of Dallas after
reports surfaced that Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles accepted thousands of dollars worth of gifts and trips from Madera between 1999
and 2001. Bowles awarded Madera's company a five-year, $20 million commissary
contract in 2002. The grand jury has since expanded its investigation
to include other counties in which Madera's company operates. (AP)
November
26, 2003
Lela McMillion says life without her youngest daughter, Suncerey
has been a constant struggle. She says she cries a lot and not a day has gone
by in the last two years that she hasn't thought of Suncerey
in some way. "I miss my baby, she was my baby, I think about her all the
time, she's on my mind when I wake up, she's on my mind when I go to bed, it
hurts, the children don't have their mom and I dont'
have my baby, " McMillon said. Two year old
Yiencey, is Suncerey's
youngest child. Yiency was a newborn baby
when her mother disappeared in November, 2001. She was born prematurely and Suncerey had been at the hospital learning to care for
her when she vanished. She was last seen with Sherman Lamont Fields,
who had escaped from the downtown Waco Detention Center. Fields was
recaptured several weeks later, but Suncerey was no where to be found. "After she was taken
from the hospital and missing all those days, I'm waiting to find out where
was her body and what was done to her, " McMillon said. Lela's
worst nightmare became reality when Suncerey's body
was found in a field south of Waco the day before Thanksgiving, two years
ago. After the discovery, authorities added murder to the long list of
charges against Fields. Lela says she had heard her daughter once dated
him, but she was sure Suncery had broken things
off. " I've never in my life felt hatred before and that's unreal
for me." Lela describes her daughter as beautiful, kind and
giving. It's those things she tells her three grandchildren, all of whom
she's helping to raise, when they ask about their mother. "We just
tell them that she's in heaven and she died and went to heaven with God, but
we know eventually we will have to tell them what happened to their
mother." Lela says she visits her daughter's grave about once a
month, though she says it doesn't ease her pain. She says nothing ever will.
"If it wasn't for God and my prayers I wouldn't be able to handle all of
this, her life was taken, she was too young, she was taken away from her
children and they will never know their mom, " she said. Lela says
little Yiencey looks a lot like Suncerey
once did. She says she sees her daughter in the eyes of her grandaughter everyday. Her hope
is that others will too. McMillion filed suit against Civigenics, the company which leases the McLennan County
Detention Center, after her daughter's murder. Earlier this year, Civigencis settled the suit for an undisclosed amount. Fields
is scheduled to go on trial in Waco Federal Court for Coleman's murder and
escape in January. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
(KWTX)
October 10, 2003
A former jail guard who helped state prisoner Sherman Lamont Fields escape
from the McLennan County Detention Center in November 2001 pleaded guilty
Thursday to a variety of federal charges that could land him in prison for 40
years. Benny Donnell Garrett, 25, formerly of Marlin, pleaded guilty to
conspiracy charges, aiding and abetting escape by providing prohibited
objects to a prisoner, establishing a drug manufacturing operation and
possession with the intent to distribute marijuana within 1,000 feet of a
school. U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Waco will sentence
Garrett on Dec. 10. Garrett, a former employee of CiviGenics,
a private detention company that contracts with McLennan County and the
federal government to operate the downtown Waco jail, faces a maximum 40-year
prison term and fines up to $2 million. Fields, 29, is charged with
escaping from the detention center and then killing his former girlfriend, Suncerey Coleman, seven hours after his escape. Federal
prosecutors say he obtained a key from Garrett and used it to flee the jail
through a fifth-floor fire escape door. Fields and Garrett both are
named in a multicount federal indictment. Federal prosecutors sought
permission for both men to face the death penalty if convicted in the escape
conspiracy. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft approved the death
penalty in Fields' case but rejected the request for Garrett. Fields is
set for trial in Waco's federal court on Jan. 12. Besides giving the
key to Fields, Garrett also pleaded guilty to providing marijuana, alcohol,
cigarettes and access to a cell phone to Fields and other CiviGenics
inmates in exchange for money or the promise of money. The detention center
at 520 Columbus Ave. is across the street from St. Paul's Episcopal School.
Fort Worth attorney Douglas C. Greene, who represents Garrett, said his
client "possibly" will testify at Fields' trial. Greene said
Garrett had never been in trouble before getting mixed up with Fields. Since
his arrest two years ago, however, Garrett has been placed on misdemeanor
probation in Falls County for possession of marijuana, court records
show. "He stupidly let this guy out," Greene said. "He's
a young kid who was provided with virtually no training and put in charge of
a bunch of professional, federal criminals, and they corrupted him. But he
certainly didn't know anything about what (Fields) was going to do after he
escaped." (Tribune-Herald)
July 13, 2002
The family of murder victim Suncerey Coleman filed
a lawsuit Wednesday against CiviGenics, operators
of a downtown Waco jail where an inmate escaped in November. The lawsuit
claims that CiviGenics was negligent in allowing
convicted felon Sherman Lamont Fields, 27, to obtain a key to the fifth-floor
fire escape and flee the jail Nov. 6. Federal prosecutors have charged Fields
and a former CiviGenics jailer, Benny Donnell
Garrett, 24, of Marlin with Coleman's murder. They said Fields bribed Garrett
to give him the fire escape key. Authorities are seeking the federal death
penalty against both men. "We are eager for a jury to hear this
case," said Waco attorney Bill Johnston, who represents the family.
"We believe the corporation bears the responsibility for what it allowed
to happen." According to the lawsuit, CiviGenics
did not properly staff the jail, train officers or retain employees before
Fields' escape. It said jail supervisors also waited more than four hours to
alert law enforcement authorities that an inmate was missing on Nov. 6. CiviGenics has operated the jail since 1998 under a
contract that nets the county more than $700,000 a year. The jail holds
detainees and inmates for several federal agencies, including the Immigration
and Naturalization Service and the Bureau of Prisons. The contract frees the
county from liability stemming from "any negligent or wrongful act or
failure to act of the operator or its officers, employees, agents or
contractors." (Wacotrib.com)
April
24, 2002
The
former Texas prison unit warden and two-term Anderson County sheriff recently
became the fifth warden in the three years that the private detention company
CiviGenics has contracted with McLennan County to
operate the former county jail in downtown Waco. Since October, the facility
has suffered through an unusually rocky period that included the escape of a
prisoner who is charged with killing a woman while he was a fugitive and the
arrest of a guard charged with facilitating the escape. There also have been
the resignations of four top detention center officials; an inmate
disturbance and fire; and a failed jail inspection. Also, local Hispanic
leaders have charged that the county is in business with a company that
improperly warehouses those charged with minor immigration violations until
deportation and is violating their rights by, among other things, not
employing enough Spanish-speaking officers. The downtown jail, which the
county built in 1981, sat vacant for two years after county inmates were
moved to the enlarged county jail on State Highway 6 in 1996. County
commissioners contracted with CiviGenics in 1998
and hoped to reap a minimum of $250,000 a year in the arrangement with the
Boston-based private prison company. From a financial standpoint, the deal
has been a "cash cow," as Precinct 4 Commissioner Ray Meadows
describes it. In 2000, the county earned $645,848 in the deal, and $426,811
last year. When the county entered into the contract with CiviGenics,
former Sheriff Jack Harwell told commissioners that he would not object to
the deal as long as the inmates were "short-term, low-risk prisoners who
do not come from other states." However, after the Nov. 6 escape of
convicted felon Sherman Fields, who was on the fifth floor awaiting federal
trial on a weapons charge, and the concerns lodged earlier this month by
Hispanic leaders, the focus has been magnified on the types of prisoners
being held there. Hubert estimates that 80 percent of the inmates he houses
are there on some type of drug-related convictions. He said he has seen only
a few inmates with immigration concerns in the few months he has been warden
in Waco. (Waco Tribune-Herald)
Mineral Wells, Texas
Emerald Corrections
May
21, 2014 mineralwellsindex.com
WEATHERFORD
– Two former prison employees who worked for the now-closed Mineral Wells
Pre-Parole Transfer Facility pleaded guilty to bribery charges earlier this
month. According to court records, Carl James Guittard,
36, and Terrie Elaine Glover, 49, were indicted on charges and each received
a $1,000 fine, 240 hours of community service and 10 years
probation. Indictments allege at least 10 people offered or conferred
money on prepaid debit cards to Guittard, Glover or
both, and the two illegally provided tobacco products to inmates in the
facility. A state prosecutor called the bribery investigation extensive due
to the number of people involved. Sixteen former inmates and others were also
indicted as part of the bribery and contraband investigation and many cases
remained pending Friday in district court. Others recently sentenced in
connection with the case include:
•
Mark Covington, 10 years deferred adjudication probation on a charge of
bribery and a $1,500 fine.
•
Dustin Baker, 10 years deferred adjudication probation on a charge of bribery
and a $1,000 fine.
•
Humberto Cavazos, 10 years deferred adjudication probation on a charge of
bribery and a $1,000 fine.
•
Walter Eugene Merideth Jr., 10 years deferred
adjudication probation on a charge of bribery and a $1,000 fine
•
Christopher Reid, pleaded guilty to bribery and
received two years in jail.
The
2,100-bed minimum security facility, closed July 30 after funding was cut by
the Texas Legislature, was operated by Corrections Corporation of America and
housed state inmates.
October 8, 2009 Mineral Wells Index
A two and-a-half year effort to bring an illegal immigrant detention center
to Mineral Wells ended Tuesday night with several long seconds of silence
from city council members. A resolution to continue negotiations with Emerald
Correctional Management to build a detention facility funded by non-recourse
revenue bonds issued by the Mineral Wells Local Government Corporation failed
when council members failed to second a motion in support. “That’s a pretty
clear message that the city council has no interest in doing this project,”
Steve Afeman, chief operating officer of Emerald,
said Wednesday morning. “We’re not about to go back.” The failure to move
ahead with negotiations seemed to come as a surprise to several. Afeman said Emerald met with mayor Mike Allen, Industrial
Foundation representative Steve Butcher and city manager Lance Howerton and
was told they believed council would support the public finance proposal.
Allen told those attending the meeting there would be no public comments.
“This is for the council to understand,” he said before a presentation from
Hull Youngblood, Emerald’s attorney and representative. “[While switching
sites earlier this year], we lost that window to get private financing that
you could use,” Youngblood said. Initially the city offered Emerald land near
Mineral Wells Municipal Airport, but 11th-hour public opposition to the site
forced its move to Wolters Industrial Park, with the Industrial Foundation
buying land to accommodate the switch. Youngblood told the council the city
would not be obligated if they authorized the local government corporation to
issue non-recourse revenue bonds. “The LGC will not have to pay anything on
the debt except what is generated by project revenue,” Youngblood said. “[If
the bonds were defaulted on] think of it like lenders and they’ve got a lien
on the building. They could sell it or refinance it.” Because the local
government corporation would own the title to the building, the facility
would also be exempt from ad valorem taxes. “We would now take that pool of
money [that would go to the city and Parker County] and give it to the city
[as the per diem fee per inmate],” Youngblood said. Councilman Bill Terry
wanted to know if the facility went defunct how much control the city would
have. “[Once the facility is foreclosed on] they could do whatever they
want,” Youngblood said, but added they would have to abide by applicable law.
“What kind of black eye is it to the city or the LGC [if they are unable to
pay off the bonds]?” council member Tommy Blissitte
asked. Howerton said they talked with the city’s financial advisor and were
told a default on the bonds would not technically affect the credit rating
and would not likely impair the city. However, the city might have to explain
the situation and that could raise a red flag with other possible
underwriters, Howerton said. “What risk, if any, does Emerald have?” council
member Deartis Nickerson asked. “[There is] not
additional equity being paid to the lender beyond the significant development
costs [already incurred],” Youngblood said. “I’ve been dealing with this for
about a month and I’ve come to a conclusion our liability (would be) no
different than private financing,” Allen said. Allen noted unemployment is
over 8 percent in the county and said the project would generate jobs and bring
in at least $6 million for the city over a 20-year period. Afeman said they’ve received about 30 job applications
for the proposed Mineral Wells facility, which was supposed to have created
140 jobs, though many of the applications were from people in other parts of
the state looking to return to Mineral Wells. Council member John Ritchie
moved to approve the resolution authorizing the local government corporation
to continue negotiations for the publicly financed proposal but did not
receive a second. After several seconds of silence from the council, Allen
requested a second to the motion but did not receive it from the other four
council members present. Chris Crawford was absent. “It’s been a long, hard
journey,” Allen said after the meeting. “I’ve put a lot of time into it.”
Richard Ball, president of the Industrial Foundation, said afterward it was
time to replace some city council members. “I don’t think it’s the right
thing at the right time,” Terry said. “I want to see the Baker Hotel
situation [succeed] and I don’t want anything to get in the way … I just
think there are better deals out there and eventually they’ll come. I feel
that Emerald is not being up front with us.” Terry was the lone dissenting
vote when the council agreed to accept a lower impact fee than Emerald
announced they would pay the city before the site was moved, asking whether
it would be a sign of things to come. “I don’t like the idea of the city
having to issue bonds,” councilman Tommy Blissitte
told the Index Wednesday. “It would look bad on the city if they defaulted.”
Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Facility
Mineral Wells, Texas
CCA
December
29, 2013 weatherforddemocrat.com
A
Parker County grand jury has indicted two former corrections officers, 11
former inmates and five others in a case involving allegations of bribery and
providing contraband to those imprisoned at the former Mineral Wells
Pre-Parole Transfer Facility. According to indictments released to the public
Thursday, Carl James Guittard, 36, and Terrie
Elaine Glover, 49, both former corrections officers at the privately run
facility housing Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates, are each
charged with bribery and providing, or possessing with intent to provide,
tobacco to a person confined at the facility around Feb. 1. The indictments
allege at least 10 people offered or conferred money on a prepaid debit card
to Guittard, Glover or both. All suspects were
charged with providing, or possessing with intent to provide, tobacco to a
person confined at the facility, in addition to any bribery charges. It’s not
common for state prosecutors to pursue bribery and contraband cases with as
many defendants with ties to each other as the recent indictments, according
to special prosecutor Mark Mullin. “This is a lot of folks,” Mullin said.
“You know we’ve seen it before but we don’t deal with it very often and not
this many of them.” Investigators reportedly began receiving information
about the issue around the beginning of the year from various sources. “It
was a pretty extensive investigation with all the people involved,” Mullin
said of the several-month investigation. “I’m very familiar with contraband
cases because of the units that I handle but I knew this one was
problematic,” Mullin said adding that, although there have been a high number
of contraband cases, he’s not aware of any other case at the prison unit
involving a network of as many people. A spokesman for the TDCJ’s Office of
Inspector General was not available to respond to questions Friday, according
to the OIG office, which investigated the case. The Democrat left a message
for a corporate spokeswoman with the Corrections Corporation of America, the
facility’s operator at the time, but was unable to reach anyone for comment
by deadline. It was not clear whether any of those indicted had been arrested
or were in custody Friday. The Democrat was unable to obtain information on
the current status of Guittard and Glover’s jailer
licenses as the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement was scheduled to be
closed for eight business days for the holidays. The contraband issue, with
banned items ranging from cell phones to illegal substances, may have helped
lead to the 2,100-bed facility’s closure earlier this year. The facility
faced the chopping block repeatedly in recent years, with some legislators
citing contraband issues at the facility, which was originally part of a U.S.
military base at the site and later purchased and renovated to become a
minimum-security prison operated by CCA. While cutting TDCJ’s funding by more
than $97 million over the course of two years, the Legislature left it up to
TDCJ to decide which prisons would be affected. Citing capacity needs, safety
and security issues, the design of the facilities and other factors, TDCJ
opted not renew CCA’s contract to operate the Mineral Wells facility and the
Dawson State Jail in Dallas. Though the facility permanently closed July 30,
Parker County grand juries have returned dozens of other indictments in
recent months involving allegations of illegal contraband at the facility
over the past several years. Others indicted last week on felony charges in
connection with the bribery investigation include Michael Adair, Dustin
Baker, Amber Barker, Humberto Cavazos, Mark Edward Covington, Maria
Hernandez, Keith Looney, Starr Madison, Gabriela Magdaleno,
Walter Eugene Merideth Jr., Christopher Reid,
Michael Revell, Aaron Slagle, Carolyn Tune and Laurence Cantwell.
May
12, 2013 www.gosanangelo.com
AUSTIN
— Texas Senate and House budget negotiators have tentatively agreed to close
two privately run state prisons. The Texas Board of Criminal Justice would
decide which two prisons to shutter under the Friday’s agreement, the Austin
American-Statesman reported. The Senate, in its state budget plan, had
targeted a 2,100-bed transfer facility in Mineral Wells and a 2,200-bed state
jail in Dallas for closure. The House, in its plan, had allocated funding for
each. Under new wording in the budget bills, legislators agreed to cut $97
million from the criminal justice budget. That’s the amount it costs to run
the Dawson State Jail in Dallas and the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer
Facility, although the budget bill won’t specifically name those two lockups.
The conflicting budget proposals and feuding lawmakers in both chambers had
endangered the entire state criminal justice budget. The newspaper, without
naming them, said legislative leaders are in agreement on closing Dawson, but
that Mineral Wells representatives are pushing to keep their facility open,
saying it would harm the economy in the city about 75 miles west of Dallas.
State Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee,
has campaigned to close the two units for more than two years. They are both
operated by the Corrections Corp. of America under a contract with the state.
Whitmire contends that the state already has 12,000 unused prison beds and
the two aren’t needed. Brad Livingston, executive director of the Department
of Criminal Justice, wrote Whitmire earlier this month that the design of Mineral
Wells, built as a military barracks and not a prison, made it a top candidate
for closing. The design causes security and safety code considerations,
Livingston said. Its location adjacent to a park, college and private land
also contributes to security concerns, he said. Prison records show frequent
instances of contraband drugs and cellphones tossed over the prison fence. It
opened in 1989 at a time when Texas prisons were under federal court control
because of crowding and was intended as a holding site for parolees heading
out. Livingston says his agency has been planning to not renew its contract
for Mineral Wells after it expires in August.
May
7, 2013 www.statesman.com
In
voting to reauthorize the operations of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
the Texas House on Saturday approved an amendment that could forestall the
controversial closure of a private prison in Mineral Wells. With more than
12,000 empty prison beds, Senate and House leaders have been pushing to close
at least two prisons — but have run into opposition from local interests. The
amendment by state Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, and Jim Keffer, R-Eastland,specifies that the prison system’s governing
board is to close privately run prisons based on their cost to operate — meaning
that the most-costly ones will be the first on the cutting block. Prison
officials earlier said the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility is
among the least-costly to operate. The move sets up a showdown between the
House and the Senate over which two prisons should be closed. The Senate
budget bill specifies that Mineral Wells and the Dawson State Jail in Dallas
are to be closed. Both are privately run, by Corrections Corporation of
America. The House version of the budget leaves the decision on closures to
prison officials. House leaders have for days been working on a way to keep
Mineral Wells open, citing local support for the lockup and the devastating
effect its closure could have on the local economy. During the debate, House
Corrections Committee Chairman Tan Parker, R-Denton, said the intention of
the House in approving the bill “is to be fiscally responsible.” “I believe
it is very important that we close at least two facilities, if not more,” he
said. “Our desire is to take at least $90 million out of the budget.” That
savings would be used to help pay for pay raises for state troopers and
correctional officers, among other employees. “At the end of the day, the
(prison) units that cost the most will be closed,” Parker said. Dawson is among
the most expensive privately run lockups, so it will likely still be targeted
for closure. Prison officials could not immediately say which other private
prison might be on the list, under the House-passed bill. Another amendment
that could have possibly justified the purchase of an empty 1,100-bed lockup
in Jones County for $19.5 million, by ramping up placements of drug-abusers
in a special treatment program, was withdrawn and was not voted upon. With a
budget of more than $3 billion a year and more than 45,000 employees and
151,000 convicts under its supervision, the criminal justice agency is among
the state’s most important public functions.
December 21, 2010 Mineral Wells
Index
Two inmates reportedly received minor injuries during a disturbance Friday
night at the Corrections Corporation of America Pre-Parole Transfer Facility
but facility personnel were able to gain control of the inmates within a
short time. “At about 8:45 p.m. Friday evening, approximately 30 offenders
refused to go to their assigned housing locations on the north side [of the
facility],” facility manager Maria White said. The inmates reportedly
encouraged others to join them, according to White. “With minimal use of
chemical agents, supervisors maintained control of the unit and quelled the
incident within an hour,” White said. “At no time was public safety
threatened as the incident was quickly contained by staff.” Two of the 48
inmates believed to be involved received minor injuries, were transported to
the hospital for treatment and released back to the facility. No staff was
injured. Local law enforcement personnel were contacted according to standard
procedure, White said. Mineral Wells police, Palo Pinto County sheriff’s
deputies and Department of Public Safety officers, responded to a call of a
riot at the facility around 9:30 p.m. and maintained a perimeter until about
11 p.m. but was not asked to intervene.
February 23, 2010 Mineral Wells
Index
The second arson suspect was released Saturday from the Parker County jail
after posting $50,000 bond on a charge of arson. Like former Mineral Wells
patrolman John Gore, official records for alleged arson accomplice Jeff
Gulley show no issues during his time working as a patrol officer for Ranger
in late 2006 and 2007. Current Ranger Police Chief Elton McCoy, who was not
with the department at the time, said Gulley's personnel records indicate
Gulley resigned in good standing to pursue another job in June 2007 and show
no record of write-ups during his several months on the Ranger police force.
Gulley – along with Gore, who faces four counts of arson – held a valid peace
officer license in the state when he was arrested Thursday on a charge of
arson. Gulley also holds a temporary jailer license from the state. Warden
Ron King of Community Education Centers, the contracting company managing the
Parker County jail, confirmed Monday that Gulley worked as a jailer in Parker
County between June and September and was not rehireable
when he left. Before receiving a temporary jailers license from the state,
Gulley would have had to pass a college entrance exam, a psychological exam
and a physical exam, according to King. Gulley also worked as a correctional
officer with Corrections Corporation of America at the Mineral Wells
pre-parole facility between November 2008 and December 2009, CCA spokesperson
Maria White confirmed Monday. Fellow officers who worked with Gore expressed
surprise last week at his arrest. Police Chief Mike McAllester
said Gore had never been disciplined and was a model officer. McAllester said they are investigating fires as far back
as 2001. Gore and Gulley are reported to be close friends and have known each
other since they attended school together. Gore was charged with three counts
of arson Tuesday after he was stopped by a Mineral Wells patrol officer near
three suspicious fires in the Wolters Industrial Park area and questioned.
During the initial interview, Gore reportedly provided information about
seven fires, including the three fires Tuesday, and provided information
about a second suspect, according to police. Parker County officials reported
Gore confessed to starting a fire Feb. 3 which destroyed a two-story storage
building and implicated Gulley. During two interviews with the Parker County
Fire Marshal's office last week, Gulley allegedly “exposed his involvement in
the Feb. 3 arson” and confessed to being involved with two other fires, a
grass fire and a structure fire that did not fully ignite.
February 16, 2010 Mineral Wells
Index
Facing a budget shortfall in 2011, Texas leaders Gov. Rick Perry, Lt.
Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus asked Texas agencies and
institutions of higher education to identify a 5 percent reduction to their
2010-11 general revenue and general revenue-dedicated appropriations. While
agencies faced a Monday deadline this week, Texas corrections officials,
looking for perhaps as much as $300 million in cutbacks in the 112-unit
system, have not ruled out closing some prisons. Last Wednesday the
Austin-American Statesman reported that Senate Criminal Justice Committee
Chair John Whitmire, D-Houston, publicly suggested that the state consider
closing the privately run, 2,100-bed Corrections Corporation of America’s
Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility and perhaps aging prisons that are
much more expensive to operate and maintain than newer ones. While the cost
of imprisoning a felon in Texas averages about $47.50 a day, prison agency
figures from 2008 show some older prisons cost more than $50 per inmate per
day. The Mineral Wells prison is located on the former Fort Wolters property.
Warden Mike Phillips said of Whitmire’s suggestions, “That’s just his
opinion.”
December 14, 2009 Mineral Wells
Index
A prisoner was reportedly bitten by a dog Thursday evening at the Corrections
Corporation of America Preparole Transfer Facility,
according to Mineral Wells police. Police received a call about 5 p.m. from a
correctional officer who told police an inmate was bitten on the right chest
area and on his right leg while the dog was being fed, according to the
report. Maria White, spokesperson for the facility, told the Index the man’s
injuries were not serious. The inmate went inside the kennel to pet the dog
after a guard had put food in the dog’s bowl and the dog lunged at him,
according to White. The man’s wounds were reportedly cleaned and treated by
medical personnel at the facility. The dog was current on vaccinations so it
was not impounded, police said.
July 1, 2009 Mineral Well Index
Police stopped a black Mercury car observed sitting across from the
Corrections Corporation of America Pre-parole Transfer Facility around 3 a.m.
Monday morning and performed a search of the vehicle. Police said they found
small foam footballs and duct tape on the floorboard of the vehicle and
advised CCA personnel to be aware of a possible attempt to drop contraband.
Police said neither individual, both from Dallas, had warrants and were sent
on their way. About two hours later, police responded to a call from CCA and
talked with another man who was in possession of four small footballs stuffed
with tobacco and lighters. Police said the man had been dropped off by the
car earlier and did not succeed in dropping contraband inside the prison
facility, a felony offense, so he was sent home.
May 1, 2009 Mineral Wells Index
A prisoner was reported transported Wednesday evening to Palo Pinto General
Hospital from the Corrections Corporation of America pre-parole transfer
facility with serious injuries, according to the Mineral Wells Fire
Department and EMS. According to a statement released late Thursday by CCA,
“at approximately 4:45 p.m. … an inmate was found in the first-floor dayroom
of housing unit 756 with injuries consistent with having been assaulted.”
According to statements by the dispatcher at the time, the caller stated that
there was “blood everywhere.” Police also responded to the call but cleared
within 15 minutes after speaking with a guard about the problem. The prisoner
was transferred to a Fort Worth hospital where he remains, according to the statement
by CCA. The prison – a privately operated, 2,103-bed, minimum security
pre-parole facility which houses male inmates for the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice – has been place on lock-down status and inmates are
confined to their rooms pending the outcome of an investigation.
December 19, 2008 Mineral Wells
Index
A Murchison, Texas, man was taken into custody late Wednesday after he
allegedly attempted to throw contraband over the fence at Corrections
Corporation of America’s facility in the 700 block of Heintzelman Road.
Mineral Wells police were notified of the incident at 10:24 p.m. According to
police reports, two CCA guards witnessed “several people” on the outside of
the gate throwing plastic-wrapped bundles of tobacco over the fence. When the
guards approached, the individuals reportedly ran though Steven Wade
Richards, 35, was apprehended. He allegedly claimed to be the look-out for
the others and was found in possession of a bundle of Bugler tobacco. There
was reportedly an assortment of cell phones and tobacco tossed over the
fence. Richards was detained for contraband in a correctional facility.
October 16, 2008 Mineral Wells Index
A high-speed chase through Mineral Wells early Wednesday morning ended in
the arrest of a Grand Prairie man on multiple charges. The activity began
when officers were responding to a call at 2:44 a.m. to Corrections
Corporation of America regarding a man throwing contraband over the fence,
Mineral Wells Police Lt. Patrick Adams said. CCA is located in the 700 block
of Heintzelman Road in Wolters Industrial Park. Adams said they were told “a
vehicle pulled up and a guy dropped two bags over the fence. They were able
get a license plate and description of the vehicle.” While an officer was en route the pre-parole facility, another officer
observed a 2003 Honda four-door vehicle matching the description driving
westbound in the 800 block of East Hubbard Street at a high rate of speed.
Because of the vehicle’s speed in a 30 mph zone, Adams said it constituted
reckless driving and the officer initiated a pursuit at 2:46 a.m. “Our units
engaged in attempting to stop [the car] but the vehicle fled through town,
continuing westbound on [U.S.] 180 to Palo Pinto,” Adams said. A few miles
east of Palo Pinto, the lieutenant said they “terminated the pursuit for
safety concerns.” The police official said no other law enforcement agencies
were involved in the pursuit. The pursuit ended at 2:57 a.m. and lasted 11
minutes, covering 11 miles. It wasn’t long after that the Palo Pinto County
Sheriff’s Office discovered the speedster parked on the side of the road near
Brad. Adams said they confirmed the vehicle as the same one that the police
had pursued. According to officials, the car broke down with mechanical
problems. The driver was identified as David Javier Amaya, 23, of Grand
Prairie. Javier was placed under arrest for reckless driving, a Class B
misdemeanor, and evading arrest with a motor vehicle, a state jail felony.
According to the lieutenant, the case remains under investigation. Additional
charges involving the alleged throwing of contraband inside the prison
grounds could be filed later. The two bags thrown over the fence at CCA were
recovered, Adams confirmed. The contraband inside consisted of 283 packs of
Bugler tobacco, eight Virgin Mobile cell phones and chargers and two cans of
Grizzly snuff. This is the third time in three months CCA has discovered
people throwing prohibited items over their fences. In August, a 14-year-old
Lancaster youth was apprehended with two footballs stuffed with contraband –
including marijuana - in his possession. A 15-year-old was caught in
September attempting to throw a black duffle bag over the fence. He told
authorities a Houston woman paid him $1,000 to toss the bag over but it was too
heavy for him. A request for comment to CCA was unreturned as of Wednesday
afternoon.
September 17, 2008 Mineral Wells
Index
Mineral Wells police were summoned to the Corrections Corporation of
America facility early Monday morning after a juvenile was discovered
attempting to throw a duffel bag over the fence, officials reported.
According to police officials, they were dispatched at 2:23 a.m. to the
pre-parole facility in the 700 block of Heintzelman Road where CCA guards had
a 15-year-old boy detained. The juvenile was reportedly attempting to throw a
black duffel bag over the facility's north fence. Inside the bag, police
said, were 200 packs of Bugler cigarettes, three bottles of cologne, four
cigarette lighters and eight prepaid cell phones. Police officials said some
of the devices had phone numbers already programmed in. The youth allegedly
told authorities someone from Houston paid him $1,000 to throw the bag across
the fence; despite his reported attempts, he said the bag was too heavy. Upon
the guards' arrival, a woman driving a gray vehicle allegedly left the scene
and law enforcement issued a bulletin on the vehicle. The driver was later
stopped by the Parker County Sheriff's Office on a traffic stop and
identified as a Houston resident. She was then released, police reported. The
juvenile was taken to the Mineral Wells police station where his mother was
contacted at a motel in Weatherford, according to officials. The teenager was
released and CCA kept the duffel bag “for their evidence,” police reported.
This is the second incident in recent weeks where a juvenile was found
allegedly attempting to throw items over the facility's fence. In August, a
14-year-old male was taken into custody near facility after authorities were
notified of a “suspicious person” in the area. According to Mineral Wells
police reports, officers encountered two CCA personnel at approximately 11:36
p.m. who'd detained the youth in the 700 block of Hood Road. The juvenile was
reportedly found in possession of two footballs that were cut and stuffed
with contraband - two small bags containing a green leafy substance - one in
each ball, 31 packs of Bugler tobacco, seven small cigars and two cell phones
with chargers and SIM cards, officials said. The Lancaster, Texas, youth was
placed under arrest for possession of marijuana less than 2 ounces and then
released to juvenile probation. CCA's Public Information Officer Maria White
explained in these situations, the local law enforcement is notified and the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice picks up the contraband and investigates
the case. She said she didn't know the status of either incident. “It's in
their [TDCJ] hands now,” she said.
August 25, 2008 Mineral Wells Index
A 14-year-old male was taken into custody late Thursday night near the
Corrections Corporation of America facility after they were notified of a
“suspicious person” in the 700 block of Heintzelman Road. According to
Mineral Wells police reports, officers encountered two CCA personnel at
approximately 11:36 p.m. who’d detained the youth in the 700 block of Hood
Road. The juvenile was reportedly found in possession of two footballs that
were cut and stuffed with contraband. The footballs contained two small bags
containing a green leafy substance – one in each ball, 31 packs of Bugler
tobacco, seven small cigars and two cell phones with chargers and SIM cards.
The Lancaster, Texas, youth was placed under arrest for possession of
marijuana less than 2 ounces and released to juvenile probation at
approximately 1 a.m. Friday.
September 21, 2007 Mineral Wells
Index
When the riot erupted inside Corrections Corporation of America’s pre-parole
facility in August, local law enforcement responded in force and to the tune
of approximately $2,200. Both the Mineral Wells Police Department and the
Palo Pinto County Sheriff’s Department have submitted requests to CCA, asking
for reimbursement for their officers’ overtime as well as the damage to a
police patrol car. Mineral Wells Police Chief Jerry White said they are
requesting reimbursement for 42 hours and 36 minutes of overtime that were
accrued between the additional dispatcher and 14 officers that were called in
to assist. The request for reimbursement for personnel totaled $1,543.36. In
addition to overtime, the MWPD also replaced a rear window that was shattered
by debris flung over the perimeter fence. The damage to the window totaled
$260. “The last time we assisted on a riot in 2005, they reimbursed us,” said
White. “They realize it costs the people [when they respond].” The previous
riot resulted in a reimbursement request for $1,780.85, he noted. “When we
had to assist in ’05, they let us know then that any costs incurred, they’d
reimburse us.” Palo Pinto County Sheriff Ira Mercer confirmed that his
department also issued a request for reimbursement for expenses incurred by
his off-duty officers. He said he learned of the reimbursement through the
police department and submitted his own request for expenses. “We didn’t
submit a reimbursement request in ’05,” Mercer said. “We didn’t have to pay
deputies overtime.” In his itemized request, Mercer didn’t request
reimbursement for his time, the chief deputy and four deputies who were
on-duty at the time. He did request reimbursement for the five officers who
each worked four hours of overtime during the riot. Three deputies worked
calls in the Mineral Wells city limits while police officers were involved at
the disturbance. Mercer’s reimbursement request totaled $439.52, though he
didn’t list reimbursement costs for the fuel used in 11 units used in
responding to the incident. The Parker County Sheriff’s Department, however,
will not be asking for reimbursement, said Parker County Sheriff Larry
Fowler. “We decided not to do it. …We didn’t have a lot of overtime [and]
elected not to bill them.” He also said they had very minor damage to a
vehicle – a dent in a hood. “In 2005, that was quite lengthy. It [the recent
riot] wasn’t like that,” Fowler recalled. For the 2005 incident, “yes, we did
request a reimbursement.” He said to the best of his knowledge, CCA had
volunteered to reimburse them. The incident began shortly after 9 p.m. on
Aug. 13 when a group of inmates reportedly took umbrage “with a recently
communicated reinforcement of a standard policy requiring inmates to wear T-shirts
while on the outside recreation yard,” CCA officials said at the time. “Any
time you have a facility like that, you’re going to run into these kinds of
bumps. We want to assist any way we can because we want to protect our
citizens,” White said. Mercer commented it was the departments’ right and the
taxpayers’ right to ask for reimbursement for the incident.
August 16, 2007 Star-Telegram
Inmates of a privately run, minimum-security prison in Mineral Wells remained
under indefinite lockdown Wednesday, two days after a disturbance that lasted
about 3 1/2 hours, officials said. Broken windows are being repaired and
offices are being cleaned of damage caused by small fires set by inmates
Monday night, a spokeswoman for Corrections Corp. of America said. About 600
inmates are being interviewed as officials try to find out what started the
disturbance at the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Release Facility, a 2,100-bed
men's facility, said Rose Thompson, a CCA spokeswoman. The disturbance began
about 9 p.m. when about 400 inmates refused to leave the recreation yard and
return to their cells, authorities have said. Thompson said she didn't know
how long the lockdown will last. "It all depends on how long it takes to
search the buildings and repair the damage," she said. Michelle Lyons, a
spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said she was told
that as of Tuesday afternoon, 36 inmates had been identified as either
instigating the disturbance or damaging property. They have been transferred
to other state prisons, she said. "We don't often have these types of
incidents at minimum-security facilities," Lyons said. "These
inmates are placed there because they have clean disciplinary records, and
they are generally cooperative." In August 2005, 17 people, including
two prison employees, were injured during a riot at the facility, according
to a Star-Telegram report.
August 14, 2007 Star-Telegram
Dozens of inmates who were eligible to be considered for parole are
facing the possibility of more prison time following a disturbance Monday
night at a private correctional facility in Parker County. As many as 600 men
were being interviewed Tuesday by state prison officials at the Mineral Wells
Pre-Parole Transfer Facility. The officials were trying to identify "key
players" in the disturbance that involved small fires and scuffles with
guards, said Rose Thompson, a spokeswoman for the facility. At 9 p.m. Monday,
about 400 inmates refused to leave the recreation yard and return to their
cells. It took about 3 1/2 hours and the use of several chemical agents,
including CS, to quell the ruckus, Thompson said. The all-male,
minimum-security facility is operated by Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of
America. The 2,100-bed facility is in the portion of Mineral Wells that is in
western Parker County. It has a contract with the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice to house inmates who are nearing release on parole. But,
Thompson said, that possibility will be denied to anyone who officials
determine was responsible for the disturbance. "They get a disciplinary
case, and they become ineligible to be housed here," Thompson said.
"Then they get shipped to different facility.'' Some of their paroles,
consequently, could get delayed, Thompson said. TDCJ spokeswoman Michelle Lyons
noted, however, that the inmates at the facility are all eligible to be
considered for parole, but they may not necessarily have been approved for
it. "As a result of this, depending on their levels of involvement, this
may impact their parole eligibilities," Lyons said. Thompson declined to
speculate on how many inmates might be held responsible for the disturbance.
She noted, however, that 400-600 men were being questioned by state prison
officials. Officials were also trying to determine what riled the inmates
enough for them to risk having their paroles delayed, Thompson said. Lyons
said she heard that some of the men were protesting an order to put their
shirts back on, but Thompson said that was one of several angles being
investigated. At least one inmate was confused about what caused the furor,
according to his wife. Foxy Blair said her husband, J.C., called her on
Monday and said the facility was on lockdown much of the day, and he wasn't
sure why. Her husband could only speculate that it was because the facility
was "under new management," Blair said. "He said they were on
their bunks all day," said Blair, who is staying with his parents in
Gunnison, Colo. "They couldn't go to their jobs or their classes.
"A few inmates got mad and went out the recreation area and he said they
were gassing them outside, trying to get them to move back in." Some of
agitated inmates began ripping out plumbing, Blair said. That's when,
according to her husband, guards tossed chemical agents into the buildings.
"You could hear all kinds of stuff going on," Blair said of the
telephone call from husband. "It sounded like a movie prison riot.
"He said, 'I don't know what to do,' and I said, 'Just get under your
bunk.' "Well, that's the last I heard from him."
August 14, 2007 AP
A disturbance broke out tonight among inmates at a private prison facility in
Mineral Wells when the inmates refused to leave the recreation yard and
return to their housing units. Two employees of the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole
Transfer Facility were treated on site for minor injuries. A spokesperson for
Corrections Corp. of America -- the facility's owner and operator -- says
there are no reports of injuries to inmates. After midnight, guards started
peacefully moving inmates back into the building, including inmates that
earlier had been disruptive. About 400 inmates were still in the recreation
yard late tonight, with about two dozen refusing to cooperate, throwing
rocks, breaking glass and trying to destroy property. Prison staff members
used "approved, non-lethal chemical agents" in an effort to gain
control of the situation. Mineral Wells police Captain Mike McAllester says about 30 local officers set up a
perimeter outside the prison's gates to secure the area.
May 14, 2007 WFAA TV
Two inmates who escaped from a minimum security facility in Mineral Wells
early Monday morning were captured about six hours later. Joshua Hall and
Carlos Goff, both 21, were discovered missing at 3:45 a.m. during a routine
check at the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility, a Texas Department
of Criminal Justice official said. Law enforcement officers in a helicopter
spotted the two men within five miles of the prison at about 10 a.m. The
facility, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, is located in the
700 block of Heintzelman Road in Parker County and houses about 2,100 male
inmates. Mr. Hall was serving a five-year sentence for a Jan. 2006 burglary
in Jefferson County. Mr. Goff was sentenced to five years for a Sept. 2004
burglary in Denton County. Both men now could face felony escape charges.
August 29, 2006 Mineral Wells Index
A Mineral Wells prison escapee was a just few miles from home when
arrested Sunday morning on U.S. Highway 51 north of Granbury. Two Hood County
officers spotted Harvey Veal, 43, of Granbury, about 8 a.m. as they went to
relieve state law enforcement officers maintaining surveillance on the home
of a relative. The Hood County officers saw a gravel truck stop to pick up a
hitchhiker matching Veal’s description and called for assistance. He was
wearing blue jean cut-offs and a black T-shirt. He was reportedly taken into
custody without incident. Veal was serving a four-year prison term on
firearms possession charges, according to Michelle Lyons of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice. He reportedly had one year to serve on his
sentence. He escaped from Corrections Corporation of America Pre-Parole
Transfer Facility in Mineral Wells late Thursday night by wedging a book
between the top of a chain link fence and strands of razor wire and slipping
through the gap.
August 28, 2006 Statesman
Investigators from the Texas prison system apprehended Saturday an inmate who
escaped from a privately run pre-parole center in Mineral Wells. Harvey Veal,
43, was spotted by investigators around 8 a.m. hitchhiking along Highway 51
near Granbury. He was taken into custody without incident, said Michelle
Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Veal
disappeared some time between 7 and 9:15 p.m.
Thursday while he was supposed to be attending a class. A preliminary search
failed to find Veal overnight, but it did find a clipboard stuck in a fence,
Lyons said.
25, 2006 Star Ledger
Search teams scanned the Mineral Wells area Friday after an inmate
escaped from a privately run pre-parole transfer center near Lake Mineral
Wells State Park. Harvey Veal, 43, disappeared some time
between 7 and 9:15 p.m. Thursday while he was supposed to be attending a
class, said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice. A preliminary search failed to find Veal overnight, but it did find
a clipboard stuck in a fence, Lyons said. Veal was serving a four-year
sentence for a Tarrant County felony firearms possession conviction, she
said. She described the fugitive as 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing 150
pounds. He has a cut scar on the outside of his right forearm, and a tattoo
of a Texas flag and an M&M candy character on the outside of his upper
left arm, Lyons said. He was last seen wearing prison-issue white pants and
white shirt, both resembling hospital scrubs, she said. The prison is
operated for the TDCJ by Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of
America. Mineral Wells is about 45 miles west of Fort Worth.
August 29, 2005 Dallas Morning News
Two inmates remained hospitalized Sunday after a fight among hundreds of
inmates at the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility. Guards used tear
gas Saturday night to stop the fight that involved about 200 inmates at the
facility, authorities said.
August 29, 2005 Star-Telegram
About 200 inmates - some armed with broom handles, sticks and boards --
rioted at a privately run prison in Mineral Wells late Saturday and early Sunday,
leaving 17 people injured, law enforcement officials said. Officials used
tear gas to quell the uprising at about 4 a.m. Sunday at the prison, which is
run by Corrections Corporation of America, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler
said. "It appears to have been race- or gang-related," Fowler said.
"They generally trashed the place." The incident at the 2,100-bed
pre-parole transfer unit began about 8 p.m. Saturday when several fights
broke out among inmates, according to a news release from the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice. Those involved were calmed, interviewed and placed in
their living areas, the release said. Then, about 9:30 p.m., several inmates
in one building at the unit began fighting, and they and some from another
building spilled out onto a recreation yard. More people continued to join
the fights, and the fighting spread to a second recreation yard.
August 28, 2005 AP
At least a dozen people were injured when inmates rioted at a privately-run
prison near Mineral Wells, law enforcement officials said. Workers at the
2,000-bed facility run by Corrections Corporation of America used tear gas to
quell the uprising early Sunday morning, said Parker County Sheriff Larry
Fowler. Fowler
said his department was called Saturday night about the riot. A Parker County
special operations team and four sheriff's units stood by outside as prison
personnel dealt with the situation. The
sheriff's department had been told some inmates had armed themselves with
boards, sticks, broom handles and broken off plumbing fixtures. Texas
Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Mike Diesca
told Dallas-Fort Worth television station WFAA that at least 12 people
received non-life threatening injuries.
August 28, 2005 WFAA-TV
Law enforcement agencies were summoned to a disturbance at a
privately-operated prison unit in Mineral Wells on Saturday night. Officials
said about two dozen offenders got into a fight about 8 p.m. in the
recreation yard of the Corrections Corporation of America pre-parole transfer
facility on Highway 180 in the Wolters Industrial Park. There were at least
500 inmates in the yard at the time, said Texas Department of Criminal
Justice spokesman Mike Diesca. He said at least 12
people received non life threatening injuries. Some
of the wounded were taken by helicopter ambulance to area hospitals; others
were transported by ground. Diesca said the
situation was under control by 2 a.m. Sunday after tear gas was used to
restore order. An investigation was under way into the cause. Sheriff and
police units from Parker County, Palo Pinto County, Mineral Wells and the
Texas Department of Public Safety were called in to help quell the
disturbance.
May 31, 2002
Robert L. Moore didn't like the TV show his fellow inmates had voted to watch
at a Mineral Wells private prison Sunday afternoon, so he started an
argument, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials said Thursday.
Neither Moore nor the other inmates reported the fight. Moore went to
the infirmary Monday, saying he had fallen. Prison officials said he
had bruises under both eyes and a cut on his lip. He was given pain
medication and sent back to his cell. On Tuesday, Moore became
incoherent as he complained of a head injury. He was taken to Palo
Pinto General Hospital and later transferred to Harris Methodist Fort
Worth. On Wednesday, Moore was pronounced dead at 4:20 p.m. The
Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office preliminarily ruled the death a
homicide. The Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility is operated by
Corrections Corp. of America and houses 2,100 inmates. Most are
classified as nonviolent, Todd said. (Fort Worth Star Telegram)
June 2000
Twenty-three inmates and six staff members contract E. coli after eating a
gritty turkey-based chili. Kitchen hygiene has been a problem at the
for-profit private prison. (The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 28, 2000)
Minute Maid Park
Houston, Texas
Aramark
August 24, 2009 My Fox Houston
The family of a state worker hit and killed a year ago by an Aramark manager
has filed a lawsuit against Aramark and three of the bartenders who served
the employee. David Hall, 40, was hit last year while working in downtown
Houston last August. Prosecutors say Aramark Manager Ray Wilson was driving
drunk after leaving a game at Minute Maid Park. It was there where
investigators say Wilson was given free drinks, which led to the crash which
claimed Hall's life. A lawsuit was filed by Hall's family on Monday in civil
court. Wilson was found guilty in the death of hall just last week. He was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. In a statement issued to the media,
President, ARAMARK Sports, Entertainment & Conventions Marc Bruno said:
"Our sincere sympathies go out to Mr. Hall's family and friends. We have
not yet seen the lawsuit and are therefore not in a position to comment on
it."
August 18, 2009 Houston Chronicle
Jurors sentenced a Pasadena man who worked at Minute Maid Park to 15 years in
prison Tuesday for killing a state worker while driving drunk minutes after
leaving a baseball game last year. Ray John Wilson, 72, a supervisor for
corporate caterer Aramark who worked at the downtown ballpark, was leaving an
Aug. 30, 2008, game when he veered around a Texas Department of
Transportation truck hitting David Hall Jr., 42, a road worker, who was
assisting a cleanup crew. Wilson's attorney's argued that he should get
probation despite a DWI conviction 15 years ago and a public intoxication in
2003 when police found him passed out in his car. “He's already pushing the
edge of the actuarial tables, so 10 years probation
would be probation for life,” defense attorney Dorian Cotlar
told jurors in closing arguments. Because the jury decided the car was used
as a deadly weapon, Wilson will not be eligible for parole until he serves at
least half of his sentence. They deliberated punishment in state District
Judge Susan Brown's court for about 45 minutes and also fined him $10,000.
After he struck Hall, Wilson continued for about a quarter of a mile before
he was stopped by a police officer in an unmarked car, prosecutors said.
Investigators said Wilson failed a field sobriety test, and his blood alcohol
content exceeded the legal limit. Assistant Harris County District Attorney
Ryan Patrick reminded jurors that Wilson, who was at the game on a date, was
drinking for free while being served by employees he supervised. An
investigation by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission found substantial
evidence that Aramark, which holds the ballpark's concessions contract
including selling alcohol, conducted business in a way that led to the
fatality, said TABC Capt. Rick Cruz. Cruz said Aramark's beer and wine
license is in jeopardy of being pulled, but the corporation's liquor license,
which also allows them to sell beer and wine, would not be affected — meaning
Minute Maid Park would not go dry and patrons would not notice a difference.
Calls to Aramark were not immediately returned.
August 11, 2009 Examiner
Jurors have begun hearing evidence in the trial of a man, accused of
killing a TXDOT worker and putting the Minute Maid Park liquor license in
jeopardy. Ray Wilson, 72 of Pasadena, is charged with felony Intoxication
Manslaughter and felony Hit and Run for the August 30, 2008 death of
42-year-old TXDOT worker David Hall. Hall was working near University of
Houston at the Travis onramp to I-45 North when Wilson is accused of smashing
through the roadblocks and running him down. Police caught Wilson a short
distance from the scene. Wilson sat in the courtroom today as jurors started
hearing the first witnesses testify against him. A gag order is in effect, so
lawyers involved in the case said they were not able to comment. Sources
involved in the investigation said a mandatory blood draw after the crash
showed Wilson had a Blood Alcohol Content of .14, which is nearly double the
legal limit. He refused all sobriety tests in the field, according to police.
Investigators told KPRC Local 2 Investigates that Wilson was the guest of
honor at a party during the ballgame at Minute Maid Park, where fellow
employees with Aramark told investigators they gave him six to eight free
drinks. Aramark is the primary vendor that holds a liquor license for serving
at the Astros ballpark. The Astros have declined to comment as the Texas
Alcoholic Beverage Commission moves forward with an administrative case
against Aramark's liquor license at the ballpark.
June 11, 2009 Fox 26 News
FOX 26 News has learned the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission may be
going after at least one of the liquor licenses at Minute Maid Park. This
comes almost a year after an Aramark manager was involved in a drunken
driving crash that claimed the life of a Houston man. Aramark is the food and
beverage vendor for Minute Maid Park. In that August 2008 crash, David Hall
Jr. was allegedly hit and killed by 70-year-old Ray John Wilson, who had just
left the Astros game. Sources close to the investigation tell FOX 26 News the
beverage commission may attempt to file a civil case to have at least one of
the alcohol licenses pulled at the ballpark. Sgt. Mike Burnett with the
beverage commission would not comment on camera. However, he did say there is
an administrative case against the vendor Aramark, the license holder at the
ballpark. Wilson has been behind bars at the Harris County Jail since the
crash last year. He's set to go on trial next month for manslaughter. Hall
Jr.'s father says he would like to see the liquor license at the stadium
pulled. He says not only the driver but those who sell the drinks are
ultimately responsible. FOX 26 News called management at the Astros for comment,
and they referred us to Aramark. Officials with Aramark issued the following
response: "We take the responsible service of alcoholic beverages very
seriously and have industry-leading standards in place at each venue where we
provide food and beverage services. We do not comment on pending
matters."
Montgomery County Psychiatric Hospital
Houston, Texas
GEO Care
September 22, 2012 The Courier of
Montgomery County
As Montgomery County commissioners prepare to approve an amendment to a
contract with the state that brings $15 million annually into county coffers
for a mental health treatment facility, county and state officials disagree
over whether the county is in compliance with how the money is supposed to be
used. State Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, worked to secure the $15
million annual contract between the county and the Texas Department of State
Health Services that pays for patient services and maintenance and operations
of the Montgomery County Mental Health Treatment Facility. It is run by GEO
Care, a subsidiary of the GEO Group, a private firm that operates such
facilities and jails, including the Joe Corley Detention Center in Montgomery
County. The Texas Legislature approved the agreement during the 2009 session,
and the state paid $7.5 million to the county from March 1 to Aug. 31, 2011.
The contract was renewed for another two years – through August 2013 – for a
total of $30 million. Since September 2010, the county has paid $685,000 in
principal on $32.45 million in certificates of obligation it has issued to
pay for the facility, which treats criminal defendants mentally unable to
stand trial. It also has paid $3.817 million in interest on those COs,
according to documents from the county. But DSHS officials say the
appropriation from the state is only meant to pay for ongoing costs, such as
patient services, operations and maintenance and interest payments on the COs. “We determined that payments on principal is not an
allowable cost,” DSHS spokeswoman Carrie Williams said Friday. “(The appropriation)
cannot be used to purchase buildings or real property.” A special provision
at the end of the contract between Montgomery County and the DSHS notes that
“this contract relates only to the provision of mental health services by the
hospital, not to the construction of the hospital.” “We’re firmly convinced
we’re in compliance (with the contract),” said Precinct 3 Commissioner Ed
Chance, who oversees the MCMHTF.
July 26, 2012 Houston Chronicle
Texas health officials recommended levying more than $100,000 in fines
against the state's first publicly funded, privately run psychiatric hospital
in Conroe for violations including the improper restraining and inadequate
monitoring of patients and other infractions committed in its first year.
County leaders who oversee the Montgomery County Mental Health Treatment
facility and officials with GEO Group, a prison company running the center
for mentally incompetent defendants, met with state health officials last
week. The company, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contracts with the county,
which has a two-year, $15 million-per-year agreement with the state. Since
company officials said they have fixed the problems, the state tentatively
agreed to halve the fines. "We take these violations very
seriously," said Pablo Paez, a GEO Group
spokesman. "We have taken the necessary steps to correct them." But
some mental health advocates said the violations are troubling as state
officials conclude a bidding process Friday into privatizing one of the 10
public psychiatric hospitals it oversees. GEO Care, a subsidiary of GEO Group
- which has a checkered recent history in Texas, including allegations of
sexual assault by prison guards and deplorable conditions that led the state
to shutter one facility it oversaw - is the only company to bid for the
contract, said Carrie Williams of the Department of State Health Services.
'Serious concern' -- Details of the violations outlined in two letters state
officials sent to GEO Group and Montgomery County are "reason for
serious concern about the privatization of a state psychiatric
facility," said Colleen Horton, a policy analyst at the Hogg Foundation
for Mental Health at the University of Texas at Austin. Williams said the agency
is following the decree of lawmakers, who attached a ride to the budget bill
last year directed officials to privatize one state mental health hospital
and generate at least 10 percent cost savings. Gyl
Switzer, public policy director for Mental Health America of Texas, said she
is concerned about GEO Group obtaining the contract because the company
"has had significant problems across the country … They have a bad
record of treating people who are forced to be in a location, whether that's
prisons or psychiatric hospitals." In Texas, for instance, state
officials closed GEO's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in 2007, citing
unsafe conditions. In 2009, a Texas appeals court upheld a $42.5 million
verdict against the company for an inmate beaten to death by others using
padlocks stuffed into socks. In 2010, GEO Group settled a $3 million
class-action lawsuit alleging that inmates were subject to unconstitutional
strip searches at a Pennsylvania jail.
July 21, 2012 American-Statesman
Sixteen months after the Montgomery County Mental Health Treatment Facility
opened in Conroe, the state's first publicly funded, privately run
psychiatric hospital is facing at least $53,000 in state fines for serious
shortcomings in patient care. The private operator, Geo Care, is a subsidiary
of Geo Group, a private prison company that has drawn attention in recent
years because of deaths, riots and sexual abuse at some units in Texas and
other states. Geo Care spokesman Pablo Paez
declined to comment to the American-Statesman. Montgomery County Commissioner
Ed Chance said all deficiencies cited by the state have been fixed.
Meanwhile, the facility's construction, by a different firm, is the target of
a separate federal grand jury inquiry. The problems come to light as the Department
of State Health Services prepares to privatize one of the 10 public
psychiatric hospitals it oversees. If Geo Care bids on the ongoing
privatization effort — and it has expressed interest to public officials in
doing so — its work in Montgomery County could be a harbinger of what
taxpayers can expect if a for-profit company wins control of a public state
hospital. This week, the agency will accept bids from contractors seeking to
run one of those facilities for at least 10 percent less than the current
cost, a move that could save the state millions of dollars each year. If an
offer is accepted, a private company could be running a state hospital by the
end of the year. The privatization process also comes at a time when the
public psychiatric hospitals are mired in their own problems. Last month,
former Austin State Hospital psychiatrist Charles Fischer was indicted by a
Travis County grand jury on charges that he sexually abused five patients
under his care at the facility. Since March 2011, the Montgomery County
hospital has been comprehensively reviewed three times by State Health
Services. All three visits have found problems, including unauthorized
restraint and seclusion of patients, incomplete medical records, failure to
show patient consent for medications and failure to report serious injuries
to the state. The hospital also did not adequately monitor patients, kept
patients for months after they had been deemed competent to stand trial and
had overly restrictive phone policies, according to reviews. A June 2011
report stated that one patient seriously injured himself and then ate fecal
matter, but the incident was not reported to the state as required or
addressed through his treatment plan. Classes designed to help patients
recover were described as "bedlam," and numerous patients refused
to attend, the report states. A review this spring by a team from the state
hospital division indicated many of the same problems. In one case, a patient
was required to clean up his own feces and urine, the report states. In
another case, a patient hurt himself in isolation, but staffers were afraid
to enter the room to help him, according to an email written by state
hospital accreditation/certification coordinator Jo Ann Elliott, who was part
of a team reviewing the facility. "While in seclusion for four hours,
patient banged his head on the seclusion room window and walls, causing
lacerations to both eyes and a bruise to head. Patient threatened staff if
door was opened," Elliott wrote to other members of the team. "Why
was mechanical restraint not considered to protect patient from
self-harm?" Such incidents alarm mental health advocates. "You
should have such training where you know how to deal with it when someone is
doing that to themselves, period," said Robin Peyson,
executive director of NAMI Texas, an advocacy group for people with mental
illness. Chance said that the hospital took the state's concerns seriously,
making staffing changes, adopting new rules and providing additional training
to employees. "Although deficiencies have been reported by (state)
regulatory staff in the past, Geo Care has promptly taken steps to address
each concern." Chance said. Geo's history in Texas -- Geo Group is best
known in Texas for its rocky history in the prison system. In 2007, officials
shut down the company's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in West Texas,
citing unsafe and unsanitary conditions. In 2009, inmates at the Reeves
County Detention Center, also in West Texas, rioted over the quality of
health care and other complaints. Although state records don't indicate such
extreme conditions at the Montgomery County hospital, State Health Services
proposed in May that the facility pay a $107,000 fine for its deficiencies.
Last week, the state tentatively knocked that fine down to $53,000, but the
decision is not final. "The facility is still getting its feet on the
ground and is dealing with some startup issues as a new facility," State
Health Services spokeswoman Carrie Williams said. "We need to see
improvements, and we're giving them the opportunity to do that. We continue
to work with them and expect them to get it right."
July 10, 2009 Dallas Morning News
A private prison company's history of filthy conditions, sexual abuse,
suicides and riots in some of its Texas lockups isn't stopping the state from
paying it $7.5 million to run a new psychiatric hospital near Houston.
Lawmakers inserted an earmark into the state budget to fund the future
Montgomery County facility starting in 2011. But they said they didn't know
until this week that the county had selected the GEO Group to operate it,
although GEO lobbyists were pushing for it as early as February. The new
facility came as a post-session shock to mental health advocates, who
acknowledge the need for it. But they say they weren't informed about it and
never would have signed off if they knew Florida-based GEO was operating it.
"Why would we want to use an entity that hasn't had a stellar
reputation?" asked Monica Thyssen, children's mental health policy specialist
with Advocacy Inc. "If the process had been more transparent, there
probably would have been other state officials who would've said, 'I don't
know if GEO is the best use of state dollars.' " GEO officials, who run
more than 50 facilities in the United States, including five mental health
facilities in Florida, declined to comment, saying in an e-mail that they
don't discuss "specific business development efforts and/or
contracts." But state lawmakers say the psychiatric facility, which by
2011 is expected to house more than 100 criminal offenders awaiting trials or
competency findings, will solve a major backlog. The Montgomery County jail
has hundreds of inmates awaiting mental health treatment. The nearest state
forensic mental hospital is more than 100 miles away, and when a bed opens up, it takes at least two deputies to take an
offender there. "It's a problem we sorely need to address, instead of
leaving people who need mental health care in prison," said Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, one of the Senate's budget writers.
But the budgeting process and the choice of contractor have raised some
eyebrows. Department of State Health Services officials, who oversee
psychiatric care in Texas, say the Montgomery County facility was not
something they requested funding for in the budget. It was added to the
budget in conference committee. Mental health advocates, who track
psychiatric hospital legislation closely, say they never heard any public
discussion about it. And neither Deuell nor Sen.
Tommy Williams, who represents Montgomery County, knew until a reporter's
phone call that county officials had selected GEO subsidiary GEO Care to run
the facility – though legislative documents indicate the company was pushing
for it as early as February. "I know [GEO] has had problems," said
Williams, R-The Woodlands. "Certainly I would expect them to run it in
accordance with our state guidelines. I'll insist on that." GEO's track
record in Texas has been rocky. In the midst of the Texas Youth Commission's
2007 sexual abuse scandal, agency officials shuttered the company's Coke
County Juvenile Justice Center, saying they had found atrocious conditions –
including feces on the walls – at the facility. They also fired a GEO prison
worker after learning he was a convicted sex offender. Earlier that year, an
inmate in isolation at GEO's Dickens County facility slashed his throat,
leaving letters complaining of blood-coated blankets and pillows, and floors
and walls covered in mold. And in 2006, a woman committed suicide at a GEO
jail in Val Verde County, after complaining that she had been raped by
another inmate and sexually harassed by a guard. As recently as this winter,
inmates at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center rioted, starting fires and
taking hostages, to demand better health care. And in April, a Texas appeals
court upheld a $42.5 million verdict against the company for the 2001 death
of an inmate who was four days from finishing his sentence at a Willacy
County facility. The man was beaten to death by other inmates using padlocks
stuffed in socks. Montgomery County officials, who selected GEO to operate
the psychiatric facility late last month, say that the company has a good
track record with its other mental health hospitals and that they're not
"overly concerned" with the problems that have been documented in a
few of Texas' 17 GEO lockups. A presentation that GEO prepared for Texas
lawmakers in February boasts of improved clinical programming, shortened
waiting lists, and the elimination of the use of restraints and seclusion in
its Florida psychiatric facilities. Company executives say they won the
support of wary mental health advocates in that state. The GEO prison
incidents "obviously shouldn't have happened," Montgomery County
Commissioner Ed Chance said. "But when you're dealing with inmates,
you're going to have problems. You're going to have some headlines."
After the 2007 TYC scandal, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised
serious concerns with GEO. Sen. Juan "Chuy"
Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said "a simple Internet search" should have
made GEO a bad contractor choice for the state. And Rep. Jerry Madden,
R-Plano, told lobbyists for the firm it was best if they didn't contribute to
his campaign at that time. But GEO has continued its full-court press in
Texas. Within months, these lawmakers and 13 others had accepted campaign
contributions from the company. "Some of their facilities are pretty
darn good, and some are not as good as the others," Madden said.
"But that's the exact same problem we have with the state-run
facilities."
Nacogdoches, Texas
MTC
May 1, 2009 Daily Sentinel
The proposed private federal prison — the subject of months of debate in
Nacogdoches — will not be built here, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said.
The federal government rejected a proposal by the private prison operator
Management and Training Corporation to build the facility because it was not
competitive enough, according to an April 28 letter from Amanda J. Pennel, a contracting officer with the bureau of prisons.
"After evaluating this proposal in accordance with the terms of the
solicitation, it was determined that this proposal was not among the most
highly rated proposals," the letter said. "A proposal revision will
not be considered," the letter continued. Proposals were evaluated on
criteria outlined in the federal acquisition regulation document, including
as price and past performance. The letter did not include any specific
information about why MTC's proposal was rejected, but MTC officials will be
able to request a "preaward debriefing"
with further information. In a statement, MTC Vice President Odie Washington
said, "Although this project will not move forward in the community, MTC
looks forward to perhaps one day working with community officials in the
future." Officials with the city, county and the Nacogdoches Economic
Development Corporation endorsed MTC's plan last summer because of the
economic benefits they believed it would bring to the area. But the proposed
prison also drew local critics who said the prison would erode the quality of
life in Nacogdoches and said local government failed to consider the possible
negative consequences of the facility. If approved, the prison would have
been minimum security facility, primarily for holding illegal immigrants. NEDCO
president Bill King said the jobs and salaries the prison would have created
would have been helpful to Nacogdoches. "If you're going to have a
correctional facility, kind of the gold standard would be a federal minimum
security. They don't get much better than that," King said. "But it
is what it is. We gave it our best show and we're looking forward to the next
challenge." Several elected officials reached by telephone Friday shared
their thoughts on the news. "We were hoping that it would bring 300 jobs
to Nacogdoches county, so we're all a little disappointed. We needed those
jobs, especially with the state of the economy right now," County Judge
Joe English said. Asked if he would support another prison effort in the
future, English said, "I think we're out of the prison business in
Nacogdoches County." Representatives from the city weighed in on the
issue as well. "The subject of the prison has definitely caused a lot of
turmoil in the community, and as much as I personally regret that it's not coming,
I'm glad that we finally have a closure to the project," Southwest Ward
Commissioner Billy Huddleston Jr. said. Northeast Ward Commissioner Randy
Johnson said he was "very disappointed" that the prison would not
come because it would have helped the economy by creating jobs. Northwest
Ward Commissioner Don Partin shared a tempered reaction. "It was nothing
to get excited about because it was never a done deal," Partin said.
"I'm just happy that the system took care of itself. I'm happy
everything happened not because of anger or fear or greediness, but happened
through the natural process." For opponents of the prison, the news came
as a victory. "This is the best news that I've heard in a year or
more," Paul Risk, chairman of the Citizens Opposed to the Prison Site
group that staged demonstrations and informational campaigns against the
project. "This prison would have been a blight on the image of
Nacogdoches. This is Christmas in May."
January 19, 2009 Daily Sentinel
Around 40 people attended a Citizens Opposed to the Prison Site (COPS)
meeting Monday, and the group's founder, Dr. Paul Risk, said the organization
is moving forward with a petition that could change the city charter. Risk
introduced a petition that would put an amendment on the ballot in May that
would require the city of Nacogdoches to provide for initiatives or referenda
in its charter. Five percent of registered Nacogdoches voters, or about 850
people, would need to sign the petition requesting the amendment, Risk said.
If approved, the citizens of Nacogdoches could vote down or uphold decisions
made by the city commissioners. The COPS group formed last summer to protest
a proposed federal private prison that would be built inside Loop 224 on
Northwest Stallings Drive. The city commissioners, county commissioners and
Nacogdoches Economic Development Corporation unanimously backed the proposal,
which would be built and operated by Management and Training Corporation. If
Nacogdoches is chosen for the prison, MTC officials expect the facility to
create 300 jobs and bring in nearly $1 million per month in salaries.
Starting wages for correctional officers are likely to be around $30,000 to
$32,000 per year, according to MTC representatives. County Judge Joe English
said it is still too soon to say if a prison will end up in Nacogdoches, and
he said city and county officials "don't even know if we're in the top
100" prospective sites. Risk said the group has made efforts to see if
the county or city concealed information about the prison before it was put
to a vote in the respective commission meetings. The COPS group recently made
an open records request from the city and county for all correspondence,
including e-mails and phone logs, between the local officials and MTC. The
city provided about 2700 documents to the group, Risk said. Risk contacted
the attorney general's office after the county denied their request, though
English said the attorney general's office cleared the county of any
wrongdoing. The county complied with the law, but the COPS group did not
follow the correct procedures in their open records request, according to
English. "Their original request was addressed to (County Clerk) Carol
Wilson. When they send an open records request to Carol Wilson, they're going
to get all the records she has," English said. "They requested her
letters, not the judge's or the commissioners'. If they want information from
my department, their (open records request) needs to be addressed to
me." The group later corrected their request and English said the county
supplied them with all available documents, though he said the group would
receive little, if any, new information. The COPS group presented the
commissioners with a number of articles and letters during a public forum in
October, and those same documents accounted for the majority of the
information the county delivered in response to the open records request,
English said. "They have to pay 10 cents per copy, and basically they
just bought back everything they gave us," English said. "I don't
think they got what they thought there were going to get." Risk also
said NEDCO declined to provide requested documents, though a lawyer from
NEDCO said the organization is a privately run entity that does not have to
abide by the Freedom of Information Act. The COPS group has also been
circulating an informal petition with signatures from people opposed to the
prison. Risk said the group now has around 2,800 signatures, or about 4.5
percent of the county.
Newton County Correctional Center
Newton, Texas
GEO Group (formerly Correctional Services Corporation)
July 15, 2010 News Express
The GEO Group, a Florida firm that contracts with local governments to
run jails, has agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle a class-action lawsuit
alleging indiscriminate strip searches of inmates at six facilities,
including three in Texas. The Frio County Detention Center in Pearsall, the
Dickens County Detention Center in Dickens and the Newton County Correctional
Center in Newton and jails in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Illinois were
named in the suit, which was litigated in federal court in Pennsylvania. The
suit alleged GEO employed a uniform practice or policy of strip-searching all
pre-trial detainees who entered certain GEO-operated jails, regardless of the
crime or violation for which they were detained, and without making the
legally required determination of whether reasonable suspicion existed to
justify a strip search. Inmates incarcerated at the six jails between Jan.
30, 2006 and Jan. 30, 2008 qualify for a share in the settlement, but they
must call 1-877-234-4512, or visit
http://www.multistatestripsearchsettlement.com/index.html.
November 6, 2008 AP
The Idaho Department of Correction has terminated its contract with
private prison company The GEO Group and will move the roughly 305 Idaho
inmates currently housed at a GEO-run facility in Texas to a private prison
in Oklahoma. Correction Director Brent Reinke notified GEO officials Thursday
in a letter. Reinke said the company's chronic understaffing at the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, put Idaho offenders' safety
at risk. An Idaho Department of Correction audit found that guards routinely
falsified reports to show they were checking on offenders regularly — even
though they were sometimes away from their posts for hours at a time. "I
hope you understand how seriously we're taking not only the report but the
safety of our inmates," Reinke told The Associated Press on Thursday.
"They have an ongoing staffing issue that doesn't appear to be able to
be solved." The contract will end Jan. 5. Reinke said the department
wanted to pull the inmates out immediately, but state attorneys found there
wasn't enough cause to allow the state to break free of the contract without
a 60-day warning period. In the meantime, Reinke said, Idaho correction
officials have been sent to the Texas prison to help with staffing for the
next two months. GEO will be responsible for transferring the inmates to the
North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayer, Okla., which is run by Corrections
Corp. of America. GEO will cover the cost of the move, Reinke said, but Idaho
will have to pay $58 per day per inmate in Oklahoma, compared to $51 per day
at Bill Clayton. Amber Martin, vice president for The GEO Group, of Florida,
said she couldn't comment on the audit or on Idaho's decision to end the
contract. She referred calls to the company spokesman, Pablo Paez, who could not immediately be reached by the AP. As
of Oct. 1, Idaho had nearly 7,300 total inmates. The Bill Clayton audit
describes the latest in a series of problems that Idaho has had with shipping
inmates out of state. Overcrowding at home forced the state to move hundreds
of inmates to a prison in Minnesota in 2005, but space constraints soon
uprooted them again, this time to a GEO-run facility in Newton, Texas. There,
guard abuse and prisoner unrest forced another move to two new GEO
facilities: 125 Idaho inmates went to the Dickens County Correctional Center
in Spur, Texas, while 304 went to Bill Clayton in Littlefield. Conditions at
Dickens were left largely unmonitored by Idaho, at least until inmate Scott
Noble Payne committed suicide after complaining of the filthy conditions
there. Idaho investigators looking into Payne's death detailed the poor
conditions and a lack of inmate treatment programs, and the inmates were
moved again. That's when the Idaho Department of Correction created the
Virtual Prisons Program, designed to improve oversight of Idaho inmates
housed in contract beds both in and out of state. The extent of the Bill
Clayton facility understaffing was discovered after Idaho launched an
investigation into the apparent suicide of inmate Randall McCullough in
August. During that investigation, guards at the prison said they were often
pulled away from their regular posts to handle other duties — including
taking out the garbage, refueling vehicles or checking the perimeter fence —
and that it was common practice to fill out the logs as if the required
checks of inmates were being completed as scheduled, said Jim Loucks, chief
investigator for the Idaho Department of Correction. For instance, Loucks
said, correction officers were supposed to check on inmates in the
administrative segregation unit every 30 minutes. But sometimes they were
away from the unit for hours at a time, he said. The investigation into
McCullough's death is not yet complete, department officials said. The audit
also found several other problems at Bill Clayton. The auditor found that
"the facility entrance is a very relaxed checkpoint," prompting
concerns that cell phones, marijuana and other contraband could be smuggled
past security. In addition, the prison averages a 30 percent vacancy rate in
security staff jobs, according to the audit. Though it was still able to meet
the one-staffer-for-every-48-prisoners ratio set out by Texas law, employees
were regularly expected to work long hours of overtime and non-security
staffers sometimes were used to provide security supervision, according to
the audit. "Based on a review of payroll reports, there are significant
concerns with security staff working excessive amounts of overtime for long
periods of time," the auditors wrote. "This can lead to compromised
facility security practices and increased safety issues." When the audit
was done, there were 29 security staff vacancies, according to the report.
That meant each security staff person who was eligible for overtime worked an
average of 21 hours of overtime a week. That extra expense was borne by GEO,
not by Idaho taxpayers, said Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff
Ray. The state's contract with GEO also required that at least half of the
eligible inmates be given jobs with at least 50 hours of work a month.
According to the facility's inmate payroll report, only 35 out of 371 offenders
were without jobs. But closer inspection showed that the prison often had
several inmates assigned to the same job. In one instance, nine inmates were
assigned to clean showers in one unit of the prison — which only had nine
shower stalls. So although each was responsible for cleaning just one shower
stall, the nine inmates were all claiming 7- and 8-hour work days, five days
a week. GEO is responsible for covering the cost of those wages, Ray said.
"While the contract percentage requirement is met, the facility cannot
demonstrate the actual hours claimed by offenders are spent in a meaningful,
skill-learning job activity," the auditors wrote. Auditors also found
that too few inmates were enrolled in high school diploma equivalency and
work force readiness classes.
July 26, 2007 The Olympian
Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke next Thursday will visit a
private Texas prison where he intends to shift 56 inmates in September, after
problems including abuse by guards, deplorable conditions and a suicide
emerged at previous facilities in that state. Reinke, who concedes lax
oversight by Idaho contributed to problems, and three other Idaho officials
will review the Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas,
run by Florida-based private prison firm The GEO Group. The prison area where
Idaho inmates are due to be housed at Val Verde is part of a new 659-bed
addition, Reinke said. Still, he wants to make sure the facility located near
the Mexican border meets Idaho standards so the recurring problems at the two
previous GEO-run prisons aren't repeated. "On contracts in general,
we're going to be stepping that up," Reinke told The Associated Press
this week. "We want to take a firsthand look." About 450 Idaho
inmates were first moved beyond state borders in 2005 to relieve overcrowding
at prisons here, where there are more than 7,000 inmates - but not enough
room to house them all. They were incarcerated at the Newton County
Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, until August 2006, when they were moved
following allegations of abuse by guards to the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas. But Reinke, who took over in January, acknowledges his
agency didn't do enough to scrutinize conditions at Dickens before Idaho
inmates were shipped there. And from August 2006 to March 2007, Idaho prison
officials only visited the Dickens County facility one time. The March 4
suicide by Scot Noble Payne, a convicted sex offender, and a subsequent
investigation illuminated conditions that one Idaho prison official described
as "beyond repair." One concern: There have been problems at Val
Verde, too. Inmate LeTisha Tapia killed herself
there in 2004 after alleging she was raped by another inmate and sexually
humiliated by a guard. And a black guard accused his captain of keeping a
hangman's noose in his office and a photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan hood
in his desk. Val Verde County has been forced to hire a full-time prison
monitor to keep a watch on prison operations as part of a settlement with Tapia's
family. Some family members of Idaho inmates now at Dickens told the AP
they're pleased Reinke is scrutinizing Val Verde personally. Still, they said
they're frustrated their relatives are being moved again - especially since
many problems at Dickens have been remedied since Payne's suicide in March.
"Things are OK now," said the wife of a sex offender who asked not
to be identified by name. "They don't want to move." Reinke has
pledged to improve oversight of conditions at Texas prisons through what he's
calling a "virtual prison" that his agency adopted earlier this
week. It's modeled after a similar system in Washington state, he said.
June 6, 2007 AP
Under terms of his contraband sentence, a Texas prison guard who provided
illegal materials to Idaho inmates will only go to prison if he violates
conditions of his release. Those conditions include staying out of “honky tonks” and “beer joints,” according to court documents.
John Ratliffe, a former guard at the Dickens County
Correctional Center where hundreds of Idaho inmates are housed, is also
implicated in providing assistance to an inmate’s escape. But Ratliffe has denied knowing Payne planned to escape.
Footprints matched to Payne, who later committed suicide, were found near Ratliffe’s home. Dickens County prosecutors couldn’t be
reached for comment on whether Ratliffe faces
additional charges related to the escape. Attempts to reach Ratliffe were unsuccessful. His telephone number in
Paducah isn’t listed. The 43-year-old Payne was among inmates shipped to
Dickens and another nearby facility in Littlefield, Texas, in August 2006 due
to problems they experienced at another Texas facility, the Newton County
Correctional Center. Those included incidents in which the inmates were
punched and doused with pepper spray by guards. Both prisons are operated by
The GEO Group of Florida. GEO officials said they took quick action upon
learning in December about Ratliffe’s contraband
operation. It included setting up a post office box where at least some
prisoners’ families sent items or money to be transferred to inmates,
according to documents. “When we have incidents of this kind, we conduct a
full investigation, and if disciplinary action is required, we take that
action properly, and that’s what we did in this case,” said Pablo Paez, a GEO spokesman. Ratliffe
was placed on unpaid leave, then fired, Paez said.
Records show a chaotic scene in Paducah before Payne was finally cornered by
search dogs in a nearby riverbed. Ratliffe
allegedly threatened to commit suicide shortly after searchers found Payne’s
footprints near his backyard fence, prompting Texas Rangers to transfer Ratliffe to the local courthouse “where a mental health
warrant was signed by the judge,” according to the GEO report. Idaho
officials said they learned of Ratliffe’s
activities after Payne’s capture. “We found out about it on Dec. 11 in a
conversation between Warden Ron Alford and our contract compliance person
Sharon Lamm,” said Jeff Ray, a spokesman for Idaho
prisons. Alford was transferred in March to another GEO prison, after
complaints from Idaho about conditions at Dickens.
August 3, 2006 The Enterprise
Two dangerous Newton County Correction Center inmates escaped earlier
this year because a watchtower guard was too intimidated to shoot, according
to a tape recording obtained by The Enterprise. The guard in the tape
admitted he didn't fire his weapon June 12 despite seeing prisoners Rudolfo Garcia-Lopez and Orlando Gonzalez-Leon scale the
outer fence covered in barbed razor wire. The recording was of the guard, who
was then terminated, and Sheriff Joe Walker, Chief Deputy Ricky Hall and an
unnamed Texas Ranger. On watch in the northwest tower near Texas 87, the
guard had his firearm raised but didn't pull the trigger. Walker, who conducted
the taped interview, asked the guard why he didn't shoot despite being less
than 80 yards from the prisoners. "My timing was slow, and I felt
highly-ass intimidated," the guard said in the conversation taped on a
handheld digital recorder. Walker wouldn't identify the guard because he
didn't "want his name pulled through the mud." However, Walker did
say the guard could have stopped the prison break before it turned into a
three-night search. Garcia-Lopez and Gonzalez-Leon, both from Idaho, escaped
at 6:30 p.m. While law enforcement captured Gonzalez-Leon 90 minutes later,
Garcia-Lopez was on the loose for 56 hours and crossed the county line before
Jasper police detained him while he pedaled a stolen bicycle through the
city. "There's 16,000 people in this county that elected him sheriff to
protect them," Hall said to the guard on the tape. "... From the
way I look at it, you turned them loose on my family." Prison guards and
jailers can respond with deadly force to prevent an inmate's attempted
escape, Walker said. According to a Texas Commission on Jail Standards
official, the county sheriff and the jail administrators set a jail's policy
and procedure. Newton County owns the facility, but the Geo Group, a private
Florida-based company, manages it. In the tape, Walker said he held the
former guard responsible for the prison break. He could have shot one time as
a warning, at least, Walker said, and that would have been enough to knock
Garcia-Lopez and Gonzalez-Leon off the fence. "That probably would have
changed their mind about what they were doing," Walker said in the taped
conversation. "... My job is to put them in jail. This Texas Ranger, his
job is to put them in jail. It's them jailers out there at that penitentiary
who keep their butts inside those fences. I'm telling you, I hold you
responsible because you should have shot them." According to sheriff's
department calculations, the prison break and resulting manhunt cost at least
$3,000 in deputy overtime hours, fuel, food and water. Texas Department of
Public Safety and state Parks and Wildlife Department personnel also put in
overtime hours. During a recent interview in his office, Walker said another
guard in the southwest prison tower saw the escaped prisoners but couldn't
get a shot at them without endangering another guard who was circling the
perimeter in a van. "She was right" for not shooting, the sheriff
said of the other guard. Walker said he had a meeting with prison
supervisors, instructing them to find "weak links" who are
unwilling to perform the job's entire duties, including shooting a gun to
prevent a prison break. "I hold their commissions, and I will dang sure
sign off on them to F-5 them. F-5 means to terminate their commission,"
Walker said. "I'll do it." The prison break was part of a string of
episodes involving inmates since the Idaho Department of Correction
transferred 419 prisoners here in March to alleviate prison overcrowding in
their state. On April 7, an excessive use-of-force incident ended with a
supervisor's firing, an officer's demotion and another officer's weeklong
suspension without pay. Prisoners later engineered a sit-down strike,
insisting on butter for rolls and better television options. And on June 4, a
deputy warden resigned after an excessive use-of-force incident May 30 in
which he punched an Idaho inmate, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Idaho prisoners are being transferred out to another Texas-located, Geo
Group-managed facility. In their place, Newton County and the Geo Group have
agreed to house 400 Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates.
August 2, 2006 Idaho Statesman
A deputy warden at a private prison in Texas resigned June 4 after
punching an Idaho inmate in the jaw May 30. A state report on the incident at
the prison, owned by The Geo Group Inc., corroborated claims made by an
inmate and reported June 21 by the Idaho Statesman that he had been punched
in the jaw and then pepper-sprayed after refusing an order from the deputy
warden. "The Geo Group was very responsive after the incident,"
said Idaho Department of Correction spokeswoman Melinda Keckler. "We
thought and they agreed that it was not an appropriate use of force and not
how inmates should be treated." As first reported Tuesday on
IdahoStatesman.com, the department released the report to the Statesman after
a public records request. The report said the incident at the Newton County
Correctional Center resulted from a lack of staff training and knowledge of
company and department policy. "Basic security practices were not followed,
and policy was violated in a number of areas," the report said.
"The need for the reactive use of force is questionable, but it can be
established that there was no need for the use of the pepper spray." The
report said the deputy warden should not have directly involved himself in
the disturbance but should have supervised his officers in defusing the
situation. The deputy warden's and inmate's names were redacted from the
report provided, but in a letter to the Idaho Statesman, inmate Randall
Swink, 21, of Twin Falls, said he was punched and pepper-sprayed. He did not
say when.
July 14, 2006 The Enterprise
The Idaho Department of Correction didn't approve of certain staff behavior
at the Newton County Correctional Center, but in no way did it lead to 419
inmates' planned transfer, an official said Thursday. With allegations of
prisoner mistreatment swirling, coupled with inmate protests and a two-man
prison break since the state placed the inmates in Newton, the Idaho
Department of Correction agreed to transport 419 of their inmates out of the
Southeast Texas prison and into another GEO Group-managed facility, said Pam Sonnen, Idaho Department of Correction administrator of
operations. The GEO Group, a private prison management company overseeing
operations in Newton, approached Idaho officials about the transfer after the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice contacted Newton County to ask about
housing 400 more Texas inmates. The state agency's prisons were at 97.4
percent occupancy as of July 11, according to a department spokeswoman, and
by the end of 2007, an estimated 1,700 additional beds will be needed. When
the transfer of the Idaho inmates initially was announced Tuesday, Idaho
Department of Correction Director Tom Beauclair
told The Associated Press he'd become dissatisfied with the prison's ability
to hire qualified staff. Sonnen said the
correctional center has holdover personnel from the prison's previous
management group, and those employees don't always follow the GEO Group's
practices. In 2005, the GEO Group bought out Correctional Services Corp.,
which previously managed the Newton prison. "What I got out of our
investigations was they needed to do more training with their staff to
understand policies and procedures," Sonnen
said. Problems arose almost immediately after Idaho agreed March 14 to send
its inmates to Newton, Sonnen said. On April 7, she
said, an excessive-use-of-force incident led to a supervisor's firing,
another employee's demotion and suspension of an officer for a week without
pay. On May 30, an inmate was doused with pepper spray, and two other Idaho
inmates escaped in June. Idaho prisoners also engineered a sit-down strike
demanding butter for their rolls and better television choices, privileges
they'd grown accustomed to, Sonnen said.
July 12, 2006 Statesman
Idaho inmates housed at a private Texas prison that has been criticized
for prisoner abuse will be moved elsewhere because the prison canceled its
contract with Idaho. And more Idaho prisoners will be headed out of state
soon. It's unclear where the 419 Idaho prisoners currently housed at the
Newton County Correctional Center will be sent, but the private prison in
Newton, Texas, notified the Idaho Department of Correction that it needs to
move the prisoners to make room for Texas inmates, department spokeswoman
Melinda O'Malley Keckler said Tuesday. Keckler said the decision had nothing
to do with recent reports that Newton prison employees abused Idaho
prisoners, but said her department agreed to the move. "The department
is pleased with this change," she said. Newton Warden Priscella Miles would not comment for this article, and
no one answered Tuesday evening at the Florida headquarters for the prison's
parent company, the Geo Group. One correctional officer was fired, one
demoted and one disciplined this spring after six Idaho inmates were
forcefully cuffed and maced at Newton in April.
June 25, 2006 Spokesman Review
Continuing problems with a private Texas prison that's housing hundreds
of Idaho's overflow inmates have even the head of the Idaho ACLU calling for
Idaho to build more prisons. "Bottom line, we probably have to
immediately start thinking about building more prisons in Idaho – which is a
terrible thing for an ACLU activist to say," said Jack Van Valkenburgh, head of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Idaho. "I want my money going to schools, I don't want it going for
prisons. But you've got to provide minimally adequate care." Van Valkenburgh noted that he favors sentencing reform and
more drug treatment as "the way to solve the prison problem," but
said Idaho is risking more crime in the future by sending its inmates to
facilities like the Newton County Correctional Center in Texas. "My
sense is the mentality of … this facility … doesn't have rehabilitation and
reintegration into society as a goal. Idaho now has more than 400 inmates at
the Newton County center, a former county jail that's now a private prison
run by GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Corp. In less than three months, there
have been two escapes; three prison employees disciplined after an incident
in which they roughed up and sprayed pepper spray on six Idaho inmates; and a
demonstration in which 85 Idaho inmates refused to return to their cells for
hours in protest over conditions at the facility. A public records request to
the Idaho Department of Corrections yielded a stack of complaints about the
Texas lockup from inmates and their families. "We are locked in these
windowless rooms for 20+ a day," one inmate wrote. "Many inmates
are spending 22 hours a day on their bunks." Others complained of
inattentive or abusive guards, cold food, lack of recreation and programs,
and fivefold increases in the cost to families for phone calls to inmates.
"This jail is so dirty and unsafe," one inmate wrote. Another wrote
about the guards: "This (sic) people hate Mexicans. They made that clear
to me right away. They don't like whites either."
June 21, 2006 Idaho Statesman
An Idaho inmate said he was punched in the jaw by the deputy warden of a
private prison in Texas before being pepper-sprayed. Idaho Department of
Correction officials said Tuesday a staff member is compiling a report about
the May 30 incident and would release more information at the end of the
week. The department reported the incident June 12 and sent a staff member to
Texas after hearing from The Geo Group Inc., owner of the Newton County
Correctional Center, that an Idaho inmate had been pepper-sprayed for
refusing to leave his cell. In a letter to the Idaho Statesman received
Monday, Randall Swink, 21, of Twin Falls, said he was punched and
pepper-sprayed. He did not say when. The department would not say whether
Swink was the inmate involved in the May 30 incident. Swink is serving two
sentences for lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under age 16. He said
he was mouthing off to correctional officers about a dirty cup when a deputy
warden asked him to leave his cell, and he refused. Swink said he was cuffed
and made a sarcastic comment to the warden before the warden punched him in the
jaw. Swink said he was pepper-sprayed and returned to his cell for struggling
as officers tried to strip search him. The Geo Group did not return a call
about the incident.
June 14, 2006 Idaho Statesman
A private prison in Texas is safe, Idaho's Department of Correction said
Tuesday after a string of incidents involving Idaho prisoners. But the
American Civil Liberties Union said security and living conditions at the
Newton County Correctional Center are unacceptable. The ACLU wants the
department to move prisoners elsewhere. One of two escaped Idaho inmates was
still at large Tuesday night after a Monday night prison break. Meanwhile, 84
Idaho inmates remained in lockdown Tuesday after a Saturday protest of
facility conditions, department spokeswoman Melinda Keckler said. The prison,
operated by The Geo Group Inc., fired one security staff member and
disciplined two others after an April incident when six Idaho prisoners were
forcefully cuffed and maced. The department said
staff inexperience and lack of training contributed to the excessive use of
force. The prison houses 419 Idaho offenders who began arriving in March
because of overcrowding in Idaho prisons. Idaho ACLU Executive Director Jack
Van Valkenburgh said he is concerned with the
prison's lack of security and met with Correction Department Director Tom Beauclair. Officers are poorly trained and the prison is
understaffed, Van Valkenburgh said, referring to
letters he has received from roughly two dozen inmates. The letters said
corrections officers regularly complain of working more than 12 hours at a
time, and inmates have reported up to nine hours passing without an officer
in their tiers. "I have heard that there are times when inmates are
having to shout and bang on the doors to get some attention," Van Valkenburgh said. "If these problems continue, I
would hope the director would insist that money be spent on housing
elsewhere." Other complaints received have ranged from beatings to
severe overcrowding, Van Valkenburgh said. Some
prisoners have been housed in 24-man, 33-by-37-foot cell tanks, he said.
June 13, 2006 Idaho Press-Tribune
A man convicted of aggravated assault and attempted kidnapping out of
Canyon County escaped from a prison in Southeast Texas on Monday evening. Rudolfo Garcia-Lopez, 38, was serving a sentence of five
to 20 years on the two felony charges. Prison officials said Garcia-Lopez and
another inmate, 27-year-old Orlando Gonzalez-Leon, were seen going over a
recreation yard fence while a disturbance took place in another area of the
prison. The escape occurred about 6:30 p.m. Gonzalez-Leon was returned to
custody about 90 minutes after a search of the area near the Newton County
Correctional Center in Newton, Texas. Law enforcement officers in Newton
County were using tracking dogs and helicopters to assist in locating
Garcia-Lopez. Gonzalez-Leon is serving a 25- to 50-year sentence on a
second-degree murder conviction out of Twin Falls County. The Texas facility
is managed by the GEO Group Inc. At this time, 419 Idaho inmates are housed
at the Newton County Correctional Center. Teresa Jones, an Idaho Correction
Department spokeswoman, said the prison break occurred after guards were
called to a separate wing of the prison, giving the Idaho inmates an
opportunity to climb the fence. She was uncertain what caused the
distraction. “There were 25 Idaho inmates outside in the recreation yard,”
she said. The pair’s escape is just the latest in a string of incidents
involving Idaho inmates at the prison run by Geo Group Inc., based in Boca
Raton, Fla. Idaho officials have traveled repeatedly to the former county
jail in Newton to scrutinize the operation. On April 7, six Idaho inmates
complained of abuse, and one supervisor was fired while another guard was
demoted after an investigation. On May 30, another inmate was doused with
pepper spray. And last weekend, 85 Idaho inmates staged a strike, demanding
butter for rolls, more TV channels and cheaper prices at the prison
commissary. Before Monday’s prison break, Pam Sonnen,
administrator of operations for the Department of Correction, had said that
Idaho officials were again flying to Texas to review training procedures for
guards. Geo is also sending a staff member to the facility, according to a
news release. “We just want to be 100 percent sure about the training
provided to staff in Texas,” Sonnen said. “Use of
force should always be a last resort to gain inmate compliance.” Idaho
corrections officials who have been to the Texas facility said it doesn’t
have the amenities of prisons in Idaho. It meets Idaho requirements, but
“it’s a very different cultural atmosphere than Idaho,” said Jones, adding
that disgruntled inmates unhappy with the move to Texas are one cause of the
incidents.
June 9, 2006 Idaho Statesman
One correctional officer was fired, one demoted and one disciplined after
six Idaho inmates were forcefully cuffed and maced
at a private Texas prison in April, the Idaho Correction Department said
Thursday. A report by the prison's parent company to Idaho officials said six
Idaho prisoners were acting up in their cells, throwing trays, and yelling
and banging against their cells when correctional officers arrived to remove
them, said Pam Sonnen, the department's operations
administrator. The officers had a hard time cuffing the inmates, and the
situation escalated, she said. "They were taken to the ground and
handcuffed, inmates were struggling, staff were struggling," Sonnen said. "It seemed from the reports that nobody
was in charge, that there was no one there to say, 'Let's stop and take a
breath.'" The Statesman first reported the incident last Friday. Sonnen said the improper use of force was due to
inexperience and poor training, and said staffers have since received
training. The prison, the Newton County Correctional Center, is owned by The
Geo Group Inc., formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp. No medical reports
showed that prisoners had been beaten or further abused, Sonnen
said. But inmate Eddie Daniel said prisoners had been beaten. In a letter his
sister, Fruitland resident Josie Daniel, received April 14, he said he and
six other prisoners had been put in an isolation area without explanation for
five days from April 3 to April 7. On the fifth day they were handcuffed,
beaten and maced by 15 people, he wrote. "So
these people came in ... and take turns beating us up," Daniel wrote.
"And when I say beating us I mean beating us, kicking us in the face ...
They went cell to cell during this." According to the letter, the
beatings stopped when the warden intervened. Sonnen
said Daniel had not been directly involved in the incident that got the
correctional officer fired, though his sister's complaints drew the state's
attention to the situation. An initial report sent by The Geo Group mentioned
nothing about the use of force, nor did it say employees had been
disciplined, Sonnen said. "We received a
report that talked about our inmates having a disturbance," Sonnen said. "There was nothing in there to make us
think anything was wrong."
June 8, 2006 Spokesman-Review
A private prison in Texas has fired a supervisor, demoted an officer from
lieutenant to sergeant, suspended a prison guard and started new staff
training after an April incident in which six Idaho inmates there were
roughed up and sprayed with pepper spray. The state Department of Correction
released that information this week only after The Spokesman-Review filed a
request under the Idaho Public Records Law seeking documents about the
incident. But state correction officials said they weren't trying to hide
anything. "Nobody's trying to sweep anything under the carpet,"
said Jim Tibbs, chairman of the Idaho Board of Correction. Pam Sonnen, administrator of operations for Idaho's prison
system, said, "We have no desire to hide any of this information."
The incident points out one of the key disadvantages of housing state prison
inmates out of state – a loss of control over the inmates by the state,
corrections officials said. But with Idaho's prisons overflowing and new
prisoners arriving every day, officials expect to send another 1,400 Idaho
inmates out of state in the next four years. The six Idaho inmates in Texas –
among 420 Idaho prisoners now at the Newton County Correctional Center – were
angry over conditions at the facility, Sonnen said.
On April 7, they began raising a ruckus, throwing their food trays out
through slots in their cells, swearing at guards and "being
disruptive." Staffers first sprayed the inmates with pepper spray and
gave orders that were ignored, Sonnen said. "I
think it kind of got out of hand a little bit," she said. "I don't
think the staff there were ready for a group disruption." The guards
then decided correctly to move the disruptive inmates elsewhere to prevent
the problem from spreading, Sonnen said. "You
remove them as quickly as possible from that unit … or the whole place goes
up pretty quick." But the guards bungled their "use of force"
in trying to subdue and move inmates, she said. "They were taking them
to the ground, there was struggling going on … I don't believe that staff was
properly trained," Sonnen said. The April 7
incident raised no eyebrows in the standard incident reports that arrived in
Idaho from the GEO Group Inc., formerly Wackenhut Corp., which operates the
Texas prison. But Sonnen said once she heard
complaints from inmates' relatives, who received letters about the incident,
she began looking into it. The GEO group sent Idaho Correction Director Tom Beauclair a report Friday detailing the results of its
own investigation of the incident. "This review revealed use of force
policy violations that stemmed from the supervisor on duty's failure to
adequately supervise/direct the use of force," said the report, which
was signed by Don Houston, senior vice president for GEO's central region.
June 2, 2006 Idaho Statesman
Correctional officers at a private Texas prison have been disciplined for
abusing Idaho prisoners this spring, the state Correction Department said
Thursday. At least half a dozen department employees, including department
Director Tom Beauclair, flew to Texas after the
department received complaints from inmates and family members, department
spokeswoman Melinda Keckler said in response to an inquiry from the Idaho
Statesman about allegations of abuse. The state team inspected the Newton
County Correctional Center in Newton, operated by Geo Group Inc. The company
disciplined security staff members in response to the team's findings,
Keckler said. "We have received concerns from several parties, all in
relation to one or two specific incidents in the Texas facility,"
Keckler said. "(Department) employees interviewed offenders and staff
and observed the physical operations of the facility, and as a result of
that, some corrective action was taken on some employees in Texas."
Keckler said she could not describe the nature of the abuse or specify how
prison employees were disciplined. The media contact for the Geo Group was on
vacation and could not be reached, and the prison's warden would not comment.
Keckler said the department is satisfied that the Newton prison is complying
with its agreement with Idaho. The state has turned to out-of-state prisons
to handle inmate overflow from Idaho's jam-packed prisons. In mid-March, 150
prisoners were moved to the Texas prison. Since then, 270 more Idaho
prisoners have been transferred from the Prairie Correctional Facility in
Appleton, Minn. after that private prison needed to make space for more
Minnesota prisoners. All out-of-state Idaho prisoners are now housed at the
872-bed Newton prison, as are prisoners from Arizona and Texas and federal
immigrations and customs detainees. Josie Daniel, a 32-year-old homemaker
from Fruitland, said her brother, Eddie Daniel, an Idaho inmate transferred
to Texas in April, was interviewed by Correction Department employees in
response to abuses he and six other prisoners suffered in early April. In a
letter Josie Daniel received from her brother April 14, he said he and six
other prisoners had been put in an isolation area without explanation for
five days from April 3 to April 7. On the fifth day they were handcuffed,
beaten and maced by 15 people, the letter claimed.
"So these people came in ... and take turns beating us up," Daniel
wrote. "And when I say beating us I mean beating us, kicking us in the
face ... They went cell to cell during this." According to the letter,
the beatings of the prisoners stopped when the warden intervened. Eddie
Daniel also said food, showers and recreation time were withheld, and
beatings continued after the first incident. "Even though we're in
Texas, Idaho is still responsible for us," he wrote. "You need to
call IDOC and let them know what's going on. Now every day they come to our
cells threatening to beat us again." Josie Daniel said she contacted at
least five IDOC employees, including Keckler, to report the abuse. Eddie
Daniel is serving a six-year sentence for drug trafficking and had already
served six months of it in Idaho, according to Josie Daniel, who served a
two-year sentence herself for grand theft that she committed when she was 19.
Josie Daniel said her brother had served five years in Idaho prisons for
earlier crimes and never complained of mistreatment or abuse. "My
brother is the kind of person that he has a lot of pride, and he's not going
to ask anyone for help," Josie Daniel said. "My heart sunk when I
read this letter because he is pleading for help." Keckler said the
department had not received any abuse complaints at the private Minnesota
facility. Idaho staffers will continue with routine checks of the Texas prison
and will investigate any future complaints, she said. "Of course
whenever we have charges of abuse we take them very seriously," Keckler
said.
March 9, 2003
An escaped jail inmate was captured early Sunday in downtown Newton, almost
exactly a week after he broke out of the Newton County Correctional Center by
cutting a hole in a fence, a Beaumont television station reported.
Duncan is the fifth inmate to escape from the Newton County Correctional
Center since 1998, and each has been caught. (AP)
March 7, 2003
It's unclear what possessed convicted felon James Duncan to cut through a
prison fence here and head for the woods, but one thing is
certain: He's just as good at getting into places as he is at getting
out. (The Enterprise)
March 3, 2003
Residents here were concerned, but didn't seem too surprised to learn Sunday
that an inmate escaped from the Newton County Correction Center - after all,
it's the fifth escape in seven years. James R. Duncan, 38, an Arizona
inmate housed at the facility, escaped at approximately 2:30 a.m. Duncan was
in the fourth year of a seven-year, six-month sentence for the offense of
armed robbery. "They need to shut down that prison," said a
resident who declined to be named, visiting the store with his small daughter
in tow. "Those son of a guns are busting out like roaches,"
he said angrily. Another woman who also declined to give her name,
complained that though the inmate escaped at 2:30, residents were not
informed until after 6 a.m. After past incidents, prison officials had
promised to give prompt warning of danger. Others in the store verified
her statements. The prison, opened in 1991, was originally pitched to
the community as a minimum-security facility, but it was found that it could
not turn a profit, security measures were increased and maximum-security
inmates - referred to by some as "the baddest
of the bad" - were brought in. It has been a source of controversy
ever since. The first and by far most dramatic escape occurred in
February of 1996, when Larry Earl Pagan, a Hawaii inmate, escaped and
abducted 51-year-old Wilma Parnell. Pagan made it to Mexico with
Parnell, where she made a break for it. Pagan was later arrested. (The
Beaumont Enterprise)
March 3, 2003
Southeast Texas law-enforcement officials were searching late Sunday for a
Newton County jail escapee. Investigators said 38-year-old James R.
Duncan, a state of Arizona inmate being housed in the Newton County
Correctional Center, broke out about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. Duncan is charged
with armed robbery. He was last seen wearing a two-piece orange jail
uniform with the letters "ADC" in black on the back of the shirt.
Duncan is white, 6 feet, 4 inches tall, weighs 215 pounds and has bushy
blond-brown hair and blue eyes. He had blue jeans and a black jacket
on. (Houston Chronicle)
January 4, 2003
An uprising by 82 Arizona inmates at a private prison in Texas caused an
estimated $15,000 in damage and lead the Department of Corrections to delay
transferring more prisoners to the facility until an investigation is
completed. Since November, 346 Arizona inmates have been transferred to
the Newton County Correctional Center under a contract with Correctional
Services Corp., which charges $38.25 a day per prisoner. On Thursday,
inmates flooded dormitories, tore up mattresses, destroyed TV sets and broke
windows until the prison staff fired pepper gas into the dormitories, the
department said. (AP)
July 21, 1998
A convicted rapist who cut his way out of a maximum security private prison
and then hitched a ride out of town was shot wounded Monday by a deputy who
was trying to arrest him. Saofaiga Loa Jr.,
24, a Hawaii resident incarcerated at the Newton County Correctional Center,
escaped sometime before dawn, authorities said. Using an unknown tool,
Loa cut his way through two security fences and was given a ride out of town,
said Billy Bryan, a spokesperson for Sarasota, Fla.-based Correctional
Services Corp., which runs the prison. (Houston Chronicle)
North
Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility
Fort Worth, Texas
GEO Group
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
March 2, 2007 Houston Chronicle
A convicted robber who escaped Sunday night from a Texas Department of
Criminal Justice facility in Fort Worth and who had ties to a Montgomery
County couple was apprehended early today in Corpus Christi. Eladio Diaz Jr.
was apprehended at about 3:30 a.m. today in Corpus Christi near a motel where
he had been staying, according to TDCJ spokeswoman Michelle Lyons. Law
enforcement officials went to the motel, acting on a tip. Diaz was taken into
custody without incident by TDCJ's Office of Inspector General, U.S. Marshals
and local law enforcement, Lyons said. He will remain in the Nueces County
Jail on a felony escape charge, as well as an outstanding felony robbery
charge he faces there. The robbery warrant was issued for him prior to his
escape from the North Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility in Fort Worth.
Diaz was last seen at about 10 p.m. Sunday and determined to be missing a
short time later. Diaz's sister, Jacqueline Diaz Chavez, 45, and her husband,
Jose Chavez, 39, who live in the Montgomery County town of Porter, were
charged Tuesday with hindering apprehension and were jailed in Montgomery
County.
February 26, 2007 AP
Authorities were searching today for a convicted robber who escaped from
a facility for parole violators. Eladio Diaz Jr., 46, was last seen at about
10 p.m. Sunday at the North Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility in Fort
Worth, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Diaz, who was
convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in Nueces County, began
serving his 25-year prison sentence in 1991 and was released on parole in
2003. Diaz was arrested in November in Nueces County and charged with making
a terroristic threat. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles in December
revoked his parole and assigned him to the North Texas Intermediate Sanction
Facility, which is operated by The Geo Group Inc. and serves as a short-term
punishment facility for parole violators. Since arriving there last month,
Diaz was allowed to work outside the facility as a trusty, according to the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Nueces
County Jail
Nueces County, Texas
Louisiana Correctional Services, Premier Management Enterprises, Aramark
Mar
6, 2014 kiiitv.com
An
inmate death at a private jail facility near Robstown is raising questions.
The inmate was a recent graduate of the Navy flight school at Naval Air
Station-Corpus Christi. The death has been ruled a suicide, but the
investigation is now being questioned by the agency that oversees the LCS
facility. That law enforcement agency is the Nueces County Sheriff's Office,
whose detectives were turned away at LCS by U.S. Marshals. They were told
Texas Rangers would be conducting the investigation, and that, says Sheriff
Jim Kaelin, is not proper protocol. "The
private prison LCS is under our charge, and we're responsible for the things
that go on out there," Kaelin said.
"Meaning that the U.S. Marshals service mandate that we make sure that
we comply with rules, regulations and law." It was Saturday when Sheriff
Kaelin says he got a call from the LCS warden that
an inmate had attempted suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet, and that
the inmate was being transported to Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital. That
inmate has been identified as 26-year old Trevor Nash, a recent graduate of
the Navy's flight school at NAS-Corpus Christi. According to sources, Nash
was preparing to be transferred to helicopter training school when he was
arrested on charges of piracy. 3News contacted the U.S. Marshals out of Houston
in hopes of obtaining more information regarding the charges, and why Texas
Rangers and not the Nueces County Sheriff's Office are heading up the
investigation. We have yet to get a response. In the meantime, Sheriff Kaelin says he too is attempting to get some answers.
June 2, 2010 KRIS TV
A Taft man who was detained at the LCS Detention Center in Robstown died this
past Saturday. Warden Mike Striedel said
27-year-old Leo Guajardo died from a brain tumor. Striedel
said Guajardo had been at the detention center since January for taking the
weapon of a U.S. Marshal. Striedel says Guajardo
saw a doctor Friday afternoon for high blood pressure, he was immediately put
on medication, but a couple hours later he claimed to feel dizzy. The Warden
says he was taken to the hospital and doctors found a massive brain tumor.
His condition worsened and eventually he was put on life support. Striedel says the family decided to take him off life
support Saturday night and he was pronounced dead. The Texas Rangers will investigate
the incident to make sure everyone at the detention center did what they
could to help Guajardo. The man's family is not ready to make a statement
yet, as they are preparing for Guajardo's funeral.
February 27, 2009 Caller-Times
Nueces County and the U.S. Marshals Service agreed to a deal to put
federal prisoners in the privately owned LCS detention facility in Robstown,
which last month laid off half its staff when it sat empty. Nueces County
sends federal prisoners to an LCS facility in Hidalgo County in exchange for
$2 per prisoner per day. The prison receives about $44 a day per prisoner. On
Thursday, the county signed an addendum to the contract, allowing the
Robstown facility to house federal prisoners, County Judge Loyd Neal said, but it won’t be paid for it initially.
January 24, 2009 Caller-Times
LCS Corrections Services laid off half of its Robstown detention center
employees Friday because federal authorities have yet to transfer in
prisoners, but the company plans to offer jobs to some elsewhere. LCS, a
private Lafayette, La.-based prison company, expected to have a full house at
its 1,100-bed facility shortly after the prison opened in mid-November, but
the center remains empty after a contract with the federal government
stalled, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president of operations. Of the 35
correctional officers laid off, six will be offered positions at the LCS
detention facility in Brooks County, Harbison said. Short on correctional
officers, Nueces County Jail will offer jobs to 14 others, county officials
said. Fifteen temporarily will be left without jobs, Harbison said. To start
the intake of federal prisoners from agencies such as the U.S. Marshals
Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol, LCS
needs Nueces County to sign an agreement with marshals that will outline how
much the federal government will pay for housing their prisoners. Congress
also must pass a 2009 budget, which should occur when a continuing resolution
allowing the federal government to operate under its 2008 budget expires in
early March. The prison company intends to rehire the laid-off employees and
hire additional staff once prisoners start arriving, Harbison said. Nueces
County spent millions to clean up its jail's substandard conditions that led
to the June 2006 removal of federal prisoners. The federal inmates haven't
returned. County officials have been negotiating since January 2008 for a
higher fee to house them at the jail. The contract also will include fees for
housing federal prisoners at two LCS facilities. Because the federal
government doesn't deal with private detention contractors, LCS is dependent
on a "pass through" contract, where the county gets a share of fees
charged per prisoner for passing through overflow federal prisoners to the
company's private facilities in Hidalgo County and Robstown. Nueces County
Judge Loyd Neal said Friday that the county, the
U.S. Marshals Service and LCS are in agreement on new rates for the jail and
the LCS facilities. He wouldn't disclose the negotiated rates. The proposed
fees are awaiting review and approval from the Office of the Federal
Detention Trustee, which oversees federal detention programs. The county,
which received a $45.15 daily rate per prisoner prior to their removal from
the county jail, was seeking a raise to $61.49. County officials previously
have said that negotiations were stuck at about $53 a day per prisoner.
"The marshals and I have agreed on that rate. We have worked with LCS,
and they agree it is very favorable," Neal said. "We did this
several months ago, and we have been unable to get any kind of funding out of
the federal government. Until the new Congress and President (Barack) Obama
reach an agreement (on a budget) there is no money available for a new arrangement
for federal prisoners." The county receives $2 a day for each prisoner
sent to LCS' Hidalgo County facility, and LCS earns roughly $43. A similar
pass through deal is in the works for the Robstown facility once the county
and the federal government sign off on new rates. "The minute we hear
anything at all we will be contacting everybody to come back to work,"
Harbison said.
September 29, 2008 KRIS TV
The Nueces County sheriff is asking the company that makes the county
jail inmates' meals to change its policies after a knife disappeared from the
jail kitchen last week. Knives are kept under lock and key by the food
manager's office in the Nueces County Jail kitchen. Yet, on Sept. 19, the
jail realized a knife was missing early in the morning. Nueces County Sheriff
Jim Kaelin said both the jail and the McKenzie
Annex went into immediate lockdown. "We searched from the top floor to
the bottom floor, every cell, every nook, every cranny where someone might be
able to hide a utensil such as that," Kaelin
said. Even so, they still have not found the knife. Kaelin
pointed out that if an inmate really wanted a knife, they would just make
one. "I feel very confident the knife is no longer in our
facility," Kaelin said. He explained that the
most likely scenario was that the knife was laying on a table and somehow was
knocked into a trash receptacle. Then, it was carried and dumped into an
outside dumpster. The experience has prompted Kaelin
to ask Aramark, the company contracted to make the food, to change the way it
operates. "The policy needs to be changed. Their current system failed
and I cannot afford to have them in our kitchen and have that system
fail," Kaelin said.
September 27, 2008 The Caller
A search of Nueces County Jail and Annex cells failed to turn up a chef's
knife missing from the jail's kitchen. Sheriff Jim Kaelin
said the knife was discovered missing the morning of Sept. 19. The cutlery,
which belongs to jail food provider Aramark Corp., was supposed to be kept in
a locked box and logged out for use by kitchen contractors. All of the
company's knives have different color handles so that they are easy to
identify, Kaelin said. "Once we knew it was
missing, we locked down the jail and conducted a cell by cell
inspection," Kaelin said. "No knife was
uncovered in our operation. It's a big enough knife that it would be
difficult to conceal in any of the cells we have. It was either taken by one
of their employees or it fell off a table into the garbage bin and then was
thrown into the Dumpsters." Aramark sent a memo to Kaelin
stating that proper sign-out procedures were not followed and that
disciplinary actions and corrective training were taking place with the
employee responsible. The company also is revising its policy to include that
kitchen knives will be tethered to work stations, Kaelin
said.
November 8, 2007 Caller-Times
A new commissary company started this week in Kleberg County Jail after
Premier Management Enterprises and the county mutually ended Premier's
contract. Premier was investigated in Bexar County for buying a trip to Costa
Rica for former Sheriff Ralph Lopez. Lopez resigned and pleaded no contest to
three charges related to the trip. Premier, based in Lafayette, La., also
operated in Kleberg County since former Sheriff Tony Gonzalez signed the
contract in fall 2004. Sheriff Ed Mata said last month he wanted to end
Premier's contract because of the Bexar investigation and because of
performance issues. Keefe Commissary Network, based in St. Louis, began
providing commissary services Monday to the Kleberg County Jail. The one-year
contract gives the county 24 percent of net sales, defined as gross sales
minus non-commissioned items such as stamps. Keefe was chosen over Swanson
Sales Corp., which said in a proposal it could offer up to 30.25 percent of
net sales. Commissaries, which supply snacks and some toiletries, are
considered privileges for inmates. Texas law gives sheriffs sole discretion
over the contracts. A county's proceeds must be spent on items or activities
that contribute to inmates' well-being, such as education, libraries, writing
materials, clothing and hygiene items, according to state law. Kleberg Chief
Deputy Willie Vera said Keefe offered the better overall package despite the
lower commission. Some items will be marked up to make up part of the
difference. Plus, the company offered a one-year contract, while Swanson
initially wanted five, then agreed to three, Vera said. Premier had signed a
five-year contract with Gonzalez, and Vera said the current sheriff isn't
willing to sign such a long contract. "We have a year to evaluate this
company," Vera said. "If he needs to go out and search for another company
the door is still open." Keefe also recently began service to the Nueces
County Jail, making it easier for the company to add Kingsville to its
routes, Vera said. Keefe made the transition smoothly and the Kleberg County
Jail was never without commissary services, he said. Premier ran the Nueces
County Jail commissary under a contract signed by former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez until Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin
terminated the agreement after taking office in January, citing performance
issues. Keefe gives Nueces County a commission of 39 percent of net sales.
Mata and Kaelin have said their staffs told them
their predecessors, Gonzalez of Kleberg County and Olivarez of Nueces County,
went on that trip to Costa Rica in August 2005. Neither Mata nor Kaelin has documentation corroborating the reports.
Gonzalez left office in 2004 after losing an election to Mata, and Olivarez
resigned in January 2006 to run for county judge. Gonzalez and Olivarez have
not responded to requests for interviews. Premier's principals, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, also own LCS Correctional Services, which is building a
private prison to house federal inmates near Robstown.
October 1, 2007 Caller-Times
Two local sheriffs are distancing themselves from their predecessors'
decisions to award jail commissary contracts to a company involved in a
criminal investigation in Bexar County. Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata said
last week officials are researching ways to end that county's five-year
agreement with the company, Premier Management Enterprises. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin gave Premier a 30-day
termination notice on Jan. 24, after taking office. Former Bexar County
Sheriff Ralph Lopez resigned and pleaded no contest to accepting a trip to
Costa Rica from the principals of Premier. The Lafayette, La., based company
runs the county jail commissary. Neither Kaelin nor
Mata has documentation corroborating what their staffs have told them -- that
their predecessors, Larry Olivarez of Nueces County and Tony Gonzalez of
Kleberg County, went on that August 2005 trip. Neither Gonzalez nor Olivarez
has responded to requests for comment. There is no known investigation in
Nueces or Kleberg counties. "At this point no case has been submitted to
me," Kleberg County District Attorney John Hubert said. "If something
is submitted to me, I take every case on its own merits. I don't have any
information other than what I've read in the papers and -- no offense to
anybody -- that's not really evidence." Nueces County District Attorney
Carlos Valdez was out of the office late last week, and the Bexar County
District Attorney's Office did not respond. The FBI would not comment.
Olivarez signed a contract with Premier five months after the Costa Rica trip
involving the former Bexar County sheriff. Gonzalez signed a contract in
September 2004. Premier's principals, Patrick and Michael LeBlanc, also own
LCS Correctional Services, which is building a private prison to house
federal inmates near Robstown. A receptionist at Premier referred all
questions to the company's chief executive officer, Chris Burch, who did not
respond. An attorney for the company, Tonya Webber of Corpus Christi, said
her clients have not been commenting because of the open investigation in
Bexar County. She said she would check with her clients for comment on the
local contracts but did not respond after that. Kaelin
and Mata both cited performance issues with Premier as reasons for
terminating the contract. Mata said the Bexar investigation also played a
part. "What I'm trying to do is just protect this county," Mata
said. "I'm not trying to pass any judgment if something was done
wrong." Kaelin said his decision was based
solely on Premier's performance. He met with Premier officials about
complaints before ending the agreement, according to correspondence the
Caller-Times obtained under the Texas Public Information Act. Kaelin and Premier also tangled over payments. A new
contract, with Keefe Supply, also is potentially more lucrative for the
county. The Premier contract gave the county $130,000 or 31 percent of net
sales, whichever was greater. The new contract gives a minimum of 39 percent
with the possibility of 41 percent after the first year. Texas law gives
sheriffs sole discretion over commissary contracts. Commissaries supply
snacks, such as chips, candy bars and soda, as well as certain toiletries,
for inmates. Friends and family put money in an inmate's account to spend on
commissary items. A county's proceeds must be used for commissary staff,
social needs of inmates (such as education or counseling), libraries, writing
materials, clothing, hygiene items or other programs that contribute to
inmates' well-being, according to state law. Kaelin
said he uses commissary profits to buy newspaper subscriptions, televisions
and uniforms. Kaelin said inmates frequently
complained about Premier's service. Under that system, inmates would order
items to be packed into bags, shipped from San Antonio and handed out the
next day. Kaelin said his office received numerous
complaints about items being damaged or wrong. Keefe stores items at the
Nueces County Jail McKenzie Annex and brings items around on a cart twice a
week so inmates can choose and receive items immediately, Kaelin
said. Premier's accounting system also allowed inmates to buy on credit, and
as a result some inmates would leave custody owing money to Nueces County, Kaelin said. Keefe's system charges inmates' accounts
directly by scanning a bracelet inmates wear. An inmate can't buy items
unless there is enough money in the account.
September 9, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez and some of his friends weren't the only
ones in South Texas who enjoyed the benefits of helping Premier Management
Enterprises secure lucrative jail commissary contracts, according to interviews
and records examined by the San Antonio Express-News. Like Lopez, the
sheriffs of two other counties awarded contracts to the Louisiana jail
services company, and either they or their associates reaped financial
benefits. Those sheriffs, now out of office, also boasted to their staffs
about going on a golf and fishing trip to Costa Rica with Premier officials,
the same trip that last week forced Lopez to resign. Here in Kleberg County,
then-Sheriff Tony Gonzalez, a close friend of Lopez, gave Premier a contract
to run his jail commissary when he was in office in 2004 and has been paid by
the company for consulting work of an unknown nature. "I've done some
consulting for them here and there," Gonzalez told the Express-News
during a brief interview at his ranch-style home on the outskirts of
Kingsville, declining to elaborate. "I'm just down here keeping my nose
clean." In Nueces County, one associate of former Sheriff Larry
Olivarez, another Lopez friend, reaped rewards after helping Premier win a jail
commissary contract there in 2005. The associate, a commercial real estate
broker who was appointed by the sheriff to an ad hoc committee that awarded
the contract, later earned a commission from the sale of 56 acres where LCS
Corrections Services Inc., another company owned in part by Premier's
principals, is building a private detention center, the Express-News has
learned. In addition, the former sheriff's chief deputy won political backing
from LCS when he ran as a candidate to replace Olivarez, who had stepped down
to run for county judge. Premier, which has come up repeatedly in an ongoing
public corruption investigation in Bexar County for doing favors for
influential people in a position to help the company, has denied any
wrongdoing. That investigation, so far, has narrowly targeted only
individuals in Bexar County, such as Lopez and his longtime campaign manager,
John Reynolds, and Reynolds' financial relationship with the sheriff's wife.
Lopez, Reynolds and at least one of their associates helped Premier land the
local jail food commissary contract in 2005. As part of an immunity deal with
Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, the sheriff resigned, effective
Sept. 19, and pleaded no contest Tuesday to three misdemeanor charges, two of
which were related to the Costa Rica golf outing he accepted from Premier.
The deal protected him from further state prosecution; his wife wasn't
indicted. Reynolds, who played a key role in awarding the contract to
Premier, is suspected by Reed of bribery, extortion, theft, money laundering
and campaign finance violations. He also went on the Costa Rica trip and
received checks totaling more than $30,000 from Premier and one of its owners
for consulting and donations to fake charities Reynolds set up. An associate
of both Reynolds and the sheriff, John E. Curran, voted with Reynolds on a
jail board to give Premier the commissary contract, then won a contract
himself from Premier to provide temporary workers for the operation. Largely
unexamined is the broader picture of how Premier, its owners, Patrick and
Michael LeBlanc, and LCS conducted a business expansion with local government
partners throughout South Texas. A closer look at some of those operations
reveals similarities in conduct with local officials that have drawn none of
the law enforcement or media scrutiny seen in Bexar County. Nueces County
Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who succeeded Olivarez, is
among those who have been watching the news from San Antonio with keen
interest because LCS is about to open an 800-bed prison in his county. So
far, no law enforcement agency has contacted him, Kaelin
said. Close relationships -- LeBlanc-run companies Premier and LCS operate
jail-related businesses in five South Texas counties. The first started in
Brooks County in 2000. They have embarked on an aggressive expansion in
recent years that has capitalized on tighter federal immigration control
policies. In addition to the work at Bexar County Jail, the companies also
operate jails, commissaries or full-scale prisons in Brooks, Kleberg, Hidalgo
and Nueces counties. They also run four jails in the LeBlancs'
home state of Louisiana and one in Alabama. Current Texas law makes sheriffs
key gatekeepers for contracts such as those sought by Premier and to a
certain extent by the prison-building LCS. Under current law, Texas sheriffs
have almost unchecked authority to contract management of their commissaries
with no competitive bidding. County commissioners must approve deals to build
private prisons but often keep their sheriffs closely in the loop as resident
overseers and advisers. Premier, LCS or sometimes both arrived in counties
served by sheriffs who maintained close personal relationships with one
another and with Bexar County's Lopez, according to interviews with personnel
in several offices. Lopez's office calendar for the past few years shows he
often traveled to visit Kleberg's Gonzalez on weekends for golfing and that
Gonzalez traveled to San Antonio. The calendar also shows a number of trips
to visit Olivarez in Corpus Christi, where he still lives in a house near a
golf course. At the Kleberg County Sheriff's Office, Gonzalez's former
staffers say the three were often joined in golfing and hunting outings by
other sheriffs and elected officials in counties where Premier or LCS are
doing business today. Among them was Balde Lozano
of Brooks County, who did not return three calls for this story. "He
kept a close-knit circle of friends," said Yvonne Barbour, Gonzalez's
former office administrator. "I know Tony was a big golfer." Those
relationships would later prove mutually beneficial for the Louisiana
companies and the sheriffs or their friends. Gonzalez, for instance, used his
relationships in Nueces County to help Premier and LCS gain entrance there.
Assistant Deputy Chief Peter B. Peralta, who worked in the office when LSC
first began courting county business, remembered that it was Gonzalez who
made the introductions. Later, Gonzalez approved giving Premier a food
commissary contract for his jail during his final weeks in office. At some
point either before or after Gonzalez left office in late 2004, he accepted
private consulting work from Premier's owners, he and a company official
acknowledged. When Gonzalez transferred the commissary contract to Premier,
two lifelong Kingsville residents, brothers who run a small local grocery,
felt the pain. Betos Community Grocery had held the
contract since the 1970s and had come to rely on the modest commissary
revenue as competition from large grocery stores cut into Betos'
bottom line. They were told they should only bid for the contract if they had
a sophisticated computer system. "We didn't even get one computer until
last year," said Juan Garza, who co-owns the grocery with his brother
Albert and supported Gonzalez's last failed re-election bid. "It
hurt." It remains unclear what kind of consulting work Gonzalez did for
the company or when it started. But former five-term Brooks County Judge Joe
B. Garcia recalled one occasion — after Gonzalez lost his election — that he
came calling, apparently after hearing that Garcia had begun agitating for
Brooks County to renegotiate better terms from its LCS detention center
contract. It was during this time that Gonzalez phoned Garcia wanting to meet
for lunch and talk about local LCS operations. "I've known Tony for a
while. But I didn't want to talk to him about my contract with LCS,"
Garcia said. Garcia remembered another story he found disturbing, when
Michael LeBlanc himself showed up at his office, accompanied by the man
Garcia had just beaten in the election. That LeBlanc would travel to South
Texas was not unusual; he often has personally tended to his business
affairs. But Garcia said what he heard made him feel uncomfortable.
"They said if I had a campaign debt, they would contribute to my
campaign," Garcia said. He said he told them he had no campaign debt to
pay off and wouldn't have accepted the offer even if he did. "A lot of
people try to do those type of things," Garcia said. "I've always
been the type who, hey, I've worked hard for my education. I don't have fancy
cars, no ranches." Attorneys for LCS and Premier have declined all
requests for interviews regarding the ongoing investigation in Bexar County
or for this report. Last year, the LeBlancs sued
the Express-News, alleging they were libeled in articles the paper published
in late 2005. The lawsuit is pending. But Chris Burch, chief executive
officer of Premier, acknowledged that Gonzalez had done some consulting work
for the company under an arrangement with a predecessor, Ian Williamson, who
is no longer with the company. Burch said he was not privy to any details
about that work. Gonzalez still may be working for the company as a paid
consultant, Burch said. "I do know he has done some consulting work, but
I'm not the one who put this together." Benefits and campaign -- Like
Gonzalez, then-Nueces County Sheriff Olivarez helped Premier land a
commissary deal in his jail during his final days in office in late 2005. He
then quit, as required, to run for county judge. During his time as sheriff,
LCS had a "pass through" contract with Nueces to refer federal
prisoners to its other Texas facilities, and it advanced a proposal to build
the 800-bed detention center, now nearing completion. The project is expected
to generate $800,000 for the county in inmate transfer payments, plus
$350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. The Express-News has learned an ally of
Olivarez benefited financially from LCS' effort to build the detention center
— after helping the sheriff give the jail commissary contract to Premier.
Corpus Christi commercial real estate broker and developer Tim Clower served in late 2005 on an ad hoc selection
committee the sheriff appointed to examine bids for the commissary management
job, according to the office of Kaelin, the current
sheriff. In February 2006, several months after Clower
voted for the commissary contract, he brokered a real estate purchase of 56.6
acres on behalf of LCS for the $20 million detention center. The property's
seller, Patricia Ann Bernsen, said Clower's company
approached her and brokered the purchase of her farmland for $4,000 an acre,
or $225,000. "He did get a commission, that's for sure," Bernsen
said, declining to say how much. "It was a good commission." On
average, commercial real estate agents earn between 6 percent and 10 percent,
according to one South Texas commercial real estate broker. At the time of
the sale, the 2006 sheriff's primary race was heating up. Clower
co-signed for a $20,000 campaign loan to Olivarez's former chief deputy, Jimmy
Rodriguez, whose opponent at the time was publicly criticizing him for
helping bring LCS to town. LCS went to Rodriguez's aid by lambasting his
opponent. At one point in the campaign, LCS went public with a threat to halt
construction of its detention center if Rodriguez did not win the Democratic
primary. "We're not going to work with or for someone who doesn't
respect our company," Michael LeBlanc was quoted in the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times as saying about Rodriguez's opponent. "If Mr. (Pete) Alvarez
wins, we're out of Nueces County — plain and simple," LeBlanc said.
Rodriguez won the primary but lost the general election. Last week, he
insisted that he was paying off the $20,000 bank loan he said Clower co-signed. "He's been a friend for a long time,"
Olivarez's former chief deputy said of Clower.
"He had a long history with the department before we even got
there." Clower did not return repeated calls
seeking comment about the loan or his commission on the LCS land purchase.
Traveling together -- The Express-News could not substantiate or refute
comments from those in the Sheriff's Office that Olivarez, while he was
sheriff, went on the same Costa Rica trip in August 2005 with Lopez, Reynolds
and Premier officials. Olivarez did not return numerous phone calls or
respond to a message left during a visit to his home. Kaelin
said Olivarez boasted of the Costa Rica trip and a separate hunting trip to
employees who remain on staff. Kleberg's Gonzalez, while in office, also told
some of his staff of going on the same Costa Rica trip, said Kleberg Sheriff
Ed Mata, who beat Gonzalez in the 2004 election. Mata conceded that he can't
prove the story, but he wondered why no one has investigated as in Bexar
County. Gonzalez, during the recent interview at his home near Kingsville,
was asked several times if he would deny going on the trip. He declined each
time. The Costa Rica trip was not the only reputed benefit Kaelin heard about in regard to Olivarez. Shortly after
taking office, Kaelin said, a staff person phoned
him to report that Olivarez had appeared with a small group of businesspeople
seeking to tour the detention center project. Kaelin
said he was told that Olivarez had represented himself as an "unpaid
spokesperson for LCS." Kaelin called LCS
officials to inquire as to whether Olivarez might have been hired to run the
detention center, a prospect Kaelin worried would
undermine his office's working relationship with it. But he was told Olivarez
had no known connection to the company or employment prospects. Bexar Sheriff
Lopez's office calendar indicates he planned to attend the detention center
groundbreaking with Olivarez on Feb. 23, 2006, after Olivarez had left office
to run, unsuccessfully it turned out, for judge. Today, Olivarez works as a
manager for the Corpus Christi branch of CGT Law Group International,
according to a woman who answered the phone there. Richard Harbison, a vice
president in charge of LCS' Texas operations, is certain that Olivarez has
had no financial relationship with LCS. As he was preparing to take his own
vacation to Costa Rica, Harbison also said by phone that he was unaware of
any paid trips involving sheriffs in Texas and the LeBlancs.
Burch, of Premier, said he was not working for the company at the time of the
August 2005 trip. In Bexar County, where the public corruption investigation
has been in high gear lately, District Attorney Susan Reed has said she is
mainly interested in prosecuting local individuals such as Reynolds, whom she
called "rotten fruit." None of Premier's San Antonio offices have
been searched, Reed acknowledged. "I'm not finished, so I'm not ready to
make any definitive determination yet" about Premier, she said. The FBI
and Texas Rangers, which have been involved in the Bexar County investigation,
aren't commenting. Patrick LeBlanc, who last week formally became a candidate
for the Louisiana Legislature, is running in part on a message that he will
fight against political corruption that "robs us of our confidence in
government." Last week, he told the Lafayette Advocate that he has been
cooperating with investigators in Bexar County but couldn't elaborate.
"We haven't done anything wrong," he told the newspaper. "I
would never, ever risk my integrity over selling candy bars and potato
chips."
July 14, 2006 Correctional News
Concern over conditions at the Nueces County Jail resulted in the removal
of 55 federal inmates — a potential loss of nearly $1 million in revenue for
the county. County commissioners grew concerned after complaints of clogged
plumbing, lack of water and insect bites were brought forth by inmates housed
in the aging facility. Officials say that the facility requires renovations
and have ordered a full report on all reported problems. The U.S. Marshals
Service, which pays the county $45 per day to house federal inmates,
transferred the prisoners to facilities in Aransas, Jim Wells, Victoria,
Karnes, Bee and Brooks counties.
April 13, 2006 Caller-Times
The county's deal to build a $20 million detention center near Robstown
is on no matter what the outcome of November's general election between
sheriff candidates Jimmy Rodriguez, a Democrat, and Republican Jim Kaelin. LCS Correction Services Inc. officials said
earlier this week they'd pull out if former police chief Pete Alvarez was elected
as the Democrats' nominee for county sheriff in Tuesday's primary runoff, but
after Rodriguez's win, the company's CEO says plans will move forward.
"The dust will be flying out there in late May or early June," said
Michael LeBlanc, chief executive officer. The company expressed reservations
about the project after hearing ads supporting Alvarez refer to a
Louisiana-based corrections firm that owns facilities where rapes and
beatings occur. The ad said Rodriguez helped bring the company, which was not
named in the advertisement, to the area. LCS is based in Louisiana.
"We're not going to work with or for someone who doesn't respect our
company," LeBlanc said Monday. "If Mr. Alvarez wins, we're out of
Nueces County - plain and simple." The facility would house federal
inmates awaiting trial and is expected to bring in about $800,000 for inmate
transfers, plus $350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. LCS broke ground on a federal
detention facility between Robstown and Driscoll last month. Alvarez said
Wednesday that LSC should not have discussed the candidates leading up to the
runoff, calling it unethical. "My problem is they got involved," he
said. Rodriguez said last week he hoped LSC would remain committed to the
Nueces County project. "We need it," he said.
April 9, 2006 KRIS TV
The company proposing a detention center in Robstown has issued an
ultimatum that could effect
the outcome of the Democratic runoff for sheriff. Friday evening, LCS
Correctional Services confirmed to 6 News that if Pete Alvarez defeats Jimmy
Rodriguez in the runoff on Tuesday, they won't build a federal detention
center here in Nueces County. Thursday, company officials told 6 News they
wouldn't make that kind of announcement until after the election, but they've
obviously changed their minds. Here's how it works, LCS wants to house
federal inmates. But those inmates technically would go through the Nueces
County Jail First, before being sent to the LCS Detention Center near
Robstown. The company said if there's a Nueces County Sheriff that doesn't
have confidence in the LCS operation, the inmates won't be sent to the
private jail and the company doesn't make money. It is the latest controversy
in a race that seems to have had plenty already. "If Pete gets elected,
they will pull out," said sheriff's Jimmy Rodriguez. He announced the
company's ultimatum during a live debate on the cable show "South Texas
Politics". He said the company's president told him that just a short
time beforehand. He blames the campaign ads of Pete Alvarez that questioned
LCS's history of escapes and cases of abuse. "If you had a company, and
somebody attacked you and told lies about you and incited the community to
turn against you, and not to want you, I don't know if I would come here
either," Rodriguez said.
April 6, 2006 KRIS TV
LULAC claims a private prison company that county leaders approved poses
a danger to the community. LCS Correctional Services is planning to build a
large detention center in western Nueces County. Leaders of LULAC Thursday
called it a bad move, but supporters of the project said the complaint is
merely for political gain in the runoff election next week. At the news
conference Thursday afternoon, the president of LULAC said the community is
tired of all the mudslinging in the sheriff's race. But moments later she
questioned one candidate's involvement in what LULAC considers a deal that
threatens public safety. "We want to bring public attention to a
potentially dangerous situation brewing in Nueces County," said Nancy
Vera. That situation is a federal detention center being built between
Robstown and Driscoll. Officials broke ground on it back in February, but
LULAC President Nancy Vera says LCS has a history the public should know
about. "We have discovered some very disturbing information." Vera
said. She claims LCS Correctional services has experienced numerous escapes
and cases of prisoner abuse. Vera is asking the commissioners court and in
particular Jimmy Rodriguez why those issues were never discussed. 6 News
asked Jimmy Rodriguez if he felt LCS was a legitimate company. Rodriguez
replied, "I think LCS spoke for themselves. They're a reputable
company." Rodriguez said the idea that he had any direct involvement in
the LSC contract is completely misleading. He said it's just a political
attack on a company trying to make a large investment in the area. "$20
million investing, 300 jobs, this is good for the economy, and to have it all
put in jeopardy because of incompetency is tragic," Rodriguez said.
"The commissioners court met with LCS, reviewed LCS, and awarded LCS.
They thought it was a good thing. They handled the contract."
April 5, 2006 Caller-Times
The latest political mudfest in the race for Nueces
County sheriff is originating in Pete Alvarez's political camp. Alvarez's new
"Bad Jimmy" television ads, claim that his opponent Jimmy Rodriguez
is responsible for the recent erroneous release of six jail inmates and that
Rodriguez is responsible for a series of lawsuits filed against Nueces County
over problems with the jail. Another Alvarez ad has raised questions about
whether a Louisiana prison administrator might ditch a plan to build a
detention facility in the county. The ad doesn't name the company in
question, but says a Louisiana-based company the county has contracted with
has an unsatisfactory record with the treatment of its inmates. The ad is
aimed at the sheriff's department's administration for its advocacy of the
company. Last month LCS Correction Services Inc. broke ground on a federal
detention facility between Robstown and Driscoll. The facility, under
contract with Nueces County, is expected to bring in about $800,000 for
inmate transfers, plus $350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. A statement released by
the company said the owners were upset by the ad. "We admit the operations
of prisons do not create a perfect world because we deal daily with imperfect
people," Chief Executive Officer Michael LeBlanc said in the statement.
"But there has never been a death or a suicide at any LCS Corrections
facility in the Company's 16-year history." Company officials refused to
comment on whether the ad has now jeopardized the plans to build the
corrections facility, saying it might unfairly impact the election. Nueces
County Precinct 4 Commissioner Chuck Cazalas said
he didn't understand why Alvarez's ad targeted Rodriguez for something former
Sheriff Larry Olivarez championed. He also said everything he knew about LCS
indicated they were a quality firm. "I think they are supposed to be a
good company. Everything I heard about them was pretty good," Cazalas said. "I understand . . . that the company
is supposedly thinking of pulling out." Alvarez said his ads are a
response to ads Rodriguez is running. The Rodriguez campaign says they did
not fire the first negative campaign volley, but they are preparing to fire
back, with new ads targeting Alvarez's record as police chief. "Pete's
radio spot hitting on jail releases was first," said Rodriguez's
campaign consultant Jeff Butler. "We had a response saying, 'No it's not
true.' He hit us first, so we responded and it went from there." Alvarez
denied that his team was first on the assault. "I tried my best to keep
a professional and clean campaign and they decided to throw the garbage
out," he said. "And we have to defend ourselves. This is not
something we initiated from the beginning. The public needs to understand
that what is being said about me is simply not true." The Rodriguez
campaign contends that ads they are running against Alvarez are
"infomercials" based on research and news stories outlining
Alvarez's record that have run on television and in the newspaper in the
past, Butler said. Butler said the Rodriguez camp is not responsible for an
anti-Alvarez flier mailed in February by political action committee Citizens
for Nueces County that may have sparked some of the rancor in the campaign.
The flier said Alvarez was more than a million dollars over budget as police
chief in 2001, that he tried to cover up an incident where his son was
driving drunk, that he had been sued for misconduct and retaliation and that
he had plagiarized a strategic plan. Butler said Tuesday the campaign also
did not put out a new flier that came out this week saying Alvarez treats
women like second-class citizens. The flier cites a Caller-Times article about
a grievance filed by female Corpus Christi police officers, who said Alvarez
had "relegated them to second-class status." Alvarez would not
comment on specific allegations Tuesday but reiterated that neither flier is
true. The only member of the political action committee listed in campaign
filings is Roland Gaona, who could not be reached
for comment Tuesday. Though Alvarez and Rodriguez would not take
responsibility for throwing the first mud, both campaigns said Tuesday they
are prepared to duke it out to the last - the April 11 runoff. Rodriguez said
he hopes the nastiness won't get any worse. Butler nodded in response to
whether he thought the campaign would get any nastier and nodded again that
the Rodriguez team is ready for battle. "I knew the only way they could
win was to go negative on us," Butler said. "Especially after the
primary when Pete only got 40 percent. Everybody knew who Pete was. His 40
percent told me that 60 percent of the voters were voting against him."
Alvarez said future ads from his camp will come from watching what Rodriguez
does and then responding. "We have to strategize," Alvarez said.
"This is a campaign, a political campaign. We have to defend ourselves,
or the public will begin to believe the nonsense his campaign has come out
with."
Oaks
Treatment Center
Austin, Texas
Browns Schools
August 28, 2003
The parents of two girls who said their children were raped at a treatment
center for troubled youth have sued the center. In a civil lawsuit
filed Wednesday in state District Court in Travis County, the girls' mothers
accuse the Oaks Treatment Center of being negligent in appointing a
19-year-old man to supervise the shower and dormitory facilities for teenage
girls. The center also failed to properly screen, hire and supervise
employees and did not provide enough security and safeguards for patients,
the lawsuit contends. "It's a lot worse because these girls were
there to get help for emotional and psychological issues," said John
Thomas, a lawyer representing one of the girls. "And it's kind of like a
boat coming up on a castaway on the ocean and throwing them a life-preserver
with rocks in it." The center, at 1407 W. Stassney
Lane in South Austin, is part of the Brown Schools, a network of therapeutic
programs for troubled children found throughout the United States. The
Brown School Behavioral Health System, its owners, McCown De Leeuw & Co.
and Psychiatric Solutions Inc. -- a Tennessee company that owns the Oaks
Treatment Center -- also have been sued. Representatives for the company
could not be reached for comment. Wednesday's lawsuit is not the first
time the Brown Schools has been surrounded by controversy. Chase Moody, a
17-year-old who was enrolled in a camp in Mason County, died Oct. 14 after he
was restrained by at least three camp staff members because of what the
company described as a violent outburst. The On Track program was cited
for 28 violations of state standards in connection with Moody's death. The
company appealed. A criminal investigation is ongoing. Edward Johnson,
the 19-year-old man named in the lawsuit, pleaded guilty in one of the cases
in state District Court in June to indecency with a child by contact, a
second-degree felony, and was sentenced to five years in prison. The
second case is still pending. The girls' names and the names of their mothers
were withheld because of the nature of the crime. Howard Falkenberg, a
spokesman for the Brown Schools, said the company would study the
lawsuit. "We regret any time there's an accusation or an incident
of this type" Falkenberg said. "These matters aren't always quite
as they seem, so you have to be careful in working them through."
The lawsuit claims officials at the Oaks Treatment Center lied to one of the
mothers, who lives in Alaska, when they told her that no current or former
Oaks employes had ever had a history of physical or
sexual abuse and that there had been no abuse at the Oaks or any of the Brown
Schools. Those statements were false, the lawsuit contends, because at
least one former employee of the Oaks had a history of committing physical
and sexual abuse and youths had been abused at the Brown Schools'
facilities. The lawsuit seeks reimbursement for mental anguish and
medical expenses but does not specify an amount. (American-Statesman)
June 20, 2003
The owners of a Hill Country wilderness camp where a teenager died in October
have filed a pre-emptive legal strike in an attempt to avoid litigation by
the boy's family and to keep the case in Mason County. The Brown
Schools, a Delaware corporation with operations based in Austin, filed a
petition in state District Court in Mason County earlier this month, asking a
judge to rule that any dispute over the death of 17-year-old Chase Moody at
the On Track therapeutic wilderness program be turned over to a binding
arbitration panel. The court filing, which names Chase's mother and
father as defendants, says the family agreed to as much in a contract signed
by Chase's mother before the teen was enrolled in the camp. Lawyers for
the Brown Schools, which operates youth-oriented therapeutic programs across
the country, filed the petition June 6 -- the same day they met with the Moodys' lawyers, who include Johnnie Cochran, the
high-profile attorney who successfully defended O.J. Simpson. David
McLaughlin, a lawyer in the Cochran Firm who is working on the case, called
the Brown Schools' petition premature because the family has not sued.
"We're (still) weighing our options," he said Thursday.
Howard Falkenberg, the Brown Schools' spokesman in Austin, said company
officials were aware that the Moodys are
considering legal action and filed the petition to make clear their opinion
that any dispute with the family should be handled outside the
courtroom. Should a judge disagree, Falkenberg said, the company at
least wanted to establish grounds for the case to be considered in Mason
County. "That's where the admissions agreement was signed, and
that's where his management was, and that's where his unfortunate death
occurred," Falkenberg said. "All those things just seem to argue
that that's where the matter should be handled." Chase, who lived
with his mother in Richardson, was sent to the camp to work out anger issues
and other behavioral problems. He died there Oct. 14 after being physically
restrained by at least three camp staff members because of what the company
said was a violent outburst. According to an autopsy, Chase suffocated
on his own vomit, a report disputed by the Brown Schools. Officials
with the company have repeatedly said their staff acted appropriately in
handling the situation. State investigators disagree and have accused
the staff members involved of physical abuse in connection with the death.
The state also cited the camp for 28 violations of state standards after a
licensing investigation of the incident. The staff members are
appealing the findings, as is the Brown Schools, even though the company
closed the camp for unrelated reasons shortly after Chase's death. He was the
fifth youth to die after being restrained in the company's Texas facilities
since 1988. (Austin American-Statesman)
February 14, 2003
The Brown Schools, the Tennessee-based company whose Texas centers for
troubled teens have been cited by authorities in the deaths of several
youths, announced Thursday that it will sell its behavioral health-care
business for $63 million. Texas centers in the deal include the Oaks
Treatment Center in Austin , the San Marcos
Treatment Center and the Laurel Ridge Hospital in San Antonio . All treat
emotionally and behaviorally troubled children and adolescents. In the sale, three residential treatment centers in
Virginia, Colorado and Oklahoma will be turned over to Psychiatric Solutions
Inc., a publicly traded company also based in Tennessee. Dallas
. In the past two decades, some of its operations have come
under scrutiny by various states and law enforcement agencies because of
restraint-related deaths and licensing and human rights' violations. Most
recently, 17-year-old Chase Moody of Richardson died in October after being
restrained at the company's now-closed Hill Country wilderness camp in Mason County . The incident is the subject of a criminal
investigation. Since 1988, five youths, including Moody, have died after
being restrained while in the Brown Schools' care. Two of the deaths occurred
at the Laurel Ridge facility in San Antonio . The
other two occurred at facilities that have since been sold by the company. In
addition, the Brown Schools of Virginia facility has been cited more than 100
times for human rights and licensing violations since it opened in January
2001. Some of the accusations were that staff members used unnecessary
physical restraints, acted physically aggressive, punished residents by
refusing to let them use the bathroom and injected residents with medication
to control them before exhausting other de-escalation options. In one case, a
staff member was accused of grabbing a boy by the neck, throwing him to the ground
and threatening to kill him. (American-Statesman)
March 12, 2002
Police are looking for a man charged in the rape of a 16-year-old girl at a
treatment center for troubled youth. Alexander Johnson, 51, is charged with
sexual assault of a child, a second-degree felony that could bring a sentence
of up to 20 years in prison. A warrant for his arrest was issued Thursday,
but authorities had not found him as of late Monday. The alleged assault is
said to have taken place last month at the Oaks Treatment Center, where the
girl was a patient. The center, at 1407 W. Stassney
Lane in South Austin, is part of the Brown Schools, a system that operates in
10 states and Puerto Rico and is devoted to helping troubled children.
Johnson was a desk counselor at the center, which treats and houses about 70
children. The girl was receiving psychiatric treatment, officials at the
center said. Johnson was arrested in 1995 and was accused of beating his
adolescent son. The charges were dismissed after he attended parenting
classes. Officials at the center said they were unaware of the prior arrest.
Allegations of misconduct and abuse are fairly common at the center, but this
is the first time police have filed charges of sexual abuse, said Mack
Wigley, director of the center. "We suspend employees all the
time," Wigley said. (Austin American-Statesmen)
Parker County Jail
Parker County, Texas
Community Education Centers
Nov 25, 2018 weatherforddemocrat.com
CEC, Alvarez family reach settlement
A settlement in the federal lawsuit against Community
Education Centers Inc. and other CEC employees by the parents of Charles
“Charlie” Alvarez, 25, who died Feb. 7, 2015 in the Parker County Jail, has
been finalized. “Charlie’s death was the result of the inherent problem of
private jails — they prioritize profits over people. This business model
regularly endangers the lives of people who, like Charlie, experience medical
emergencies while detained in a private jail,” the family’s attorney Corinna
Chandler said. “Without reform, people will continue to unnecessarily suffer
and die in private jails. We are committed to continuing to focus on this
important issue in pursuit of meaningful reform.” Chandler said the terms of
the settlement are confidential. “It’s been a very long and painful legal
process and I am glad that part is over,” Alvarez’s mother, Susan Hitshew, said. “It was never about money and now I can
focus on seeing changes using Charlie’s case, the jail and the staff were so
cruel to my son and it’s just not acceptable for anyone to be treated that
way. And they laughed at my son while he was dying. I forgive them but I want
them to change their training or lack of training. There have been way too
many deaths in Parker County.” According to a previous article by the Weatherford
Democrat, Alvarez was found beaten and lying in the roadway in the 100 block
of North Denton Street about 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2015 after attending a
party. He was arrested for alleged public intoxication and while in the
Parker County Jail made complaints of trouble breathing for more than 20
minutes before an ambulance was called. Alvarez was later pronounced dead at
Plaza Medical Center in Fort Worth. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s
Office ruled that Alvarez died of undetermined causes and found it was a
sudden death caused by multi-organ failure due to anoxic encephalopathy and
terminal bowel ischemia with hemorrhage. Two people were charged with the
assault on Alvarez — Alexandra Dover and Evan Scott Gustin.
According to court records in January 2016, Dover pleaded guilty to assault
causing bodily injury and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, which she had
already served while awaiting trial. Gustin, 22,
was found guilty of assault causing bodily injury in October 2017 and was
assessed a 365-day sentence and a $4,000 fine. “[Jail staff’s] deliberate
decision to take no action, in accordance with company policy and practices,
was callous and fatal,” Chandler said. “They robbed a young man of his future
simply because he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Chandler sent the response filed to the defendants’ motion for summary
judgement documents to the Democrat. “There can be no dispute that Charlie
had a serious medical need. A layperson could, and several actually did,
observe that Charlie was in need of an ambulance and emergency medical care
at a hospital emergency room,” according to the documents. “In fact, a number
of jailers have admitted that they recognized that need long before an
ambulance was finally called. But perhaps the most startling ‘questionable
behavior’ is the fact that the jail staff decided to change the clothes of a
dying man to perpetuate the fiction that CEC was not responsible for his
suffering and death because he was never in CEC’s custody. The jail staff
decided that it was more important to get Charlie out of CEC’s uniform than
it was to attempt to save his life and both CEC and its witnesses have
continued to justify that action since.” According to the document CEC does
not believe its medical policies apply to detainees before they are booked
into the jail and CEC maintains that Alvarez was never booked in and was not
responsible for medical care, in part, because he did not sign a consent for
treatment form. Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler agreed that Alvarez was
never booked into the jail. “[Alvarez] was never booked in this jail, never,”
Fowler said. “That’s why we didn’t get sued.” Chandler said a trial would
have forced Alvarez’s family to extend their agony over the loss of their
son. “They are relieved to put this part of their fight for justice behind
them,” Chandler said.
Jun 5, 2016 weatherforddemocrat.com
Family of Alvarez files federal lawsuit in Dallas
The family of Charles Alvarez, who died last year in
the Parker County Jail, has filed a federal lawsuit in Dallas, alleging he
received improper medical care. Alvarez, 25, died after he was taken to jail
by a Weatherford police officer who found him collapsed in the street on Feb.
7, 2015. An autopsy determined Alvarez died from internal complications,
including internal bleeding, “multi-organ failure,” and heart failure. Police
believe Alvarez was assaulted shortly before an officer found him lying in
the middle of the roadway in the 100 block of North Denton Street near
several people and an SUV stopped in the street. At the Parker
County Jail, Alvarez repeatedly complained of being unable to breathe for
more than 20 minutes before an ambulance was called. Jail personnel began
performing CPR on Alvarez when he became unresponsive seconds after an
ambulance was requested. Though a Parker County grand jury declined to indict
anyone in the death of Alvarez, Weatherford police obtained arrest warrants
for 20-year-old Evan Gustin and 20-year-old Rachel
Dover and arrested them on misdemeanor charges of assault. At the time of
Alvarez’s arrest for alleged public intoxication, the county jail in
Weatherford was operated by a private, New Jersey-based company, Community
Education Centers Inc. The federal lawsuit, filed by Alvarez’s parents, names
CEC and seven unidentified CEC jail staffers as plaintiffs.
February 23, 2010 Mineral Wells Index
The second arson suspect was released Saturday from the Parker County jail
after posting $50,000 bond on a charge of arson. Like former Mineral Wells
patrolman John Gore, official records for alleged arson accomplice Jeff
Gulley show no issues during his time working as a patrol officer for Ranger
in late 2006 and 2007. Current Ranger Police Chief Elton McCoy, who was not
with the department at the time, said Gulley's personnel records indicate
Gulley resigned in good standing to pursue another job in June 2007 and show
no record of write-ups during his several months on the Ranger police force.
Gulley – along with Gore, who faces four counts of arson – held a valid peace
officer license in the state when he was arrested Thursday on a charge of
arson. Gulley also holds a temporary jailer license from the state. Warden
Ron King of Community Education Centers, the contracting company managing the
Parker County jail, confirmed Monday that Gulley worked as a jailer in Parker
County between June and September and was not rehireable
when he left. Before receiving a temporary jailers license from the state,
Gulley would have had to pass a college entrance exam, a psychological exam
and a physical exam, according to King. Gulley also worked as a correctional
officer with Corrections Corporation of America at the Mineral Wells
pre-parole facility between November 2008 and December 2009, CCA spokesperson
Maria White confirmed Monday. Fellow officers who worked with Gore expressed
surprise last week at his arrest. Police Chief Mike McAllester
said Gore had never been disciplined and was a model officer. McAllester said they are investigating fires as far back
as 2001. Gore and Gulley are reported to be close friends and have known each
other since they attended school together. Gore was charged with three counts
of arson Tuesday after he was stopped by a Mineral Wells patrol officer near
three suspicious fires in the Wolters Industrial Park area and questioned.
During the initial interview, Gore reportedly provided information about
seven fires, including the three fires Tuesday, and provided information
about a second suspect, according to police. Parker County officials reported
Gore confessed to starting a fire Feb. 3 which destroyed a two-story storage
building and implicated Gulley. During two interviews with the Parker County
Fire Marshal's office last week, Gulley allegedly “exposed his involvement in
the Feb. 3 arson” and confessed to being involved with two other fires, a
grass fire and a structure fire that did not fully ignite.
Physicians Network Association
Lubbock, Texas
February 15, 2009 Trans Border Project
Complaints about medical care at the Reeves County Detention Center
aren’t new. In 2007 an inmate went on a hunger strike protesting inadequate
medical care. When inmates protested after the death of an inmate in solitary
confinement on December 12, 2008, they alleged that medical deficiencies and
malpractice were widespread. Six weeks later the immigrant inmates rioted
again with the same demands that they be provided with decent medical care.
Juan Angel Guerra, a South Texas attorney who was the former district
attorney in Willacy County, says some 200 inmates at the immigrant prison
have enlisted his services to address their concerns about medical and other
abuses. During the week of the Jan. 31 disturbance, the county kept the
prison on “lockdown,” denying access to reporters and all others, including
Guerra. Neither the county, which owns the prisons, nor GEO Group, which runs
the immigrant prison, released any information about the concerns of the
rioting prisoners, simply saying in brief releases that the “issues” were
being resolved. Similarly, the Bureau of Prisons, which contracts with Reeves
County, to hold the immigrant prisoners, ignored public requests for
information. A full week after authorities said that they restored control
over the prison, County Attorney Alva Alvarez sent a letter to Guerra denying
his request to meet with his clients. "We are doing everything possible
to meet your request," Reeves County Attorney Alva Alvarez wrote.
"However, since the facility was destroyed, there is no secure place for
you to meet with your clients at this time." Reeves County Detention
Center is not a maximum-security prison. It has been variously described by
prison officials as a minimum or low-security facility – hence the “detention
center” designation. The immigrants detained at the Pecos prison are not violent
criminal offenders but rather immigrants, often legal ones albeit
noncitizens, who have been convicted generally of nonviolent felonies like
drug possession and various immigration violations. In the name of
guaranteeing public safety, Reeves County officials have kept the prison off
limits to reporters and attorneys. And in an apparent effort to keep the
story about inmate protests from gaining momentum in the media and to keep it
away from the view of state and federal officials, county officials and the
private prison contractors have refused to comment on prison conditions.
Among those who have declined to comment about the state of medical care at
the detention center is the private contractor that is responsible for this
care. Leader in Correctional Healthcare -- Physicians Network Association
(PNA), a Lubbock-based company that calls itself a leader in correctional
healthcare,” has subcontracted with Reeves County since 2002. As the owner of
the prison, Reeves County has a contract with the Bureau of Prisons to hold fedeal immigrant prisoners. But rather than run the
facility itself, the county subcontracts its responsibilities to GEO Group to
operate and manage the prison and to PNA to provide medical and dental care.
(See Medical Claims Part One) In its presentation as part of the negotiations
over its current contract with the county, PNA assured the county that “as a
subcontractor, PNA has fourteen years’ experience assisting operators exceed
expectations.” It emphasized the “cost-effective” character of its medical
services, and promised that it would “work as your partner to ensure
appropriate healthcare without compromising operations.” “We are recognized
for our responsiveness to the needs of our customers,” boasted PNA, referring
as “customers” to the private prison firms like GEO (with which it has ten
contracts) and counties like Reeves that own prisons not to the inmates it
cares for. PNA included GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation
(MTC) among its references, and it told the county: “PNA has never had a
contract canceled or been removed from a facility.” It noted that it was
“proud of its record of no substantiated grievances in any facility.” The
Dec. 12 prisoner protest at Reeves County Detention Center started when inmates
saw the body of Jesus Manuel Galindo removed from solitary confinement.
Inmates contend that Galindo did not receive medical attention for his
epileptic seizures. The Galindo family says it has filed a lawsuit against
the Reeves County Detention Center. David Galindo, the dead inmate’s brother,
told a reporter after the second riot that started Jan. 31, “The reason
they’re having riots is because their personnel is doing the wrong thing just
like they did to my brother.” After the second disturbance started, an inmate
called the media. The Pecos prisoner said that the protest began when prison
officials placed Ramon Garcia, 25, in solitary confinement after he
complained of dizziness and feeling ill. “All we wanted was for them to give
him medical care and because they didn't, things got out of control and
people started fires in several offices,” said the inmate, who declined to
give his name for fear of reprisals by officials. Lana Williams, a family
friend of Garcia, told KFOX TV in El Paso that his medical neglect had been a
problem since August 2008. "He's gotten to the point where he can't walk
down the hall without holding on to the wall, and this has been going on and
getting progressively worse," said Williams. Garcia told her was being
been placed in solitary confinement whenever he complained about feeling ill.
PNA’s Medical Gulag -- It shouldn’t be surprising that long-running
complaints about medical cars abuses sparked the inmate protests at the
Reeves County Detention Center. Six years ago the Justice Department found
widespread medical abuses at another county-owned, privately run adult
detention center, where the same subcontractor, Physicians Network
Association, was also the the medical services
provider. Concerned about civil rights violations at the detention center,
the Justice Department sent a study team from its Civil Rights division to
investigate the jail in May 2002 to determine if there were violations that
could be prosecuted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act
(1997). On March 6, 2003 the Justice Department sent a letter and a long
report of its findings to Santa Fe County, which owned the jail and
contracted with Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison
firm, to operate the jail. The county had an intergovernmental services
agreement (IGSA) with the Justice Department to hold detainees waiting trial
who were under the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. MTC subcontracted the medical services part of the IGSA
contract to PNA. Summarizing its findings, the Justice Department stated: “We
find that persons confined suffer harm or the risk of serious harm from
deficiencies in the facility’s provision of medical and mental health care,
suicide prevention, protection of inmates from harm, fire safety, and
sanitation.” In its report, the Justice Department team specified 52 actions
that were needed “to rectify the identified deficiencies and to protect the
constitutional rights of the facility’s inmates to bring the jail into
compliance with civil rights standards. Thirty-eight of the 52 identified
deficiencies related to medical services. The Justice Department report
concluded: “The Detention Center, through PNA, provides inadequate medical
services in the following areas: intake, screening, and referral; acute care;
emergent care; chronic and prenatal care; and medication administration and
management. As a result, inmates at the Detention Center with serious medical
needs are at risk for harm.” The Justice Department’s investigation was
sparked by the suicide of Tyson Johnson in January 2002 at the Santa Fe
County Detention Center. Johnson, who was awaiting a hearing on charges of
stalking, was a longtime sufferer of severe claustrophobia. In a New York
Times (June 6, 2004) story on the Justice Department’s investigation and MTC,
Suzan Garcia, Johnson’s mother, said that had tried to contact the jail
because she was concerned about her son’s psychological condition. ''I called
the jail and asked to speak to a doctor, but they said they didn't have a
doctor,'' Ms. Garcia said. ''When I asked to speak to the warden, they just
put me on hold and then the phone would disconnect.'' According to the
Justice Department’s finding and associated reports, Johnson had asked to see
a psychologist, but the 580-inmate jail didn’t have a doctor let alone a
psychologist or a psychiatrist. So Mr. Johnson tried slitting his wrist and
neck with a razor, and when that failed, as the New York Times reported, he
told the jail's nurse, Sheila Turner, “Today I am going to take myself out.”
A guard, Crystal Quintana, told investigators that the nurse replied, ''Let
him.'' Ms. Turner denies this, her lawyer said. As the New York Times
recounted: “Ten minutes later, Mr. Johnson, 27 and with no previous criminal
record, was found hanging from a sprinkler head in a windowless isolation
cell where he was supposedly being closely watched.” Despite being placed on
suicide watch, Johnson hung himself with a supposedly “suicide-proof” blanket
inside the isolation cell. His family contends that instead of tending to his
psychological problems, the medical staff neglected him and taunted him. The
NYT story by Fox Butterfield described the state of mental healthcare for
which PNA was responsible: “The nearest doctor on contract was in Lubbock,
Tex., a two-hour plane flight away, and he visited the jail on average only
every six weeks, seeing only a few patients each time, the report found. The
nurse had an order in her file to spend no more than five minutes with any
inmate patient, which the report said was not enough time. “There was no
psychologist or psychiatrist, and although the nurse had no mental health
training care, she was distributing drugs for mentally ill inmates, the
report said. “The jail did have a mental health clinician, Thomas Welter, who
was employed by Physicians Network Association, a subcontractor. But he never
did any evaluations of mentally troubled inmates, the report said. Instead,
he boasted to them about his own history of drug use, according to a recent
deposition by Cody Graham, who was then warden of the Santa Fe jail. Not long
after Mr. Johnson hanged himself, Mr. Graham escorted Mr. Welter to the gate
and told him not to come back.” Pattern of PNA Medical Malpractice -- The Justice
Department found a pattern of gross medical care deficiencies at the Santa Fe
jail. Among its findings were the following: · “PNA’s intake medical
screening, assessment, and referral process is insufficient to ensure that
inmates receive necessary medical care during their incarceration.” · “Even
when PNA staff identify inmates with serious medical needs during the intake
process, they fail to refer them for appropriate care.” · “Chart review
revealed that of those inmates in our sample who did receive the initial
health screening, none were referred to the Health Services Unit for the
medical attention they needed.” · “The grievance system does not provide an
avenue for resolving problems of access to health services. The grievances we
reviewed included a complaint from one inmate who was supposed to have an
x-ray, but had received no response from the Health Services Unit despite
having filed two grievances in three weeks.” Seven Suicide Attempts, One
Completed in Seven Months of MTC/PNA -- · “As of the time of our visit,
during the seven months since MTC assumed management of the facility, there
had been one completed suicide and seven attempted suicides. A review of
these incidents reveals that the Detention Center staff fail to respond
appropriately to inmates’ indications of mental health crises and possible
suicidality.” · “For example, one inmate answered several of the initial
mental health suicide screening questions in the affirmative, including that
he had recently experienced a significant loss, that he felt that he had
nothing to look forward to, and that he ‘just didn’t care.’ He reported that
he had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that he was
taking an antidepressant for this condition. He also stated that he felt that
he needed to see a psychologist. Despite these indicators, the screening
nurse concluded that the inmate needed only a routine mental health referral,
as opposed to an immediate mental health evaluation and determination whether
mental health services were necessary.” · “Another incident involved an
inmate who cut her wrists with a razor and was placed on a 15-minute suicide
watch in the medical unit. According to the subsequent investigation of the
incident, the inmate was upset because her medications were stopped. The
inmate was treated for lacerations to her wrists and released from suicide
watch without ever receiving a mental health evaluation or mental health
clearance.” An inmate placed on watch status in a medical unit cell for his
own safety due to mental illness and seizure disorder was able to cut both of
his wrists with a razor blade within 5 minutes of his arrival in that cell.
The only way that staff knew that the event had occurred was when blood began
running down the floor from his cell." Five Minutes Per Patient -- ·
“The nurse practitioner’s personnel file included a memo from the Vice
President of Operations of PNA instructing her to see one patient for each
five minutes of scheduled clinical time. Many inmates, particularly those
with acute or chronic conditions, require significantly more clinical
attention to ensure that their needs are adequately addressed.” · “PNA does
not test for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). STDs are prevalent in jail
populations. Left untreated, STDs can cause brain and organ damage and damage
to fetuses. PNA’s failure to screen for STDs places the inmates and the
community at risk.” · “PNA fails to provide timely access to appropriate
medical care for inmates when they develop acute medical needs. Medical care
is unreasonably and unnecessarily delayed and, even when provided, often
inadequate.” · “Even once inmates succeed in getting to the Health Services
Unit, they frequently receive substandard care. We reviewed the medical
records of ten inmates seen for primary care by the nurse practitioner within
a one-month period. Six of the ten inmates received substandard care.” PNA’s
Failure to Respond to Acute Medical Needs -- “Additional
chart reviews confirmed PNA’s failure to respond to inmates’ acute medical
needs. For example, one inmate reported breast lumps and lumps in her armpit,
chest pain, and swelling in her legs and feet. Although a mammogram was
ordered in October 2001, it had not been done by the time of our visit to the
Detention Center seven months later.” · “At the time of our visit, the only
physician providing supervision or care at the Detention Center was the
doctor who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PNA and is based in
Lubbock, Texas. As the CEO of PNA, this doctor has numerous responsibilities,
including supervising the medical care at each of the facilities at which PNA
provides care throughout the south and southwestern United States. This
physician was visiting the Detention Center an average of once every six
weeks, and saw only a few patients during each visit. While he is available
by telephone for consultation, he does not visit the Detention Center
frequently enough to provide adequate supervision. Given the deficiencies in
care and other problems identified in this letter, additional physician
supervision at the Detention Center is necessary.” No Pre-Natal Care,
Improper Treatment for Seizures -- · “PNA fails to provide inmates with
needed medications in a timely manner, and fails to monitor medication in
inmates with serious medical needs.” · “The Detention Center fails to provide
for continuity of medications for inmates upon arrival at the facility.
Several files we reviewed revealed that the nurse practitioner does not
continue the same medications for inmates that were prescribed for them prior
to their incarceration. Sometimes the nurse practitioner simply discontinues
the medication, and sometimes she changes the inmate’s prescription to older,
less expensive medications which are significantly less effective.” · “PNA fails
to provide adequate prenatal care for pregnant inmates. Of the four pregnant
women at the Detention Center at the time of our visit, none had any prenatal
visit with an OB/GYN during their incarceration documented, despite the fact
that two of the women were in their third trimester of pregnancy and near
term.” · “An inmate had been prescribed a medication for his seizure
disorder, in addition to several other medications, and his blood levels of
the seizure medication had been measured. Although the laboratory results
showed that the amount of this drug in his system was not enough to achieve
the intended therapeutic effect, there was no reference to this finding
anywhere else in his medical record. Moreover, staff failed to respond
appropriately, such as adjusting his medication. Seven days later, the inmate
attempted suicide by cutting his wrists, then suffered a seizure.” Keeping it
Cost-Effective -- · “PNA’s formulary does not contain effective medication
for inmates with serious medical needs such as hypertension, heart failure
and diabetes. In addition, the formulary includes many less expensive, less
effective medications than are currently available for the treatment of some
diseases.” · “Some inmates at the Detention Center are currently provided
with less effective medications with greater side effects than they had
received prior to incarceration, which can lead to deterioration in inmates
with mental illness and end-organ damage in inmates with diseases such as
hypertension and diabetes.” · “Even when staff did monitor medication levels,
they failed to respond to indications that an inmate’s dosage was
inappropriate. Although the laboratory results showed that the amount of this
drug in his system was not enough to achieve the intended therapeutic effect,
there was no reference to this finding anywhere else in his medical record.
Moreover, staff failed to respond appropriately, such as adjusting his
medication. Seven days later, the inmate attempted suicide by cutting his
wrists, then suffered a seizure.” PNA and MTC Leave Town -- Neither MTC nor
PNA stuck around Santa Fe to help the country resolve its problems with the
Justice Department. Both MTC and PNA said they had to terminate their
contracts because they were losing money. Soon after the Justice Department
issued its findings in March 2004 on medical care and other problems at the
Santa Fe County Detention Center, PNA pulled out of its contract with MTC. A
year later in April 2005, MTC announced that it had “chosen to end this
contract because it has not been possible to operate profitably. Under two
different contracts and with two different medical providers, MTC and both
medical providers have lost money.” Before the private prison companies
terminated their unprofitable contracts, their personnel left town. MTC asked
Warden Cody Graham to leave his job in Santa Fe, and he transferred to
another MTC county jail in Gallup, New Mexico. According to a heart-rending
investigative story in the Santa Fe Reporter (April 2, 2003)on
the death of a jail inmate because of deficient medical care, PNA’s regional
medical consultant left at the same time as the warden. That PNA supervisor
was Katherine Graham, wife of the MTC warden. A story in the Albuquerque
Journal (June 28, 2004) on the “tough negotiations” following “state and
federal audits slamming the facility for inadequate medical services”
reported, “PNA will not return if and when the county and MTC reach a new
agreement, jail administrators have said.” County Commissioner Paul Duran
recommended that the county would do a better job running the jail. He noted
that the Utah-based MTC – a for-profit company – was not providing enough
medical staffing or case managers to deal with inmate needs. “I think it’s
the profit element that is the root of all these problems.” The county did
take over management of the jail after MTC left, and worked with the Justice
Department to rectify its findings of deficiency. Judith Greene, director of
Justice Strategies, echoed Commissioner Duran’s observation. She told the New
York Times, ''This goes to the heart of the problem in the private prison
business,'' Ms. Greene said. ''You get what you pay for.''
Potter County Jail
Potter County, Texas
Mid America
January 9, 2008 Avalanche-Journal
Lubbock County commissioners said there is nothing illegal about the
county's contract with the food services provider at the county jail, but
they will remain watchful of the pending criminal case against the company
and its president. Commissioner Bill McCay said
Lubbock County is open and transparent and if commissioners find any illegal
contacts or attempts to make illegal contact were made, the county would get
out of the contract. Food service company Mid America Services, Inc. and its
president, Robert Wayne Austin Jr., are under indictment on bribery charges
in Potter County stemming from allegations of campaign donations by the
company to the Potter County sheriff to secure a bid as the jail food service
provider for that county. For the time being, however, Lubbock County will
continue to use Mid America. "Everything (in Lubbock County) was 100
percent copacetic," McCay said, adding
commissioners will keep an eye on the Potter County situation. "We'll be
watching those proceedings with great interest," he said. Lubbock County
commissioners awarded the jail food service bid to Mid America last summer,
with the contract going into effect October 1. McCay
said Aramark and Canteen competed against Mid America for the bid, but
Lubbock County had experienced mixed results with Canteen and Aramark in the
past. "They started out great and then deteriorated," McCay said of the two previous food service providers.
When it came time to negotiate a new contract, McCay
said an advisory committee directed commissioners to go with Mid America.
"They weren't the lowest bid, but they were the best bid," he said.
Commissioner Ysidro Gutierrez said the bidding process required the committee
to evaluate the contractors based on food quality, delivery and service,
personnel and supervision and security, sanitation and safety. Sixteen days
after the contract went into effect, a Potter County grand jury indicted Mid
America and Austin on bribery charges. Also indicted were the Potter County
sheriff and chief deputy on corruption charges. The indictments claim Austin
and Mid America offered benefits in return for hiring and retaining the
company's contract as food service provider for Potter County. "When I
first read that it made me nervous as a cat," McCay
said. "My initial reaction is no, they're not guilty,' but where there's
smoke, there's fire." If Mid America and its president are found guilty,
Gutierrez said the county commissioners will review the contract and
procedures surrounding that contract. While statute mandates the county enter
contracts for one-year periods, the contract with Mid America has a four-year
renewable clause, meaning commissioners can reassess the contract each fiscal
year and decide whether to continue using Mid America. "The real
important thing is everyone deserves their day in court," Gutierrez
said.
Presidio County Jail
Marfa, Texas
Emerald
June 11, 2009 CBS 7 News/KOSA
The Presidio County Jail in Marfa is in the process of shutting down
because the county can't afford to run it. This will put fourteen jailers out
of a job and transfer close to a hundred inmates to another jail. Presidio
County Sheriff Danny Dominguez said: “The county is flat out broke they
barely have enough to make payroll, they barely have money coming in from tax
revenue." Private prison company Emerald Correctional unexpectedly ended
their contract managing the Presidio County jail. This Monday, county
commissioners decided to shutdown the facility for
60 days because there's no money in the budget to fund it.
On Track
Mason, Texas
January 9, 2003
A
Mason County wilderness camp where a Dallas-area teenager died in October
will relinquish its operating license and forgo any plans to reopen, state
and camp officials said Wednesday. In
December, however, the parks department canceled the lease and gave the camp
120 days to vacate the property. Diane
Huggins, a spokeswoman for the Brown Schools, the Nashville, Tenn.-based
company that owns and operates On Track, said recent efforts to persuade parks
officials to reconsider have been unsuccessful. Both parks officials and Huggins said
troubles with the lease started before 17-year-old Charles Chase Moody died
after being physically restrained by three camp counselors Oct. 14. Investigators with the Texas Department of
Protective and Regulatory Services, the agency with authority over wilderness
camps and youth-oriented residential treatment centers, have accused the
staff members of physical abuse and neglect in connection with Moody's
death. Moody's death is also the focus
of a criminal investigation. (The Hutchinson News)
Reeves County Detention
Center
Pecos, Texas
GEO Group, Physicians Network Association
Companies
Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit: Expose on immigration
by Nina Bernstein at the New York Times, September 28, 2011
"Private
Prisons, Public Pain Despite a long record of abuses, GEO is still running
Texas prisons," Peter Gorman
"What's
Happening Inside Reeves?" Dan Rather Reports
Read
Tom Barry's Boston Review article here
Apr
1, 2018 expressnews.com
Uresti’s Reeves County bribery trial may
be delayed until October
State Sen. Carlos Uresti’s second criminal
trial of the year — for allegedly conspiring to bribe a judge in Reeves
County — may be postponed until the fall after his co-defendant asked the
court for a delay. Lubbock businessman Vernon C. Farthing III, who made the
request in a court filing Tuesday, said Uresti’s
lawyer and federal prosecutors aren’t opposed to pushing back the trial,
which is currently set to start May 7 in San Antonio federal court. Farthing
wants it continued until Oct. 22, citing various scheduling conflicts.
Meanwhile, U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad has
scheduled a Monday court hearing to consider other motions by Farthing —
including a request that he be tried separately from Uresti.
Uresti, 54, and Farthing, 45, were accused in a May
indictment of conspiring with others from January 2006 through September 2016
to pay and accept bribes to secure a Reeves County Correctional medical
services contract for Farthing’s company. The indictment says Farthing paid Uresti $10,000 a month as a marketing consultant and then
gave half of the money to Jimmy Galindo, county judge in Reeves County in
West Texas from January 1995 to June 2006, in return for a favorable vote for
Farthing’s company contract. Galindo pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to
commit bribery and failure to file a 2013 tax return. He admitted to
splitting about $850,000 in bribes with Uresti and
struck a deal with prosecutors that includes assisting in the case. Farthing
wants separate trials, in part, because of concerns that Uresti’s
conviction three weeks ago in another case will spill over into their trial
and deprive Farthing of his right to a fair trial. A federal grand jury on
Feb. 22 convicted the San Antonio Democrat on 11 felony counts over his
involvement in FourWinds Logistics, a defunct
oilfield company that defrauded investors. Uresti
was convicted of wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud, among
other charges. He intends to appeal. Uresti is scheduled
to be sentenced on June 28. Federal prosecutors are opposing separate trials
for Farthing and Uresti. Trying Uresti
and Farthing together will “avoid the scandal and inequity of inconsistent
verdicts,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Blackwell said in a response to
Farthing’s request. Bemporad also will review
Farthing’s request to disclose the grand jury proceedings that led to the
indictments. The government says it provided defense lawyers copies of
transcripts of the only witness to testify before the grand jury, FBI Special
Agent Monroe Giese. Farthing also wants the indictment against him dismissed,
in part, because he says it alleges conduct barred by a statute of
limitations. Bemporad is not slated to take up that
motion at Monday’s hearing, according to the court docket. Prosecutors have
opposed the request.
Jun
20, 2017 cbs7.com
Reeves County in negotiations with BOP to keep prison open
REEVES COUNTY -- Three weeks ago, the Reeve's County Detention Center
announced it would be shutting down two of its three units come after losing
a bidding contract to house prisoners. Now the fate of the third facility
remains up in the air. On Monday, county commissioners met in executive
session to discuss their next move on how to keep the last remaining unit’s
doors open. As a team, the county judge, commissioners, attorneys and even
financial advisors are all working together to see how they can keep the
prison open for business and its employees with jobs. Over $142 million -
that's how much it cost the county to build the detention center, according
to the county auditor. The county now has to figure out if they can afford to
keep it running. With the $50 million in debt we have, we have got to try to
keep a positive cash flow, so we don't get into a further debt trying to keep
the prison open,” said Commissioner Paul Hinojos.
“We also want to keep the employees employed, so it's a very tough
situation.” Commissioners voted Monday to move forward with using GEO Group
to help them negotiate a bridge contract with the Bureau of Prisons. This
contract would allow the prison to keep its remaining unit open for an
additional year. “We’re at a crucial point right now where it’s a bidding
process again, where we have to come up with a pier diem per inmate that BOP
would accept,” Hinojos explained. If an agreement
isn’t reached, Hinojos has a backup plan. "I'm
speaking for myself, but I think the best thing we could do is sell the
prison,” said Hinojos. “If we sell it someone's
going to buy it, and they are going to want to immediately get prisoners
there so they can make money off their investment, which in turn would employ
people of Reeves County. So it could be a positive thing to the county."
Another option would be to transport inmates in from other states and
government agencies. “The main thing is trying to keep the people employed
for a year,” said Hinojos. “In a year and a half
there will be other contracts up, and that’s when we can go ahead and bid
again with BOP to try and get R1, R2, and R3 filled.” R1, R2 and R3 are the
three units within the prison. If the bridge contract goes in the county’s
favor, there will be job openings in R3 -- the remaining open prison unit. Hinojos says the prison has benefited their community for
many years. Besides providing hundreds of jobs, it’s also brought in around
$4 million each year which supplements resident’s taxes. If for some reason
they aren’t awarded the contract, Hinojos says they
would make sure that the remainder of their debt wouldn’t fall on tax payers.
The county should find out within the coming week or two whether or not
they’re awarded the bridge contract.
Jun
25, 2015 politicalnews.me
Federal: Powerful Sen Chairman calls for investigation in overbilling
WASHINGTON
– Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is calling on the Bureau
of Prisons to explain how approximately $2 million in questionable spending
was allowed in one of its largest prison management contracts. A recent
Justice Department Inspector General audit of a Bureau contract for
management of the Reeves County Detention Center uncovered that the Bureau
improperly paid $1.95 million in fringe benefits at the contractor’s request.
The inspector general was reviewing the Bureau’s contract with Reeves County,
Texas, and its subcontractors for compliance with terms relating to billing
and staffing requirements as well as oversight and monitoring. Both the
Bureau’s and the contractor’s failure to understand the applicable law led to
the improper use of funds, according to the inspector general’s audit. The
audit further determined that the Bureau should reduce the monthly payout to
the contractor by $41,088 to prevent additional waste of $945,024 throughout
the remainder of the contract. The improper spending was compounded by
findings that the prison consistently failed to meet minimum contractual
standards and received too many notices of concern. Further, one of the
subcontractors, the GEO Group, did not adequately respond to the inspector
general’s inquiries. In a letter to the Bureau, Grassley is asking for a
detailed explanation of its oversight practices as well as whether the Bureau
has taken steps to remedy the concerns raised by the inspector general’s
audit. A signed copy of Grassley’s letter can be found here. Full text of the
letter is below.
June
12, 2015
The
Honorable Charles E. Samuels, Jr.
Director
Federal
Bureau of Prisons
320
First Street, NW
Washington,
D.C. 20534
Dear
Director Samuels:
The
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has contracted with counties and private contractors
to manage 14 prisons that house criminal aliens. One of those contracts was
awarded to Reeves County, Texas to operate the Reeves County Detention Center
(RCDC). This contract has an estimated value of $493 million and is BOP’s
second largest contract. Reeves County subcontracted with the GEO Group
(GEO), a corporation that is also a primary contractor in four federal
correctional facilities. Reeves County also subcontracted to Correct Care
Solutions, LLC (CCS), to provide comprehensive health care services. In April
of 2015, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
audited BOP’s contract with Reeves County for compliance with contract terms
and conditions relating to billings, staffing requirements, and contract
oversight and monitoring. OIG found substantial waste and abuse.
Specifically, OIG found that “Reeves County improperly requested and the BOP
improperly paid $1.95 million in fringe benefits it was not entitled to
receive, including $175,436 in payroll taxes and workers’ compensation
insurance[.]” In addition, CCS improperly requested $74,765 in fringe
benefits that were unsupported by payroll documentation. OIG further noted
that the unallowable reimbursements have “a compounding effect over time” and
therefore in addition to the aforementioned unallowable reimbursements, BOP
“should reduce the contract’s monthly price by $41,088 to ensure the
contractor will not improperly charge BOP an additional $945,024” through the
life of the contract. OIG concluded that the unallowable reimbursements were
able to occur because both the BOP and the contractors failed to understand
the requirements of the Service Contract Act. In addition, between February
2007 and December 2014, the RCDC was rated “deficient” or “unsatisfactory” in
6 of 12 award fee evaluation periods. According to OIG, RCDC struggled
immensely to adequately perform under the contract, including: “[RCDC]
consistently struggled to meet or exceed baseline contractual standards,
received an unacceptable number of deficiencies and notices of concern; was
unresponsive to BOP inquiries; struggled with staffing issues in health
services and correctional services; and frequently submitted inaccurate
routine paperwork, including erroneous disciplinary hearing records and
monthly invoices. In addition, the BOP reports repeatedly described RCDC
I/II’s quality control program as minimally or marginally effective.” This is
concerning. As the oversight authority, BOP ought to have more control over
entities that it contracts with so as to ensure adequate performance.
According to the OIG, it appears that RCDC was often totally unresponsive to
BOP inquiries all while BOP was paying for unallowable reimbursements valued
in the millions of dollars. According to the OIG, $2,028,847 in BOP expenditures
under the contract were “Questioned Costs” which are defined as “expenditures
that do not comply with legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements, or
are not supported by adequate documentation at the time of the audit, or are
unnecessary or unreasonable.” If BOP does not reduce the contract’s price to
recoup the unallowable costs, $945,024 will be spent unnecessarily bringing
the total amount of unnecessary expenditures to just under $3 million
dollars. BOP’s apparent lack of command, control and oversight over the legal
requirements of contracts awarded to private entities to manage prisons is
cause for serious concern. One must wonder what degree of mismanagement is
occurring, or has already occurred, at other prisons.To
ensure that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently, please answer the
following:
1.
OIG noted, “[t]hroughout the course of this audit,
the OIG has on several occasions requested the GEO Group provide
documentation on its interpretation so we could review and consider its
position, but GEO Group officials did not provide us with documentation.”
What role does BOP play in ensuring that parties to a BOP contract are
sufficiently cooperating with an OIG audit? Was that role fulfilled with the
current audit? Please explain.
2.
BOP’s Privatization Management Branch (PMB) is responsible for managing and
overseeing the operation of secure contract facilities. The PMB maintains at
a minimum two full time staff at each private facility including the Senior
Secure Institution Manager (SSIM) and Secure Oversight Manager (SOM). Do you
believe the SSIM and SOM at RCDC performed up to the standards expected of
them by the taxpayer? Please explain.
3.
Please describe the oversight and accountability mechanisms in place that BOP
uses to ensure that SSIM’s and SOM’s within the PMB are properly managed to
reduce contract waste and abuse at privately contracted prisons.
4.
Has BOP remedied the $1,954,082 in net unallowable costs that Reeves County
incorrectly claimed for Health & Welfare benefit-related price
adjustments and the $175,436 in incorrectly claimed price adjustments for
payroll taxes and workers’ compensation? If so, has BOP provided OIG with
that documentation? If it has not been remedied, why not?
5.
Has BOP remedied the $74,765 in unsupported costs for CCS since they were
unable to provide records supporting the cost of providing benefits to
employees from 2007-2009? If so, has BOP provided OIG with that
documentation? If it has not been remedied, why not?
6.
GEO is a subcontractor for RCDC and is a contractor for Criminal Alien
Requirement Privately-Managed Contract Facilities as of February 19, 2015.
The OIG report indicates that GEO, in conjunction with BOP, did not properly
comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and Service Contract Act. In
light of these troublesome claims, has BOP taken steps to ensure that similar
improprieties are not occurring at other privately managed facilities,
including those managed by GEO? If so, please explain the steps taken. If
not, why not?
7.
Has BOP removed the $41,088 in unallowable and unsupported costs from the
Monthly Operating Plan to remedy the $954,024 for Funds Put to Better Use?
8.
Has BOP performed a review to identify unallowable questioned costs related to
price adjustments that Reeves County was not entitled to receive for RCDC III
(Contract No. DJB1PC003)?
9.
Has BOP created and implemented policies and procedures that strengthen
responsible officials’ understanding of Service Contract Act rules and regulations?
If so, please explain. If not, why not?
10.
Has Reeves County updated its quality control policies and procedures
requiring the retention of all records related to the contract? If so, please
explain. If not, why not?
11.
What, if anything, has BOP done to remedy the problem RCDC had with
frequently submitting inaccurate routine paperwork, including erroneous
disciplinary hearing records and monthly invoices? If nothing has been done,
why not?
Apr
24, 2015 texasobserver.org
The world’s largest for-profit prison has minimal oversight, overcharged the
federal government by $2.1 million, arbitrarily punishes protesting inmates
and suffers from severe understaffing, according to a report released
Thursday morning by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector
General. Run by private prison company GEO Group, the Reeves County Detention
Complex in Pecos houses nearly 4,000 federal prisoners, mostly undocumented
immigrants serving sentences for drugs and immigration-related offenses. Over
the last decade, Reeves has been rocked by riots, persistent complaints about
inadequate medical care and allegations that prison officials use solitary
confinement to punish inmates who complain. In 2009, Reeves was the site of
two back-to-back prisoner uprisings after an epileptic inmate, Jesus Manuel
Galindo, was found dead in his isolation cell. Galindo, his family and other
inmates had repeatedly pleaded with GEO officials for better medical care.
The Department of Justice investigated two of the three sub-complexes, which
together hold about 2,400 low-security immigrant inmates. The Reeves complex
consists of three compounds. The Department of Justice investigated two of
the three sub-complexes, which together hold about 2,400 low-security
immigrant inmates. Perhaps the most alarming finding is that the federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) asked GEO Group to eliminate minimum staffing
requirements for correctional officers, medical care providers and other
personnel in its original bid for the facility. Not surprisingly, the prison
was almost continuously understaffed from 2007 to March 2009, following two
riots in late 2008 and early 2009 that did more than $1 million worth of
damage. “BOP officials told us they removed these staffing requirements to
achieve cost savings and grant the contractor flexibility and discretion to
manage the staffing of the facility,” the report states. “This audit confirms
what we’ve suspected about the BOP’s contracts for private prisons for
immigrants for many years,” said Bob Libal, executive
director of Grassroots Leadership, a Texas-based group that opposes private
prisons. “An extreme lack of accountability has created an unsafe and
inhumane system of incarcerating immigrants in substandard private prisons.
While immigrants suffer, unaccountable prison corporations are making big
bucks off these contracts paid for by taxpayers.” The private contractor
providing health services at Reeves, Tennessee-based Correct Care Solutions
LLC, also has persistently understaffed the prison, despite a requirement
imposed by BOP in December 2010 that contractors maintain staffing levels of
at least 85 percent of the contract requirement. Nonetheless, for three
years, Correct Care failed to meet the 85 percent threshold more than 90
percent of the time. The report also found that the company has a “potential
financial incentive” to maintain vacancies rather than fill positions at
market rates, based on the BOP’s accounting methods. A staff shortage in the
Special Housing Unit—the solitary confinement unit where Galindo was found
dead—was so severe that the BOP issued an emergency “cure notice” to GEO
Group in September 2012, the report found. The BOP reviewed a video feed from
July and August of that year and found that 47 of 70 required inmate counts were
simply not conducted, that 30-minute irregular rounds were not consistently
or completely conducted and that orderlies weren’t properly supervised.The BOP saved an estimated $10 million by
keeping staffing levels low. The report states that correctional staff levels
were boosted after the riots and that medical personnel have been added
because of concerns raised by the Office of Inspector General during its
investigation. The audit also criticized GEO Group for arbitrarily sending
inmates to an isolation unit called the “J-Unit.” Created in the wake of
inmate protests in October 2013, the J-Unit is intended to isolate prison
leaders who have been “found to be coercing other inmates to join
demonstrations,” according to the report. (In a footnote, the authors state
that they did not investigate the inmates’ demands for things like better pay
and additional movement in the recreation yard.) After the demonstrations,
prison authorities sent 364 inmates it considered ringleaders to Reeves’
Special Housing Unit (SHU), or solitary confinement unit, which is designed
for only 210 people. To deal with the overcrowding, the prison converted a
general housing unit into a kind of SHU-lite. Investigators found that in 9
of the 10 cases they looked into, the prisoners didn’t belong in the J-Unit
by the prison’s own criteria. In early 2015, the BOP renewed GEO’s contract
for the third time.
Apr 25, 2015 newswest9.com
REEVES COUNTY - We're learning more about an audit released by the U.S.
Inspector General. It targets the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos.
The 85-page audit was released Thursday. A lack of staffing and medical
personnel are just two issues brought to light that are happening inside this
West Texas prison. The 2,400 bed facility primarily houses immigrants who
have committed "low-level" crimes, such as repeatedly entering the
U.S. illegally. Inside the report, it says the Reeves County facility and
Correct Care Solutions, the company that provides healthcare services for the
inmates, failed to comply with the Service Contract Act. The act requires
employees working on federal service contracts of more than 25-hundred
dollars not to be paid less than the wages and fringe benefits required by
law. It also prevents contractors from underbidding each other by reducing
wages or fringe benefits for employees. The audit also identified almost $3
million that they say was, "...questioned as unallowable or unsupported,
or believe should be put to better use". They also found that between
February 2007 and December 2014, the center was rated as
"deficient" and "unsatisfactory" in half of their
evaluation periods. The evaluations said the facility "struggled"
to meet minimum standards, received an unacceptable number of notices of
concern, that the prison was unresponsive to Federal Bureau of Prison
inquiries and struggled with staffing issues with medical and correctional
employees. The Bureau of Prisons did say the performance improved over time.
William McBride, the lawyer behind a lawsuit targeting the five private
prisons in Texas says he met with 56 inmates at the Reeves County facility.
As a result, he says, all were put in solitary confinement. He adds that the
company that manages the prisons, The GEO Group, will not let him meet with
any more inmates. "One of the reasons they're not getting the medical
attention they need in that facility is for profit because it costs money to
have more staff, it costs more money to provide medical care. In my opinion,
I believe The GEO Group is putting profit above the principal of basic human
rights," said McBride. The audit also criticized what's called the
'J-Unit', used for isolation at the facility. The report says the unit lacks
guidelines on what evidence is needed for an inmate to be placed there,
procedures to ensure inmates receive due process and safeguards to ensure
inmate rights are consistent. In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Prisons
says it, "...takes very seriously the recommendations of the Inspector
General and is currently taking steps to address them. We are also
considering revising internal policies and procedures to address quality
control and Service Contract Act compliance." The GEO Group, Inc. said
in a statement, "The GEO Group thoroughly reviewed the Office of
Inspector General's audit into the contract between the Federal Bureau of
Prisons and Reeves County, Texas, and in its role as Reeves County's
management services provider issued a comprehensive response along with the
County, which was included in the final report issued by the OIG. As noted in
the OIG's report's subsequent analysis of the responses provided by Reeves
County/GEO and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the recommendations made by the
OIG have been largely resolved. GEO has always strived to achieve the highest
correctional management standards, and we look forward to continuing to
strengthen our long-standing partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons
and the community of Reeves County."
Mar
5, 2015 newswest9.com
REEVES COUNTY - An alleged hunger strike is underway by inmates in the Reeves
County Detention Center. They claim they were put in solitary confinement
just for seeking legal help in light of a recent lawsuit. William McBride,
the attorney behind the lawsuit, says he met with 56 inmates Tuesday at the
Reeves County Detention Center. On Wednesday morning, when he arrived to meet
with more clients, he says he was told by the warden that no further
interviews will be allowed. "[The warden] didn't give me a reason why.
He just said, 'We're not gonna let you see them today, tomorrow or in the
future,'" McBride said. The wife of a Reeves County inmate says her
husband was locked up for illegal re-entry into the United States He had no
criminal background. "Just for wanting to be with his kids, to be with
his family, they're sentencing him to 16 more months in jail. He's already
been there for a year," she told NewsWest 9
over the phone. McBride says his phone number was also blocked in the
facilities. "They're punishing them. Those who spoke with a lawyer, or
were wanting to speak with one, they put them in solitary confinement,"
the wife of the inmate, said. McBride is fighting for the constitutional
rights for inmates in private prisons across Texas. His lawsuit pinpoints the
facility in Willacy County, in South Texas, and its parent company, the
Management and Training Corporation. He plans to go after all five private
prisons in Texas. "One of the most alarming stories that I heard were
individuals who came to the United States who were picked up for immigration violation
with no criminal history, no criminal record and they were given anywhere
from 16 months to 24 months in prison," McBride said. He says inmates
told him they get only rice and beans for every meal and only four computers
to share between nearly 2,300 inmates. which, he says, makes it nearly
impossible for them to seek legal representation. Medical care is also a
concern. "I met with another client who is in a wheelchair, who reported
that he had an infected toe because he's a diabetic. No medical attention was
given to him other than some type of Neosporin cream. As a result, he lost
all five of his toes and part of his foot," McBride said. NewsWest 9 reached out to the parent company of the
Reeves County facility, The GEO Group, Inc. about McBride's access to the
inmates. They said in a statement, "As a matter of policy, our company
cannot comment on operational and legal matters." McBride says he will
continue to speak with families on the inmates' behalf.
July 16, 2012 Odessa American
A minor fight involving several inmates resulted in minor injuries at the
Reeves County Detention Center Sunday, officials from the Geo Group, Inc.,
the private company that operates the facility, reported. During the day
Sunday, a minor “inmate-on-inmate fight” broke out in the recreation yard,
reported Pablo E. Paez, vice president of corporate
relations reported. The fight resulted in minor injuries to “less than half a
dozen inmates.” “Staff at the facility responded promptly to quell the fight
which did not result in any injuries to staff or damage property,” Paez reported.
December 8, 2010 ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas and El Paso co-counsel
Mike Torres and Leon Schydlower today announced the
filing of a lawsuit against the federal government and administrators of a
West Texas for-profit prison on behalf of the survivors of Jesus Manuel
Galindo. Mr. Galindo, 32, died on December 12, 2008, after suffering a
seizure in solitary confinement where he had been placed for complaining
about the facility’s failure to provide him medication to control his
epileptic seizures. For a copy of Galindo, et al. v. Reeves County, et al.
(W.D. Tex. Dec. 7, 2010), go to http://www.aclutx.org/galindo The suit names
as defendants individual employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, The GEO
Group (which operates the for-profit prison), Reeves County and the
facility’s contracted medical provider, Physicians Network Association (PNA).
“The Galindo family has suffered a terrible loss, a loss that could have been
prevented if Reeves County Detention Center officials had responded to Jesus
Manuel Galindo’s repeated pleas for care as well as requests on Galindo’s
behalf from fellow inmates and his mother, Graciela Galindo,” said Mike
Torres. “A prison sentence should not be a death sentence because officials
are unwilling to provide basic medical care,” added Schydlower.
Mr. Galindo’s death came after repeated attempts by Galindo, his family and
others to persuade prison and medical staff to move him out of isolation and
provide effective medication to control his seizures. “U.S. taxpayer dollars
were used to pay a for-profit medical provider with a documented record of
providing constitutionally inadequate care, and federal officials looked the
other way while inmates like Mr. Galindo were denied access to the most basic
medical necessities,” said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director for the ACLU of
Texas. “A prisoner’s citizenship status does not matter when it comes to
medical care – federal inmates are entitled to equal protection of the law,
and no inmate held in a United States prison should be subject to the
deliberate denial of life-saving medication, then left in solitary to die.”
In recent years, the federal government has increasingly relied on private
firms like The GEO Group, which operates the Reeves County Detention Center
(RCDC) in Pecos, to manage prisons where immigrant prisoners serve criminal
sentences, mostly for non-violent crimes like illegal entry. Gouri Bhat, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Texas,
said, “Prisoners at RCDC face an impossible situation. Private prison
officials cut costs and provide deficient care, and the Bureau of Prisons
won’t hear grievances about private prisons. That is a Catch-22 with deadly
consequences.”
July 23, 2010 Odessa American
A prisoner who helped broker an end to a Pecos prison riot in 2008 is suing
the company that runs the Reeves County Detention Center, claiming jail
officials retaliated against him and violated his rights in the aftermath of
the infamous riot. Paul Ohaegbu claims GEO Group
jail officials reneged on a promise that he and other prisoners involved in
negotiations to resolve a hostage situation would not face prosecution. Last
year, a federal grand jury indicted Ohaegbu and
about two dozen of his fellow prisoners on federal riot charges. While
several of Ohaegbu’s co-defendants pleaded guilty
and were sentenced to additional prison time, prosecutors dropped the charges
against Ohaegbu, citing “insufficient evidence.” Ohaegbu claims jail officials became angry when the
charges were dropped and fabricated an incident report to “convict” Ohaegbu of disorderly conduct at a disciplinary hearing
and strip him of good time and privileges. Ohaegbu,
51, is seeking several million dollars in actual and punitive damages. Pablo Paez, a GEO Group spokesman, declined to comment on the
lawsuit, citing company policy concerning litigation. But an incident report
of the riot filed into court records shows jail officials dispute Ohaegbu’s claims: “It was explained again to the inmates
that there would be no retaliation for the riot but that investigation and
possible prosecution for these offense would be pursued,” the report states,
referring to negotiations that included Ohaegbu.
The charges against Ohaegbu stemmed from a riot involving
more than 1,200 prisoners at the Pecos lockup in December 2008. Court
documents show the prisoners took two guards hostage and demanded better
medical attention, food and recreation. Ohaegbu, in
a 14-page lawsuit he filed on his own behalf, offers a detailed prisoner’s
perspective of the chaos, attributing the uprising to the outrage sparked by
the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo, a 32-year-old epileptic prisoner. “The
inmates housed in the segregation became irate and started a fire in one of
the cells,” Ohaegbu said in the suit. “The general
population inmates saw a body bag being removed from segregation and became
aware of the death.” Court documents show the riot began after two prisoners
in a cell across from Galindo’s exposed the wires behind an electrical outlet
and used them to set fire to a mattress. “It sounds like a design flaw to me,
but that’s how they started it the best we can tell,” FBI agent Justin E.
Fleck told a panel of 20 grand jurors last year, according to a transcript of
the hearing. Earlier this month, one of the prisoners charged with starting
the fire, Alex Javier Morales Romero, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting
to cause a riot. He is awaiting a sentencing hearing Sept. 30 in Pecos. His
cellmate, Carlos Alberto Morales-Rojas, pleaded guilty last year to
misprision of a felony — failure to report or concealing a crime — and was
sentenced to time served. Ohaegbu, for his part,
denied any role in the rock throwing and vandalizing that Fleck estimated
resulted in about $1 million damage to the prison during the 24-hour
standoff. Rather, Ohaegbu claims he acted as an
arbitrator between the Spanish-speaking inmates and the jail administration.
“Since neither the warden nor the deputy speaks Spanish, the Mexican inmates
requested the assistance of plaintiff, an African inmate, to communicate
their request to the Geo administrators,” the suit states. “To alleviate
inmate fear, the Geo Group, Inc. warden, Dwight Sims, promised before the
officials that no inmate would be retaliated for the riot.” In November, Ohaegbu was sanctioned for “conduct that disrupts the
orderly running of the institution.” According to the suit, Ohaegbu was stripped of 40 days good conduct time and 200
days of telephone and commissary privileges. The prisoner claims he also was
ordered to spent 30 days in disciplinary segregation and given a
“disciplinary transfer” to a federal prison in Beaumont.
March 10, 2010 AP
A former food service worker at a publicly owned but privately run West
Texas prison says he accepted bribes to smuggle cell phones and other
contraband to prisoners. Sixty-two-year-old Frank Williams Jr. pleaded guilty
Wednesday in federal court in Midland. Prosecutors say Williams, who worked
at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos until being fired in 2008,
admitted being caught trying to smuggle two cell phones, three phone chargers
and a Bluetooth headset into the prison for inmates. Prosecutors said
Williams also admitted that one of the phones was used by an inmate to
continue his work in drug trafficking.
February 16, 2010 PR Newswire
Every day, thousands of federal inmates across the country are locked up
in prisons...prisons that answer more to their shareholders than they do to
the U.S. taxpayers. These private prisons are the subject of a months-long
Dan Rather Reports investigation. Since 1997, the U.S. government has been
outsourcing a growing percentage of its inmate population to private
facilities. But unlike federally-owned and operated prisons, private prisons
are not required to open their books or operations to public scrutiny. The
focus of Rather's investigation is the case of a 32-year-old illegal
immigrant named Jesus Galindo, who died in December 2008 of an epileptic
seizure while in solitary confinement at the Reeves County Detention Center
in Pecos, Texas. Reeves is a low-security facility run by the private prison
giant The GEO Group. Galindo was a federal inmate whose death sparked a
series of riots with prisoners demanding better medical care. The case and
riots drew the interest of human rights advocates. Was the death of Jesus
Galindo due to a lack of medical attention? Why had inmates at a detention
center receiving millions of federal dollars every year complained of medical
neglect? And will the full story of what's happening at this prison, and
others like it, ever be known? The answer, according to David Shapiro, an
attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, is no, unless federal law is
changed. He says that's because private prisons are immune from one of the
most powerful tools for the American public to learn what is being done in
its name. "They're not subject to the Freedom of Information Act like
other federal prisons," Shapiro said. "And the Freedom of
Information Act is an information lifeline that lets us know what's going on
behind the prison walls." The investigation explores how this one case
in Texas could break through the walls that have protected the private prison
industry from public scrutiny.
February 12, 2010 NewsWest
9
She took an oath to protect and serve, instead she broke the law. A
former Reeves County Detention Center corrections officer has been sentenced
to a little more than two years in federal prison. Kimberly Owens plead
guilty to accepting a bribe from an inmate's family member in return for
smuggling in contraband. Owens received a paid vacation to Mexico and cash
from the inmate's family member. After she serves her time, Owens will be
under 3 years of probation.
January 3, 2010 Midland
Reporter-Telegram
El Paso attorneys are almost finished preparing a lawsuit against the
company that operates Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos and a Lubbock
physicians' group in the case of an epileptic 32-year-old inmate who died on
Dec. 12, 2008, one of the attorneys said. Representing the wife, three
children and parents of Jesus Manuel Galindo, Miguel "Mike" Torres
said he will file suit against the Geo Group of Boca Raton, Fla., which
operates the 2,400 inmate lockup for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, and
Physicians Network Association of Lubbock, which had been providing the
inmates medical care when Galindo was found dead in an isolation cell in the
prison's Security Housing Unit. Efforts were unsuccessful last week to reach
Wayne Calabrese, Geo's president-CEO in Boca Raton, Fla., and Dr. Vernon
"Trey" Farthing, PNA board chairman. Torres said he and co-counsel
Leon Schydlower and defense lawyers have sought
documents and conducted extensive witnesses' depositions since the 7 a.m.
discovery of Galindo's body started a prison riot in which the recreation
center was burned, three inmates were hospitalized and 25 were charged with
assault and other crimes. Galindo, of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, was
serving 30 months for illegal entry into the U.S. Torres said the petition
will be filed in Judge Bob Parks' 143rd District Court in Monahans.
"We're very close to filing and it is a significant claim we're going to
make," he said. "It's a very wrongful death and we want to do our
homework and be absolutely ready. A big part of this case has been obtaining
documents. PNA will also very likely be a party." Torres said Galindo's
relatives believe his medical needs were inadequately attended to because
they had been prevailing on prison officials to give him full doses of his
medicine, Dilantin, and administer it at the prescribed intervals. "We
really want to get justice for the family," said Torres, who had told of
attending the man's funeral at an "overflowing" south El Paso
funeral home. "There are a lot of layers to this case, but for us it's
simple. They should have provided medical care right there and treated him
decently and they didn't."
December 10, 2009 San Antonio
Express-News
About 20 human rights activists gathered outside the New Braunfels office of
a private prison-management company on Thursday to demand that it improve
conditions at the Reeves County Detention Center. Grasping fake black coffins
and shouting for the closure of the detention center in Pecos, the protesters
garnered attention in the form of honks from drivers passing by the front of
the GEO Group Inc.’s central regional headquarters in the 1500 block of
Common Street. Members of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the
Grassroots Leadership and other organizations were unsuccessful in getting a
meeting with GEO Group Inc.’s employees. Inmates have rioted at the facility
twice since last December. The first time, inmates were seeking better
medical treatment. The second riot began Jan. 31 and lasted nearly a week,
leaving extensive damage at the facility, which holds up to 2,000 inmates.
“We are here to demand rights for the immigrant prisoners who are held at the
Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos,” said Bob Libal,
Texas campaigns coordinator for Grassroots Leadership. “We know that nine
prisoners at this facility have died in the last four years, and that’s the
reason we have the nine coffins out here in honor of those who have passed
away in that facility,” he said. “We also know prisoners at the Reeves County
Detention Center, many of whom are only serving time for immigration
violations, report conditions that include medical neglect, abuse by guards,
overcrowding, inadequate food and unsanitary conditions.” The demonstration
came on International Human Rights Day. Soon after protesters tried to deliver
a letter to GEO Group employees, New Braunfels police responded to a call
about people entering the building. No one was arrested in connection with
the protest. Employees of the GEO Group, both in New Braunfels and at its
world headquarters in Florida, did not respond to requests for comment. Terri
Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, said the letter called on the
GEO Group to agree to a federal investigation into immigrant prisoners’
deaths at the Reeves County center, to implement a grievance system and allow
civil rights groups to monitor conditions there. Maria Reynaga
of Edinburg joined the protest to speak out about conditions she said her
brother has experienced as a detention center inmate in Pecos. She said her
brother, Manuel Carrillo, is a legal resident immigrant arrested for drug
possession and distribution in Florida. She said Carrillo suffers from
stomach ulcers but is unable to get medicine. “He has to take some medicine
or he’s going to be in stomach pain all the time,” Reynaga
said. “He has asked for the medicine more than a month ago, and he still
hasn’t gotten anything.”
November 24, 2009 AP
A former guard at the Reeves County Detention Center faces up to 15 years
in prison in a bribery and smuggled iPods investigation. Prosecutors in
Midland say 28-year-old Katherin Elizabeth Terry of
Pecos on Tuesday pleaded guilty to accepting bribes. Terry acknowledged that
three times during 2008 she accepted money from the mother of an inmate,
totaling $500, in exchange for agreeing to smuggle banned iPods to the
prisoner. A federal judge in March will sentence Terry, who also faces a fine
of up to $250,000.
October 12, 2009 Texas Observer
Last Dec. 12, on the outskirts of Pecos, Texas, the immigrants doing time
in the world’s largest privately run prison decided to turn the tables on
their captors. It was the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an important
religious holiday in Latin America. But the inmates were in no mood for
celebration. The motin, as the overwhelmingly
Spanish-speaking inmates called their uprising, began in the Reeves County
Detention Center’s Special Housing Unit (SHU), better known as solitary
confinement, with two men—a Honduran and a Mexican—using the wires in an
electrical outlet to set a mattress on fire. They broke out the windows of
their cell, and when prison guards tried to extinguish the fire by sticking a
fire hose through a port in the door, the two broke the sink off the wall and
held it up as a shield. One brandished, but didn’t use, a “shiv,” a crude
jailhouse knife. Meanwhile, the two men yelled for other inmates to join in
the uprising. Soon, at 12:45 p.m., a lockdown order went out across the
prison. Staff tried to hustle prisoners on their way to lunch or the
recreation center back to their cells. Inmates in one of the housing areas
refused, and they forced the guards to release friends from their cells.
“Open the doors or we will take your keys,” the prisoners demanded, according
to an FBI account. “We’ll see who has control in a bit,” one inmate told a guard.
The prison’s emergency-response team deployed an arsenal including rubber
bullets, pepper spray, expulsion grenades and bean-bag guns. To little avail.
The insurrection quickly spread to the other housing areas. The rioters
assembled in the outdoor recreation yard armed with rocks, concrete, and
steel poles as well as horseshoes, hammers and box cutters they had pilfered
from the recreation building. Many of them, aware of the prison’s extensive
surveillance system, hid their faces with T-shirts, hats and bandanas. Some
wore sunglasses. Two prison employees were taken hostage. (Neither was
harmed.) With more than 1,200 inmates milling around outside and hordes of
law enforcement officials, the prison must have looked like a war zone. It
was not mere anarchy, though. By midafternoon, members of the FBI, Texas
Rangers, DPS and the Odessa Police Department arrived at the prison. As the
crisis negotiators quickly found out, the riot had not been prompted by gang
infighting, racial tensions or a spontaneous outburst of violence. The men
incarcerated at the Pecos prison are considered “low-security”; most are
serving relatively short sentences for immigration violations or drug
offenses. All are set to be deported at the end of their sentences. Leaders
of the rebellion were demanding a meeting with the Mexican Consulate, the FBI
and the warden to discuss a number of grievances that they said GEO Group,
the prison company that manages the 3,700-bed facility, had refused to
address. The evening of the uprising, the inmates sent a delegation of seven
men—a Venezuelan, a Cuban, a Nigerian, and four Mexicans—to meet with the
authorities. They explained that the uprising had erupted from widespread
dissatisfaction with almost every aspect of the prison: inedible food, a
dearth of legal resources, the use of solitary confinement to punish people
who complained about their medical treatment, overcrowding and, above all,
poor health care. The delegates pointed to a string of deaths (according to
public records, five men died in Reeves between August 2008 and March 2009,
including two suicides) they attributed to the prison’s inattention to
medical needs. The riot had been sparked by the death of Jesus Manuel
Galindo, an epileptic, who had been carried out of the prison’s Special
Housing Unit in a body bag that same day. “Suspect(s) are talking about the
guy being out of the shoe [SHU],” the FBI report said. “Someone should have
been there with him. Special housing was not the place for [him].” The
authorities jotted down the concerns and promised to take them seriously.
Twenty-four hours after it began, the uprising was over. More than $1 million
worth of damage had been done to the prison. Less than two months later, on
Jan. 31, the prison would be under inmate control again—and this time the
rioting would last for five days and end with one building destroyed and some
$20 million in damage. To critics of GEO and other for-profit prison
companies, the two huge riots in as many months—rare, especially in
low-security prisons—were the logical consequence of the largest experiment
in prison privatization to date. *** The story of the death of Jesus Manuel
Galindo is the story of a death foretold. For weeks, Galindo, a 32-year-old
epileptic Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States since he was 13,
had been complaining to anyone who would listen that something terrible was
going to happen to him because of poor medical care. In May 2007, Galindo was
found illegally crossing the border in El Paso. Galindo, nicknamed “Negro”
for his dark complexion, was sentenced later that year to 30 months for
illegal re-entry (crossing into the U.S. after being deported). Ten years
ago, he would likely have been quickly deported, not prosecuted. But the Bush
administration piloted a “zero-tolerance” policy in Texas that eventually
spread across the border: All illegal border crossers would be arrested,
detained and, if possible, prosecuted in federal court. Prosecutions surged,
as did the need for detention centers, jails and prisons to hold the tens of
thousands of newly minted criminals. The Obama administration has more than
embraced the policy. The number of prosecutions for immigration crimes—almost
68,000—during the first nine months of 2009 is on track for a 14 percent
increase over 2008. More than half of those prosecutions took place in Texas.
The result has been a system swamped with low-level immigration cases and
prisons bursting at the seams with illegal immigrants. Rather than build and
run the facilities themselves, federal agencies have turned in large part to
private prison companies, such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO
Group. In 2008, GEO reported more than $1 billion in revenue, an 80 percent
increase over 2005. Privatization has been less profitable for others. GEO’s
Texas facilities have been plagued with suicides, filthy conditions, sexual
abuse scandals, hunger strikes, riots and lawsuits. Jesus Galindo became
another case in point. According to his family, Galindo had had seizures
before his incarceration but they grew worse and more frequent under the care
of the Physicians Network Association, a Lubbock-based medical services
provider that serves 17,000 inmates in 24 facilities across the nation. In
2002, Reeves County hired PNA to run the prison’s health care, attracted by
its promise to improve services and cut costs. (The county pays PNA $6.03 per
inmate per day, about $8 million a year at full capacity.) Four months into
their contract, then-warden Rudy Franco lauded PNA at a county commissioners
meeting for drastically reducing the number of surgeries, X-rays, outside
visits and other medical services, the latter of which had dropped from 3,148
to 222. On Nov. 12, Galindo was locked up in the Special Housing Unit. The
mostly Spanish-speaking inmates call it la celda de
castigo, the punishment cell. Prisoners and others
say the SHU was frequently used to isolate and punish men with health
problems who complained about their medical care. According to Galindo’s
family, the prison authorities said they put him in the SHU to keep an eye on
him. “That’s not true,” says Jesus Galindo Sr., his father. “It was to punish
him.” Galindo pleaded with prison officials to return him to the general
population where he had friends who woke him up to take his pills and took
care of him during his frequent seizures. “He would say he was really afraid
because if he got sick who was going to help him?” says his mother, Graciela
Galindo. She begged officials to look after her son. “They told me he was in
a high security place; that was what the warden said, and that I should not
worry about him. They told me they were taking good care of my son.” Galindo
did what he could to reassure his family, singing love songs to his mother
over the phone. “He had hope,” his brother Jesus Galindo Jr. said. “He was
real strong. The only thing that bothered him was his condition. I saw him on
his birthday [Nov. 29]. I said, ‘Hey, hang in there. Think of us like we
think of you.’” Judy Madewell, the public defender in charge of Galindo’s criminal
case was so worried that she sent an investigator to the prison on Dec. 4.
The investigator, Octavio Vasquez, urged the authorities to put Galindo back
into the general population. On Dec. 9, Graciela talked to her son on the
phone. “He told me to tell Belinda [his daughter] to do a dance to the Virgin
because he’s getting out of the SHU on Friday [Dec. 12] ... and that if he
wasn’t, to contact the jail.” The following day, Dec. 10, Galindo wrote a
letter to his family saying that he felt bad and had asked the doctor and
warden to do something. The letters begins in the morning, with Galindo
noting that a nurse had promised him that she would return later that day to
take his blood. Two days later, on Dec. 12, Graciela called to see if her son
had been released from the SHU. “I called and to my surprise he was dead.
They kept me on the phone for an hour. They said we have to wait for the
doctors. I told them please do something. But my son was already dead.”
“Mama, the day already passed and nothing,” he writes later that same day.
“All they did was walk up and down but here, where I am, no one even stopped.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow.” *** When Galindo was found in his cell,
rigor mortis had already set in. His body was purple and stiff. The El Paso
County medical examiner ruled the cause of death as epileptiform seizure
disorder. A toxicology report found “below-therapeutic levels” of Dilantin, a
cheap anti-epileptic drug, in Galindo’s blood and urine. The drug is only
effective at certain dosages, and a patient’s blood must be checked regularly
to make sure it’s not too high or low, says Robert Cain, an Austin
neurologist who reviewed the autopsy. “With multiple seizures, inadequate
levels of medication and left in isolation without supervision, he was set up
to die,” Cain says. Galindo’s experience was strikingly similar to those of
other inmates under PNA’s care. In 2003, the Justice Department investigated
the Santa Fe County Jail in New Mexico, which was then run by Management
& Training Corp. (MTC). Just as it does at Reeves, PNA had a subcontract
to provide health care there. The Justice Department found nearly
non-existent medical and mental health care, and specifically noted PNA’s
inattention to properly calibrating dose-sensitive medications, especially
anti-epileptics. “We found several instances in which PNA failed to monitor
inmates on these types of medications, even when inmates reported
experiencing side effects,” the report states. In one case, blood testing
showed that an inmate with a seizure disorder did not have enough of the
anti-seizure drug to be effective. The PNA medical staff did nothing, and
seven days later the inmate attempted suicide and then suffered a seizure.
“Even with all the attention from medical staff due to his suicide attempt,
his seizure medication blood level was not measured until four days” later,
the report says. No such authoritative report has been done for the Pecos
prison. But in interviews and correspondence, prisoners, their relatives,
attorneys and immigrant rights advocates describe a facility overrun with
corruption and dangerous cost-cutting measures. Prisoners writing to the
Observer have made allegations ranging from physical abuse to tacit
arrangements between guards and prisoners to traffic drugs and other
contraband inside the facility. (GEO Group declined to comment.) A prisoner
we’ll call Juan, who asked that his real name not be used for fear of
retribution, describes an environment of fear where hardened criminals
serving long sentences live side by side with men who are there solely for
crossing the border illegally. Juan says that prisoners in the jail are
divided into groups based on their home state in Mexico with the tacit
approval of the guards and the warden. Prisoners who have money and can buy
influence and authority run these groups. These bosses dole out punishments
and determine with the guards who gets sent to the punishment cell, Juan
says. “We are threatened and beaten if we complain. While [the prison bosses]
can have cell phones and other benefits that are forbidden.” Another
prisoner, Jose—who also asked that his name be changed—writes that he has
hepatitis. “I begged for medicine and they sent me a bottle that was unsealed
and only half full,” Jose writes. “I haven’t received treatment for my
hepatitis since December 2008.” “The problem with Reeves is that there are no
medical services,” says Graciela Arredondo, the mother of a man who served
part of his sentence at Reeves. “They won’t bring a doctor if you are sick.
They don’t want to spend the money, but these are human beings and they
deserve medical services.” After the riots in December and January, the ACLU
of Texas called on the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector
General to investigate the prisoners’ charges. This wouldn’t be the first
time the OIG was asked to look into reports of abuse at the Reeves facility.
In 2006, an investigation resulted in the arrests of five employees at the
jail for smuggling drugs into the facility and having sex with inmates. Because
it hasn’t received an answer from the OIG, the ACLU is starting its own
investigation. “Riots are relatively rare, and are an indicator of serious
problems at a facility,” says Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of
Texas. ”We continue to receive complaints that the Bureau of Prisons and its
contractors, GEO and Physicians Network Association, are systemically failing
to address life-threatening and chronic medical conditions of detainees.”
None of this is surprising to longtime prison activist Bob Libal, co-coordinator of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin
nonprofit that fights private prisons. “Conditions at GEO facilities have
been horrendous, and it stretches across every type of facility,” says Libal. “It’s case after case after case. Whether Coke
County, Val Verde, Dickens County, Reeves, Pearsall, it’s one horrendous
thing after another.” In 2007, the Texas Youth Commission removed 197 youths
from GEO Group’s Coke County Juvenile Justice Center after inspectors found
deplorable conditions including filthy cells that reeked of feces and urine,
insects in the food, and inmates only being allowed to shower and brush their
teeth every few days. A year before, the family of 23-year-old LeTisha Tapia sued GEO Group after Tapia killed herself
at the Val Verde County Jail, which the company runs. Tapia had told her
family that she was raped, beaten, sexually humiliated and deprived of
psychological and medical treatment in retaliation for telling the warden
about guards allowing inmates to have sex with each other. The suit was
settled out of court. In the past two years, the state of Idaho has pulled
out of contracts at two GEO-operated jails—the Dickens County Correctional
Center, near Spur, and the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littleton—citing chronic
understaffing, a lack of required treatment programs, and suicides linked to
squalid conditions. In a lawsuit set to go to trial in March, two detainees
at the GEO-run South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall claim that the
company “intentionally and systematically violates the rights of mentally
disabled detainees.” Echoing the Reeves County allegations, both of the
plaintiffs, Miroslava Rodriguez-Grava and Isaias Vasques Cisneros de Jesus, allege that instead of
treating them for their mental disabilities, GEO put them in segregation for
extended periods of time. “I think that any time you insert profit into the
equation that care and also the rehabilitative elements of corrections goes
out the window,” said Libal. “They try to do things
as cheap as possible. You get what you’re paying for in a lot of ways.” ***
The Pecos prison, a remote, austere correctional campus flanked by farmland
and a weirdly out-of-place cemetery, sprawls across several acres a few
hundred yards from Interstate 30. To travelers zipping by at 80 mph, the
facility is little more than a blur of barbed wire and guard towers. But to
the people of Reeves County (population 13,137), it’s an engine of progress.
In the mid-1980s, with the regional economy devastated by the Texas oil bust,
local business and government leaders decided to move into a recession-proof
industry that was exploding in an increasingly criminalized America: prisons.
In 1986, the county built a 300-bed prison. The prison filled rapidly with
federal inmates, pumping revenue into the county’s budget and adding
decent-paying jobs to the local work force. By 2002, Reeves had 2,000 beds.
In 2003, the county completed construction on a $39 million, 960-bed unit
only to find that the feds had no interest. “They built a $39 million prison
on speculation,” said Jon Fulbright, a reporter for the Pecos Enterprise.
While the prison sat empty, payments on the bonds, reduced to junk status,
were coming due. On the verge of default, county officials begged the Bush
administration to send prisoners and hired Randy DeLay, former House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay’s brother, to lobby in Washington, D.C. That’s when
Wackenhut Corrections Corp., now GEO Group, rode to the rescue. In November
2003, GEO agreed to take over management of the whole 3,000-bed prison
complex and soon struck a deal with the Bureau of Prisons to fill the new
unit. Despite the troubles at the Pecos prison under GEO management, local
officials are grateful. “A lot of people criticize GEO but I don’t,” says
Sheriff Arnulfo “Andy” Gomez. “We had a hard time and they pulled us out.
They’ve got lobbyists and all that.” Besides, he says, “You’re going to have
trouble in every prison.” Some more than others. On Jan. 31, a month and a
half after the first uprising, prisoners at the Reeves County Detention
Center rose up again. Prison and law enforcement officials have released
little information on the disturbance, but inmates, advocates and family
members say it began when Ramon Garcia, 25, was forced into solitary confinement
after complaining of dizziness and feeling sick. “We spoke with the warden
and we told him to take our countryman out of the punishment cell and take
him to the hospital because he needs medical attention,” an inmate told Laura
Rivas, an advocate with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights. “We told them that if they were not going to do it then we would do
it, we would take him out, because we have more strength, and they laughed at
us. And that’s when it all started.” Lana Williams, a friend of Garcia’s
family, told KFOX-TV in El Paso that Garcia had been put into solitary
confinement whenever he complained of feeling sick. “He’s gotten to the point
where he can’t walk down the hall without holding on to the wall, and this
has been going on and getting progressively worse,” Williams said. During the
five-day takeover, the inmates drafted another list of demands: better
medical treatment, adequate food (especially for those who are ill or have
diabetes) and no guard retaliation against any person. “To them, we don’t
matter,” the inmate told Rivas. “If we die, it doesn’t matter to them. The
only thing that interests them is money—nothing more.”
September 10, 2009 CBS 7 News
The business manager for the Reeves County Detention Center is behind
bars after being arrested on an embezzlement warrant out of New Mexico.
39-year-old Keith Clark has nine charges of credit card fraud against him.
The Reeves County Sheriff's Office says the warrant stems from an incident
that happened in Albuquerque. Clark worked for the GEO Group, which manages
the RCDC facility. All employees are required to have a background check. The
GEO Group declined to comment on Clark when we contacted them today. No bond
has been set yet.
August 3, 2009 NewsWest
9
A former worker at the Reeves County Detention Center will spend the next
two and a half years behind bars. Moises Martinez worked as a case manager.
He had money wired into his account to sneak tobacco and other contraband
into the private prison, several times last summer. After he gets out from
jail, he will spend three years on probation.
June 17, 2009 Midland
Reporter-Telegram
The death of a 32-year-old epileptic inmate in solitary confinement at
Reeves County Detention Center last Dec. 12 touched off the first of two
riots that saw fires set and hostages taken, said an attorney who represents
the inmate’s family. Some of the privately-run federal lockup’s 2,400
inmates, many of them illegal immigrants, had complained of woeful health
care after the riots west of Pecos on Dec. 12-13 and Jan. 31-Feb. 1. But the
story now centers on 32-year-old Jesus Manuel Galindo of Ciudad Juarez,
Chihuahua, Mexico, who El Paso lawyer Miguel “Mike” Torres” claims was
improperly treated. Representing Galindo’s wife, three children and parents
with co-counsel Leon Schydlower, Torres said
Wednesday that a doctor with a Lubbock physicians’ group that contracts with
the prison examined Galindo just before his death. “The doctor said Jesus had
an attitude problem because he was complaining about the lack of medical
treatment that killed him three days later,” said Torres. “He had no business
being in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) because he was only in for minor
infractions, not fighting or worse. His mom had been calling almost daily to
say he was not feeling well and was having seizures. “She mailed the prison
his medical records, but they sent them back with a curt note that said,
‘Don’t send these again.’ When they found him at 7 a.m. Dec. 12, rigor mortis
had set in, which meant he had been dead for three to five hours. I attended
his funeral and the small neighborhood funeral home in south El Paso was
filled to overflowing. It was tragic because he was a young man.” Torres, who
is taking steps toward a civil lawsuit against the company operating the
prison, said Galindo’s former cell mates touched off the riot because they
had feared that result. “Everything we learned is that they were worried sick
about this guy,” he said. “They tried to contact the administration and say,
‘Bring him back and we will watch him.’ You have to take this type of
medication (Dilantin) at precise times at well-monitored therapeutic levels.”
Judy Madewell, a federal public defender in San Antonio who was handling
Galindo’s appeal of a 30-month term for illegal re-entry into the U.S., said
she has “had concerns for a long time because RCDC has had a number of
problems with inmates getting proper medical attention. “My secretary
translated a letter in which Jesus said, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to die and no
one will find me!’” Madewell said. “We feel horrible about what happened and
feel like there is a lot of responsibility on the facility’s part.” She
reported sending Octavio Vasquez, an investigator with the federal defender’s
office in Alpine, to spend three hours with Galindo on Dec. 4. “He was in the
SHU for minor disciplinary infractions,” Madewell said. “Octavio went to the
authorities and said, ‘He needs removing from solitary,’ and they said, ‘Yes,
we will move him out by this weekend.’ He was still there when he died eight
days later. “Jesus told Octavio the prison was not giving him his meds often
enough and lowered the dosage. He was a gentle person — not a problem client
and as far as I know not a problem inmate.” Assistant Federal Defender Charlotte
Harris of Alpine, whose office represented Galindo after his arrest, said the
Geo Group of Boca Raton, Fla., runs RCDC with support from Reeves County.
“It’s better for the government to run prisons, rather than private
companies, because corners can be cut if you have a profit motive,” said
Harris. A call to the prison last week was referred to Geo’s Florida
headquarters, where a spokesman asked questions be
submitted in writing by e-mail. The questions had not been answered
Wednesday. Geo also operates Lea County Correctional Facility at Hobbs, N.M.,
according to references. Two prison recreation specialists were released
unharmed after the first riot. The rec center was torched during that melee,
and smoke poured from a housing unit during the second, broadcast by CNN,
after which three inmates were hospitalized, one missing a finger. Charged
with assault and other crimes, 25 inmates will be tried in Pecos and Midland,
a court official said. Six former RCDC employees — four guards, a life skills
teacher and a case manager — have been indicted since March for accepting
bribes to smuggle marijuana, tobacco and cell phones. Four pleaded guilty,
one was convicted by a jury and the sixth awaits trial, according to records.
Reeves County Hospital Administrator Al LaRochelle said Wednesday that his
hospital has not worked at the prison in at least nine years, if ever, and he
is not interested in it doing so. Noting RCH occasionally treats prisoners in
its emergency room and does some pre-arranged surgeries, LaRochelle said,
“You need experience running an inmates’ health care facility. “Anytime you
start looking at low bid contracts, that’s not my cup of tea. I’m not a fan
of that type of arrangement. If I can’t provide the quality, I don’t want to
do the work.”
June 2, 2009 AP
A federal jury in Midland convicted a 21-year-old former prison guard of
smuggling contraband to inmates. Jacob C. Guzman of Pecos was convicted
Tuesday of accepting bribes, attempted destruction of evidence and attempted
smuggling of contraband to prisoners. The federal inmates were at the
county-owned but privately managed Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos.
The prison, owned by Boca Raton, Fla.-based The GEO Group Inc., was the site
of inmate riots in December and January. Guzman faces up to 15 years in
prison. Sentencing is Aug. 29. Prosecutors say Guzman in 2008 accepted $600
from someone in Tennessee to smuggle cell phones, tobacco and MP3 players to
an inmate. Guzman was indicted, along two other former employees, earlier this
year.
April 1, 2009 Odessa American
Juan Angel Guerra said he wasn't surprised when two riots recently broke out
at the Reeves County Detention Center. As district attorney in Willacy County
in South Texas, Guerra charged a prison's private operator with murder in
connection with the death of a prisoner there in 2001. Like the Pecos prison,
the facility there is operated by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group.
"If you look at the map, and you see how they're spreading across the
country it's frightening," Guerra said of private prisons. "But you
know when you start complaining is when it's your brother, it's your
wife." Along with the Geo Group, Guerra has also indicted former Vice
President Dick Cheney, claiming that his investment in private prisons made
him culpable in abuse. The charges were later dismissed. "I would have
loved to have taken that to trial," Guerra said. But, instead, Guerra is
out of office after losing in a primary in his re-election bid last year. So
he has taken his fight north. Guerra said he now represents more than 250
inmates, all illegal immigrants, at the Reeves County Detention Center. The
prison, which holds 2,400 inmates, had separate riots in December and January
that heavily damaged the facility. The county-owned prison has had an
agreement with the Geo Group since 2003. The facility houses federal
immigration violators under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Guerra said he's representing the inmates because it's hard for them to find
or afford attorneys. "Nobody else is representing them," he said.
"Nobody else knows enough." Guerra said he initially represented
the inmates for free, but he now asks families for a $100 donation to assist
with his expenses. The attorney said he hasn't been able to see his clients
because the prison hasn't allowed any attorneys or family members into units
1 or 2 since the riots. "They're my clients," he said. "That's
a basic right that anybody who's detained on United States soil has, is the
right to see an attorney." Guerra said the prison cites safety concerns
in not permitting him to enter. "For somebody to say you can't see your
client because we're concerned about your safety, and then they have another
death, what are you supposed to do, just walk away?" he said. The other
death Guerra refers to is that of Jose Manuel Falcon, who died March 5, after
the riots had ended, of wounds prison officials ruled was a suicide. So
Guerra has been camping out just down the road from the prison. He said he
won't leave until he's able to see his clients. He sleeps in his pickup,
which is surrounded by 90 white crosses, made of wooden stakes. He said they
represent 90 inmates who died at private prisons in the United States. While
the crosses are all in remembrance of illegal immigrants, he said he would
soon add 90 more to commemorate U.S. citizens who died under similar
circumstances. Falcon's mother, Santos Aguallo,
recently joined him at his camp. With Guerra translating, she said she didn't
believe her son's death was a suicide. "All she wants to know is why did
they take away his life? He only had two months to go," Guerra said. The
attorney also questions the suicide ruling. "Give me another example of
a guy committing suicide by cutting his throat," he said. "It
doesn't happen." Guerra dismisses those who say he has no business being
in Pecos. "If I got a guy indicted for murder and something happens and
it's the same guy, am I outside my jurisdiction?" he said. Guerra said
the prison told him he would be allowed to see 10 of his clients today. If he
can see his clients, he promises to leave Pecos. But his fight won't be over
until private prisons are shut down. In 2007, Guerra was charged himself on
indictments that he extorted money from a bail bonds company and used his
office for personal business. He said the charges, which were later
dismissed, were politically motivated. Guerra said private prisons are
intentionally understaffed, and the companies work to keep inmates in longer,
all so the companies can continue to bring in $80 a day per inmate and keep
as much of it as possible. Officials at the Reeves County Detention Center
declined comment onsite, saying they would issue a written statement Tuesday
afternoon. As of Wednesday evening, the Odessa American hadn't received any statement.
Efforts to reach Reeves County Judge Sam Contreras and County Attorney Alva
Alvarez were also unsuccessful. Raul Tavarez of Odessa said his
brother-in-law Auden Amancio Castillo sent a letter
to Guerra because he fears he'll be sent to Pecos. Castillo is currently in
the Ector County Detention Center facing felony possession of a controlled
substance charges. Tavarez said he'd like to join Guerra's cause. "I'm
glad that somebody has the initiative to get involved with them and make a
point to be involved with these guys," Tavarez said. "I'm glad
we've got somebody like that who's a voice for these guys."
March 28, 2009 NewsWest
9
A Pecos street was covered in white crosses on Saturday symbolizing inmates
in private prisons who have lost their lives. A local attorney representing
inmates inside the Reeves County Detention facility asked family members to
make crosses to represent their loved ones. Juan Guerra has been camped
outside the detention center now for weeks. He says he wants authorities to allow
him inside the facility to talk to his clients. In the meantime, this weekend
he placed each cross along side the road just
outside the prison. "All these crosses symbolize all the people who have
died in private prisons in the last three years. We have over about 90
identified so far, but everyday we find out more
that are dying," Pecos inmate attorney, Juan Guerra, said. About 180
crosses were places along the road. Guerra plans on camping out until
Thursday. No word yet as to how long those crosses will stay up.
March 20, 2009 Action 4 News
A Rio Grande Valley family continues to search for justice after their nephew
died while serving time in a private West Texas prison. Jose Manuel Falcon
was two months shy of his release from the Pecos prison when he died. The
32-year-old died Thursday, March 12, at the Reeve County Detention Center.
Falcon spent five years there. Family members called it a harsh sentence for
being caught illegally in the U.S. without papers. They claim corruption at
the prison ultimately took his life. Falcon's aunt said they cut him and they
removed his eyes; his legs were bruised and his body was mutilated. "It
was horrible," she said. According to former Willacy County District
Attorney, Juan Guerra, an inmate is five times more likely to die in a
private prison than in a government prison. Guerra is representing the
Falcons. Since 2001, Guerra has made it his mission to investigate what he
calls injustices at private prisons. Currently, he represents roughly 250
inmates, and he claims he's been denied access numerous times to visit with
his clients. "Private prisons are out there to make money. They have
very few guards, they're treated inhumane. In my opinion, the meals are just
ridiculous and the medical attention is just not adequate." said Guerra.
The exact cause of death is listed as suicide. But Falcon's family vowed to
continue investigating his death. They will make their trip to Pecos next
week and place 160 homemade crosses in the prison's front lawn, which represent
inmates who have died in private prisons this year.
March 19, 2009 Valley Morning Star
Attorney Juan Angel Guerra will continue his quest to meet with clients
in the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos by lining the prison's fence
with crosses that represent the 160 inmates who have died there, including a
33-year-old Alamo man who died last week. On Wednesday, Guerra and Jose
Falcon's family worked on the crosses, which will feature the name of each
inmate that has died. He planned to leave Thursday night. Guerra said
detention center officials said Falcon committed suicide. However, Guerra
said that's impossible as Falcon was nearing the end of his sentence.
"Two more months and he would have been out," Guerra said. Falcon
was completing his five-year prison sentence after he crossed into the United
States from Mexico illegally for the second time. He was previously arrested
on the same charge 10 years ago, Guerra said. "They're saying he
committed suicide, but there's no way," Guerra said, adding that bruises
and cuts found on Falcon's body are consistent with defensive wounds. Since
February, the detention center has been on lockdown following a riot that
damaged the facility. County officials have denied Guerra access to the
facility and his clients, saying it's too dangerous, letters to the former
Willacy County district attorney show. The Reeves County Detention Center,
about 350 miles northwest of San Antonio, is managed by the GEO Group, which
a grand jury under Guerra indicted last year in the death of an inmate in a
Raymondville facility. Charges were later dropped. Families for his other
clients - more than 200, Guerra said - are concerned about the safety of
their family members. "If people are rioting, something is going
on," Guerra said. "They're not being treated right." Members
of Falcon's family, who live in Alamo, are expected to travel with Guerra to
Pecos in protest, he said. Along with the crosses they'll place at the
entrance of the facility, they'll also take signs that urge government control
of these prisons. "We need to make people aware that people are inside
there," he said when asked why the signs and crosses are necessary.
March 19, 2009 KRGV
A spokesman for the GEO Group, a private prison company that runs the
Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos released a statement to NEWSCHANNEL
5. The statement reads: On March 5, 2009, at approximately 6:40PM, inmate
Jose Manuel Falcon took his life by self inflicting
numerous lacerations with a disposable razor blade. At the time of the incident
the inmate was in a single cell and there is no evidence of foul play. In
accordance with state law, the custodial death of inmate falcon was
investigated by the Texas Rangers and it has been determined through the
investigation that the death was suicide. A Texas Rangers spokesperson tells
NEWSCHANNEL 5 they still consider Falcon's death an open case.
March 17, 2009 KRIS TV
Three employees at a county-owned but privately managed West Texas prison
have been indicted on charges that they took bribes to smuggle in contraband,
the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday. Moises B. Martinez Jr., a
prison case manager, and guard Sylvia Castillo Chairez
were indicted last week in Midland. Jacob C. Guzman was indicted on Jan. 28,
though his Midland lawyer, Dan Wade, believes a second indictment was also
issued last week. All three defendants worked at the Reeves County Detention
Center in Pecos. Martinez and Chairez turned
themselves in Tuesday morning. Guzman turned himself in earlier.
Investigators said the three are accused of taking cash from inmates to
smuggle in contraband including tobacco and cell phones. According to an
indictment against Guzman, investigators allege the guard was paid $100 by
someone in Tennessee to smuggle tobacco into the prison in September 2008.
When the tobacco was found during a search before Guzman could go into the
jail, the indictment alleges, he tried to destroy it. Wade declined to
comment on the case against Guzman Tuesday. Court records do not list lawyers
for Martinez or Chairez. Investigators said
Martinez is accused of taking five bribes, ranging from $500 to $900 to
smuggle contraband into the prison between June and July 2008. Chairez is accused of taking six bribes of $500 to $1,100
to smuggle cell phones into the prison between November 2007 and June 2008.
Investigators said Chairez was paid by someone in
New York. The Reeves County Detention Center, a sprawling prison complex at
the edge of Pecos, is owned by the county but run by Boca Raton, Fla.-based
GEO Group Inc. The prison houses about 3,000 federal criminal immigrant
inmates. The facility suffered widespread damage in two riots in as many
months in December and January. Relatives of inmates at the jail have claimed
that poor conditions, including a lack of medical care, prompted the inmates
to riot. County officials have said repairs could cost up to $20 million. The
charges announced Tuesday are not related to either riot.
February 25, 2009 KRIS TV
A pair of destructive prison riots in the span of two months at a
county-owned but privately managed West Texas prison have cost more than $1.1
million in repairs, according to Reeves County records. The Reeves County
Commission unanimously approved more than $948,000 in repair bills from the
riots during a regular meeting Monday and previously OK'd about $320,000 in
repair costs. Reeves County Judge Sam Contreras said it may be some time before
officials know the total cost of the riots. The first incident was sparked by
an inmate's death in December, and the second incident erupted Jan. 31. But
insurance officials have estimated its repairs could exceed $20 million,
Contreras said. "They said we won't know until all the bids come
in," Contreras said Wednesday. In the latest incident, which relatives
of inmates said was sparked by poor medical care and other conditions inside
the sprawling prison complex, inmates caused widespread damages, even setting
fire to one building. Contreras said two recreation buildings suffered
substantial damage in the second riot and one may be demolished.
February 15, 2009 Trans Border
Project
Complaints about medical care at the Reeves County Detention Center aren’t
new. In 2007 an inmate went on a hunger strike protesting inadequate medical
care. When inmates protested after the death of an inmate in solitary
confinement on December 12, 2008, they alleged that medical deficiencies and
malpractice were widespread. Six weeks later the immigrant inmates rioted
again with the same demands that they be provided with decent medical care.
Juan Angel Guerra, a South Texas attorney who was the former district
attorney in Willacy County, says some 200 inmates at the immigrant prison
have enlisted his services to address their concerns about medical and other
abuses. During the week of the Jan. 31 disturbance, the county kept the
prison on “lockdown,” denying access to reporters and all others, including
Guerra. Neither the county, which owns the prisons, nor GEO Group, which runs
the immigrant prison, released any information about the concerns of the
rioting prisoners, simply saying in brief releases that the “issues” were
being resolved. Similarly, the Bureau of Prisons, which contracts with Reeves
County, to hold the immigrant prisoners, ignored public requests for
information. A full week after authorities said that they restored control
over the prison, County Attorney Alva Alvarez sent a letter to Guerra denying
his request to meet with his clients. "We are doing everything possible
to meet your request," Reeves County Attorney Alva Alvarez wrote.
"However, since the facility was destroyed, there is no secure place for
you to meet with your clients at this time." Reeves County Detention
Center is not a maximum-security prison. It has been variously described by
prison officials as a minimum or low-security facility – hence the “detention
center” designation. The immigrants detained at the Pecos prison are not
violent criminal offenders but rather immigrants, often legal ones albeit
noncitizens, who have been convicted generally of nonviolent felonies like
drug possession and various immigration violations. In the name of
guaranteeing public safety, Reeves County officials have kept the prison off
limits to reporters and attorneys. And in an apparent effort to keep the
story about inmate protests from gaining momentum in the media and to keep it
away from the view of state and federal officials, county officials and the
private prison contractors have refused to comment on prison conditions.
Among those who have declined to comment about the state of medical care at
the detention center is the private contractor that is responsible for this
care. Leader in Correctional Healthcare -- Physicians Network Association
(PNA), a Lubbock-based company that calls itself a leader in correctional
healthcare,” has subcontracted with Reeves County since 2002. As the owner of
the prison, Reeves County has a contract with the Bureau of Prisons to hold fedeal immigrant prisoners. But rather than run the
facility itself, the county subcontracts its responsibilities to GEO Group to
operate and manage the prison and to PNA to provide medical and dental care.
(See Medical Claims Part One) In its presentation as part of the negotiations
over its current contract with the county, PNA assured the county that “as a
subcontractor, PNA has fourteen years’ experience assisting operators exceed
expectations.” It emphasized the “cost-effective” character of its medical
services, and promised that it would “work as your partner to ensure
appropriate healthcare without compromising operations.” “We are recognized
for our responsiveness to the needs of our customers,” boasted PNA, referring
as “customers” to the private prison firms like GEO (with which it has ten
contracts) and counties like Reeves that own prisons not to the inmates it
cares for. PNA included GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation
(MTC) among its references, and it told the county: “PNA has never had a
contract canceled or been removed from a facility.” It noted that it was
“proud of its record of no substantiated grievances in any facility.” The
Dec. 12 prisoner protest at Reeves County Detention Center started when
inmates saw the body of Jesus Manuel Galindo removed from solitary
confinement. Inmates contend that Galindo did not receive medical attention
for his epileptic seizures. The Galindo family says it has filed a lawsuit
against the Reeves County Detention Center. David Galindo, the dead inmate’s
brother, told a reporter after the second riot that started Jan. 31, “The
reason they’re having riots is because their personnel is doing the wrong
thing just like they did to my brother.” After the second disturbance
started, an inmate called the media. The Pecos prisoner said that the protest
began when prison officials placed Ramon Garcia, 25, in solitary confinement
after he complained of dizziness and feeling ill. “All we wanted was for them
to give him medical care and because they didn't, things got out of control
and people started fires in several offices,” said the inmate, who declined
to give his name for fear of reprisals by officials. Lana Williams, a family
friend of Garcia, told KFOX TV in El Paso that his medical neglect had been a
problem since August 2008. "He's gotten to the point where he can't walk
down the hall without holding on to the wall, and this has been going on and
getting progressively worse," said Williams. Garcia told her was being
been placed in solitary confinement whenever he complained about feeling ill.
PNA’s Medical Gulag -- It shouldn’t be surprising that long-running
complaints about medical cars abuses sparked the inmate protests at the
Reeves County Detention Center. Six years ago the Justice Department found
widespread medical abuses at another county-owned, privately run adult
detention center, where the same subcontractor, Physicians Network
Association, was also the the medical services
provider. Concerned about civil rights violations at the detention center,
the Justice Department sent a study team from its Civil Rights division to
investigate the jail in May 2002 to determine if there were violations that
could be prosecuted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act
(1997). On March 6, 2003 the Justice Department sent a letter and a long
report of its findings to Santa Fe County, which owned the jail and
contracted with Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison
firm, to operate the jail. The county had an intergovernmental services
agreement (IGSA) with the Justice Department to hold detainees waiting trial
who were under the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. MTC subcontracted the medical services part of the IGSA
contract to PNA. Summarizing its findings, the Justice Department stated: “We
find that persons confined suffer harm or the risk of serious harm from
deficiencies in the facility’s provision of medical and mental health care,
suicide prevention, protection of inmates from harm, fire safety, and
sanitation.” In its report, the Justice Department team specified 52 actions
that were needed “to rectify the identified deficiencies and to protect the
constitutional rights of the facility’s inmates to bring the jail into compliance
with civil rights standards. Thirty-eight of the 52 identified deficiencies
related to medical services. The Justice Department report concluded: “The
Detention Center, through PNA, provides inadequate medical services in the
following areas: intake, screening, and referral; acute care; emergent care;
chronic and prenatal care; and medication administration and management. As a
result, inmates at the Detention Center with serious medical needs are at
risk for harm.” The Justice Department’s investigation was sparked by the
suicide of Tyson Johnson in January 2002 at the Santa Fe County Detention
Center. Johnson, who was awaiting a hearing on charges of stalking, was a
longtime sufferer of severe claustrophobia. In a New York Times (June 6,
2004) story on the Justice Department’s investigation and MTC, Suzan Garcia,
Johnson’s mother, said that had tried to contact the jail because she was
concerned about her son’s psychological condition. ''I called the jail and
asked to speak to a doctor, but they said they didn't have a doctor,'' Ms.
Garcia said. ''When I asked to speak to the warden, they just put me on hold
and then the phone would disconnect.'' According to the Justice Department’s
finding and associated reports, Johnson had asked to see a psychologist, but
the 580-inmate jail didn’t have a doctor let alone a psychologist or a
psychiatrist. So Mr. Johnson tried slitting his wrist and neck with a razor,
and when that failed, as the New York Times reported, he told the jail's
nurse, Sheila Turner, “Today I am going to take myself out.” A guard, Crystal
Quintana, told investigators that the nurse replied, ''Let him.'' Ms. Turner
denies this, her lawyer said. As the New York Times recounted: “Ten minutes
later, Mr. Johnson, 27 and with no previous criminal record, was found
hanging from a sprinkler head in a windowless isolation cell where he was
supposedly being closely watched.” Despite being placed on suicide watch,
Johnson hung himself with a supposedly “suicide-proof” blanket inside the
isolation cell. His family contends that instead of tending to his
psychological problems, the medical staff neglected him and taunted him. The
NYT story by Fox Butterfield described the state of mental healthcare for
which PNA was responsible: “The nearest doctor on contract was in Lubbock,
Tex., a two-hour plane flight away, and he visited the jail on average only
every six weeks, seeing only a few patients each time, the report found. The
nurse had an order in her file to spend no more than five minutes with any inmate
patient, which the report said was not enough time. “There was no
psychologist or psychiatrist, and although the nurse had no mental health
training care, she was distributing drugs for mentally ill inmates, the
report said. “The jail did have a mental health clinician, Thomas Welter, who
was employed by Physicians Network Association, a subcontractor. But he never
did any evaluations of mentally troubled inmates, the report said. Instead,
he boasted to them about his own history of drug use, according to a recent
deposition by Cody Graham, who was then warden of the Santa Fe jail. Not long
after Mr. Johnson hanged himself, Mr. Graham escorted Mr. Welter to the gate
and told him not to come back.” Pattern of PNA Medical Malpractice -- The
Justice Department found a pattern of gross medical care deficiencies at the
Santa Fe jail. Among its findings were the following: · “PNA’s intake medical
screening, assessment, and referral process is insufficient to ensure that
inmates receive necessary medical care during their incarceration.” · “Even
when PNA staff identify inmates with serious medical needs during the intake
process, they fail to refer them for appropriate care.” · “Chart review
revealed that of those inmates in our sample who did receive the initial health
screening, none were referred to the Health Services Unit for the medical
attention they needed.” · “The grievance system does not provide an avenue
for resolving problems of access to health services. The grievances we
reviewed included a complaint from one inmate who was supposed to have an
x-ray, but had received no response from the Health Services Unit despite
having filed two grievances in three weeks.” Seven Suicide Attempts, One
Completed in Seven Months of MTC/PNA -- · “As of the time of our visit,
during the seven months since MTC assumed management of the facility, there
had been one completed suicide and seven attempted suicides. A review of
these incidents reveals that the Detention Center staff fail to respond
appropriately to inmates’ indications of mental health crises and possible
suicidality.” · “For example, one inmate answered several of the initial
mental health suicide screening questions in the affirmative, including that
he had recently experienced a significant loss, that he felt that he had
nothing to look forward to, and that he ‘just didn’t care.’ He reported that
he had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that he was
taking an antidepressant for this condition. He also stated that he felt that
he needed to see a psychologist. Despite these indicators, the screening
nurse concluded that the inmate needed only a routine mental health referral,
as opposed to an immediate mental health evaluation and determination whether
mental health services were necessary.” · “Another incident involved an
inmate who cut her wrists with a razor and was placed on a 15-minute suicide
watch in the medical unit. According to the subsequent investigation of the
incident, the inmate was upset because her medications were stopped. The
inmate was treated for lacerations to her wrists and released from suicide
watch without ever receiving a mental health evaluation or mental health
clearance.” An inmate placed on watch status in a medical unit cell for his
own safety due to mental illness and seizure disorder was able to cut both of
his wrists with a razor blade within 5 minutes of his arrival in that cell.
The only way that staff knew that the event had occurred was when blood began
running down the floor from his cell." Five Minutes Per Patient -- ·
“The nurse practitioner’s personnel file included a memo from the Vice
President of Operations of PNA instructing her to see one patient for each
five minutes of scheduled clinical time. Many inmates, particularly those
with acute or chronic conditions, require significantly more clinical
attention to ensure that their needs are adequately addressed.” · “PNA does
not test for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). STDs are prevalent in jail
populations. Left untreated, STDs can cause brain and organ damage and damage
to fetuses. PNA’s failure to screen for STDs places the inmates and the
community at risk.” · “PNA fails to provide timely access to appropriate
medical care for inmates when they develop acute medical needs. Medical care
is unreasonably and unnecessarily delayed and, even when provided, often
inadequate.” · “Even once inmates succeed in getting to the Health Services
Unit, they frequently receive substandard care. We reviewed the medical
records of ten inmates seen for primary care by the nurse practitioner within
a one-month period. Six of the ten inmates received substandard care.” PNA’s
Failure to Respond to Acute Medical Needs -- “Additional
chart reviews confirmed PNA’s failure to respond to inmates’ acute medical
needs. For example, one inmate reported breast lumps and lumps in her armpit,
chest pain, and swelling in her legs and feet. Although a mammogram was
ordered in October 2001, it had not been done by the time of our visit to the
Detention Center seven months later.” · “At the time of our visit, the only
physician providing supervision or care at the Detention Center was the
doctor who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PNA and is based in
Lubbock, Texas. As the CEO of PNA, this doctor has numerous responsibilities,
including supervising the medical care at each of the facilities at which PNA
provides care throughout the south and southwestern United States. This
physician was visiting the Detention Center an average of once every six
weeks, and saw only a few patients during each visit. While he is available
by telephone for consultation, he does not visit the Detention Center
frequently enough to provide adequate supervision. Given the deficiencies in
care and other problems identified in this letter, additional physician
supervision at the Detention Center is necessary.” No Pre-Natal Care,
Improper Treatment for Seizures -- · “PNA fails to provide inmates with
needed medications in a timely manner, and fails to monitor medication in
inmates with serious medical needs.” · “The Detention Center fails to provide
for continuity of medications for inmates upon arrival at the facility.
Several files we reviewed revealed that the nurse practitioner does not
continue the same medications for inmates that were prescribed for them prior
to their incarceration. Sometimes the nurse practitioner simply discontinues
the medication, and sometimes she changes the inmate’s prescription to older,
less expensive medications which are significantly less effective.” · “PNA
fails to provide adequate prenatal care for pregnant inmates. Of the four
pregnant women at the Detention Center at the time of our visit, none had any
prenatal visit with an OB/GYN during their incarceration documented, despite
the fact that two of the women were in their third trimester of pregnancy and
near term.” · “An inmate had been prescribed a medication for his seizure
disorder, in addition to several other medications, and his blood levels of
the seizure medication had been measured. Although the laboratory results
showed that the amount of this drug in his system was not enough to achieve
the intended therapeutic effect, there was no reference to this finding
anywhere else in his medical record. Moreover, staff failed to respond
appropriately, such as adjusting his medication. Seven days later, the inmate
attempted suicide by cutting his wrists, then suffered a seizure.” Keeping it
Cost-Effective -- · “PNA’s formulary does not contain effective medication
for inmates with serious medical needs such as hypertension, heart failure
and diabetes. In addition, the formulary includes many less expensive, less
effective medications than are currently available for the treatment of some
diseases.” · “Some inmates at the Detention Center are currently provided
with less effective medications with greater side effects than they had
received prior to incarceration, which can lead to deterioration in inmates
with mental illness and end-organ damage in inmates with diseases such as
hypertension and diabetes.” · “Even when staff did monitor medication levels,
they failed to respond to indications that an inmate’s dosage was
inappropriate. Although the laboratory results showed that the amount of this
drug in his system was not enough to achieve the intended therapeutic effect,
there was no reference to this finding anywhere else in his medical record.
Moreover, staff failed to respond appropriately, such as adjusting his
medication. Seven days later, the inmate attempted suicide by cutting his
wrists, then suffered a seizure.” PNA and MTC Leave Town -- Neither MTC nor
PNA stuck around Santa Fe to help the country resolve its problems with the
Justice Department. Both MTC and PNA said they had to terminate their
contracts because they were losing money. Soon after the Justice Department
issued its findings in March 2004 on medical care and other problems at the
Santa Fe County Detention Center, PNA pulled out of its contract with MTC. A
year later in April 2005, MTC announced that it had “chosen to end this
contract because it has not been possible to operate profitably. Under two
different contracts and with two different medical providers, MTC and both
medical providers have lost money.” Before the private prison companies
terminated their unprofitable contracts, their personnel left town. MTC asked
Warden Cody Graham to leave his job in Santa Fe, and he transferred to
another MTC county jail in Gallup, New Mexico. According to a heart-rending
investigative story in the Santa Fe Reporter (April 2, 2003)on
the death of a jail inmate because of deficient medical care, PNA’s regional
medical consultant left at the same time as the warden. That PNA supervisor
was Katherine Graham, wife of the MTC warden. A story in the Albuquerque
Journal (June 28, 2004) on the “tough negotiations” following “state and
federal audits slamming the facility for inadequate medical services”
reported, “PNA will not return if and when the county and MTC reach a new
agreement, jail administrators have said.” County Commissioner Paul Duran
recommended that the county would do a better job running the jail. He noted
that the Utah-based MTC – a for-profit company – was not providing enough
medical staffing or case managers to deal with inmate needs. “I think it’s
the profit element that is the root of all these problems.” The county did
take over management of the jail after MTC left, and worked with the Justice
Department to rectify its findings of deficiency. Judith Greene, director of
Justice Strategies, echoed Commissioner Duran’s observation. She told the New
York Times, ''This goes to the heart of the problem in the private prison
business,'' Ms. Greene said. ''You get what you pay for.''
February 12, 2009 KWES
About twenty people have gathered outside the Reeves County Courthouse in
Pecos to protest the Geo Group, which runs the Reeves County Detention
Center. The group is chanting and holding signs. The signs say the government
should run prisons and not private companies. Inmates at the Reeves County
Detention Center have rioted twice in the past three months. A riot in
December caused at least $1 million in damage. Crews are still accessing damage from the last riot. In both riots the
inmates demanded better healthcare and better treatment.
February 11, 2009 Valley Morning
News
County lawyers in this West Texas city have told attorney Juan Angel
Guerra that he cannot meet with his clients inside a prison plagued by riots.
In a letter sent to Guerra, Willacy County's former district attorney, Reeves
County officials state that his visit would be unsafe. "We are doing
everything possible to meet your request," Reeves County Attorney Alva
Alvarez wrote. "However, since the facility was destroyed, there is no
secure place for you to meet with your clients at this time." Before
receiving notice of the county's decision, Guerra headed to the Reeves
Detention Center in Pecos, which is managed by the GEO Group. Guerra said he
would file a request to a federal judge to gain access to nearly 200 clients.
In her letter, Alvarez said the county hopes to accommodate Guerra in the
near future.
February 9, 2009 AP
Officials at a West Texas prison where inmates rioted for nearly a week
have started cleanup and repairs. Reeves County Judge Sam Contreras today
said insurance adjusters have been at the county-owned but privately managed
prison complex in Pecos since Friday. Workers are clearing debris and getting
damage estimates at the Reeves County Detention Center. The Associated Press
reports records show a riot in December that left one housing unit damage has
cost the county at least $320,000 in repairs. Contreras believes most of the
cost will be covered by insurance. Inmates and relatives say the latest riot,
which started Jan. 31 and ended late Thursday, was prompted by poor treatment
-- including medical services. The prison is managed by Boca Raton,
Fla.-based The GEO Group.
February 6, 2009 AP
It turns out inmates in the troubled Pecos prison get their medical care from
a Lubbock-based company. The Associated Press cites inadequate food and
health care as possible reasons for two prison riots in two months. The
sheriff there denies it. The Pecos prison is owned by Reeves County and
managed by a private company (GEO Group). As of Thursday night the Associated
Press reported fires are still burning from the most recent riot. The
Associated Press says it confirmed that Lubbock-based Physicians Network
Association provides the health care. Trey Farthing, President, confirmed
that his group provides health care for the Reeves County facility but
declined further comment.
February 6, 2009 KRISTV
As officials in a remote West Texas county have sought to keep their local
prison full and financially viable, it has become the scene of mounting
inmate unrest, including two riots in the last six weeks. Reeves County faced
a major boondoggle _ a prison without prisoners _ when it turned to a private
company, The GEO Group Inc., about five years ago to manage its sprawling
detention center and fill it with federal inmates. The influx of prisoners
has allowed the facility, the county's largest employer, to stay in
operation, but not without a series of disturbances and protests, some of
them incendiary. The prison and its management have come under increasing
scrutiny as authorities dealt with the latest incident, a riot that started
Jan. 31 and left buildings heavily damaged. The riot followed a similar
disturbance in another portion of the prison in December. Two employees were
taken hostage and an exercise room was burned. That incident caused at least
$320,000 worth of damage, according to county records. These and other
matters detailed in news accounts and court documents indicate widespread
tension among inmates over a variety of issues, most notably medical
treatment. And, for some observers, they give more voice to the oft-stated criticism
of private prisons. "Generally, these (disturbances) are not
random," said Bert Useem, a Purdue University
sociology and anthropology professor who has written extensively on prison
issues. "They occur in prisons that are facing serious difficulties."
The GEO Group did not respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press seeking
comment. The publicly traded company based in Boca Raton, Fla., has attracted
scrutiny before over conditions in its prisons. In 2007, the Texas Youth
Commission fired the company after nearly 200 teenage offenders were removed
from a juvenile justice center it operated in Bronte, citing health and
safety violations. The company has also come under fire for its operation of
a facility that houses illegal immigrant detainees in Pearsall, Texas. A
federal lawsuit charges that two Mexican immigrants were not treated for
their mental illnesses. Meantime, correctional officers at the facility are
threatening to strike over pay and working conditions. "They operate as
a bare-bones, profit-making machine," said Howard Johannssen,
an official with the union representing the Pearsall officers. In Reeves
County and Pecos, its largest town, The GEO Group is largely viewed as the
savior of a sinking ship. At the time the company was hired to manage the
prison, the county was unable to find enough inmates to fill a newly built
third unit. The lack of prisoners put the county at risk of defaulting on the
bonds used to finance the unit's construction. Since joining forces with The
GEO Group, the county has filled the center with more than 3,300 federal
inmates, including more than 1,207 in unit III, turning the situation around.
Many of the prisoners are non-U.S. citizens. The facility employs more than
500 people, most of whom work for the county, and has become increasingly
important to the economy as the area has lost several other employers in
recent years. "Any small community with a prison that employs that
number of people would see (the value of having such a facility)," said
Robert Tobias, executive director of the Pecos Economic Development
Corporation. The significance of The GEO Group's work on the county's behalf
was underscored in January 2006 when the Pecos Area Chamber of Commerce gave
the company its "Citizen of the Year" award. At the presentation,
chamber president Jim Dutchover cited the company
for injecting an "infusion of ideas and money" into the community.
But recent events have cast the situation in a different light, leaving the
impression that the prison, while full, has been poorly run. "Prisoner
riots are a relatively rare occurrence," wrote the American Civil
Liberties Union in a letter to the Department of Justice requesting that it
investigate the center. "For this reason, two serious disturbances within
a two-month period at a single facility is sufficient cause for great
concern." According to information posted on the Web site of another
advocacy group, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the
latest riot began when authorities refused to respond to prisoners' request
that a gravely ill inmate be released from solitary confinement and
transferred to a hospital. A federal lawsuit filed by an inmate in 2007
claims prisoners were sprayed with mace after staging a hunger strike to
protest the quality of medical care and meals. As part of the suit, filed
without an attorney, the prisoner included an undated memo purportedly from a
prison official saying he was working toward improving meals, medical care
and recreational equipment. The prison was accredited last month by the
American Correctional Association, the nation's only such program for adult
and juvenile detention facilities. The accreditation, required by the federal
Bureau of Prisons, was based largely on the results of an on-site audit in
October in which representatives of the organization would have reviewed
paperwork and interviewed inmates outside the presence of prison authorities,
said James Gondles, the group's executive director.
"To my knowledge, our auditing didn't raise any red flags," he
said. However, because of the riots, it is likely that another auditing team
will be sent to the prison, Gondles said. "Are
we concerned when an incident happens at an accredited facility?" he
said. "The answer is yes."
February 5, 2009 Permianbasin360
Around 10:30 this morning, inmates started new fires inside the Reeves County
Detention Center. According to the GEO Group, who manages the facility the
fires began when they were moving inmates from the central area inside the
prison to secure housing. Management is also saying two areas that were
already badly damaged in last weekend’s riot were set on fire again. A short
time after the fires started, former Willacy County DA Juan Angel Guerra was
outside the prison. He says he’s now a private attorney, with more than fifty
clients inside. But, he couldn’t get in to see them. “All I need to do is go
in there. Tell them to calm down, and we will go to Federal Court with your
grievance. Don't burn anything, don’t' get hurt. Stop making it harder on
yourselves.... but instead, we're on lockdown. Like, we have animals in
there. These are human beings," he said. Guerra has a history of going
after the GEO Group, and other private prisons, saying they’re making money
while taking advantage of inmates, employees, and even the cities and
counties where the prisons are. “They get 80 dollars a day and that goes to
the GEO. Subtract that two dollars they get 78 dollars. If the country tries
to get more money they're breaking the law," Guerra said. DPS is now
back on the scene, helping secure the perimeter again. The Pecos Fire
Department was also on hand, putting out the fires. The GEO Group is saying
no inmates or staff were hurt, and that the secure housing is still intact.
But, Guerra says as long as private prisons like this exist, we’ll continue
to see protests like these. “They’re taking advantage of all these people
inside. And the people understand that, and that's what's happening
here," he said. A source has told KMID things are wrapping up the Reeves
County Detention Center. KMID has confirmed that RCDC No. 1 and RCDC No. 2
are fully insured with replacement value. The County will be meeting with the
insurance company tomorrow to review the facility’s insurance policy. Also,
something to keep in mind is that so far the insurance company has agreed to
pay for the damages in RCDC No. 3 from December’s riot. The insurance company
has already approved the first payment of about $130,000.
February 5, 2009 AP
More than five days after inmates started rioting for a second time in as
many months at a remote West Texas prison thick, black smoke continued to
billow above parts of the sprawling complex. Officials at the county-owned
and privately managed prison refused to comment publicly about the ongoing
situation for a fifth day. In two written statements issued Thursday from The
GEO Group-operated prison where federal criminal immigrants and others are
being held, officials said the situation was stable and “approximately
two-thirds of the inmate population had been safely processed” and moved to
secure parts of the prison. “They were all going in slowly but surely; I
thought they would all be in this morning but they weren’t,” Reeves County
Chief Deputy Victor Prieto told The Associated Press. In the midst of
Thursday’s apparent chaos at the prison, the American Civil Liberties Union
called for a federal probe of the compound. “Such an investigation should
focus on both the immediate causes of the disturbances as well as the root
causes, which may involve poor conditions ranging from inadequate medical
care to poor food, ventilation, etc.,” Elizabeth Alexander, director of the
ACLU National Prison Project, and Terri Burke, the ACLU of Texas’ executive
director, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department. Fire initially broke
out in one of the unsecured prison buildings damaged during earlier rioting
about 10 a.m. Thursday, shortly before GEO Group, the Boca Raton, Fla.,
company that operates the prison, issued a statement for the facility saying
the situation was returning to “more normal.” Smoke continued to waft
intermittently above the prison throughout the day, and at times could be
seen from as far away as 15 miles. The company also said there had been no
incidents or injuries involving any of the prison’s nearly 3,000 inmates or
staff during the past 24 hours. For much of Thursday, law enforcement and
emergency workers streamed in and out of complex, which sits just off busy
I-20 on the outskirts of oil-rich Pecos in Reeves County, about 175 miles
east of El Paso. Rented equipment, including portable flood lights and a
bucket truck, were carted onto jail property, which has been cordoned off by
local deputies and jailers. Several deputies told reporters that the riot was
subsiding. One deputy who stood guard along a road leading to the prison said
he suspected the inmates were growing tired of living in recreation areas and
eating cold food after having destroyed parts of their living quarters and
kitchens. Meanwhile, an attorney who said he was contacted by relatives of more
than 50 inmates arrived at the prison Thursday. Juan Angel Guerra, the former
Willacy County District Attorney who has been a longtime and vocal opponent
of privately run prisons and The GEO Group, said a request to meet with those
inmates and help mediate their grievances, which he said involved inadequate
health care and food, were denied. Prieto said inmates were receiving
adequate health care inside the troubled jail. Trey Farthing, president of
the Lubbock-based Physicians Network Association, confirmed that his group
provides health care for the Reeves County facility but declined to comment
further.
February 5, 2009 NewsWest9
A fire has erupted at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos. The
Pecos Enterprise reports that the recreation center at Reeves County
Detention Center Building I is on fire. Inmates have also set some garbage
piles on fire in the yard of the prison. NewsWest9 viewers report heavy black
smoke coming from the prison on Interstate 20. Prisoners started rioting at
the facility this past weekend. Inmates and family members of inmates have
told NewsWest9 they are demanding better healthcare. At that time, three
inmates were hurt, but those injuries were described as minor. RCDC is a
low-level security federal prison that holds inmates with immigration
violations. According to a press release from the Reeves County Judges
Office, the facility was moving to more normal operations as of Thursday
morning. The press release was issued before the fires broke out. Two-thirds
of the inmates at RCDC were back in housing as of Thursday morning and more
inmates were to be moved into housing throughout the day Thursday. It is
unclear how these latest fires will affect those plans.
February 4, 2009 AP
About 20 SWAT team officers have entered the grounds of a remote West
Texas prison that was heavily damaged by a weekend riot. The officers,
wearing helmets and some carrying shields, walked single file onto the
grounds Reeves County Detention Center on Wednesday afternoon. It was unclear
whether they were entering the buildings where rioting occurred because roads
leading to the low-security prison were closed to media. It's the second day
in a row officers in SWAT gear entered the prison, which officials deemed
uninhabitable following the Saturday riot. Earlier Wednesday, county
officials said in a news release that progress had been made in efforts to
clean up the prison. Staff members and some inmates were cleaning through the
night, but the center's still not fit to return to normal operations, the
county said.
February 3, 2009 KGBT-TV
Ignaica Medellin is trying her best to enjoy
the pleasant Los Fresnos weather on Tuesday. But
her mind is somewhere else these days after a chilling phone call on her
birthday from her son about his jail cell being on fire. As she looks at a
picture of her 39-year-old son, she wonders whether he was injured in the
riot at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Texas. Her son has been
an inmate for the past 10 years but expected to be released in September.
Medellin says she last spoke to her son on Sunday and he told her that they
were being held outdoors in a yard until the riot could be controlled. He
said he was very cold, but that he was okay. This riot has been the second in
as many months and Medellin says her son had alleged the inmates were
rebelling because of the lack of medical attention they received in the
private prison.
February 3, 2009 AP
A weekend riot at a federal prison caused “significant” damage, the
prison’s operator said on Tuesday. Law enforcement officers and equipment
were being moved in and out of the Reeves County Detention Center on Tuesday.
From behind a sheriff’s roadblock limiting access to the prison, a small
forklift could be seen entering the compound and garbage trucks left hauling
what appeared to be debris. The GEO Group Inc. said in a statement that
inmates in two of the prison’s three units remain under staff view in a
central area of the complex. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company said inmates
remain “cooperative and compliant.” Sidia Molina,
of Houston, the wife of an inmate accused of being in the U.S. illegally,
said the riot started because the inmates don’t think they are receiving
adequate medical care. “It’s 100 percent what it is,” she said. “It’s not
lack of food or clothing. What they’re complaining about is the medical. The
people are not getting medical treatment.” Pablo Paez,
a spokesman for GEO Group Inc., said in an e-mail on Tuesday to the
Associated Press that the company does not provide medical services or health
care. Medical services at the prison are provided by a physicians’
association “under a direct contract with the county,” the e-mail stated.
Attempts to reach county officials by telephone were unsuccessful Tuesday.
February
3, 2009 AP
The company that runs a federal prison in West Texas says
"significant" damage from the second riot in less than two months
has left the facility unable to resume normal operations. The GEO Group Inc.
said in a statement Tuesday that inmates in 2 of the Reeves County Detention
Center's three units remain under staff view in a central area of the
complex. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company says inmates remain
"cooperative and compliant" after a riot that started Saturday
afternoon. The company says there have been no serious injuries to staff or
inmates. The two buildings affected by the latest riot house up to 2,200
criminal immigrants. The third unit was the site of a December riot that
officials said ended with minor injuries. The GEO Group says the riots appear
unrelated.
February 1, 2009 CNN
A riot at a Texas detention center was ended Sunday. One prison building
was heavily damaged, and about 700 inmates were going to spend the night in
tents, authorities said. The disturbance began Saturday at the Reeves County
Detention Center near Pecos in west Texas, and hundreds of inmates continued
rioting overnight in the second such incident at the facility in less than
two months. April Orsoco with the Reeves County
Sheriff's Office said the office was notified by the prison about 4 p.m.
Sunday that "they got it under control." Orsoco
did not have details on how the situation ended, but she said no injuries
were reported as the incident ended. The office reported it had no
explanation for the rioting. Three inmates were hospitalized Saturday after
fighting began, one with a severed finger, according to the sheriff's office.
In addition to prison personnel, sheriff's deputies and officers from several
other agencies remained at the facility Sunday night. With one of three buildings
at the detention center damaged extensively in the rioting, "the warden
is trying to figure out where [the prison] can house the inmates," Orsoco said. She said the tents were set up on prison
grounds, and inmates would be transferred to other prison facilities on
Monday so damage could be repaired. The prison is a 2,400-bed, low-security
facility, operated by Geo Group Inc. It houses federal prisoners as well as
inmates from other states. As many as 2,000 inmates from two of the center's
three buildings began fighting in the prison yard about 4:30 p.m. Saturday,
according to the sheriff's office. The center is about 430 miles from Dallas,
Texas. On December 12, inmates took two workers hostage and set fire to the
recreation area. Those inmates surrendered later that night.
February 1, 2009 AP
Inmates at a privately run federal prison in western Texas started a riot
and set at least one fire Saturday for the second time in less than two
months, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. The
disturbance broke out in an area of the Reeves County Detention Center that
houses up to 2,000 inmates, corrections officer Matt Guerra said. "They
took over the compound," he said. "They burned half the stuff over
there." Guerra said rioting inmates were close to a control area where
"they can open practically everything." He said he could see smoke
coming from the area. Guerra said prison officers were safe but that he
wasn't sure whether inmates were injured. Helicopters and Department of Public
Safety troopers from the Pecos area had descended on the facility. "You
name it, we've got it out there," Guerra said. DPS spokeswoman Tela
Mange said earlier that the disturbance was in the prison yard. She said she
had no information on injuries. A spokeswoman for the Reeves County Sheriff's
Department said he had no information about the riot. Sylvia Garza, an
executive secretary at the prison, said officials had no comment. In
December, rioting inmates at the facility about 430 miles west of Dallas sought
better medical treatment. Officials said there were minor injuries. The GEO
Group, based in Boca Raton, Fla., has run the lockup through contracts with
Reeves County and the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 2003. The prison holds
more than 2,400 inmates. Pablo E. Paez, a spokesman
for GEO, did not immediately respond to phone or e-mail messages Saturday
night.
February
1, 2009 CNN Thousands of inmates rioted at the Reeves County Detention Center
in Texas on Saturday, the second disturbance at the prison facility in the
last two months. As many as 2,080 inmates from two of the center's three
buildings began fighting in the prison yard about 4:30 p.m. CT, said county
Sheriff's Office Dispatcher Anna Granado.
Authorities from several law enforcement agencies responded to quell the
violence. However, officials had not brought the unrest under control as of 1
a.m. Sunday, according to the sheriff's office. Officials said they do not
know what prompted the riots. Three inmates were hospitalized, including one
with a severed finger, the sheriff's office said. On December 12, inmates
took two workers hostage and set fire to the recreation area at the center in
Pecos, located about 430 miles west of Dallas. The inmates, who had made
several demands, surrendered later that night. The prison is a 2,400-bed,
low-security facility, operated by Geo Group Inc. It houses federal prisoners
as well as inmates from other states.
January 31, 2009 NewsWest
9
NewsWest 9 has learned of a riot occurring at
the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos. Callers have been flooding the NewsWest 9 newsroom with calls regarding the riot. NewsWest 9 Reporter Diane Tuazon just reported the riot
is still going on and it is currently not under control at this time.
Numerous police departments are currently on the scene including DPS Troopers
and the Reeves County Sheriff's Department. The riot apparently started
around 4p.m. on Saturday afternoon. A helicopter is flying over the scene
assisting with the riot, and a CareStar helicopter
has been dispatched to the facility. Still no word on what may have caused
the riot or if there are any injuries. This is the second riot at the Reeves
County Detention Center in the past few months. In December prisoners rioted
and set a recreational building on fire. They also took two workers hostage.
That riot lasted for hours and the workers were released unharmed. The Reeves
County Detention Center is run by the Geo Group and houses federal inmates
who are being held on immigration charges.
December 17, 2008 NewsWest
9
For the second time in less than a week an inmate has been found dead at
Reeves County Detention Center. The first death happened this Friday and as a
result more than 1200 inmates started a riot. The inmates held two people
hostage and burned down the recreational facility. Geo Group officials
confirmed that a second inmate died at Lubbock University Medical Center
Sunday night. They believe it was due to natural causes. Autopsy results are
still pending.
December 13, 2008 KWES
The second hostage at the Reeves County Detention Center III has been
released after a riot broke out around 1:00 Friday afternoon. NewsWest9 first
reported there were hostages at the prison, but officials denied that before
finally saying the information was true. One hostage was let go Friday
evening. The second was free by midnight. The two freed hostages are
recreation specialists and are ages 57 and 60. The recreation specialists
oversee the building where the private prison keeps its sports equipment. The
two are civilians are and not guards. It was not immediately clear what
condition the released hostages were in. NewsWest9 has learned that the
prison will begin allowing prisoners back into RCDC III in small groups early
Saturday morning. NewsWest9 has learned that an inmate did die Friday morning
of natural causes. We do not know if that death had anything to do with riot,
but the inmates demanded better healthcare and food. The inmates also wanted
to speak with the Mexican Consulate. Most of the prisoners are illegal
immigrants. It is unclear if those demands were met by the prison staff. The
recreation center near building III was set on fire early Friday afternoon.
Black smoke was coming out of the building for a time, but the fire had died
down after burning for an hour or so. That building was left to smolder most
of Friday. The Reeves County Detention Center is located on West County Road
204 and is a private prison. It is run by the Geo Group, which runs
facilities all over the country including one in Lea County, New Mexico.
Authorities set up a one mile perimeter around the facility. West County Road
204 has been blocked off. Multiple agencies are on the scene including the
Reeves County Sheriff's Office, Pecos Police, DPS, Pecos County Sheriff's
Office, Andrews County Sheriff's Office and the Border Patrol.
December 12, 2008 AP
Inmates started a riot at a privately run prison in West Texas, setting
at least one fire. The Pecos Enterprise is reporting that Reeves County
emergency officials were called to the prison, run by the Geo Group for the
county Friday afternoon. Fire crews and additional law enforcement were
called to the sprawling prison complex after a fire broke out in one
building. It was unclear Friday afternoon what prompted the riot or if anyone
inside the prison had been injured, or how many inmates were involved. A
woman who answered a phone call from The Associated Press at the Reeves
County Detention Complex warden's office said she had no comment and hung up.
The Geo Group, based in Boca Raton, Florida, has run the jail through
contracts with Reeves County and the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 2003.
The prison holds more than 2,400 inmates.
December 12, 2008 KWES
Two people are being held hostage at the Reeves County Detention Center
III after a riot broke out around 1:00 Friday afternoon. The two hostages are
recreation specialists and are ages 57 and 60. The recreation specialists
oversee the building where the private prison keeps its sports equipment. The
two hostages are civilians are and not guards. NewsWest9 first reported there
were hostages at the prison, but officials denied that before finally saying
the information was true. NewsWest9 has learned that an inmate did die Friday
morning of natural causes. We do not know if that death had anything to do
with riot, but we have learned the inmates are demanding better healthcare
and food. The inmates also wanted to speak with the Mexican Consulate. Most
of the prisoners are illegal immigrants. The recreation center near building
III was set on fire early Friday afternoon. Black smoke was coming out of the
building for a time, but the fire had died down after burning for an hour or
so. The Reeves County Detention Center is located on West County Road 204 and
is a private prison. It is run by the Geo Group, which runs facilities all
over the country including one in Lea County, New Mexico. Authorities have
set up a one mile perimeter around the facility. West County Road 204 has
been blocked off. Multiple agencies are on the scene including the Reeves
County Sheriff's Office, Pecos Police, DPS, Pecos County Sheriff's Office,
Andrews County Sheriff's Office and the Border Patrol.
January
20, 2005 Odessa American
GEO Group, which manages Reeves County
Detention Center, has hired a former member of the Texas Boards of Pardons
and Paroles as the new warden for Reeves County Detention Center 1 and 2. Tony Garcia started
work Wednesday at RCDC 1 and 2 in Pecos. Garcia was with the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice Institutional Division from 1980 to 2001. He was then
appointed to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles by Gov. Rick Perry in
2001 and served as chief commissioner. Texas
Ranger Brian Burzynski said an investigation
continues into tampering with government documents at the Reeves County
Detention Center. The Texas Rangers have also confirmed other investigations.
Along with the Texas Rangers, the FBI is also involved in the multiagency
probe.
January 6, 2005 Odessa
American
Two Reeves County corrections officers have resigned over sexual
molestation charges. Sheriff Arnulfo “Andy” Gomez said he investigated claims
by inmates at the prison at the request of Detention Center III Warden Martin
McDaniel. Agapita Martinez, 31, was indicted for
improper sexual activity with a person in custody. According to the
indictment, while a corrections officer at RCDC III, Martinez “intentionally
engage(d) in sexual contact” with a male inmate “by touching the genitals” of
the inmate “with intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire” of the
defendant. Roque Ybarra, 29, was charged with the same offense and has bonded
out, but has not been indicted, according to the District Clerk’s Office.
January
4, 2005 Odessa American
Under Texas’ “Doctrine of Forgiveness,”
Reeves County Judge Jimmy Galindo can’t be removed from office for acts he
supposedly committed before his re-election in 2003, a district court judge
has ruled. Galindo and former county commissioners Felipe Arredondo and
Herman Tarin are accused of acts of official misconduct and acts of
incompetence. The forgiveness doctrine, which Parks said has always been part
of state law, prohibits an official’s removal from office for acts committed
in a previous term in office. According to the order issued by Parks, the
only grounds for removal is the decision by the Reeves County Commissioners
Court in the summer of 2001 to build the 960-bed Reeves County Detention
Center III. According to the suit, Hanks wants: * Commissioners to nullify a contract
with Washington, D.C., lobbyist Randy DeLay, brother of House Majority Leader
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. Randy DeLay was hired to help Reeves County lobby to get
more federal inmates from the federal Bureau of Prisons. * Reinstate
employees moved to jobs with the Reeves County Detention Center from other
county offices. RCDC has three units — R1 and 2 house inmates from the
federal Bureau of Prisons and unit 3 houses inmates from the State of
Arizona. GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, manages the prison for the county,
which owns the facility. Hanks’ lawsuit also claims Galindo and commissioners
built Reeves County Detention Center Unit 3 knowing it would not get inmates
from the federal Bureau of Prisons, leading to the near financial ruin of the
county. The suit also claims nepotism on the part of Galindo, conflict of
interest and refusal to provide public information. The Texas Rangers have
confirmed that there are several investigations going on in Reeves County,
but Lt. Bob Bullock said he could not comment further. Along with the Texas
Rangers, the FBI is also involved in the multiagency probe, Bullock said.
December
14, 2004 Odessa American
An Austin law firm will represent
Reeves County in a lawsuit seeking removal of the county judge and two
commissioners from office. Allison, Bass and Associates LLP was retained by
Reeves County earlier this month, County Judge Jimmy Galindo said. Robert L.
Hanks of Pecos filed the suit in 143rd District Court to remove Galindo and
commissioners Felipe Arredondo and Herman Tarin for mismanagement of the
Reeves County Detention Center and financial irregularities, among other
claims. Arredondo, representing Precinct 1, lost his bid for re-election and
Tarin, representing Precinct 3, did not run again. Along with these actions,
Hanks wants: Galindo to stop all nonessential spending. Commissioners to
nullify a contract with Washington, D.C., lobbyist Randy DeLay, brother of
House Majority Leader U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. Randy DeLay was hired to help
Reeves County lobby to get more federal inmates from the federal Bureau of
Prisons. The suit also asks that county employees moved to the prison be
reinstated to their former jobs. At Monday’s meeting, commissioners
approved paying Randy DeLay $93,953 owed to him.
August
12, 2004
District Judge Bob Parks on Wednesday
dismissed a petition filed by a Pecos resident to remove Reeves County Judge
Jimmy Galindo and two county commissioners from office. Filed in 143rd
District Court by Robert L. Hanks, the suit alleges Galindo and commissioners
built Reeves County Detention Center unit 3 knowing that it would not get
inmates from the federal Bureau of Prisons, leading to the near financial
ruin of the county. It also claims nepotism on the part of Galindo, conflict
of interest and refusal to provide public information. The lawsuit was
dismissed without prejudice, meaning Hanks could refile it. “I’m not
surprised at all because I know how he (Parks) works.” The lawsuit alleges:
Commissioners built Reeves County Detention Center Unit 3 knowing it would
not get inmates from the federal Bureau of Prisons, leading to the near
financial ruin of the county. It also claims nepotism on the part of Galindo,
conflict of interest and refusal to provide public information. William W.
Nelson, chief of privatized corrections contracting with the Bureau of
Prisons, wrote a letter to Galindo in response to his visit of June 14, 2001.
The visit was to tell the Bureau of Prisons of Reeves County’s “intention to
build more prison housing in Reeves County, Texas.” “We appreciate the
information you have shared with us and have notified the appropriate bureau
staff. Although the bureau cannot make an absolute commitment at this time,
should the need arise to house additional federal offenders in Texas, your
facility will be given the opportunity for consideration,” the letter said.
The suit also said Galindo, Tarin, Arredondo and former commissioner David
Castillo knew there would not be adequate workforce in town to operate the
prison because the completing date was set for a year-and-a-half after the
closing of the former Anchor Foods plant. But Galindo, Tarin, Arredondo and
Castillo built the $40 million prison “with no inmates, no employees and no
way to pay the payments except for the general fund of Reeves County,” the
lawsuit said. “And
to make matters even worse, defendants Reeves County Judge Jimmy B. Galindo
and these defendant commissioners removed the $4 million Reeves County had in
savings as financial backup for the Reeves County prison system. These funds were
used to pay the cost overruns and mistakes in the construction of Reeves
County Detention Center II. These facts were know
to (Galindo and commissioners) before the start of construction on Reeves
County Detention Center III,” In November 2003,
the county hired GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, to run the RCDC on a 10-year
contract.
Hanks also claims he was refused public information under the Texas Open
Records Act by Galindo and his secretary, Sylvia Garcia; that Galindo
violated state nepotism law by having his mother and a distant cousin, Randy Baeza, hired at the prison; and that he has a conflict of
interest doing business with a cousin. The suit further charges that Galindo
transferred their budgeted salaries back into the general fund to help pay for
a Washington lawyer and lobbyist to encourage the Bureau of Prisons to send
more inmates to RCDC 3, get better salaries for prison staff and better
reimbursement for housing inmates. (Odessa American)
May 26, 2004
Despite several large fights and riots at two out-of-state private prisons in
the last several weeks, state officials say they have no plans to reverse
course and bring home any of the 2,000 inmates in Texas and Oklahoma. On
Saturday, more than 40 inmates in a Pecos, Texas, prison owned by the Geo
Group created a disturbance, damaging the prison. Earlier this month, about
70 inmates were injured in a fracas at Corrections Corporation of America's
Watonga, Okla., prison. The two recent events are in addition to a
hunger strike and large fight in the Pecos prison and problems in 2002
at another private Texas prison, which included several inmate escapes while
a state review found an unacceptable quality of service from the
company. About 240 inmates participated in a fight in the Watonga prison
yard, with at least 70 suffering injuries. (AP)
May 2, 2004
Groups of Arizona prisoners transferred to a Texas private prison staged
fights and hunger strikes to either improve conditions or earn transfers back
to Arizona. The incident report from Wackenhut Corp.'s Pecos, Texas,
prison officials recommends eight inmates be sent back to Arizona because
they are security problems. The report details a fight between two
groups of prisoners, with at least 14 taking part in the late-night April 10
fight. The subsequent investigation showed that some inmates from each group
were conspiring to get back to Arizona. The decision last year by the
Arizona Legislature to ship about 2,000 inmates to out-of-state prisons
angered some inmate family members, mainly because contact with inmates will
be limited by the financial ability to travel to either Texas or another
prison in Oklahoma. (Arizona Daily Star)
November 22, 2003
Reeves County’s pending contract with Wackenhut Corrections Corp. to run the
Reeves County Detention Center is one of the items on the agenda for the
Reeves County Commission meeting set for 10 a.m. Monday. Commissioners
approved an agreement with the Boca Raton, Fla., company to run the RCDC Nov.
3. One of the conditions of the 10-year contract was to cut prison
employees from 414 to 344. Don Houston, vice president of Wackenhut’s Central
Division in New Braunfels, said Friday no further layoffs are planned in the
near term. An amendment to the county’s agreement with Wackenhut is up
for commission approval as well that would reduce Wackenhut’s management fee,
Houston said. It is currently $333,333 a month. He would not say how much of
a fee reduction was offered, but that it was “substantial.” (OA Online)
November 17, 2003
With layoffs pending at the Reeves County Detention Center, local agencies
are prepared to help affected workers. The Pecos Technical Training Center of
Odessa College and Pecos Workforce Network plan to go to the prison sometime
next week to let laid-off workers know about available services. “We as a
campus here in Pecos along with some other agencies will try to get involved
in the layoff process. We will provide financial aid services and admissions
services. We plan to sit with them and complete the applications,” said
Michelle Workman, campus director of Pecos Technical Training Center. Reeves
County Commissioners approved a contract with Wackenhut Corrections Corp. of
Boca Raton, Fla., on Nov. 3 to manage the RCDC. One of the conditions of the
10-year contract was to cut prison employees from 414 to 344. County
Judge Jimmy Galindo could not be reached for comment. A call to the RCDC was
referred to Galindo as well. RCDC has three units with 3,025 beds, but
the third unit, RCDC-3, is largely empty. The prison houses mostly
inmates from the federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshal
Service. The 344 — the number of positions the Bureau of Prisons requires
to run the facility — includes a management team which would work for
Wackenhut consisting of the warden, assistant warden, deputy warden,
department heads and key positions with fiduciary responsibility. It
wasn’t clear how many people would be laid off or when. But people in the
community have known for two to three weeks that the layoffs were coming,
Workman said. Elva Arreguy, manager of Pecos
Workforce Network, said her agency will offer information on job searching. Arreguy said the agency conducts job-search workshops and
can help get aid for workers if they want to train for something else.
“We will provide the same rapid response we do for anyone who becomes
dislocated,” Arreguy said. She added that the
Department of Human Services will probably be on hand as well to let workers
know what services that agency has available. Those laid off would be
given a chance at other jobs at Wackenhut prisons, but they wouldn’t
necessarily be paid the same wage. Wackenhut designs, builds, finances and
operates prisons worldwide. It operates 11 facilities in Texas and has a
prison in Hobbs, N.M. Some $89 million in certificates of participation
bonds were sold to pay for the prison. The third unit was financed with the
proceeds of 2001 certificates of participation. The bonds were
downgraded Sept. 3 to BB and on Monday were lowered to CCC by Fitch Ratings
in New York City. The Bureau of Prisons never committed to putting
inmates in the third RCDC unit, according to a press release from Fitch Ratings.
“While discussions with BOP are ongoing, the continuing delay causes Fitch to
be skeptical that the prior relationship between RCDC and BOP will resume
anytime soon, and the positive nature of that relationship was a key rating
factor. …” the news release said. CCC ratings indicate a high default
risk, according to the release. If Wackenhut or the county were successful in
improving occupancy at RCDC, the rating would be reviewed at a later date,
the release said. (OA Online)
August
29, 2003
A bid to make money by jailing federal prisoners may end with a West Texas
county losing its jail and defaulting on a $40 million bond note.
Reeves County counted on the federal Bureau of Prisons to pay it to house up
to 3,000 illegal immigrants by this fall, but the bureau says it never made
any promises. The county now owes $475,000 on its first loan payment for
a jail expansion completed in March. Failing to pay by Sept. 1 means the
county could lose all three buildings making up the Reeves County Detention
Center because the county used two older buildings for collateral.
"Hundreds of jobs will be lost and our local economy will be
destroyed," county Judge Jimmy Galindo wrote in a letter this summer to
President Bush, asking him to intervene with the Bureau of Prisons.
About 500 people work at the jail in Pecos, more than 200 miles east of El
Paso, making it the county's single largest employer. The jail can house up
to 3,000 inmates; the expansion added 960 beds. Galindo has said the
county built the third jail building based on Bureau of Prisons projections
that the federal government would need to house 175,000 inmates in jails
across the country by September 2003. The bureau already relies on
Reeves County to house 2,043 federal inmates, mostly low-security "criminal
aliens," spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said. "We made it
clear to them we could make no promises or commitments," to house more
inmates, she said. County Commissioner Felipe Arredondo said while the
county would continue to negotiate with the bureau, commissioners must look
for other customers. He said county officials are talking with the U.S.
Marshals service about holding prisoners arrested in Arizona and West
Texas. However, Michael Troyanski, with the
U.S. Marshals Service in El Paso, said the agency won't guarantee a specific
number. "We are not going to commit," Troyanski
said. "The prisoner population is fluid, it goes up and down with the
tide." Other possible sources, Arredondo said, are illegal
immigrants awaiting deportation by the Department of Homeland Security and
Arizona state prisoners. Arizona's prisons exceed capacity by about
4,000 inmates, said Jim Robideau, a spokesman for
the Arizona Department of Corrections. The department considered the Reeves
County jail about a month ago, he said, but wasn't aware of any negotiations
or a pending agreement. Galindo maintains the county charges less than
anyone else in the nation to house prisoners, $47.33 a day per inmate, and
doesn't understand why the federal government would choose other jails.
Bureau of Prisons spokesman Dan Dunne said location, not cost, is the
reason. "We don't have an immediate need for beds in the
South-Central region," he said. Arredondo said the county would
need a commitment of 600 additional prisoners to make it's payment. He
wouldn't discuss what would happen if the county failed to get such a
contract. "We haven't even looked at that because I don't think
it's coming," he said. If the county misses the payment, the bond
holders could put the jail up for sale or hire a private company to run
it. The nation's largest for-profit prisons operator, Nashville,
Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, is one company closely
watching the situation, said Laurie Shanblum, CCA
senior director for business development. Increased border security and
more arrests for drug and immigration violations since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks has made West Texas attractive to companies like CCA, she said.
"Our current philosophy is very conservative," she said. "We
wouldn't get involved without strong assurances that there is light at the
end of the tunnel. "Some Reeves County residents have criticized
commissioners for spending $120,000 to hire House Majority leader Tom DeLay's
brother, Randy, to lobby the Bureau of Prisons. Arredondo said the county
must compete with national firms such as CCA in lobbying the government for
business. "We've always been struggling. It's not an easy
task," Arredondo said. "We built (the jail) so we can employ people
and Pecos won't blow away. ... It just goes with being in West Texas and not
having any big factories or industries." (AP)
Rio Grande Detention Center
Laredo, Texas
GEO Group
May 23, 2019
lmtonline.com
DPS: Detention officer arrested on drug
delivery charges
Manuel Lopez
III, 25, was charged with delivery of marijuana. A Rio Grande Detention
Center officer has been arrested for transporting 280 pounds of marijuana,
according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Authorities identified
him as Manuel Lopez III, 25, of Laredo. “We can confirm that Manuel Lopez
worked at the Rio Grande Detention Center and resigned effective Monday,” a
GEO Group Inc. spokesman said in a statement. Lopez was charged with delivery
of marijuana. Webb County Jail records show he is out on bond. At about 11
p.m. Saturday, a trooper pulled over a black Ford Explorer driven by Lopez
for a traffic violation on U.S. 59. The trooper then discovered 15 bundles of
marijuana in the cargo area of the vehicle, according to DPS. The contraband
had an estimated street value of $140,000.
Mar 10, 2018 theeagle.com
Two men in Texas immigration detention are undergoing treatment after
being bitten by a bat
Two immigrants in a South Texas detention center suffered bat bites earlier
this week, and at least one is undergoing treatment “just in case the bat was
rabid,” the immigrant's attorney told the Texas Tribune. One bite occurred at
around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Rio Grande Detention Center in Webb County,
according to San Antonio-based immigration attorney Laura Figueroa. Her
client, Yonathan Eduardo Morales Galviz, was taken to the hospital at about 3:30 a.m. that
day and then taken back to the facility soon after. Fewer details are
available about the other case. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed
the bites in a short statement to the Tribune on Friday. "The area the
bat was found in was temporarily evacuated, and the facility is currently
undergoing a thorough inspection and abatement plan that is consistent with
state and federal protections," the statement said. The detention center
is managed by the Florida-based GEO Group, which has a contract with ICE to
operate the facility. Morales, who is originally from Venezuela, was detained
in Texas after seeking asylum at the port of entry in Laredo. Figueroa said
Morales told her that there have been several bats at the detention center
and that guards have gone so far as to tell detainees to kill the winged
mammals — and alert the staff when they do so the bats can be disposed of.
That practice has led to uncertainty about whether the bat that bit Morales
was rabid. “The bat was actually thrown away. So, by the time they figured
out where the bat was, it was too late to test it for rabies,” Figueroa said.
“[His treatment] was supposed to begin [Thursday].” Figueroa said late Friday
morning that her client had received one injection but needs more
vaccinations. It can take weeks, or even months, for someone bit by a rabid
animal to begin showing signs of rabies, according to the Centers for Disease
Control. But the bat would have had to have already shown symptoms in order
to infect Morales. The CDC also notes that there have been prior cases of
rabies reported in the particular part of South Texas where the detention
center is located. Figueroa said she was told by her client the bat problem
existed before Morales was bitten, and another client described an opening in
the roof area where bats or other critters can breach the facility. But
Figueroa said she was told the biting was an isolated incident and there was
“one bat.” The GEO Group acknowledged the incident and said the company was
moving forward with improvements. “This past weekend, a bat was able to
access one of the housing units at the Rio Grande Detention Center,” Pablo E.
Paez, the GEO Group’s executive vice president of
corporate relations, said in an email. “Medical treatment has been provided
to two detainees who received bat bites, and enhancements are already
underway to the eaves of all buildings to ensure no such occurrences in the
future.” Figueroa said the detainees were likely reluctant to sound alarm
bells earlier because they feared retribution. “They know that these people
are not going to complain about the situation because they’re scared,” she
said. “They think, 'If I say something, I am going to get in trouble.’ The
first thing my client asked was ‘How is going public going to affect my case?
‘” Controversy isn’t new for the GEO Group. The company, which was formerly
known as Wackenhut, was sued in 2006 after a detainee, Gregorio de la Rosa,
was beaten to death in one of the company’s facilities in Willacy County.
That incident caused an uproar in Laredo when the company announced the
opening of the Rio Grande Detention Center. And just last month the 10th
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a lawsuit against the company seeking millions
in damages could move forward after the company tried to have the case
dismissed, The Denver Post reported. The bat bite is the latest in a series
of incidents that began when Morales first arrived in the United States more
than 17 years ago. He entered the country in 2000 with a tourist visa and
remained here after it expired. When he was 17 he was arrested on a theft
charge after taking from an acquaintance’s house what Morales said was his
video game. But he was convicted when he was 18 and eventually deported to
Venezuela. While he was there, he worked for Luisa Ortega, an ally of former
President Hugo Chavez. She later denounced his successor and current leader,
President Nicolas Maduro, and Morales said his relationship with Ortega led
him to fear for his life and seek asylum in the United States.
April
22, 2013 lmtonline.com
A
man accused of ripping a gold chain from a GEO Group’s Rio Grande Detention
Center officer during an assault was arrested early Sunday. The alleged act
occurred while the 30-year-old man was an inmate there. Cristobal Cervantes
was served with two warrants at about 2 a.m. Sunday in 10700 block of
McPherson Road, charging him with engaging in organized criminal activity and
robbery. On June 6, 2011, the Laredo Police Department received a call from
the detention center off U.S. 83. Officials there wanted to report an assault
on one of their correctional officers. Three inmates attacked the officer and
stole a gold chain from him while he checked out a housing unit at 10:40 p.m.
June 4, according to police. A criminal complaint states an officer entered a
housing unit for a security check and smelled an alcohol beverage while
walking around the area. The officer located the source and attempted to
seize the bag containing an alcoholic beverage, which was underneath a bed.
September 10, 2012 San Antonio
Express-News
Six former employees of the prison company GEO Group Inc. pleaded guilty to
firearms charges Monday in Laredo, federal prosecutors said. The six straw
purchasers, who acted as proxies for anonymous buyers, worked at GEO's Rio
Grande Detention Center last year when the crimes took place, according to
prosecutors. A seventh defendant, Benito Aguirre Jr., 24, also pleaded
guilty. Angel Chavez, 23, and a defendant whose name remains sealed would
choose the guns they wanted and hire others to buy them, according to court
documents. The others were Abel Robles, 23; Hugo Enrique De La Rosa, 23;
Ramiro Adolfo Rodriguez III, 26; Hugo Ubaldo Castillo Jr., 23; and Leticia
Adriana Zamora, 24. They face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
December 14, 2009 Texas Tribune
Some Texas sheriffs are looking to an unlikely source to get them out of the
hole as private prisons win away federal contracts for inmates and put the
financial squeeze on county jails. Federal prisoners translate to dollars to
local detention facilities — mainly county jails — which are reimbursed at a
rate that can exceed $50 a day for each federal inmate they house. But
competition from private prisons in Texas continues to shrink that potential
pool of inmates for smaller, poorer counties, leading some local governments
to ask help from an agency better known for its fever tick riders than
building jails. The Department of Agriculture is currently considering
whether and how it will grant or loan Webb County about $5 million, said
Sheriff Martin Cuellar, which will be used to build a new county-owned jail.
“We build another jail elsewhere and house the regular state prisoners
[there],” said Cuellar. “We could also have the current jail filled with
federal prisoners and that could be something very profitable to the county.”
County governments and the U.S. Marshals Service negotiate federal-prisoner
contracts, some of which used to be a steady secondary source of revenue for
Webb. But Cuellar’s future plans could be thwarted by the region’s brand new
detention facility, the privately owned Rio Grande Detention Center, which
undoubtedly wants to see all of its roughly 275,000 square feet put to use.
The new prison is nestled just outside the City of Laredo’s boundaries and
can house 1,500 inmates, including up to 68 female detainees. Opened in
October 2008, the detention facility was for years a source of bitter dispute
because of opposition to the detention center’s owner and operator, the
Florida-based GEO Group, and its record of alleged human-rights abuses within
the confines of its facilities in Texas. Local officials nonetheless hailed
the facility as a job creator, and a source of revenue through utility
contracts with Webb County. But Cuellar says the county is losing $500,000
annually because inmates are going to GEO instead of the county lockup.
Cuellar said it's helpful knowing people at the federal level, in this case,
his older brother, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who the sheriff said
has helped guide the department in the right direction. “Through what they
call the Rural Communities Facilities Program there is a way that you can use
funding to build community centers, you can build city halls or you can even
build jails,” said Rep. Cuellar, a member of the House Agriculture Committee.
March 11, 2009 Pro 8 News
Laredo police are called out to the Rio Grande Detention Center for
assistance after a situation with the inmates. A helicopter could be seen
circling around the prison around seven this evening. Sources say a riot may
have broken out behind the detention center walls but neither representative
from the Geo Group nor Laredo police could confirm those details. According
to police, officers were called out to assist the situation, which was
controlled after 20 minutes. Pro 8 News tried to obtain details from the Rio
Grande Detention Center but were asked to leave the premises.
May 17, 2007 Laredo Morning News
The Geo Group came to Laredo on Wednesday bearing cash for both the City
of Laredo and Webb County. But in what seemed like a sudden impulse move at a
news conference, George Zoley, Geo CEO and founder,
doubled the amount he planned to give the entities from $125,000 each to
$250,000 each in general funds. The Geo Group has been awarded a federal
contract to build the privately-owned Rio Grande Detention Center off of U.S.
83. “We are very grateful for your support because something of this
magnitude, of this complexity couldn’t have started this quickly without it,”
Zoley said. “This is a big project and we want to
be good corporate partners.” The Geo Group did not leave empty handed,
however. Mayor Raul Salinas and Erasmo Villarreal, city Building Department
director, presented the company with its building permit. County Judge Danny
Valdez and Precinct 2 Commissioner Rosaura “Wawi”
Tijerina also signed an agreement for the water and utilities, which the
county will provide.
Rolling
Plains Regional Jail and Detention Center
Haskell, Texas
Emerald Corrections
Mar 2, 2017 bigcountryhomepage.com
ICE Moving Detainees from Haskell, Detention Center Closing
HASKELL COUNTY, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) - Immigration and Customs Enforcement
is moving detainees from a local detention center, causing the facility to
close. Rolling Plains Jail and Detention Center is closing on March 15, 2017,
because ICE officials are "not happy with the current management company
[Emerald]", according to a press release from Haskell County Judge David
Davis. Over the next two weeks, the press release says ICE officials will be
moving detainees from Haskell to a new facility in Alvarado. Judge Davis wants to assure residents that
ICE has not pulled their contract with the Rolling Plains Detention Center.
In the press release, he claims ICE, "said they need beds today and if
we had a new management company, they would continue to use Haskell".
Judge Davis told KTAB and KRBC Haskell County is "working
diligently" to hire a new management company - a project he says is not
feasible to get done in two weeks. He has contacted Workforce Solutions of West
Central Text to help establish unemployment for those affected by layoffs
resulting from the closure, according to the press release, which contains
the following statement about the future of the facility: We are under the
impression that the Trump administration expects to utilize many prison
facilities across Texas. They will need a place to go with additional ICE
detainees. They tell us they currently have plenty of detainees to fill
Haskell and Alvarado. The DOJ is in the process of making all their new
appointments. As soon as that is complete, we foresee this process will move
much quicker than it has in the past.
The press release ends by stating County officials are working with
other counties to house inmates currently serving time in the Haskell County
Jail, which is inside the detention facility. County commissioners are
meeting Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m. to discuss their options they have to
house these inmates.
February 5, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old Cuban
immigrant, lay on the floor of Rolling Plains Detention Center with no pulse,
his face flushed, his pupils dilated. For months before he collapsed at the
detention center near Abilene, he had been complaining to nurses about chest
pain and heart problems, asking to see a doctor. “Can't stand the pain,” Dubegel-Paez wrote on a sick call slip on Jan. 1, 2008.
In response, he was treated by a nurse at the center's medical clinic and
given cold medicine. As the weeks passed, he filed more urgent requests to
see a doctor — only to be given more cough medicine and Tylenol by nurses,
according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records. While Dubegel-Paez waited to see a doctor, inspectors working
for ICE toured the facility Feb. 26, 2008, to check that it complied with
ICE's own detention standards. The inspectors rated the center “acceptable,”
noting no deficiencies in its medical care. It was only after Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died in March 2008 that ICE's
inspectors noted in a report that medical care for about 500 detainees at the
facility was being provided only by eight vocational nurses with minimal
nursing or physician supervision. The case highlights what critics have
called pervasive problems with ICE's enforcement of detention standards. A
review of more than 800 pages of inspection reports obtained by the Houston
Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that inspectors
have, in some instances, given positive reviews to facilities with serious
problems — ranging from inadequate medical care to poor grievance procedures.
In many cases, ICE has required facilities with deficiencies to make
improvements, though inspectors often failed to note in subsequent reports
whether changes were made. After Dubegel-Paez's
death, inspectors noted that the Rolling Plains facility failed to meet a
number of ICE's detention standards, including care for chronic illness and
responding to sick call requests. But ICE officials still did not downgrade
the center's rating because of staffing problems in the medical unit, records
show, and continue to place a growing number of detainees there. ICE
officials said they are in the process of overhauling the nation's
immigration detention system, including its monitoring procedures, and plan
to improve oversight of medical care. “The problems that occurred in 2007 and
2008 are terrible problems, and as an institution and an agency we have to
address them and take them extraordinarily seriously,” said Brian Hale, ICE's
public affairs director in Washington, D.C. “But I also do have to point out
that was something that occurred in the past, and this new administration ...
is committed to ensuring that doesn't happen again. We take it very
seriously.” Are changes enough? ICE officials said they plan to announce
changes this spring to strengthen their detention standards, which are
designed to ensure that detainees have basic protections while in custody.
The agency has relied on 300-plus detention centers, private prisons and
local jails to house about 400,000 immigrants annually — with roughly one in
four detained in Texas. Hale said ICE is reducing the number of facilities to
improve oversight. The agency also plans to station government monitors at
the centers and jails that house the largest numbers of ICE detainees, he
added. Linton Joaquin, who has investigated detention centers' compliance
with ICE's standards as general counsel with the National Immigration Law
Center, said ICE's planned measures are positive, but “they are so inadequate
in comparison to the scope of the problem.” ICE officials have reported that
the majority of inspected facilities complied with the agency's detention
standards, though a 2008 Inspector General audit found reviewers had not been
effective in identifying certain serious problems at facilities. Locally, the
Houston Contract Detention Facility has received high marks in reviews.
Inspection reports obtained by the Chronicle, which date from early 2007
through February 2009, show ICE has placed detainees in facilities that have
failed to meet some minimum requirements outlined under its own standards for
detainee care, with violations ranging from failure to accommodate religious
diets to lack of formal disciplinary procedures. Access to adequate medical
care continues to be one of the most difficult and controversial issues for
ICE, which has recorded 107 detainee deaths since 2003, including more than a
dozen in Texas. ICE's records documented a wide range of medical care
problems at facilities rated as acceptable, including a complete lack of on-site
medical care at one Dallas-area jail approved for housing short-term
detainees, and chronic staffing problems at larger facilities. An inspection
report for the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall documented a severe
staffing shortage in 2007 in the medical unit, with 19 vacancies out of 46
positions. The reviewer wrote that the facility, which at the time held about
1,250 detainees, was meeting ICE's standard for medical access at an
“acceptable” level, though he noted that employees were staying after hours
to complete basic duties. When inspectors returned a year later, in April
2008, ICE had increased the number of detainees held at the facility to 1,547
— despite continuing problems with the medical unit. Hiring a key issue --
The inspector noted the facility, which is owned and operated by the GEO
Group, was having trouble meeting a standard ICE requirement that all
detainees have a medical exam within 14 days of admission. The medical unit
had 10 vacancies at the time of inspection. “These positions are critical to
the delivery of health care and compliance with all ICE standards,” the
inspector wrote, giving the facility a “good” rating. The center continues to
suffer from staffing shortages, with 24 vacancies out of 69 authorized
positions in its medical unit, though ICE officials noted that the government
is actively recruiting and hiring for those spots. GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez declined comment. On March 14, the day that Dubegel-Paez died, he filled out a final sick call slip
and complained to his cell mate about chest pains before being seen by a
nurse. He was being held while ICE officials tried to arrange his deportation
to Cuba. “I have an emergency to see the doctor about my heart problems that
I been having for the last couple days, and I have been getting dizzy a lot,”
he wrote on the sick call slip. According to ICE's report, the nurse gave him
two Tylenol pills and scheduled him for a sick call appointment the following
Monday. An autopsy ruled his cause of death was heart disease. Still, weeks
after Dubegel-Paez's death, the acting chief of
ICE's Detention Standards Compliance unit affirmed the center's “acceptable”
rating without any requirement to improve medical treatment. Arthur Anderson,
the warden of Rolling Plains center, operated by Emerald Companies, did not
return phone calls seeking comment. The facility now has an on-site physician
only six to 10 hours a week and eight full-time nurses, ICE reported. ICE has
continued to increase the number of detainees housed there, averaging 537 a
day last year.
May 11, 2008 Washington Post
Neil Sampson, who ran the DIHS as interim director most of last year, left
that job with serious questions about the government's commitment. Sampson
said in an interview that ICE treated detainee health care "as an
afterthought," reflecting what he called a failure of leadership and
management at the Homeland Security Department. "They do not have a
clear idea or philosophy of their approach to health care [for
detainees]," he said. "It's a system failure, not a failure of
individuals." A new director for health services arrived six months ago,
following a stretch when the agency was run first by Sampson and then by a
second interim director. The new boss is LaMont W.
Flanagan, who brought with him the credential of having been fired in 2003 by
the state of Maryland for bad management and spending practices supervising
detention and pretrial services. An audit found that Flanagan had signed off
on payments of $145,000 for employee entertainment and other ill-advised
expenditures. His reputation was such that the District of Columbia would not
hire him for a juvenile-justice position. "Another death that needs to
be added to the roster," Diane Aker, the DIHS chief health
administrator, tapped out in an e-mail to a records clerk at headquarters on
Aug. 14, 2007. Juan Guevara-Lorano, 21, was dead.
Guevara, an unemployed legal U.S. resident with a young son, was arrested in
El Paso for driving illegal border-crossers farther into the city. He was
paid $50. An entry-level emergency medical technician, with barely any
training, had done Guevara's intake screening and physical assessment at the
Otero County immigration compound in New Mexico. Under DIHS rules, those
tasks are supposed to be done by a nurse. After two difficult months in
detention, Guevara had decided not to appeal his case. He would go back to
Mexico with his family. But on Aug. 4, he came down with a splitting
headache, what he called a nine on a pain scale of 10, his medical records
show. The rookie medical technician prescribed Tylenol and referred Guevara
to the compound's physician "due to severity of headache ... and
dizziness," according to medical records. But Guevara never saw a
doctor. Eight days after the first incident, he vomited in his cell. The same
junior technician came to help but was unable to insert a nasal airway tube.
Guevara was taken to a hospital, where doctors determined an aneurism in his
brain had burst. His wife, pregnant at the time with their second child,
recalled that she rushed to the hospital but ICE guards would not let her
inside, until the Mexican Consulate interceded. Guevara's mother waited five
hours before they let her in. By then he was brain-dead. "My son is not
coming back," sobbed Ana Celia Lozano months later, sitting in Guevara's
small mobile home as her grandson played on the floor. "I want to know
how he lived and died, nothing more." What appears to be the most
incriminating document in Guevara's case has been partially blacked out. Still,
what is left shows that he did not receive adequate care. "The detainee
was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel or physician. . . . At the time
of the incident on 8/12/2007, the detainee was seen and examined by
EMTs." Each immigration facility is allotted a different number of
positions, and a shortage of doctors and nurses is not unusual at centers
across the country. Records from February show that about 30 percent of all
DIHS positions in the field were unfilled. ICE officials said last week that
the current vacancy rate is 21 percent. Concern about the vacancies is voiced
repeatedly at clinical directors' meetings. "How do we state our
concerns so that we can be heard? . . . this is a CRITICAL condition. . . . We have bitten off more than we can chew," a physician
wrote in the minutes of one meeting last summer. In some prisons, the
staffing shortages are acute. The Willacy County detention center in South
Texas -- the largest compound, with 2,018 detainees -- has no clinical
director, no pharmacist and only a part-time psychiatrist. Nearly 50 percent
of the nursing positions were unfilled at the 1,500-detainee Eloy, Ariz.,
prison in February. At the newly opened 744-bed Jena., La., compound, nurses
run the place. It has no clinical director, no staff physician, no
psychiatrist and no professional dental staff. Last August, Sampson, who was
then DIHS interim director, warned his superiors at ICE that critical
personnel shortages were making it impossible to staff the Jena facility
adequately. In a vociferous e-mail to Gary Mead, the ICE deputy director in
charge of detention centers, he wrote: "With the Jena request we have
been re-examining our capabilities to meet health care needs at a new site
when we are facing critical staffing shortages at most every other DIHS site.
While we developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment
efforts we have been unable to meet the demand." The slow ICE
security-clearance process forced many job applicants to go elsewhere,
Sampson wrote. Of the 312 people who applied for new positions over the past
year, 200 withdrew, he wrote, because they found other jobs during the 250
days it took ICE, on average, to conduct the required background
investigations. Last week, ICE officials said the average wait had decreased
recently to 37 days. These shortages have burdened the remaining staff. In
July 2007, a year after Osman's death in Otay Mesa,
medical director Hui strongly complained to headquarters about workload
stress. "The level of burnout . . . is high and rising," she wrote
in an e-mail. "I know that I have been averaging approximately 2-6 hrs of overtime daily for the past 2 months. I will no
longer be able to sustain this pace and will be decreasing the number of
hours that I work overtime. This being said, more will be left undone because
we simply do NOT have the staff." The overcrowding has created a petri
dish for the spread of diseases. One mission of the Public Health Service is
to detect infectious diseases and contain them before they spread, but last
summer, the gigantic Willacy center was hit by a chicken pox outbreak. The
illness spread because the facility did not have enough available isolation
rooms and its large pods share recycled air, but also because security
officers "lack education about the disease and keep moving around
detainees from different units without taking into consideration if the unit
has been isolated due to heavy exposure," noted the DIHS's top
specialist on infectious diseases, Carlos Duchesne. The staff was forced to
vaccinate the entire population in mid-July. In one 2007 death, memos and
confidential notes show how medical staff missed an infectious disease,
meningitis, in their midst. Victor Alfonso Arellano, 23, a transgender
Mexican detainee with AIDS, died in custody at the San Pedro center. The
first three pages of Duchesne's internal review of the death leave the
impression that Arellano's care was proper. But the last page, under the
heading "Off the record observations and recommendations," takes a
decidedly critical tone: "The clinical staff at all levels fails to
recognize early signs and symptoms of meningitis. . . . Pt was evaluated
multiple times and an effort to rule out those infections was not even
mentioned." Arellano was given a "completely useless" antibiotic,
Duchesne wrote. Lab work that should have been performed immediately took 22
days because San Pedro's clinical director had ordered staff members to
withhold lab work for new detainees until they had been in detention there
"for more than 30 days," a violation of agency rules. "I am
sure that there must be a reason why this was mandated but that practice is
particularly dangerous with chronic care cases and specially is particularly
dangerous with . . . HIV/AIDS patients," Duchesne wrote. "Labs for
AIDS patients . . . must be performed ASAP to know their immune status and
where you are standing in reference to disease control and meds." Given
the frequency with which ICE moves people within the detention network,
keeping track of detainees is critical to stopping the spread of infectious
illnesses. The purchase of an electronic records system named CaseTrakker in 2004 was supposed to help. But according
to internal documents and interviews, CaseTrakker
is so riddled with problems that facilities often revert to handwritten
records. A study at one site found that it took one-third more time to use CaseTrakker than to use paper. Thousands of patient files
are missing. Recorded data often cannot be retrieved. Day-long outages are
common. When detainees are transferred from one facility to another, their
records, if they follow them, are often misleading. Some show medications
with no medical diagnoses, or "lots of diagnoses but no meds,"
according to Elizabeth Fleming, a former clinical director at one compound in
Arizona. After Yusif Osman's death and the
discovery of the problem with his computerized records, the DIHS ordered a
review of all charts at the Otay Mesa center.
During the review, auditors also found that 260 physical exams were never
completed as required. The nurse responsible for the error in Osman's case
was reprimanded, but the computer problem was not fixed. The CaseTrakker system "has failed and must be
replaced," Sampson, the DIHS interim director, wrote to his ICE
supervisors in August. In January 2008, medical director Shack told
colleagues that CaseTrakker "is more of a
liability than the use of paper medical record system," according to the
minutes of a meeting. It "puts patients at risk." ICE officials
said last week that they are not satisfied with CaseTrakker
and are working to replace it. Along with being at the mercy of computer
glitches, detainees suffer from human errors that deny or delay their care.
And with few advocates on the outside, they are left alone to plead their
cases in the most desperate ways, in hand-scribbled notes to doctors they
rarely see. "I need medicine for pain. All my bones hurt. Thank
you," wrote Mexico native Roberto Ledesma Guerrero, 72, three weeks
before he died inside the Otay Mesa compound.
Delays persist throughout the system. In January, the detention center in
Pearsall, Tex., an hour from San Antonio, had a backlog of 2,097
appointments. Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old
Cuban, had filled out many sick call requests before he died on March 14.
Detained at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility in the West Texas town of
Haskell, he wrote on New Year's Day: "need to see doctor for Heart
medication; and having chest pains for the past three days. Can't stand
pain." Ten days later he went to the clinic and became upset when he
wasn't seen. He slugged the window, yelled, pointed at his wristwatch. He was
escorted back to his cell. Another of his sick call requests said: "Need
to see a doctor. I have a lot of symptoms of sickness ... as soon as possible!"
The next was more urgent: "I have a
emergency to see the doctor about my heart problems ... for the last couple
days and I been getting dizzy a lot." The next day, Dubegel-Paez
collapsed and died. His medical records do not show that he ever saw a doctor
for his chest pains.
April 18, 2006 AP
Two Wyoming inmates have been recaptured after escaping from a Texas jail
over the weekend, according to the Wyoming Department of Corrections. Joe
Wilkinson, 41, gave himself up about two hours after the escape Saturday and
didn't get very far from the Rolling Plains Regional Jail and Detention
Center in Haskell, Texas, corrections spokeswoman Melinda Brazzale
said Monday. Robert Dix, 25, was arrested Sunday night, about 34 hours after
the escape. He, too, didn't get far from the prison. Haskell is about 50
miles north of Abilene, Texas. Wyoming keeps many of its inmates there
because it doesn't have enough room for them at prisons in Wyoming.
Rolling Plains
Technical Foundation
Sweetwater, Texas
Texson
December 3, 2000
Leslie Broadwell isn't bitter that she lost her job right before Thanksgiving
with only one weeks notice. Actually she spoke
quite respectfully of her former employer who recently filed for bankruptcy.
When the adult drug-rehabilitation facility here was shut down they were told
that they would receive there checks the Wednesday
before Thanksgiving. When they failed to arrive they were told that they
would receive them the day after Thanksgiving. They also failed to come then
either. Then they were told that they won't be paid for there
lat two weeks of work because their former
employer, Texson Management Group Inc. of Austin
filed for bankruptcy. In its bankruptcy claim, which was filed Nov. 20
in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Texson listed nearly
$5 million in claims from 20 of its largest unsecured creditors. Texson representatives have refused to return numerous
calls by The Avalanche-Journal seeking comment. In addition, about 80 others
were left without jobs in October when Texson
pulled out of a Juvenile facility it also managed in Sweetwater. Most of the
people from the adult facility have copies of their last time card. They're
still hoping to receive their final paycheck. (The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal,
Dec 2, 2000)
San
Antonio Jail
San Antonio, Texas
GEO Group
September 19, 2008 AP
Imagine Mayor Will Wynn hiding copies of the Chronicle because it
contained something mean about him. That's exactly why LareDOS,
the alternative newspaper in Laredo, is suing the town mayor. The paper
claims that on June 5, 2007, Mayor Raul Salinas ordered staff at Laredo
International Airport to remove the May/June issue from the stands because it
contained a satirical cartoon lampooning him. The publication has video
footage of Salinas directing staff to remove the papers. The cover story,
written by Editor María Eugenia "Meg" Guerra, addressed the close
relationship between Salinas and private prison firm Geo Group. The cover
image, inspired by 19th century Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada's
Calaveras print El Jarabe en Ultratumba
(The Folk Dance Beyond the Grave), featured the council as skeletons dancing
on money. "The mayor has a pretty thin skin," said Guerra. The
bimonthly publication and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed suit on Sept.
9 in federal Southern District of Texas Court in Laredo against the city and
Salinas for First Amendment violations. TCRP Director Jim Harrington called
the case "about abuse of power" and added, "You see this
pattern going on around in the country, where politicians will suppress free
speech even though they know they'll lose the case."
May 1, 2008 San Antonio Express-News
A 35-year-old man who escaped from a downtown private jail March 30 and
was captured a few days later in Boerne faces new charges related to his
caper. Esequiel Pena, who was being held on a
federal parole violation, apparently got through the fence of a recreation
yard, then scurried down the fire escape of the GEO Central Texas Detention
Facility and was gone for almost a day before his escape was noticed. He was
captured April 2 by the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and Boerne officers.
Pena was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on escape charges.
April 11, 2008 Laredo Morning Times
An investigation into last week's escape of an inmate from a private
detention facility in downtown San Antonio is continuing, GEO officials said
Thursday. Esequiel Peña, 35, was reported missing
from the Central Texas Detention Facility on March 31. He was arrested
without incident the morning of April 2 at an apartment in Boerne, north of
San Antonio, by members of the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and the Boerne
Police Department, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Peña was behind
bars for violating terms of his supervised release. He had been convicted of
a weapons violation. The detention facility is operated by The GEO Group
Inc., based in Florida. GEO is currently constructing a 1,500-bed facility in
southern Webb County under federal contract. Whenever something happens at a
GEO-run facility, the company conducts a "thorough investigation,"
said Pablo Paez, GEO's director of corporate
relations. "In this particular case, we are reviewing all the
circumstances that led to that incident," Paez
said Thursday, adding that he could not release any details at this point.
"Many of these findings are security-sensitive. Also, there is the
ongoing investigation." Paez said once the
investigation is complete, the company will take all necessary steps.
"We take all appropriate actions with regard to policy and procedure as
well as physical plant improvements," Paez
said. Peña escaped around 3 p.m. on March 30 from a recreation area enclosed
by a chain-link fence, located at the top of the building, eight floors up,
according to the Express-News. A U.S. Marshals Service news release said Peña
somehow squeezed through the fence and apparently climbed down a fire escape
to get away. It was unclear why the facility did not discover that Peña was
missing until nearly 24 hours had passed. That's one of the things under
investigation.
April 2, 2008 WOAI
The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force was notified of the escape and launched
a massive manhunt for Esequiel Pena. (News 4) A
inmate who escaped from a San Antonio jail was captured Wednesday morning.
Officers with The Lone Star Fugitive Force and the Boerne Police Department
caught up with fugitive Esequiel Pena in Boerne
around 11:30 a.m. Pena was being held in a 8-story level room at the GEO
Group Holding Jail in Downtown San Antonio when he escaped. It's believed
Pena squeezed through a fence and then made his way to a fire escape and
disappeared on Sunday, April 30th. The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force was
notified of the escape and launched a massive manhunt for Pena. A concerned
citizen spotted Pena at a Boerne apartment complex and called the Boerne
Police Department. Boerne police then contact the Lone Star Fugitive Task
Force. Boerne Police Department Assistant Chief Jim Kohler said "Boerne
is a wonderful place to live and work and we will not tolerate the likes of
Pena coming into our community. I am proud of the citizen that came forward
and I am also proud of the way the Boerne Police Department handled this
matter. It was a great cooperative effort between us and the LSFTF."
Officers from both the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force and the Boerne Police
Department worked together, and Pena was arrested without incident at the
apartment complex. The United States Marshal for the Western District of
Texas LaFayette Collins said "Because of the
reputation of the LSFTF, the Boerne P.D. did not hesitate to call us. A
spirit of cooperation is essential in our line of work. Today's arrest of a
wanted and dangerous felon bears that out."
April 1, 2008 KENS 5 News
Could an inmate’s escape from a federal jail downtown two days ago have been
prevented? One woman told KENS 5 that she tried to warn guards that Esequiel Pena had broken out, but she says they didn’t
listen. The woman said she told two guards about the escape, but neither did
anything about it. "Where is he right now? How do we know he hasn't hurt
somebody or kidnapped somebody?" said the woman, who does not want to be
identified. The woman said she was sitting in the parking lot at the federal
jail when she saw Pena make his escape. "He crossed his arms and kinda got nervous, which kinda
got my attention. Once he came around the GEO sign, I saw his bottom half,
and I said, ‘Wait a minute,’" the witness said. It was Sunday afternoon,
around 3:30 — about 26 hours before Pena was ever reported missing — when she
said Pena came out from the back corner of the jail in full inmate uniform.
"The inmate wasn't five minutes down the road by the time I hit the
doors to report it," she said. The woman says she was taken aback by the
guard’s lack of urgency. "He never asked me if he was white, Hispanic,
African American. I described the clothing,” she said. “All he asked was,
‘Was he wearing tennis shoes?’" Now, as authorities search for the
convicted felon, considered armed and dangerous, the woman is angered knowing
Pena could have been caught sooner. The company that owns the facility, The
GEO Group, told KENS 5 they’re investigating the incident.
April 1, 2008 AP
Officials want to know how a convicted felon escaped from a privately
owned jail across the street from San Antonio police headquarters. Nobody
noticed he was gone for a full day -- and he remains at large.
Thirty-5-year-old Esequiel Pena escaped fled the
private jail sometime between Sunday afternoon and Monday afternoon. U.S.
Marshals believe Pena is in the San Antonio area. Spokesman Thomas Smith says
Pena apparently pulled back chain-link fencing around a rooftop recreation
yard and climbed down an eight-story fire escape. Pena was at the Central
Texas Detention Facility for violating terms of his supervised release. He
was previously convicted of an unspecified weapons charge and re-arrested for
a different offense. The facility is operated by The GEO Group, which is
assisting in the investigation.
March 31, 2008 KSAT
A man who escaped from a jail facility downtown had quite a headstart on law enforcement. Esequiel
Pena escaped from the GEO Group Jail sometime between Sunday and Monday
afternoons when he pulled open a recreation yard fence and climbed down an
eight-story fire escape, according to a press release from the Lone Star
Fugitive Task Force. Pena was originally sentenced to more than 15 years in
prison on weapons charges, but was awaiting transfer into a release program
when he was at the facility, according to the release. He has a history of
mental problems, according to the release.
May 12, 2007 WOAI TV
San Antonio Police arrested a prison guard Saturday after an undercover
investigation. He’s accused of smuggling drugs into a private jail where he
works. Undercover narcotics investigators said 31-year-old Hector Almanza
agreed to smuggle an ounce of black tar heroin into the prison for a fee of
$800; he reportedly stated he had smuggled things into the prison before with
success, like a cell phone. According to the report, Almanza also told the
undercover officer he didn’t want to get caught by police, as another guard
was previously arrested for smuggling on May 11th. Almanza is currently being
held in Bexar County Jail, awaiting transfer into the custody of the U.S.
Marshals Service.
February 23, 2007 Express News
Bond was set at $50,000 Friday for a guard charged in a plot to smuggle
crack into a privately run San Antonio jail housing federal prisoners. Cedric
Darnell Chambers, 21, appeared before the U.S. magistrate, charged with attempted
possession of cocaine base. He was arrested Thursday after undercover San
Antonio police officers caught him in a deal to smuggle 11 grams of crack
into the jail, at 218 S. Laredo St., run by Florida-based The Geo Group Inc.
Calls to that company were not returned. Chambers could face as many as 40
years in prison if convicted of the charge.
October 21, 2004 Express News
The Justice Department is reviewing a local case against the Texas Mexican
Mafia to determine whether it warrants a death-penalty prosecution against
one of its alleged generals. The development, revealed for the first time
Wednesday, puts lawyers for Jimmy "Panson"
Zavala, 35, on notice that, if the Justice Department certifies the case for
death-penalty prosecution, they'll be fighting for his life. Also revealed
Wednesday was a foiled escape attempt by alleged gang members, including
Zavala, at the San Antonio jail run by the GEO Group, which holds pretrial
federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service. The Sept. 18 attempt, which resulted in
the beating of a guard, prompted the Marshals Service to split up several
alleged members, including Zavala, and send them to other jails in the area.
August 11, 2004
A private corrections company has agreed to pay more than $98,000 to settle a
civil-rights lawsuit alleging negligence by staff at a San Antonio jail led
to an inmate giving premature birth. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery today finalized the agreement — which was reached
months before and preceded a ruling by another judge that would have given
the former Wackenhut Corrections Corp. the victory in the suit filed in 2002
by Melissa Villarreal. Villarreal, 32, was incarcerated at the company's jail
downtown in 2001 on federal charges that she violated conditions of the
probation she got for drunken driving on Randolph Air Force Base. Her lawsuit
claimed the jail denied her adequate medical care, which resulted in the
premature birth of her son, Logan Daniel Flores, who weighed 1 pound and six
ounces when he was born at University Hospital on Nov. 7, 2001. The suit
alleged he had medical complications that continue today, and that Villarreal
was denied to see the boy or provide him with milk after he was born. This
February, U.S. Magistrate Judge Pamela Mathy noted
the company documented that it gave Villarreal adequate medical attention
during her pregnancy. The judge also noted that, because the infant was never
in the jail's care, the company could not have violated the child's
constitutional rights. The judge granted the corrections company summary
judgment, which would have dismissed the case, but Mathy
wasn't aware a settlement had been negotiated before she ruled, said
Villarreal's lawyer Frank Menchaca. "This was
plan B just in case the summary judgments did get granted against us, and
that is exactly what happened," Menchaca said.
(Express-News)
Smith County Jail
Smith County, Texas
Corplan/Correctional Services Corporation
November 7, 2005 Tyler Morning Telegraph
Smith County commissioners picked Lee Lewis Construction Inc. of Lubbock,
along with Dallas architects Wiginton Hooker Jeffry PC, with which to enter
into negotiations for the design and construction of a new Smith County Jail.
In Monday's meeting of the Smith County Commissioners Court, Commissioner
JoAnn Hampton explained that the three private firms that responded to the
recent Request for Proposals were evaluated according to a specific set of
criteria. The next highest was Correctional Services Corporation, with a
score of 55, she said. Hale-Mills received 51 points. The court, with Gary's
help, also looked at the potential legal entanglements of each of the three
firms, after they were forced to reject an early RFP due to the legal
troubles of bidder CorPlan.
September 1, 2005 Tyler Morning
Telegraph
Smith County commissioners on Tuesday could vote to put a bond referendum for
a new criminal justice complex on the Nov. 8 ballot, County Judge Becky
Dempsey confirmed Thursday. Commissioners have not yet picked a specific
proposal, but have three to choose from, she said. The prices in those
proposals from private firms range from $46.52 million to $55.71 million. "We have some
preliminary numbers already, and I'm working with our bond counsel on exact
wording," Judge Dempsey said. "We have to fill in some blanks, but
I'm hopeful we can do that in the jail workshop on Tuesday." Also, all three of the firms that submitted proposals
failed to provide the disclosure of their legal troubles commissioners
wanted; they've been asked to provide that information to the county by
Friday. Any firm that fails to do so presumably would be considered out of
the running.
August 25, 2005 Tyler Morning
Telegraph
If the instructions weren't explicit enough before, Smith County officials
say, they'll make it perfectly clear: The private firms offering proposals to
build a new jail complex must disclose all their legal troubles immediately.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Gary will send a letter on Friday, he
told attendees at a public hearing on the jail that county commissioners held
in Lindale on Thursday. Smith County officials are wary of such lawsuits
because in July, they threw out a proposal by Corplan
Corrections for a new facility after learning of a growing scandal in Willacy
County. Their vote was not based on the bribery-related convictions of three
county officials there, but on the "contingent liability" of a lawsuit
filed in May against Corplan and Hale-Mills
Construction by Willacy County. They wish to avoid any more such surprises,
they say. The private proposals were one issue that emerged at the public
hearing attended by more than two dozen citizens at the county offices in
Lindale. Sheriff J.B. Smith began the hearing with a brief presentation on
jail overcrowding, followed by County Judge Becky Dempsey explaining what
overcrowding is doing to the county's finances.
August 24, 2005 Tyler Morning
Telegraph
A general partner of Hale-Mills Construction says his firm's proposal to
build a criminal justice complex for Smith County is in full compliance with
the county's request for proposals, and that a lawsuit filed by Willacy
County alleging that his firm conspired to bribe officials there will soon
"dry up and blow away." Smith County commissioners have expressed
concern that not one of the five proposals submitted last week included the
disclosure about lawsuits and criminal charges that they asked for in the
request for proposals. And all five lead firms have either sued or been sued
over construction projects or jail operations in that period. The merit of
the lawsuits filed by or faced by each of the companies is not the issue,
county commissioners say; it's that they didn't tell the county about the
lawsuits when asked in the RFPs. In July, Smith County threw out a proposal
by Corplan Corrections for a new facility after
they learned of a growing scandal in Willacy County. Their vote was not based
on the bribery-related convictions of three county officials there, but on
the "contingent liability" of a lawsuit filed in May against Corplan and Hale-Mills by Willacy County. The lawsuit
claims that Corplan and Hale-Mills conspired to
bribe county commissioners, to be selected for a $14.5 million project.
August 22, 2005 Tyler Morning
Telegraph
The most recent round of proposals for a new Smith County jail and sheriff's
office are in, with private firms offering to build and run a new facility
for sums ranging from $46.52 million to $55.71 million for construction, and
$31.65 to $45.51 per day, per prisoner for privatized operations. But
Hale-Mills Construction, a firm linked to a South Texas prison project
scandal, has apparently submitted a proposal that doesn't disclose that the
firm is being sued by Willacy County. That county alleges that Hale-Mills and
Corplan Corrections conspired to bribe Willacy
County officials in order to win a project. Smith County commissioners in
July threw out a proposal by Corplan Corrections
for a new facility after they learned of a growing scandal in Willacy County.
Their vote was not based on the bribery-related convictions of three county
officials there, but on the "contingent liability" of a lawsuit
filed in May against Corplan and Hale-Mills by
Willacy County. The lawsuit claims that Corplan and
Hale-Mills conspired to bribe county commissioners, in order to be selected
for a $14.5 million project. Smith County commissioners added extra language
to their new Request for Proposals to avoid any more such surprises.
"List all criminal charges, lawsuits or alternative dispute resolutions
to which Respondent is a party or has been a party in the past five years and
the nature of the issue," the county's RFP reads. "Indicate if and how
each was resolved." No such disclosure about the Willacy County lawsuit
appears to be in the Hale-Mills proposal packet.
June
27, 2005 Tyler Paper
It's no longer a choice between public and private, Smith County officials
say - it's a matter of combining the best of both to come up with a workable
solution to jail overcrowding. In Monday's jail workshop session,
county commissioners agreed in principle that a new jail should be publicly
financed, privately built and run by the county. County Judge Becky
Dempsey added, "It's more cost effective for us to do our own
financing." That's because generally, government entities can
borrow money more cheaply. Corplan, when discussing
financing the facility itself, cited an interest rate of 5.125 percent. Smith
County, on the other hand, could get an interest rate of 4.8 percent or less.
Over the 20-year life of millions of dollars worth
of bonds, that extra point of interest would add up. "Just a
slight difference in interest rates over 20 years could prove quite
costly," Judge Dempsey said.
December 9, 2002
A private jail contractor drew interest and skepticism Friday from members of
a committee formed to study Smith County's jail space crunch. But after
touring the county's cramped facilities, CSC Vice President Bill Bryan
conceded whether or not county leaders embrace his product, they need to do
something - and fast. "My hat's off to the sheriff and his
staff," said Bryan. who retired as chief jail administrator in Bell
County before joining the staff of the nationwide CSC.
Bryan said a lack of infirmary and space for one is causing medical bills to
skyrocket because inmates constantly must be hospitalized for ailments that
could be treated in an onsite infirmary. The county's jail facilities,
which consist of 755 beds, failed the most recent state inspection due to
overcrowding. Bryan joked he would be glad to take the inmates at a
900-bed facility his company recently opened in Newton County. CSC
currently contracts with four counties in Texas and open spaces in those
jails are rented to counties and other states with overcrowded
facilities. Bryan said CSC has a large contract with Arizona and has
been able to nearly fill its Texas facilities with Arizona prisoners.
Friday's committee meeting consisted of the sheriff and jail staff, his
administrative staff, County Auditor Ann Wilson, purchasing agent Jacque Pelson, attorney "Buck" Files, who represents
the county in jail matters, and Taxpayers Association President JoAnn
Fleming. Answering a question from Files, Bryan said indemnity clauses
and insurance could be built into a contract for liability purposes.
Still, Files was skeptical about contracting jail services, which would mean
bringing in inmates from other states to fill empty beds. "The
more inmates we have, the more problems we have," Files said.
(CLEAT News)
Southeast Texas
Transitional Center
Houston,
TX
Aug 21 ,2019
houstonchronicle.com
Lawsuit: Private prison contractor abandoned parolees at flooded halfway
house during Harvey
More than 200 former
inmates are suing a private prison contractor who they say “utterly failed”
them during Hurricane Harvey, allegedly leaving the men in a flooded halfway
house in Houston surrounded by toxic waste and without food, clean water or
medical care. Despite the “barbaric” conditions, according to the lawsuit,
the men couldn’t leave the premises because officials told them it would be a
violation of their parole. “It was a total disaster,” said Henry Thigpen, one
of the roughly 500 parolees who weathered the storm at the Southeast Texas
Transitional Center before officials sent them all back to prison. “They left
us there to fend for ourselves.” Attorneys for GEO Group, the massive private
prison contractor that runs the eastern Harris County facility, denied the
allegations in court filings but declined to offer any additional comment to
the Houston Chronicle. “Plaintiffs no doubt experienced inconveniences during
Hurricane Harvey flooding, just like the STTC staff and nearly every resident
of Harris County and southeast Texas,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “Like
nearly all of Houston, the flooding made plaintiffs normal routines
impossible.” On HoustonChronicle.com: Listen: A podcast from death row, and
the story of Larry Swearingen. But, the lawyers said, the flooding never
reached over calf-height, the staff never abandoned the facility and there
was always adequate food and water on hand. The parolees who were there
begged to differ. “They don’t know,” said Everett Crawford, a 63-year-old from
Bexar County. “They abandoned us.” The GEO Group-run facility on Beaumont
Highway is a former bible college that contracts with the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice to house parolees fresh out of prison as they work to get
back on their feet. The men there - some of whom are sex offenders with ankle
monitors - are allowed to have cellphones and jobs
and they don’t have to wear prison uniforms. But there’s still a gate and
they’re not free to come and go as they please according to the conditions of
their parole. After the storm hit Houston on a Friday - August 25, 2017 -
parts of the campus started taking on water. Most of the staff allegedly
abandoned their posts as the flooding rose to waist-deep in some places,
according to the lawsuit. Men began moving their belongings up to the second
floor, retreating from the foul-smelling water. Some read or listened to the
radio, while others sang gospel music or prayed as they tried to figure out
what to do. “There was no clean water,” said Houston-based attorney Scott
Arnold, one of the lawyers who is representing the men in court. “You’d turn
on the faucet and you’d get brown stuff coming up.” Some of the men raided
the kitchen for scraps of food, he said, while others went hungry. At one
point, according to Thigpen, a few of the guys waded through miles of
floodwater to the nearest store, a process that took hours. In the end, the men were “nearly starved,
were dehydrated and incurred rashes, infections and other injuries from the
toxic flood waters,” the suit alleges. In part, that’s because the facility
sits between a former superfund site, a landfill and a waste processing
plant, “all of which flooded and subjected Plaintiffs of up to waist-high
water filled with the filth and toxins from the surrounding landfill and
toxic waste facility.” Many of the men had medical and mental health
conditions that required monitoring and medication, “none of which was
available,” according to the lawsuit. Instead, the parolees said they took
care of their comrades themselves. “It still haunts me today,” said Thigpen.
“I’d neve been in a situation like that where I had
to take care of mentally ill and handicapped people. We had to physically
hold them down so they wouldn’t go out there and drown.” GEO Group offered a
very different narrative of the hurricane conditions, writing that the
floodwaters peaked at around 18 inches, below the bottom of first-floor bunk
beds. “Affected parolees and their bedding were temporarily moved to the
second floor of their dorms,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “The facility
staff stayed on-site around the clock to mitigate the flooding, to maintain
essential functions like the kitchen and the medication room, and to conduct
rounds, roll calls, and counts.” The halfway house staff was not only “fully
present” throughout the storm and weathering the “exact same conditions” as
the parolees, according to GEO Group’s response filing, but there were
actually more employees there than usual and the claims that they abandoned
their posts is “baseless.” One thing that both sides agree on is that on
August 29 - four days into it - the flood waters subsided enough for prison
staff to come pick up the men. That night, the men said, they were all loaded
onto Texas Department of Criminal Justice buses at gunpoint and shipped to
various state prisons. In the process they were forced to abandon all their
belongings, and some said they found their things missing weeks later when
they returned to the facility. In the nearly two years since the storm, some
of the men - including Thigpen and Crawford - moved out on their own. They’re
both still on parole.
South Texas Family Residential Center
Dilley, Texas
CCA
Mar 2, 2019
publicintegrity.org
BABIES IN POOR HEALTH
AT ICE-RUN DETENTION FACILITY, SAYS COMPLAINT
Advocacy groups want
mom and kids released from Dilley, Texas center; government says
comprehensive care is being provided. Babies in poor health at ICE-run
detention facility, says complaint. A privately-run Texas detention center
has been holding nine mothers with babies, including a 5-month-old, who have
allegedly lost weight and aren’t sleeping or feeding properly because of
abrupt changes in the availability of formula, according to a new complaint
filed by three immigrant advocacy groups. The South Texas Family Residential
Center in Dilley, Texas, is the largest family detention center in America,
with capacity for 2,400 people. The private prison company CoreCivic operates the facility under contract with U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The letter of complaint — from
the Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and
the Catholic Legal Immigration Network — alleges that the number of infants
held at the Dilley center is increasing at an “alarming” rate and that the
institution has a troubling history of inadequate care. “We have grave
concerns about the lack of specialized medical care available in Dilley for
this vulnerable population,” the complaint says. “Infants are especially
vulnerable to serious illnesses, pain, disability, and even death from
preventable infections and diseases.” The complaint notes that pediatricians
advise against abrupt changes in formula routines, a process that should be
gradual and monitored by a doctor. The complaint also points out that the
Dilley center is more than an hour away by car from San Antonio, “the nearest
metropolitan center with facilities equipped to provide specialized medical
services.” The complaint was sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security’s civil rights staff and the department’s Office of the Inspector
General. The advocacy groups are urging officials to release the infants and
their mothers, all of them Hondurans, from the South Texas facility, so they
can fight their asylum cases outside of detention. As of Feb. 28, one mother
and her baby had been detained at the center for more than 20 days. “Very
young infants should not be held in detention centers,” Kathryn Shepherd, the
American Immigration Council’s national advocacy counsel, told the Center for
Public Integrity. Until recently, Shepherd added, it was very rare for babies
under a year old to be held in detention. In a document attached to the Feb.
28 complaint, Physicians for Human Rights experts described instances of
alleged neglect uncovered in a variety of detention facilities. The
Department of Homeland Security’s own health experts, the document says,
identified a 16-month-old baby who’d lost a third of his body weight over 10
days because of diarrheal disease and an infant just 27 days old who was not
examined by a physician until he had a seizure. Shepherd said the Honduran
mothers with infants detained at Dilley presented themselves to U.S. Customs
and Border Enforcement officers at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked to apply
for asylum. Shepherd said that the mothers have family in the United States
with whom they could live while waiting to present their asylum claim to a
judge. Last year, an 18-month-old girl who had been held at the Dilley
facility died after her release. The child and her Guatemalan mother were
taken into custody at the border and placed at the Dilley center, where the
toddler developed a cough and fever. The child received treatment and was
eventually released with her mother. But six weeks later, the child died of
viral pneumonitis. The advocacy groups that filed the recent complaint
argued that “ICE has failed to demonstrate its ability to provide regular
preventive care which could detect potentially serious complications that
could arise while in detention.” The letter also includes
references to a different complaint that immigrant-rights advocates filed in
2015 alleging that Dilley staff had administered vaccinations inappropriately
to detainees, and failed to appropriately respond to detainees suffering from
broken bones, diarrhea and other health problems. Following a second
complaint, alleging more cases of neglect, the inspector general’s office
launched an investigation into ICE’s family detention facilities but found no
major violations. Amanda Gilchrist, CoreCivic’s
director of public affairs, said in an email to the Center that the company
would defer to a statement issued by ICE, and declined to comment further.
ICE’s statement in response to the complaint says that “As the number of
family units crossing the border into the U.S., has increased, so too has the
frequency of those with younger children…” As a result, the letter said, “ICE
is seeing an uptick in the number of family units with infants at its family
residential centers.” ICE noted that, as of Friday, a total of 17 children
under a year old have been held at Dilley. But the ICE statement says the
agency insures that “comprehensive medical care is provided to all
individuals in ICE custody” and that “staffing includes registered nurses and
licensed practical nurses, licensed mental health providers, mid-level
providers that include a physician’s assistant and nurse practitioner, a
physician, dental care, and access to 24-hour emergency care.” The agency
spends “more than $250M annually on the spectrum of health care services
provided to those in our care,” the statement added. A June 2017 report by
the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General, found that family
residential detention centers were “addressing
the inherent challenges of providing medical care and language services and
ensuring the safety of families in detention.” Last year, as detention of
families increased along the border, physicians expressed concerns about
detention conditions, and argued against a new Trump Administration policy of
separating migrant children from parents. The policy was developed so that
all adult border crossers could be held in adult detention pending
appearances in court on illegal-entry charges. The Center for Public
Integrity reported on allegations that babies still breastfeeding were taken
from mothers and placed in separate shelters.
March 1, 2019 stl.news
Texas: Mother sues
city for baby’s death
HOUSTON (AP) — The
mother of a migrant toddler who died shortly after being released from the nation’s
largest family detention center sued the tiny Arizona city on Thursday that
for years was paid by the U.S. government to run the facility in name only.
The lawsuit from Yazmin Juarez of Guatemala alleges that her 1-year-old
daughter, Mariee, developed a respiratory illness
at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, and medical
staff provided inadequate treatment before releasing her three weeks later.
The lawsuit targets Eloy, Arizona, which collected $438,000 a year from U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement to officially run the 2,400-bed Texas
facility for four years even though the city is roughly 900 miles (1,450
kilometers) away. Eloy then paid the private prison operator CoreCivic to operate Dilley, in an arrangement questioned
by ICE’s own lawyers . Mariee’s
death in May underscored the complaints advocates have long had about medical
care for detained immigrants, as the Trump administration has sought to
detain more migrant parents and children for longer times. At least nine
infants under one year of age are currently detained at Dilley, according to
lawyers who work with migrant families detained there. Legal groups filed a
complaint Thursday with the Department of Homeland Security about what it
described as an “alarming increase” in detained infants. Democrats in
Congress have called for investigations into Mariee’s
death as well as other recent incidents, including a woman delivering a
stillborn baby while in custody last week and the deaths of two children
detained by the Border Patrol in December after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico
border with their parents. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined
to comment on Juarez’s lawsuit, but said it takes the welfare of detainees
“very seriously.” “ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in
the agency’s custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate
medical care,” the agency said. The lawsuit alleges that Mariee
developed a severe fever a week after entering Dilley on March 5, 2018. As her
mother repeatedly tried to seek medical treatment, the lawsuit alleges
medical staff at Dilley misdiagnosed Mariee’s
illness and did not prescribe the correct medication, before releasing both
mother and daughter on March 25 and clearing them to travel. Juarez took Mariee to an emergency room almost immediately, the
lawsuit alleges. She remained hospitalized for the rest of her life, dying in
May. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened the facility in 2014,
during the administration of former President Barack Obama, so it could
detain more parents and children together during a previous surge of migrant
families trying to enter the United States. ICE used Eloy to expedite the
opening with so many migrants coming into the system. The agency modified an
existing detention agreement with Eloy to quickly open the Texas facility.
Under the setup, ICE paid the Arizona city several million dollars per year,
and it in turn funneled the money to the private prison company that ran the
facility. Eloy kept a cut, to the tune of about $400,000 per year. The
Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general leveled harsh criticism
against ICE, Eloy and the private prison operator CoreCivic,
formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America. The pass-through
arrangement was long criticized by advocates and the DHS inspector general,
which said it violated budget guidelines and wasted money. ICE replaced Eloy
last year with the city government in Dilley, which now collects the same
fees. Stanton Jones, a lawyer for the Juarez family, said Eloy deserved blame
for what happened to Mariee “precisely because they
did so little.” “Eloy never lifted a finger to exercise any sort of oversight
or participation in the operation of the facility,” Jones said. Eloy city
manager Harvey Krauss declined to comment, and it remains to be seen how much
legal liability the city of nearly 20,000 people between Tucson and Phoenix
will face. CoreCivic agreed as part of the previous
arrangement to assume any legal liability on Eloy’s behalf. A CoreCivic spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday that it will
“defend and indemnify any lawsuits with respect to allegations related to the
operations of the facility for which CoreCivic is
responsible.” CoreCivic added that ICE “is solely
responsible” for medical care at the Dilley facility.
Oct 18, 2018 journalgazette.net
Detention center deal lucrative for Texas town, prison operator
HOUSTON – The U.S. government has quietly reached a new agreement to keep
open a 2,400-bed detention facility used to detain immigrant mothers and
children, in a lucrative arrangement for a private prison company and the
tiny South Texas town where it's located. U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement last month signed a contract with the city of Dilley, where the
South Texas Family Residential Center opened in 2014. Dilley signed a
contract at the same time with CoreCivic, the
private prison operator that runs the detention center, the largest facility
of its kind in the U.S. The city released both contracts to The Associated
Press last week in response to an open records request. ICE said it was
replacing an arrangement dating to President Barack Obama's administration
that the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general criticized this
year as violating budget guidelines and wasting money. But the new
arrangement has some of the same features the inspector general criticized.
When it opened the facility in 2014, the U.S. was seeing a surge of women and
children immigrating from Central America. ICE argued it had an urgent need
for family bed space and had to circumvent government standards for
contracting, which require a bidding process and extensive reviews. ICE
modified an existing detention agreement with the city of Eloy, Arizona, to
include the Dilley facility, 900 miles away. Eloy technically ran the
facility but routed ICE money to CoreCivic, then
known as the Corrections Corp. of America. The inspector general said in a
February audit that ICE improperly modified the Eloy contract and that it should
have avoided creating a “middleman” and reached an agreement directly with
the company operating the facility. Also, not conducting a bidding process
may have led ICE to overpay for services at the detention facility, the audit
said. ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said Tuesday
that the agency created the agreement with Dilley in response to the
inspector general's concerns about Eloy, and that all other terms of the
contract will remain the same. ICE will pay Dilley about $13 million a month
for the cost of detaining immigrants at the facility. Dilley will then send
almost all of that money to CoreCivic, minus
administrative fees that add up to an estimated $438,000 a year. That's a
significant windfall for a city with a population of about 4,000 people that
has an annual budget of $2.1 million. Dilley already collects annual
revenue-sharing payments from CoreCivic, with
$200,000 due in December. CoreCivic will continue
operating a facility that generated $171 million in revenue last year. ICE
retains use of a facility that provides most of the 3,000 beds it has in
family detention. That space is particularly critical as President Donald
Trump's administration tries to detain immigrant families longer and waive
restrictions on the detention of children. Immigrant advocacy groups say the
contracts preserve an arrangement in which a city's oversight is a
technicality that lets ICE and CoreCivic operate
without public scrutiny. Claudia Valenzuela, director of the National
Immigrant Justice Center's detention project, said the city, ICE and CoreCivic should explain how they reached the agreement.
She questioned whether Dilley would actually be overseeing the facility given
the money it is receiving from CoreCivic. “I don't
have too much faith ... that there's going to be a whole lot of pushback,”
she said. Neither ICE nor CoreCivic announced the
new agreement. The Dilley City Council met in closed session Sept. 17 to
discuss the two contracts, and interim city administrator David Jordan signed
them a day later. Both Jordan and Dilley Mayor Mary Ann Obregon declined to
comment on the agreement. CoreCivic also declined
to comment. Bob Libal, executive director of the
group Grassroots Leadership, said ICE may have wanted to avoid the attention
that other detention contracts have gotten. One county in Central Texas this
year terminated its agreement with ICE and CoreCivic
for a 500-bed facility long protested by Grassroots Leadership and others.
“It's an agency that tends to play by its own rules,” Libal
said. Located on the site of a former “man camp” for oil field workers, the
family residential center is a major engine of jobs and taxes in Dilley. CoreCivic runs ads in the local newspaper advertising
positions that start as high as $20 an hour, and Obregon wrote a public
letter last year lauding the facility. There are 1,975 people currently
detained there.
Aug 29, 2018 mprnews.org
A toddler's death adds to concerns about migrant detention
The death of a toddler is renewing concerns about the quality of medical
care that immigrant families receive in federal detention centers.
Eighteen-month-old Mariee Juárez died after being
detained along with her mother Yazmin Juárez at the South Texas Family
Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Her mother says Mariee
was a happy, healthy child when they arrived at the U.S. border in March to
seek asylum. Then they were sent to Dilley. Six weeks after being discharged,
her mother says, Mariee died of a treatable
respiratory infection that began during her detention. "The conditions
at Dilley were unsanitary, unsafe and inappropriate for any small
child," said R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer at the firm Arnold & Porter,
which is representing Yazmin Juárez. When Juárez raised concerns about her
daughter's deteriorating condition, he alleges, she wasn't taken seriously.
"The medical care that Mariee received in
Dilley was neglectful and substandard," Jones said. Doctors and
immigrant advocates have long complained about the medical care at family
detention centers overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or
ICE. Dilley is the largest of three such facilities, with 2,400 beds. Those
concerns have taken on new urgency as the Trump administration looks to detain
more migrant families. In June, ICE requested space to accommodate 15,000
additional beds. ICE declined to comment on the details of Mariee's case, which was first reported by VICE News. But
the agency says it takes the welfare of immigrants in its care seriously.
"ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency's
custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical
care," ICE said in an emailed statement. "Staffing includes
registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, licensed mental health
providers, mid-level providers that include a physician's assistant and nurse
practitioner, a physician, dental care, and access to 24-hour emergency
care." But a pediatrician who reviewed Mariee's
medical records says she did not receive adequate care in Dilley.
"Nobody at any time decided to actually have a pediatrician or a doctor
see the child," said Benard Dreyer, the
director of pediatrics at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, and a
past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dreyer reviewed Mariee's medical records from her time at Dilley at the
request of her mother's lawyers, and says that nurses and physician
assistants overlooked several high fevers, and other signs that Mariee's respiratory infection was getting worse.
"Can we guarantee that if [she] had been sent to the hospital a week
earlier, it wouldn't have been too late? I can't guarantee that," Dreyer
said. But he adds, "the child was very sick and should have been sent to
a hospital." Instead, Yazmin Juárez's lawyers say, Mariee
was simply discharged from Dilley without ever seeing a doctor. Juárez and
her daughter were driven to the airport in San Antonio. They flew to New
Jersey, where Juárez took Mariee to the emergency
room. Mariee spent the last weeks of her life in
hospitals. She died on May 10 of respiratory failure. Her mother's lawyers
signaled on Tuesday that they intend to sue. They're seeking seeking $40 million in damages for Mariee's
"wrongful death" from the city of Eloy, Ariz. (Eloy is official
contractor for Dilley under an unusual arrangement with the Department of
Homeland Security and CoreCivic, the private prison
company that operates the facility). More lawsuits are expected to follow.
Doctors and immigrant rights advocates who are familiar with medical care in
Dilley and other family detention centers say they're not surprised by Mariee's death. In July, two doctors contracted by the
Department of Homeland Security released a scathing assessment of care at
those facilities. Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson conducted 10
investigations of family detention centers over the past four years, and
found widespread problems with inadequate staffing and poor training.
"The threats to health and safety of the children are not merely
theoretical," Allen and McPherson wrote. Family detention is "an
exploitation and an assault on the dignity and health of children and
families."
Jul 11, 2017 patch.com
Private Prisons Operator CoreCivic Laying Off
500-Plus Workers Across Texas
AUSTIN, TX — Nashville-based CoreCivic, a
company formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America that owns and
manages private prisons, is laying off more than 500 employees throughout
Texas after failing to retain a contract with the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, according to state filings. The company notified the Texas Workers
Commission of its plans to lay off 518 workers at facilities in Rusk, Willacy
and Rusk counties. The notifications are in compliance with the Worker
Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requiring employers with at
least 100 workers to give a 60-day advance notification of mass layoffs.
Patch requested accompanying correspondence submitted at the time of the
layoffs notifications to glean more information about the mass CoreCivic layoffs. Recently, the TWC stopped providing
lists of job titles affected (citing issues related to worker privacy) as
they did so for many years, making it impossible to know what positions will
be affected. What is known is that 518 layoffs will occur by the end of
August. "This letter will constitute notice, pursuant to the Worker
Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, that despite our best efforts, CoreCivic's contract with the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice is ending...." each of three letters per region begin.
The planned layoffs are set to occur at three locations: In Jack County
located in North Texas, where 169 workers will be laid off. In Willacy County
located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where 157 jobs will be cut. In Rusk
County located in East Texas, another 192 workers will be without work by
Aug. 31. It's unclear why the TDJC opted not to renew CoreCivic's
contract in those cities. Patch will attempt to reach criminal justice
department officials to discern reasons for the contracts' end. Elsewhere in
the country, CoreCivic has run into problems with
contracts as well. The Nashville Scene reported last month that CoreCivic is the target of a pair of class action federal
lawsuits after a massive scabies outbreak at prisons it managed. “[CoreCivic] deliberately failed to adequately screen those
entering its facility, respond to inmate requests for medical attention,
treat those infested with the parasite, quarantine the infected individuals
in its care, or to take any other precautions to prevent the spread of
scabies outside the facility,” the lawsuit reads, as reported by Nashville
Scene. “This caused a foreseeable and preventable systematic outbreak which
spread to the Plaintiff and all others similarly situated.” Closer to home,
the company—under its former Corrections Corporation of America iteration—was
the subject of frequent protests centered on conditions at a detention
facility in Dilley, Texas (located 150 miles south of Austin) used by the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to house undocumented women
and children. Critics have called the detention center tantamount to a jail,
despite its sanitized South Texas Family Residential Center name. The
facility was hastily built in 2014 in an effort to deal with a sudden influx
of Central American mothers and their children that summer. Lawsuits by
immigrant advocates were filed that questioned the legality of the Obama
administration's family detention policy. The Dilley contract was lucrative
for CCA, with Reuters reporting that the company was paid $296 per person per
day to run the site holding up to 2,400 detainees, making it the nation's
largest immigrant detention center. Unlike its contracts coming to an end in
August with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the one with ICE to run
the facility in Dilley is all but assured after the Department of Homeland
Security recently extended the terms in a new contract.
Jun 2, 2016 texastribune.org
Judge Blocks License for Immigration Detention Facility
A Travis County judge ruled Wednesday that the Texas Department of Family
and Protective Services cannot license an immigration detention center as a
childcare facility, giving immigrant rights groups a victory in a months-long
battle with the state. State District Judge Karin Crump said her injunction
was needed to protect the women and children being held in the 2,400-bed
facility in Dilley, Texas. Crump said current licensing exceptions allow
mixed gender detainees to room together and in some cases, force children to
share quarters with adult strangers. “The exceptions allow and have allowed
for situations for children that are dangerous,” she said. “And this
temporary injunction addresses those concerns.” The case will proceed to a
full trial in September when the court will hear arguments over whether the
state agency can issue the licenses based on an emergency rule it adopted
last year. Crump added that in her opinion, the agency didn’t have the
legislative authority to do so. Opponents argue that the licensing
requirements are watered-down versions of what other centers must abide by
and make the detention centers less safe.
The facility in Dilley, operated by Corrections Corporation of
America, is one of two privately run detention centers in Texas under
contract with the federal government to hold undocumented immigrant women and
children. The other unit, in Karnes City, is operated by the Geo Group. The
Karnes City unit can hold about 600 people and has already been issued a
state license. The effort to stop the licensing is being led by Grassroots
Leadership, a non-profit immigrant rights group that sued the family services
agency and alleged it had no authority to license a detention center as a
childcare facility when the centers act more like jails than daycare centers.
Grassroots Leadership has also argued the state is only interested in moving
forward with the licensing to comply with an order a federal judge issued
last year. In July, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ordered that immigrants
held in Texas and elsewhere be released as soon as possible because their
detention violates the provisions of a 1997 legal settlement — the Flores v.
Meese agreement — requiring that undocumented juveniles be held in the places
that protect their overall health and safety. In that ruling, Gee declared
conditions in the detention centers “deplorable.” That case is being appealed
in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “I think that what we heard over
the last few weeks and what we’ve known is that the reason for the licenses
was not about the protection of children but was about helping the federal
government enforce this harsh immigration regime,” Bob Libal,
the executive director of Grassroots Leadership, said after the hearing.
Crump’s decision Wednesday came after hours of testimony during which expert
witnesses told the court that detaining children for long periods was
detrimental to their health. “They are under considerable fear and
deprivation,” said Luis H. Zayas, the dean of the University of Texas at
Austin’s School of Social Work. “They are dealing with constant stress and
hyper vigilance about what’s going to happen to them.” Todd Disher, the assistant attorney general who represented
the agency, referred all comments to the attorney general’s office. But
during Wednesday’s proceedings, he told Crump that by licensing the
facilities, the state would allow its own agents to keep tabs on the
officials at the detention facilities. "If you can’t issue them a
license, you can’t regulate them,” he said. “Who better to police compliance,
the facility itself or DFPS?” he asked the court.
Nov 24, 2015
texastribune.org
Judge: No
"Emergency" to License Detention Centers
The state of Texas
can't claim an emergency to quickly grant licenses for two private detention
centers holding undocumented immigrant families for the federal government, a
state district judge has ruled. The ruling last week by state District Judge
Karin Crump of Travis County handed a victory to a watchdog group pursuing
better conditions for the roughly 2,000 undocumented women and children being
held after arriving during the surge of unauthorized migration last summer in
the Rio Grande Valley. In September, the Texas Department of Family
Protective Services posted notice that it would issue the detention centers
in Karnes City and Dilley licenses as residential centers under emergency
rules that don't allow for public comment. The agency's move came after a
federal district judge ruled in July that the government was holding the undocumented
immigrants in “deplorable” conditions, violating a provision of a 1997
settlement called the Flores v. Meese agreement. That settlement requires
that undocumented children be held in places that protect their overall well being. The government has appealed to the U.S. 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals. In October, Austin-based nonprofit Grassroots
Leadership filed suit claiming that the state's rush would allow it to
license the centers without publicly detailing how it would ensure the health
and well-being of the immigrants detained within their walls. Crump agreed,
saying in her ruling that the agency must go through its regular process and
allow public comments on its efforts to license the centers. Crump ruled “no
imminent peril to public health, safety or welfare exists” justifying that
emergency action. She said the defendants, including the Texas Health and
Human Services Department, “utilized the emergency rule power for
administrative purposes rather than to address a true emergency.” The Geo Group
operates the center in Karnes City, and Corrections Corporations of America
operates the facility in Dilley, under contracts with U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. In an email, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
spokeswoman Adelina Pruneda said the agency is not
in a position to comment on pending litigation. But she said that the
Department of Homeland Security has worked diligently to ensure
"compliance with all aspects of the [federal] Court’s Order” issued in
July. The health commission deferred
comment to the family services agency, whose spokesman said the agency is
aware of the ruling and had no further comment. When the lawsuit was filed
last month, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins cited an agency fact sheet that
stated: “The court determined that while detained by [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement], families must be in state-licensed facilities to provide
‘essential protection of regular and comprehensive oversight by an
independent child welfare agency.' Although the ruling did not require DFPS
to license the facilities, it did highlight a gap in the oversight of the
children at these types of facilities. The new DFPS rule closes that gap by
requiring state licensing.” In her ruling however, Crump said that the
emergency ruling would have exempted the centers from rules limiting room
occupancy and governing whether children can share a room with unrelated
adults or children of the opposite sex. While the ruling doesn’t prevent the
agency from moving forward with the licensing procedures, it allows opponents
the opportunity to have their concerns with the process officially noted. “It
makes the state abide by its own laws and actually have hearings and go
through the process,” said Grassroots Leadership Executive Director Bob Libal. “We submitted a letter [in opposition] with 140
organizations and child care [advocates] and never got a response.” Crump
said in her ruling the emergency rule allows for “less oversight” of family
residential centers than the state's current minimum standards for
residential operations. But Libal said he feared
the regular licensing method would also lower the standards of care, which
public comment would help address. “I think there is a lot of opportunity to
show these facilities can’t meet the standard even though it is a lower
standard,” he said. “I would love it if formerly detained people got to speak
on this. If the goal is to ensure the safety of the children, you don’t put
the Texas seal of approval on these facilities.”
Jul 10, 2015
dallasobserver.com
TEXAS IMMIGRANT
PRISON ACCIDENTALLY GAVE A BUNCH OF KIDS AN ADULT-STRENGTH VACCINE
Immigrant children
being held in a privately operated detention center received an improper dose
of hepatitis A vaccine. On the one hand, it might be comforting to know that
the new, huge, taxpayer-funded but privately operated detention camp in South
Texas for immigrant women and children is providing its young inmates with
vaccinations. On the other hand, one should remember that vaccines, while
life-saving, are not candy but a form of medicine that must be administered
carefully and appropriately. So, it's a little unsettling to hear U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement say it definitely accidentally gave 250
kids adult-strength vaccines, even if nothing bad resulted from it.
"Medical professionals monitored approximately 250 children at the South
Texas Family Residential Center who, over a five-day period, inadvertently
received an adult dose of hepatitis A vaccine rather than a pediatric
dose," Nina Pruneda, an ICE spokesman, says in
a statement. "No significant adverse reactions occurred. Parents
at the facility were advised and counseled by medical professionals about
potential side effects, with services made available in multiple languages.
ICE, in consultation with DHS's Office of Health Affairs, is conducting a
thorough review of the circumstances that led to this event and will make all
necessary changes to prevent similar occurrences in the future." Barbara
Hines, an immigration attorney who visited the prison last week, has a
different take. Hines spoke with a mother who reported troubling side effects
after her child received shots. "I met with a mother last week at Dilley
who told me that her 4-year-old child was feverish, not eating, having trouble
walking and complaining of the pain in his leg,” Hines says in a written
statement. The vaccine overdose was exposed on July 4 by immigration
attorneys, who, along with prisoner advocates, are using the instance to make
the case that family detention camps are inhumane and should be shut down.
The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley is operated by the
Corrections Corporation of America, one of two corporations that has profited
tremendously from the influx of illegal immigrants crossing the border. The
Dilley center, which now has 2,400 beds, is the largest of its kind in the
United States. A report by the prison advocacy group Grassroots Leadership
earlier this year found that the CCA has in particular benefited from the
"bed quota," the mandate passed by lawmakers that says the
Department of Homeland Security must "maintain a level of not less
than 33,400 detention beds." Crystal Williams, executive director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, describes a traumatic atmosphere at
the South Texas camp: "..children have been forced to sleep with the
lights on, are subject to intrusive checks regularly throughout the night,
and have been dragged from their beds at 4 a.m. to be given shots while their
mothers must stand helplessly by without being told what is going on or being
allowed a say in the matter." Grassroots Leadership consulted with a
University of Texas medical student, who said that, while most of the kids
should be fine, “the symptoms that Barbara [Hines] saw are consistent with
vaccine overdose ... This is a red flag warning of deeper problems with
medical care in detention centers, and reminds us why private prison
corporations should not be entrusted with the care of children.”
South Texas Intermediate Detention Center
Houston, Texas
GEO Group
Dec
16, 2016 bizjournals.com
Downtown Houston lockup slated for closure transferring offenders, cutting
jobs this month
Offenders being housed at the South Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility
in downtown Houston will be relocated this month as the facility is slated
for closure, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman confirmed. News
broke in August that the TDCJ proposed closing the 450-bed facility at 1511
Preston Ave. as part of its Legislative Appropriations Request for the
2018-2019 biennium. Texas state agencies were required to cut their budgets
by 4 percent compared to the previous biennium. "As part of that
reduction and in light of the declining offender population because of the
success of the agency’s treatment and diversion initiatives, TDCJ proposed
closing the 450-bed South Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility in Houston and
the repurposing of the 667-bed Kegan State Jail in Houston as an intermediate
sanction facility," TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark said via email. Utah-based
Management & Training Corp. operated the STISF, which employed about 115
people, according to the TDCJ’s website. MTC recently informed the Texas
Workforce Commission it is cutting all of its 110 jobs at the downtown
lockup. Approximately 14 jobs were expected to be cut on Dec. 5, with another
96 to be cut before the end of the year, according to MTC's Worker Adjustment
and Retraining Notification Act letter to the TWC. The affected employees are
not represented by a union and do not have bumping rights, meaning workers
with more seniority cannot take the jobs of those with less seniority.
"MTC is working to place affected employees at other facilities and TDCJ
is also recruiting them for possible employment with the agency," Clark
said.
May 30, 2007 AP
A 25-year-old prison escapee was captured Wednesday on a jogging trail behind
the Harris County Jail — headquarters for one of the largest contingents of
law enforcement officers in the state of Texas. Andrew Dell Coley traveled
only about seven blocks during his more than 40 hours on the lam before an
off-duty university police chief jogging near the Harris County Jail nabbed
him. Coley, a convicted car thief from Galveston County, apparently lacked a
plan after escaping from the privately run South Texas Intermediate Sanction
Facility in downtown Houston on Monday evening. He was spotted there by Chief
Rick Boyle of the University of Houston-Downtown Police Department, who jogs
the trail three or four days a week. Boyle, clad only in shorts and a T-shirt,
recognized Coley's tattoo from information sent to law enforcement and ran
back to the university to summon help. Boyle then watched Coley until help
could arrive. Coley noticed he was being watched and immediately continued
his run of self-inflicted bad luck. "I don't know if he knew where he
was, because he ran straight toward the jail," Boyle said. Boyle caught
up with the escapee and took him into custody. He then marched Coley inside
the jail, where he is now being held on an escape charge. Michelle Lyons, a
spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said officials
believe Coley escaped by getting through a layer of fencing into a
ventilation system that runs to another part of the building. He then
apparently kicked out a wall panel and was able to flee. He had been in
custody since January 2006.
May 29, 2007 AP
A convicted car thief from Galveston County escaped Monday evening from a
state prison in downtown Houston, officials said. Texas Department of
Criminal Justice officials said Andrew Dale Coley, 25, serving two years for
unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, was noticed missing about 7 p.m. Monday
from the South Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility. Agency spokeswoman
Michelle Lyons said authorities suspect Coley managed to get through a layer
of fencing into a ventilation system that runs to another part of the
building. He then apparently kicked out a wall panel and was able to flee.
Coley has been in state custody since January 2006. The prison, which can
hold up to 450 inmates, is operated under contract by The GEO Group Inc., a
private corrections firm based in Boca Raton, Fla. The prison, opened in
1993, houses low-risk offenders under active supervision who have violated
the terms of their release to parole or mandatory supervision. Prison
authorities said Coley was serving time for a nonviolent offense, but any
escapee should be considered dangerous.
South Texas Detention Complex
Pearsall, Texas
GEO Group (Formerly Correctional Services Corporation)
Jan 17, 2019 kgns.tv
Geo Group employees rally for better wages
LAREDO, Texas (KGNS)- A local detention center is seeing activists at
their doorstep, this time, in regards to compensation for its employees.
Several union members of the Security Police Fire Professionals of America
conducted a protest. They tell us those working the facility have not seen a
pay raise in more than 6 years. A union representative says the officers have
a big responsibility when taking care of people that are detained inside the
facility. In a recent meeting with the Geo Group, the union was not able to
get the pay raise they are asking for the officers. They are asking for an
increase of one to two percent per year.
Mar
26, 2014 mysanantonio.com
SAN
ANTONIO — A then-employee at a federal immigration detention center near San
Antonio pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he engaged in an illegal
sex act with an inmate there. Juan Aguilar was a kitchen employee for The GEO
Group, the Florida-based company that runs the South Texas Detention Complex
in Pearsall on contract for the Homeland Security Department. A criminal
complaint affidavit said the incident occurred on Feb. 17, when Aguilar
allegedly lowered the inmate's pants and began performing oral sex on him in
the facility's kitchen. Aguilar was indicted March 19 on a charge of sexual
abuse of a ward, as part of an investigation by Homeland Security's Office of
Inspector General. Aguilar no longer works at the detention facility, records
show.
May 26, 2011 KSAT 12
A group of prison guards who work at the South Texas Detention Complex in
Pearsall have taken to the streets in protest, calling for a salary increase.
About 25 people, carrying signs that read "Unfair Wages" walked in
a circle in the street outside the facility Thursday morning. Watch Katrina
Webber's Report Many of them are members of Local 304, a labor union which
represents some prison guards and police officers. "This is not a
strike. It's a picket," said Officer Tim Stone, a spokesman for the
group. "We have not had a (significant) raise in six years and we feel
we deserve one." Stone, however, did say his employer has given workers
a 50 cent per hour cost of living increase on occasion. In the latest
contract being negotiated, Stone said, there is no wage increase at all. Stone
said the guards are protesting on their own time, hoping to send a message to
their employer, The GEO Group Inc. The Florida-based company owns the
facility on Veteran Drive in Pearsall, operating under a contract with the
federal government to house undocumented immigrants. The prison warden
refused to comment about the issue, referring media to an email address for
the public information officer. In an emailed response, Pablo Paez, vice president of Corporate Relations, said,
"As a matter of policy, our company cannot comment on employment-related
matters." Stone said the guards began picketing at 6 a.m. and would
continue, in shifts, until 6 p.m. each day. He said it's unclear whether the
union will call a strike should the company not be willing to adhere to their
demands.
February 5, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old Cuban
immigrant, lay on the floor of Rolling Plains Detention Center with no pulse,
his face flushed, his pupils dilated. For months before he collapsed at the
detention center near Abilene, he had been complaining to nurses about chest
pain and heart problems, asking to see a doctor. “Can't stand the pain,” Dubegel-Paez wrote on a sick call slip on Jan. 1, 2008.
In response, he was treated by a nurse at the center's medical clinic and
given cold medicine. As the weeks passed, he filed more urgent requests to
see a doctor — only to be given more cough medicine and Tylenol by nurses,
according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records. While Dubegel-Paez waited to see a doctor, inspectors working
for ICE toured the facility Feb. 26, 2008, to check that it complied with
ICE's own detention standards. The inspectors rated the center “acceptable,”
noting no deficiencies in its medical care. It was only after Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died in March 2008 that ICE's
inspectors noted in a report that medical care for about 500 detainees at the
facility was being provided only by eight vocational nurses with minimal
nursing or physician supervision. The case highlights what critics have
called pervasive problems with ICE's enforcement of detention standards. A
review of more than 800 pages of inspection reports obtained by the Houston
Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that inspectors
have, in some instances, given positive reviews to facilities with serious
problems — ranging from inadequate medical care to poor grievance procedures.
In many cases, ICE has required facilities with deficiencies to make
improvements, though inspectors often failed to note in subsequent reports
whether changes were made. After Dubegel-Paez's
death, inspectors noted that the Rolling Plains facility failed to meet a
number of ICE's detention standards, including care for chronic illness and
responding to sick call requests. But ICE officials still did not downgrade
the center's rating because of staffing problems in the medical unit, records
show, and continue to place a growing number of detainees there. ICE
officials said they are in the process of overhauling the nation's
immigration detention system, including its monitoring procedures, and plan
to improve oversight of medical care. “The problems that occurred in 2007 and
2008 are terrible problems, and as an institution and an agency we have to
address them and take them extraordinarily seriously,” said Brian Hale, ICE's
public affairs director in Washington, D.C. “But I also do have to point out
that was something that occurred in the past, and this new administration ...
is committed to ensuring that doesn't happen again. We take it very
seriously.” Are changes enough? ICE officials said they plan to announce
changes this spring to strengthen their detention standards, which are
designed to ensure that detainees have basic protections while in custody.
The agency has relied on 300-plus detention centers, private prisons and
local jails to house about 400,000 immigrants annually — with roughly one in
four detained in Texas. Hale said ICE is reducing the number of facilities to
improve oversight. The agency also plans to station government monitors at
the centers and jails that house the largest numbers of ICE detainees, he
added. Linton Joaquin, who has investigated detention centers' compliance
with ICE's standards as general counsel with the National Immigration Law Center,
said ICE's planned measures are positive, but “they are so inadequate in
comparison to the scope of the problem.” ICE officials have reported that the
majority of inspected facilities complied with the agency's detention
standards, though a 2008 Inspector General audit found reviewers had not been
effective in identifying certain serious problems at facilities. Locally, the
Houston Contract Detention Facility has received high marks in reviews.
Inspection reports obtained by the Chronicle, which date from early 2007
through February 2009, show ICE has placed detainees in facilities that have
failed to meet some minimum requirements outlined under its own standards for
detainee care, with violations ranging from failure to accommodate religious
diets to lack of formal disciplinary procedures. Access to adequate medical
care continues to be one of the most difficult and controversial issues for
ICE, which has recorded 107 detainee deaths since 2003, including more than a
dozen in Texas. ICE's records documented a wide range of medical care
problems at facilities rated as acceptable, including a complete lack of
on-site medical care at one Dallas-area jail approved for housing short-term
detainees, and chronic staffing problems at larger facilities. An inspection
report for the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall documented a severe
staffing shortage in 2007 in the medical unit, with 19 vacancies out of 46
positions. The reviewer wrote that the facility, which at the time held about
1,250 detainees, was meeting ICE's standard for medical access at an
“acceptable” level, though he noted that employees were staying after hours
to complete basic duties. When inspectors returned a year later, in April
2008, ICE had increased the number of detainees held at the facility to 1,547
— despite continuing problems with the medical unit. Hiring a key issue --
The inspector noted the facility, which is owned and operated by the GEO
Group, was having trouble meeting a standard ICE requirement that all
detainees have a medical exam within 14 days of admission. The medical unit
had 10 vacancies at the time of inspection. “These positions are critical to
the delivery of health care and compliance with all ICE standards,” the
inspector wrote, giving the facility a “good” rating. The center continues to
suffer from staffing shortages, with 24 vacancies out of 69 authorized
positions in its medical unit, though ICE officials noted that the government
is actively recruiting and hiring for those spots. GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez declined comment. On March 14, the day that Dubegel-Paez died, he filled out a final sick call slip
and complained to his cell mate about chest pains before being seen by a
nurse. He was being held while ICE officials tried to arrange his deportation
to Cuba. “I have an emergency to see the doctor about my heart problems that
I been having for the last couple days, and I have been getting dizzy a lot,”
he wrote on the sick call slip. According to ICE's report, the nurse gave him
two Tylenol pills and scheduled him for a sick call appointment the following
Monday. An autopsy ruled his cause of death was heart disease. Still, weeks
after Dubegel-Paez's death, the acting chief of
ICE's Detention Standards Compliance unit affirmed the center's “acceptable”
rating without any requirement to improve medical treatment. Arthur Anderson,
the warden of Rolling Plains center, operated by Emerald Companies, did not
return phone calls seeking comment. The facility now has an on-site physician
only six to 10 hours a week and eight full-time nurses, ICE reported. ICE has
continued to increase the number of detainees housed there, averaging 537 a
day last year.
February 11, 2009 KRIS TV
Guards at one of the nation's largest immigrant detention facilities have
approved a new labor contract rather than strike. Union workers at the South
Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall ratified the new deal late Wednesday
that union leaders say promises improved equipment and increases the
likelihood of wage increases. Chief union negotiator Howard Johannssen said the new three-year contract passed by a
slight margin but declined to release the vote. Negotiations with The GEO
Group Inc. had been ongoing for months. Guards threatened to walk off the job
unless a deal was reached this week, and brought about 100 picketing signs to
the negotiating table. About 1,400 detainees are being held at the South
Texas facility because of their immigration status, and more than 300 workers
there are union members. A strike would have been the latest problem in Texas
for GEO, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based private contractor disrupted by two recent
inmate riots at a West Texas federal prison.
February 10, 2009 AP
Guards at the largest immigrant detention facility in Texas readied to strike
Tuesday in a dispute with the same private contractor running a West Texas
prison disrupted by two inmate riots in as many months. Unionized workers at
the South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall say that unless The GEO Group
Inc. agrees to better wages and working conditions Tuesday, more than 300
employees could walk off the job as early as this week. Negotiations began in
August, and union officials said the meeting with GEO in San Antonio was the
last chance to hammer out a deal. About 1,400 detainees are being held at the
facility because of their immigration status. "I'm hoping (GEO) will be
serious this time," said Ricardo Luna, 50, a detention officer at the facility
and the union president. "But I don't know. It could go either
way." GEO spokesman Pablo Paez did not
immediately return an e-mail Tuesday morning seeking comment. Immigrations
and Customs Enforcement, which contracted GEO to run the facility, has
previously said the agency is "prepared to respond appropriately"
no matter the outcome but did not elaborate. A strike would be the latest
problem in Texas for GEO, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based private contractor that is
still sorting out two inmate riots since December at a federal prison the
company manages in Reeves County. The latest riot began Jan. 31 and ended
Thursday in the remote West Texas town of Pecos. The disturbance left
buildings heavily damaged, sent smoke billowing from the facility, and SWAT
teams driving inside and out. Inmates and relatives have told news media the
riot was prompted by poor treatment, including medical services. Another riot
in December left one housing unit damages and cost the county at least
$320,000 in repairs. In San Antonio, union workers arrived to the bargaining
table prepared with 100 red picketing posters that read, "ON STRIKE
AGAINST GEO GROUP INC. — UNFAIR." Luna said the safety of detention
officers has been compromised by poor equipment and new guards who he says
have not received the proper training. Located about 60 miles south of San
Antonio, the Pearsall detention center is the only unionized GEO facility in
the nation, union officials say. Workers are seeking increased wages, more
affordable health benefits and improved working conditions. The standard wage
there is $14.37 an hour, according to union officials. Negotiations last
broke off in January.
January 14, 2009 News 4 WOAI
News 4 WOAI has learned guards could go on strike at a detention center
in our area. Negotiations over a pay raise have stalled and it could end up
costing you money. The South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall is where
illegal immigrants are held while waiting to be deported. But soon those
detainees may have no one to guard them. The union’s chief negotiator Howard Johannssen says, “This employer refuses to give them a
pay raise of any sort.” That employer is GEO, a private company hired by the
government to run the prison. After six months of negotiations GEO says the
offer is now final and it doesn't include a raise. The union says it hopes it
doesn't come down to a walkout, but if it does it’ll work with Immigration
and Customs Enforcement to set a strike date. Johanssen
says, “I want the inmates in a safe place. I want the people who protect them
in a safe place, but we cannot go on as we're going on now.” If there is a
strike, one possibility would be that all the detainees would have to be
moved to other facilities across the state and that would be a huge expense
to taxpayers. A union representative estimates it'd be 10-15 million dollars
to make the arrangements to move the detainees. The union is scheduled to
meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday to discuss its options. If union members reject
GEO’s offer, a strike is possible. GEO, based in Florida, says its policy is
not to comment on negotiations. ICE Statement: News 4 WOAI received the
following... "Discussions are underway between the GEO Management staff
at the South Texas Detention Complex (STDC) in Pearsall, Texas, and the union
that represents its bargaining unit employees. GEO is under contract with
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate and maintain STDC.
The employees involved in these discussions are not employed by ICE or the
Department of Homeland Security. ICE is not directly involved in these
discussions. Any questions regarding specific issues under discussion should
be directed to GEO or to its union." "ICE is committed to ensuring
that all ICE detainees — at the STDC and throughout the country — are maintained
in a safe, secure and humane environment. Whatever the result of the ongoing
discussions at STDC, ICE is prepared to respond appropriately to ensure the
continuation of safe and secure operations at the facility." "ICE
encourages all the parties involved to continue their efforts to reach a fair
and equitable agreement. However, it would be inappropriate for ICE to
comment or speculate regarding hypothetical situations, especially while
discussions and negotiations are underway."
December 17, 2008 Houston Chronicle
Attorneys for 10 Somali men held in an immigration detention center in
South Texas allege that federal immigration officials segregated and
interrogated their clients after they left a Muslim prayer service, saying
they were subject to "discriminatory and unethical" questioning.
Lawyers for the asylum seekers said the men — detained at the South Texas
Detention Complex in Pearsall — were targeted because they were Muslim and
from Somalia. The lawyers contend that their clients were segregated into a
separate dormitory for two to three days after they left a Dec. 8 prayer
service at the detention facility celebrating the Muslim holiday, Eid. The
Somalis were not given the opportunity to contact their lawyers, according to
a letter the attorneys sent Monday to several federal agencies including the
Department of Homeland Security's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Carl Rusnok, a spokesman with Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, said the agency is researching the allegations in the
letter, which was forwarded to ICE's public affairs office Tuesday by a
Houston Chronicle reporter. Rusnok declined to
answer a reporter's questions Wednesday. "Until that research is
completed, no further specific information is available on the issue," Rusnok said.
May 16, 2008 WOAI
Jail guards are reportedly sexually abusing some female illegal immigrants
held there. In response to our investigation, groups like LULAC plan to visit
the immigration facility in Pearsall to demand answers. "We are
committed. We are not going away," said Gabriel Velasquez, with the
Cesar Chavez March for Justice. He and other civil rights leaders are
reacting to allegations that guards at this immigration facility in Pearsall
are taking advantage of some female detainees, and that those guards are
preying on the women for sex while claiming to be able to help them with
their immigration cases. "These allegations are horrible, horrible.
There's nothing to do but go and try to get accountability," said
Velasquez. The allegations first came to light in a News 4 Trouble Shooters
investigation with the help of a former detainee and a former employee of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Since our story aired earlier
this month, more former and current guards have contacted us to confirm the
allegations. They told us guards hired by a private company called GEO are
forcing themselves on the women at the Pearsall facility. That includes one
former guard who was fired after he got a detainee pregnant, according to
documents obtained by the Trouble Shooters. This case, and others, has these
activists demanding changes. "I'm hopeful the GEO organization will
understand that if they have a problem, all they need to do is fix that
problem," said Velasquez. He added, "We do want to thank Brian Collister for breaking this story in the city and
bringing this to the public." This coalition of human rights groups
plans to visit the facility and try to speak to the warden next Tuesday. If
the warden won't meet with them, they're planning to protest. News 4 will be
in Pearsall to bring you the outcome and to continue our investigation.
May 16, 2008 WOAI
In at least one case, a guard reportedly got a female detainee pregnant. It’s
all happening at the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall. News 4
Trouble Shooter Brian Collister brings you the fall out from his investigation. We’ve heard from several
more former guards at the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall since we
aired our investigation. They all say the sexual abuse of female immigrants
there has been going on for years and the people running the facility are
trying to cover it all up. The agency that runs the facility is finally
commenting, and so is a US Congressman. The San Antonio Field Office Director
for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Marc J. Moore, sent us
the following statement early Tuesday evening: “The allegations raised in the
news story have been referred to the Office of the Inspector General.
Additionally, ICE is now sending a Detention Facilities Inspection Group
(DFIG)* team to review compliance with ICE detention standards and will make
recommendations based on the results of its review.” (Read full statement
below.) “This is shocking,” said Scott Medlock, attorney for the Texas Civil
Rights Project in Austin. “This is outrageous that this is going on, and that
nothing appears to being done about it.” Medlock said the detainees who are
being assaulted probably feel they have no one to turn to. “The greatest
threat to them is, ‘we’re going to deport you, to get you out of here before
you get a chance at relief in your immigration case,’ so that makes them very
afraid to step up and say, ‘these are problems in this facility,’ or, ‘I am
being abused.’” Our investigation shows that abuse has been reported to the
government agency that runs the facility, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, ICE. A former detainee told the News 4 Trouble Shooters she told
ICE investigators about the widespread problem last year. “I told them
everything that was going on in the kitchen. How even the lieutenants were
doing stuff,” she explained. ICE is still not talking about these cases,
which includes former guard Joseph Canales. We’re told Canales was fired
after getting a detainee pregnant, but surprisingly that case was apparently
not investigated by ICE. In a report obtained by the Trouble Shooters, ICE
had the private company that hires the guards, GEO, to investigate the
possible crime. Medlock said, “This report you’ve discovered says that they
let the GEO group do the investigation of what happened. That’s really
letting the fox guard the hen house.” We’ve also tried to get answers from
two area congressman. The Pearsall facility is in Henry Cuellar’s district,
and Lamar Smith sits on the committee overseeing the agency that runs the
facility. So far, neither has offered a comment on what we uncovered. We’re
not stopping there. We’ll be back with more as we continue to uncover more
from what’s been going on inside the Pearsall facility. ICE Statement: The
allegations raised in the news story have been referred to the Office of the
Inspector General. Additionally, ICE is now sending a Detention Facilities
Inspection Group (DFIG)* team to review compliance with ICE detention
standards and will make recommendations based on the results of its review.
ICE would also like to make it clear that no employee has been, nor will be,
terminated or disciplined for reporting misconduct at any facility that houses
ICE detainees. Regarding your additional questions, ICE will continue to
review and will provide any other publicly releasable information when
appropriate.” Marc J. Moore San Antonio Field Office Director U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
May 16, 2008 WOAI
Startling allegations of sexual assault are coming out about a facility that
holds illegal immigrants. It’s said to be happening in Pearsall, just about
an hour outside of San Antonio. News 4 Trouble Shooter Brian Collister is uncovering how some guards may be
victimizing the women they are supposed to be protecting. Many of the
immigrants held here are women. Some have fled abuse in their home country,
only to be reportedly abused again behind these bars. A former detainee, who
asked us not to identify her told us, “It was going on a lot. It was going on
almost all the time, the sexual abuse.” She claims sexual abuse came from the
guards. She said while she was there she rejected advances by one of the
guards, but said other girls were too scared to put up a fight. “Some of the
guards actually tried to force themselves on the girls and that they’ve told
them that if they ever said anything about it, that they have the power with
ICE to deport them,” explained this former detainee. The guards work for a
private company called GEO, hired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or
ICE, to run the prison. Sexual contact with detainees is not allowed. In
fact, it’s a crime. The former detainee said, “Some of the girls ended up
pregnant by some of the officers there.” She added one of those who got
pregnant was a girl from Guatemala, named Marley. Marley’s case is mentioned
in an incident report obtained by the News 4 Trouble Shooters. It details how
last may a guard reported being told by another guard that he’d had sex with
a Marley, who has already been deported back home. That guard accused of
having sex with Marley was Joseph Canales. The Trouble Shooters tracked him
down, but he told us he didn’t get anyone pregnant, then added: “Whatever happened,
happened a long time ago.” After the incident report, Canales was fired, but
ICE will not tell us if they referred the case for prosecution. The US Attorneys Office told us it has no case against Canales.
Still, there are other sexual assaults we’ve uncovered. We obtained an email
sent by an ICE officer to his supervisors notifying them that a detainee had
told him about a GEO sergeant who was having sex with one of the female
detainees. The ICE officer who wrote that e-mail sat down with us, but asked
us not to identify him. He said some of the GEO guards prey on the female
detainees by lying to them and promising they can help them stay in the
United States. “If they had the opportunity,” he explained, “some of the
guards were just touching, groping, but if they had the opportunity they had
sex with them. The female detainees, a lot of them, were willing because they
thought it was…somehow their chances of staying were going to increase.
That’s not the case whatsoever. If ICE can keep it under wraps, they will
keep it under wraps.” To keep it under wraps, he said he was fired for
reporting what was going on. And he is not alone. We’ve also talked to a
former GEO guard who said she, too, was fired after reporting sexual abuse.
While ICE would not provide a spokesperson to speak with us on camera, the
man in charge did recently speak to News 4 for another story on how they
deport illegals and said this about how detainees are treated. Marc J. Moore,
ICE Field Office Director said recently, “I think ICE has a clear commitment
to not only safe detention but also humane detention.” A spokesman for GEO
told us they didn’t know of any sexual assault cases, but when Trouble
Shooter Collister asked about the incident in this
report, we got no response. The people who run this prison may not want to
talk about it, but we’re not done digging. We’ll follow up with more in the
coming days and weeks.
May 11, 2008 Washington Post
Neil Sampson, who ran the DIHS as interim director most of last year, left
that job with serious questions about the government's commitment. Sampson
said in an interview that ICE treated detainee health care "as an
afterthought," reflecting what he called a failure of leadership and
management at the Homeland Security Department. "They do not have a
clear idea or philosophy of their approach to health care [for
detainees]," he said. "It's a system failure, not a failure of
individuals." A new director for health services arrived six months ago,
following a stretch when the agency was run first by Sampson and then by a
second interim director. The new boss is LaMont W.
Flanagan, who brought with him the credential of having been fired in 2003 by
the state of Maryland for bad management and spending practices supervising
detention and pretrial services. An audit found that Flanagan had signed off
on payments of $145,000 for employee entertainment and other ill-advised
expenditures. His reputation was such that the District of Columbia would not
hire him for a juvenile-justice position. "Another death that needs to
be added to the roster," Diane Aker, the DIHS chief health
administrator, tapped out in an e-mail to a records clerk at headquarters on
Aug. 14, 2007. Juan Guevara-Lorano, 21, was dead.
Guevara, an unemployed legal U.S. resident with a young son, was arrested in
El Paso for driving illegal border-crossers farther into the city. He was
paid $50. An entry-level emergency medical technician, with barely any
training, had done Guevara's intake screening and physical assessment at the
Otero County immigration compound in New Mexico. Under DIHS rules, those
tasks are supposed to be done by a nurse. After two difficult months in
detention, Guevara had decided not to appeal his case. He would go back to
Mexico with his family. But on Aug. 4, he came down with a splitting
headache, what he called a nine on a pain scale of 10, his medical records
show. The rookie medical technician prescribed Tylenol and referred Guevara
to the compound's physician "due to severity of headache ... and
dizziness," according to medical records. But Guevara never saw a
doctor. Eight days after the first incident, he vomited in his cell. The same
junior technician came to help but was unable to insert a nasal airway tube.
Guevara was taken to a hospital, where doctors determined an aneurism in his
brain had burst. His wife, pregnant at the time with their second child,
recalled that she rushed to the hospital but ICE guards would not let her
inside, until the Mexican Consulate interceded. Guevara's mother waited five
hours before they let her in. By then he was brain-dead. "My son is not
coming back," sobbed Ana Celia Lozano months later, sitting in Guevara's
small mobile home as her grandson played on the floor. "I want to know
how he lived and died, nothing more." What appears to be the most
incriminating document in Guevara's case has been partially blacked out.
Still, what is left shows that he did not receive adequate care. "The
detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel or physician. . . . At
the time of the incident on 8/12/2007, the detainee was seen and examined by
EMTs." Each immigration facility is allotted a different number of
positions, and a shortage of doctors and nurses is not unusual at centers
across the country. Records from February show that about 30 percent of all
DIHS positions in the field were unfilled. ICE officials said last week that
the current vacancy rate is 21 percent. Concern about the vacancies is voiced
repeatedly at clinical directors' meetings. "How do we state our concerns
so that we can be heard? . . . this is a CRITICAL condition.
. . . We have bitten off more than we can chew," a physician
wrote in the minutes of one meeting last summer. In some prisons, the
staffing shortages are acute. The Willacy County detention center in South
Texas -- the largest compound, with 2,018 detainees -- has no clinical
director, no pharmacist and only a part-time psychiatrist. Nearly 50 percent
of the nursing positions were unfilled at the 1,500-detainee Eloy, Ariz.,
prison in February. At the newly opened 744-bed Jena., La., compound, nurses
run the place. It has no clinical director, no staff physician, no
psychiatrist and no professional dental staff. Last August, Sampson, who was
then DIHS interim director, warned his superiors at ICE that critical
personnel shortages were making it impossible to staff the Jena facility
adequately. In a vociferous e-mail to Gary Mead, the ICE deputy director in
charge of detention centers, he wrote: "With the Jena request we have
been re-examining our capabilities to meet health care needs at a new site
when we are facing critical staffing shortages at most every other DIHS site.
While we developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment
efforts we have been unable to meet the demand." The slow ICE
security-clearance process forced many job applicants to go elsewhere,
Sampson wrote. Of the 312 people who applied for new positions over the past
year, 200 withdrew, he wrote, because they found other jobs during the 250
days it took ICE, on average, to conduct the required background
investigations. Last week, ICE officials said the average wait had decreased
recently to 37 days. These shortages have burdened the remaining staff. In
July 2007, a year after Osman's death in Otay Mesa,
medical director Hui strongly complained to headquarters about workload
stress. "The level of burnout . . . is high and rising," she wrote
in an e-mail. "I know that I have been averaging approximately 2-6 hrs of overtime daily for the past 2 months. I will no
longer be able to sustain this pace and will be decreasing the number of
hours that I work overtime. This being said, more will be left undone because
we simply do NOT have the staff." The overcrowding has created a petri
dish for the spread of diseases. One mission of the Public Health Service is
to detect infectious diseases and contain them before they spread, but last
summer, the gigantic Willacy center was hit by a chicken pox outbreak. The
illness spread because the facility did not have enough available isolation
rooms and its large pods share recycled air, but also because security
officers "lack education about the disease and keep moving around
detainees from different units without taking into consideration if the unit
has been isolated due to heavy exposure," noted the DIHS's top
specialist on infectious diseases, Carlos Duchesne. The staff was forced to
vaccinate the entire population in mid-July. In one 2007 death, memos and
confidential notes show how medical staff missed an infectious disease, meningitis,
in their midst. Victor Alfonso Arellano, 23, a transgender Mexican detainee
with AIDS, died in custody at the San Pedro center. The first three pages of
Duchesne's internal review of the death leave the impression that Arellano's
care was proper. But the last page, under the heading "Off the record
observations and recommendations," takes a decidedly critical tone:
"The clinical staff at all levels fails to recognize early signs and
symptoms of meningitis. . . . Pt was evaluated multiple times and an effort
to rule out those infections was not even mentioned." Arellano was given
a "completely useless" antibiotic, Duchesne wrote. Lab work that
should have been performed immediately took 22 days because San Pedro's
clinical director had ordered staff members to withhold lab work for new
detainees until they had been in detention there "for more than 30
days," a violation of agency rules. "I am sure that there must be a
reason why this was mandated but that practice is particularly dangerous with
chronic care cases and specially is particularly dangerous with . . .
HIV/AIDS patients," Duchesne wrote. "Labs for AIDS patients . . .
must be performed ASAP to know their immune status and where you are standing
in reference to disease control and meds." Given the frequency with
which ICE moves people within the detention network, keeping track of
detainees is critical to stopping the spread of infectious illnesses. The
purchase of an electronic records system named CaseTrakker
in 2004 was supposed to help. But according to internal documents and
interviews, CaseTrakker is so riddled with problems
that facilities often revert to handwritten records. A study at one site
found that it took one-third more time to use CaseTrakker
than to use paper. Thousands of patient files are missing. Recorded data
often cannot be retrieved. Day-long outages are common. When detainees are
transferred from one facility to another, their records, if they follow them,
are often misleading. Some show medications with no medical diagnoses, or
"lots of diagnoses but no meds," according to Elizabeth Fleming, a
former clinical director at one compound in Arizona. After Yusif Osman's death and the discovery of the problem with
his computerized records, the DIHS ordered a review of all charts at the Otay Mesa center. During the review, auditors also found
that 260 physical exams were never completed as required. The nurse
responsible for the error in Osman's case was reprimanded, but the computer
problem was not fixed. The CaseTrakker system
"has failed and must be replaced," Sampson, the DIHS interim
director, wrote to his ICE supervisors in August. In January 2008, medical
director Shack told colleagues that CaseTrakker
"is more of a liability than the use of paper medical record
system," according to the minutes of a meeting. It "puts patients
at risk." ICE officials said last week that they are not satisfied with CaseTrakker and are working to replace it. Along with
being at the mercy of computer glitches, detainees suffer from human errors
that deny or delay their care. And with few advocates on the outside, they
are left alone to plead their cases in the most desperate ways, in
hand-scribbled notes to doctors they rarely see. "I need medicine for
pain. All my bones hurt. Thank you," wrote Mexico native Roberto Ledesma
Guerrero, 72, three weeks before he died inside the Otay
Mesa compound. Delays persist throughout the system. In January, the
detention center in Pearsall, Tex., an hour from San Antonio, had a backlog
of 2,097 appointments. Luis Dubegel-Paez, a
60-year-old Cuban, had filled out many sick call requests before he died on
March 14. Detained at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility in the West Texas
town of Haskell, he wrote on New Year's Day: "need to see doctor for
Heart medication; and having chest pains for the past three days. Can't stand
pain." Ten days later he went to the clinic and became upset when he
wasn't seen. He slugged the window, yelled, pointed at his wristwatch. He was
escorted back to his cell. Another of his sick call requests said: "Need
to see a doctor. I have a lot of symptoms of sickness ... as soon as
possible!" The next was more urgent: "I have a emergency to see the doctor about my heart
problems ... for the last couple days and I been getting dizzy a lot." The
next day, Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died. His
medical records do not show that he ever saw a doctor for his chest pains.
May 6, 2008 WOAI
Reaction is coming into a News 4 Trouble Shooters investigation into
sexual assaults at a South Texas Immigration Detention Facility for illegal
immigrants. In at least one case, a guard reportedly got a female detainee
pregnant. It's all happening at the South Texas Detention Complex in
Pearsall. News 4 Trouble Shooter Brian Collister
brings you the fall out from his investigation.
We've heard from several more former guards at the South Texas Detention
Complex in Pearsall since we aired our investigation. They all say the sexual
abuse of female immigrants there has been going on for years and the people
running the facility are trying to cover it all up. The agency that runs the
facility is finally commenting, and so is a US Congressman. The San Antonio
Field Office Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
Marc J. Moore, sent us the following statement early Tuesday evening:
"The allegations raised in the news story have been referred to the
Office of the Inspector General. Additionally, ICE is now sending a Detention
Facilities Inspection Group (DFIG)* team to review compliance with ICE detention
standards and will make recommendations based on the results of its
review." (Read full statement below.) "This is shocking," said
Scott Medlock, attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin.
"This is outrageous that this is going on, and that nothing appears to
being done about it." Medlock said the detainees who are being assaulted
probably feel they have no one to turn to. "The greatest threat to them
is, 'we're going to deport you, to get you out of here before you get a
chance at relief in your immigration case,' so that makes them very afraid to
step up and say, 'these are problems in this facility,' or, 'I am being
abused.'" Our investigation shows that abuse has been reported to the
government agency that runs the facility, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, ICE. A former detainee told the News 4 Trouble Shooters she told
ICE investigators about the widespread problem last year. "I told them
everything that was going on in the kitchen. How even the lieutenants were
doing stuff," she explained. ICE is still not talking about these cases,
which includes former guard Joseph Canales. We're told Canales was fired
after getting a detainee pregnant, but surprisingly that case was apparently
not investigated by ICE. In a report obtained by the Trouble Shooters, ICE
had the private company that hires the guards, GEO, to investigate the
possible crime. Medlock said, "This report you've discovered says that
they let the GEO group do the investigation of what happened. That's really
letting the fox guard the hen house." We've also tried to get answers
from two area congressman. The Pearsall facility is in Henry Cuellar's
district, and Lamar Smith sits on the committee overseeing the agency that
runs the facility. So far, neither has offered a comment on what we
uncovered. We're not stopping there. We'll be back with more as we continue
to uncover more from what's been going on inside the Pearsall facility.
May 6, 2008 WOAI
Startling allegations of sexual assault are coming out about a facility
that holds illegal immigrants. It's said to be happening in Pearsall, just
about an hour outside of San Antonio. News 4 Trouble Shooter Brian Collister is uncovering how some guards may be
victimizing the women they are supposed to be protecting. Many of the
immigrants held here are women. Some have fled abuse in their home country,
only to be reportedly abused again behind these bars. A former detainee, who
asked us not to identify her told us, "It was going on a lot. It was
going on almost all the time, the sexual abuse." She claims sexual abuse
came from the guards. She said while she was there she rejected advances by
one of the guards, but said other girls were too scared to put up a fight.
"Some of the guards actually tried to force themselves on the girls and
that they've told them that if they ever said anything about it, that they
have the power with ICE to deport them," explained this former detainee.
The guards work for a private company called GEO, hired by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to run the prison. Sexual contact with detainees
is not allowed. In fact, it's a crime. The former detainee said, "Some
of the girls ended up pregnant by some of the officers there." She added
one of those who got pregnant was a girl from Guatemala, named Marley.
Marley's case is mentioned in an incident report obtained by the News 4
Trouble Shooters. It details how last May a guard reported being told by
another guard that he'd had sex with a Marley, who has already been deported
back home. That guard accused of having sex with Marley was Joseph Canales.
The Trouble Shooters tracked him down, but he told us he didn't get anyone
pregnant, then added: "Whatever happened, happened a long time
ago." After the incident report, Canales was fired, but ICE will not
tell us if they referred the case for prosecution. The US Attorneys
Office told us it has no case against Canales. Still, there are other sexual
assaults we've uncovered. We obtained an email sent by an ICE officer to his
supervisors notifying them that a detainee had told him about a GEO sergeant
who was having sex with one of the female detainees. The ICE officer who
wrote that e-mail sat down with us, but asked us not to identify him. He said
some of the GEO guards prey on the female detainees by lying to them and
promising they can help them stay in the United States. "If they had the
opportunity," he explained, "some of the guards were just touching,
groping, but if they had the opportunity they had sex with them. The female
detainees, a lot of them, were willing because they thought it was...somehow
their chances of staying were going to increase. That's not the case
whatsoever. If ICE can keep it under wraps, they will keep it under
wraps." To keep it under wraps, he said he was fired for reporting what
was going on. And he is not alone. We've also talked to a former GEO guard
who said she, too, was fired after reporting sexual abuse. While ICE would
not provide a spokesperson to speak with us on camera, the man in charge did
recently speak to News 4 for another story on how they deport illegals and
said this about how detainees are treated. Marc J. Moore, ICE Field Office
Director said recently, "I think ICE has a clear commitment to not only
safe detention but also humane detention." A spokesman for GEO told us
they didn't know of any sexual assault cases, but when Trouble Shooter Collister asked about the incident in this report, we got
no response. The people who run this prison may not want to talk about it,
but we're not done digging. We'll follow up with more in the coming days and
weeks.
November 1, 2007 Laredo Morning
Times
When Wendolyne Morales received a letter from the
Corrections Corporation of America on Saunders Street, and then spoke with
the detainee's wife in Wisconsin, she knew she was onto something. The
KLDO-Univision investigative reporter spent six months working on a series of
10 stories related to Tomas Contreras, a resident alien detained at the
border for a drug charge and fine he paid nearly 20 years ago. With the help
of photographers Elsa De Leon, Guillermo Rodriguez, Ruben Carranza and Sammy
de la Garza, Morales did stories on the detainee's plight with the
government's mandatory detention law. In particular, the last one she filed
in June, after Contreras was released, propelled her into the big leagues.
This weekend, at a sumptuous gala event in Dallas, her name was announced
after the presenter said, "And the Emmy goes to … " Morales had
just become Laredo's first television reporter to win an Emmy Award. "I
feel very happy and I'm so proud to belong to the team that I do," she
said. "More than anything, it feels good to know that our competitors
were the big sharks." Her entry beat out six other English- and
Spanish-language reporters from the Houston, Dallas and San Antonio television
markets in the Lone Star Emmy category for Specialty Assignment Report-Single
News Story. Since the Emmys opened a chapter in Texas five years ago, this is
the first time a KLDO entry made it into the finals, and the first time that
a Laredo television news network brought home a trophy. A native of
Guanajuato, Mexico, Morales came to Laredo in the seventh-grade and graduated
from Cigarroa High School and the Vidal M. Treviño School of Communications and Fine Arts, where she
focused on television, film and communications. She is pursuing a bachelor's
degree in communications and previously worked for Univision in Corpus
Christi. Dressed in a long, red evening gown that Saturday night, Morales was
accompanied by Maria Montoya, Maria de la Luz de Alba and Alma Blanco. These
are her best friends, "my sisters," she said, describing them as
her mentors and role models when they worked together at another local
television station several years ago. "We grabbed hands and when the
announcer said my name, we screamed," Morales said. "I was so
excited and emocionada (emotional) and when I get
like that I stumble my words. I didn't even know what I was saying."
What attracted Morales to her award-winning story was how the mandatory
detention laws, enacted immediately after 9/11, are dividing families and
creating undue hardship and suffering, she said. Meant to catch terrorists at
points of entry, the mandatory detention laws are now detaining people,
regardless of their immigration status, for crimes committed decades ago.
"They need to modify the laws because they are punishing people who went
through the whole process to come into the country legally," Morales
said. "They are detaining people for long periods of time, for six
months or longer," Morales said. "It's dividing families and making
people lose their jobs, because what job is going to wait six months for you
to come back?" In her stories, Morales focused on Contreras, a resident
alien and successful businessman in Wisconsin. He was detained for an 18-year-old
drug charge by Laredo officials at the bridge upon returning from a family
vacation in Mexico. In 1989, Contreras was fined for drug possession when
police found cocaine residue in a car he was borrowing from a friend.
Contreras has since built up a successful career. As part of her series,
Morales filmed part of Contreras' family protesting outside CCA on a cold
early Saturday morning, even though she and the photographer, Guillermo
Rodriguez, are off weekends. She also interviewed Contreras after he was
released six months later and learned about the mistreatment and poor
conditions facing detainees behind bars. After she spoke with his wife in
January, Morales said she knew she had to "at least investigate."
She began calling CCA officials and U.S. Customs officials in San Antonio,
and stayed on top of the story. "When we won on Saturday, we were able
to show that Hispanic reporters can also put out an excellent product and can
compete with the big North American chains," she said.
October 24, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
One was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The other was manic-depressive. But
as far as the federal immigration detention system is concerned, the pair
say, their illnesses were checked at the door. The cases of two immigrants in
South Texas reflect the systematic medical maltreatment detainees face across
the country as the government rushes people in and out to save a buck by
skipping treatment, said Javier Maldonado, a San Antonio immigration lawyer.
Maldonado is representing Miroslava Rodríguez Grava
and Isaías Vásquez Cisneros, Mexican immigrants
held at the South Texas Detention Complex, a 1,904-bed federal immigration
prison in Pearsall. Vásquez was released last year and since gained U.S.
citizenship, while Rodríguez remains in Pearsall. Both were U.S. permanent
residents when they were detained. Maldonado declined to discuss their felony
convictions, which made them deportable. Once in prison, their mental
illnesses went untreated, according to a federal suit Maldonado filed last
month against the GEO Group, the private contractor hired to run the Pearsall
prison. "It's a complete disregard for people with mental
disabilities," he said. "They're doing nothing or very little for
(detainees), in many cases leading to their deaths." Mark Kosanovich, a San Antonio lawyer hired by the
Florida-based company that manages about 50,000 prison beds in 18 states,
declined to comment. His court response denied any wrongdoing and pointed to
the government as responsible for detainee health care. Maldonado said he
eventually will include U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S.
Public Health Service, which runs medical clinics inside immigration prisons,
where more than 60 detainees have died in the past four years. Public Health Service
officials referred calls to ICE officials, who declined to comment. At a
congressional hearing this month, an ICE administrator denied accusations of
poor treatment and said the death count is minuscule given the massive volume
of detainees. The San Antonio lawsuit comes on the heels of increased
scrutiny of the medical care of those detained for civil violations of
immigration law. The government recently settled a lawsuit by agreeing to
changes at a detention center for families northeast of Austin. Another suit
alleges maltreatment at a prison in San Diego, Calif. It and three others
were deemed in violation of ICE's national detention standards — including
medical care — in a report issued last year by the inspector general for the
Homeland Security Department, the ICE parent agency. Detainees' top complaint
is typically poor medical care. The issue was further thrust in the national
spotlight after the deaths of three detainees in separate prisons in August,
including one in El Paso, prompting an inquiry from the U.S. House Homeland
Security Committee — yet to be answered by ICE — and a hearing by the House
immigration subcommittee. "This is just another way of murdering people
and it cannot be tolerated," U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chairman of
the subcommittee, said by phone. The attention extends beyond U.S. borders. Florentín Meléndez, president of the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights, said he received U.S. approval this month to
visit immigration prisons, including the T. Don Hutto Family Residential
Facility near Austin, starting in December. "It's really worrisome to
see all these reports," Meléndez said by phone from El Salvador.
"We're interested in making sure people are being treated well — they're
human beings before they're illegals." Not all prison managers for the
private and public outfits that contract with ICE to house immigrant
detainees are happy with their middleman role concerning medical care. One
prison warden openly accused ICE of landing him in legal trouble by refusing
to approve medical care he sought for one of his inmates. "We believe
that the policies that are being followed by the (Public Health Service) are
designed to try to minimize the medical expense by dragging out the requests
for medical care so that the ... inmate can be deported before the cost is
incurred," Thomas Hogan, warden of York County Prison in Pennsylvania,
said in a court affidavit last year. The government has rejected allegations
of delaying or denying care, saying detainees have a top-notch network of
more than 600 doctors and nurses with a $100 million budget. In his testimony
to the House immigration panel, Gary Mead, assistant director of detention
and deportation for ICE, said all detainees get two medical screenings and
about a fourth of them enter the system with chronic ailments, such as
diabetes, that are promptly treated. Mead said detainees submit more than
40,000 medical requests annually, of which 90 percent are approved with an
average wait of a day and a half. And 64 deaths in four years is remarkably
low considering the agency processed about 1 million detainees in the same
period, Mead said. They may have survived, but Rodríguez's and Vásquez's
treatment was inhumane since their jailers knew about their diagnosed conditions,
their lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit argues that the pair's rights under the
Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act were violated. Not
only did they not get adequate treatment and medication, but the medical
staff accused them of faking their illnesses, the lawsuit states. It says the
GEO Group retaliated against Rodríguez, who also had polio and can't walk on
her own, by "purposefully misdiagnosing her condition, denying her
adequate treatment and reasonable accommodations, removing her crutches, and
stripping her naked and placing her in an isolation room." As for
Vásquez, now back with his family in San Antonio, the suit seeks justice for
past abuse. Though his records listed him as schizophrenic, guards accused
him of being a phony and stopped the psychiatric treatment he received from
the Veterans Affairs Department. "Plaintiff has suffered and continues
to suffer emotional pain and anguish as a result of defendant's
actions," according to the suit.
July 19, 2007 The Capital Times
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. "One night
after midnight, I was sleeping and a whole bunch of people showed up. They
tied me up and beat me," Contreras, his voice catching, told a forum on
immigration issues in Whitewater last week. Contreras appeared with a "Reality
Tour" of the state organized by Voces de la Frontera -- a rally at the
State Capitol in Madison, a forum in Whitewater, a stop in Milwaukee -- to
tell of what he calls abuses in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) detention centers. "Every time I get into what was going on back
there, what happened to these people, it breaks me," Contreras said in a
recent interview at his family's east side carpet cleaning business. The
experience took 90 pounds off his 260-pound frame, he said, weight that he's
putting back on since he was released following an order by a federal judge
on March 30. Contreras was taken into custody in early January after a
computer check at the border as he and his family were returning from Mexico.
The check turned up a 1989 arrest in Illinois, where a trace of cocaine was
found in the car in which Contreras was riding. He said he paid a $250 fine
and was told he would have no record. Although he has lived legally in the
United States since 1964, Contreras is not a U.S. citizen, so his drug
conviction was a deportable offense under a 1996 law. He has crossed the
border without incident many times since then, but ICE recently upgraded its
computers at the border, which may be why he was detained this time. Tough
Texas treatment: Contreras was held at three ICE facilities in Texas run by
private companies under contract with the federal government. 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. He saw fights
among detainees and unprovoked force used by guards on detainees. His
objections to rough treatment by guards of other detainees brought threats of
retaliation, he said. Contreras launched a hunger strike and encouraged
others to join him in protest of treatment there, as his wife, Carmen, gave
reports on the protest to Spanish-language media. Contreras said in an
interview that he and six other men who challenged guards' treatment of
detainees were shackled and beaten as they were transferred to another
facility. He said after he was awakened in the middle of the night and yanked
from his bunk, his wrists and ankles were shackled to his waist, and he was
prodded repeatedly -- hard -- by a guard wielding a police baton. Because
their shackled feet could not step up high enough to get into a transport
van, Contreras said, he and others we picked up and thrown in. "They
tossed us all in there like animals." Contreras said the incident left
bruises on his legs and arms, and his arms were cut when guards used tools to
snap off the plastic restraints. He was transferred to Corrections Corp.'s
Webb County Detention Center, also in Laredo, where he continued his hunger
strike. After a letter from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin to ICE officials,
solicited by Contreras' family, he said he was transferred to the South Texas
Detention Complex in Pearsall, run by the international GEO Group Inc. After
a dispute with a guard about an assignment to a lower bunk, which Contreras
said was made by GEO's medical unit, he said he was put in a 5-foot-by-6-foot
isolation cell. He stayed in the metal cell, with bunk, toilet and sink, for
two weeks, he said. The prescribed periods of release, for showering,
exercise and visits, sometimes were not given because there weren't enough
guards on duty, he added. Steve Owen, Corrections Corp.'s director of
marketing, referred requests for comment to ICE, saying that was ICE's
policy. Nina Pruneda in ICE's public affairs office
in San Antonio said she could find no record in Contreras' file "of the
things he said he witnessed and endured. We are looking into the
matter." GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said as a
matter of policy, the company does not comment on "third party
allegations" like those made by Contreras, but said that all of GEO's
facilities are run in accordance with the American Correctional Association's
standards for humane treatment. A spokesperson in Baldwin's office said they
had received no further requests from Contreras since his release, but said
Baldwin would ask the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to
"investigate issues raised by the Contreras case in its review of
possible civil liberties violations and its review of the consequences of
privatizing basic government services." The committee, under Chairman
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is reviewing Bush administration practices and
policies. Waxman's office said that on Baldwin's request, the committee would
look into it. "If she thinks this is an important issue, the committee
will treat it very seriously," Waxman said in a prepared statement.
Contreras said he and six others held in the detention centers are preparing
a federal suit. The San Antonio attorney he said was representing them did
not return calls seeking comment. Contreras said the suit will seek to force
the government to improve conditions at the prison. "I'm not doing it
for the money. I'm doing it so they treat people right," Contreras said.
"Somebody has got to say enough is enough.' "
May 18, 2005 San Antonio
Express-News
Overcoming some last-minute glitches, homeland security officials have
opened the doors to the country's largest and most modern immigrant detention
center. The $49.5 million South Texas Detention Complex is to begin housing
detainees in the next month or two. It has room for 1,020 of them — 850 men,
150 women and a temporary holding area for 20 minors. The massive, high-tech
structure — the main corridor stretches one-fourth of a mile — isn't immune
to technical difficulties. During the tour, an administrator had trouble
opening and closing a back entrance through which detainees will arrive and
be processed. The door could be opened both automatically and manually, but
the operator inside and the guard outside spent several frustrating minutes
before getting it to work. "It's a brand-new facility," ICE
supervisor Valentín De La Garza said with a smile. "There are still some
kinks left to be worked out."
T. Don Hutto Correctional Center
Taylor, Texas
CCA
Click here for The New
Yorker expose on Hutto
Sep
19, 2019 austinchronicle.com
Grassroots
Leadership Sues to See Contract Between ICE and CoreCivic
The
organization hopes to shine light on ICE and the T. Don Hutto facility
Grassroots
Leadership wants to know what's in the contract between U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and CoreCivic, the for-profit
jailers who run the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, for housing
detained immigrants. Even after two Freedom of Information Act filings by the
justice advocacy group, ICE has refused to produce it. So
GL, which has long battled to shut down T. Don Hutto, filed suit in federal
district court Sept. 9 to force its release. "At this point, we have no
way of knowing whether there is even a written contract for the operation of
this detention center," said GL's Bethany Carson. When ICE contracts
with a private prison, it typically does so through a third-party government
entity, which for T. Don Hutto has been Williamson County for the last
decade. Toward the end of that run, largely as a result of GL's efforts, the
Wilco Commissioners Court's feet grew cold as it heard the many allegations
of abuse at T. Don Hutto, along with the term "civil liability." In
August 2018, they chose to stop doing business with CoreCivic;
the contract expired in January. Around that same time, ICE announced a
"short-term contract extension" with CoreCivic;
nine months later, operations at the center grind on. T. Don Hutto is the
only immigrant detention facility in the nation reserved solely for women; at
present, over 500 are detained there. As the Chronicle has reported, it was
the scene of much heartbreak in the summer of 2018 when guards began
separating children from their mothers. There have been persistent
allegations of medical neglect of detainees, and it's earned notoriety for
reports of sexual abuse; Laura Monterrosa attempted
suicide in January of 2018 after complaining of such abuse at the hands of a
guard. GL was integral in getting her released two months later. An FBI
investigation has seemingly gone nowhere. At its Sept. 10 press conference,
GL asked, "Why is T. Don Hutto still open?" But at the very moment
Williamson County voted to end its relationship, CoreCivic's
CEO Damon Hininger was celebrating his prisons'
increased profitability. He told investors it was "the most robust kind
of sales environment we've seen in probably 10 years."
Jan 31, 2019 kxan.com
Williamson County agreement with ICE detention center
ends Thursday
TAYLOR, Texas (KXAN) — Williamson County will
officially cut its ties after Thursday with an immigrant detention center in
Taylor. The county previously had an Intergovernmental Services Agreement
with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison company CoreCivic for the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, which
houses women detained at the border. In June 2018, the commissioners' court
voted 4-1 to end those agreements by Jan. 31, 2019. Grassroots Leadership, a
group advocating for immigrant rights in Austin, hoped that the county's
action would mean the facility would close by that date. However, it doesn't
appear T. Don Hutto will shut its doors anytime soon. On Tuesday Nina Pruneda, a public affairs spokeswoman for ICE sent KXAN a
brief statement about the facility's future: “U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) filed a short-term contract extension with CoreCivic for the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility
located in Taylor, Texas, to remain open beyond Jan. 31, 2019.” When KXAN
asked additional questions, the agency would not comment on how long that
contract extension would last. Bethany Carson, an immigration researcher and
organizer for Grassroots Leadership, said it's been impossible to get any
information from ICE or CoreCivic. She and other
members of her group have pressed city and county leaders to investigate the
status of the facility. "This is the responsibility of county leaders
[and] Taylor city leaders," Carson said. "This is a place that is
actively abusing more than 500 women consistently that is operating in their
community. It is their responsibility to make sure this place shuts down for
good." Activists from Grassroots Leadership spoke at the Taylor City
Council meeting on Jan. 24 and asked city leaders to try to find out more
information about the facility's future. Mayor Brandt Rydell said previous
requests from the group made him seek out a second tour of the facility,
which he attended on Jan. 11. At that time he said he did not ask the
representatives from ICE or CoreCivic what their
plans for the future were. "I was impressed when I toured the facility
with the professionalism, the dedication of all the staff that I met
there," Rydell said. "They were very open and welcoming and pretty
much allowed me to go to anywhere in the facility that I wanted to
view." "I know there have been allegations of sub-par conditions within,"
he added. "Certainly I didn't see any of that." He, along with
Williamson County leaders, said ICE and CoreCivic
have not communicated with any of them about what will happen to T. Don Hutto
once the county's agreement ends Thursday. County leaders told KXAN that the
facility can remain open even without that agreement in place. The county,
however, will not have any more oversight of the facility, which causes
concern for Carson. "There is no sign of this place shutting down right
now," she said, "so we need to know answers as to why."
Previously, Williamson County would send sheriff's deputies to inspect the
facility periodically and talk with the women about any claims they wanted to
have investigated. The agreement's expiration means that ends Thursday.
Grassroots Leadership plans to keep having its volunteers visit and work with
the women detained at the facility.
Jun
27, 2018 PCWG rocketcitynow.com
Texas suburb ends contract with immigrant detention center
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A conservative Texas suburb voted Tuesday to sever
ties with a 500-bed immigration detention center that activists say is
currently housing some mothers who don't know the whereabouts of their
children. The outcome is a victory for immigrant-rights groups who have spent
years trying to shut down the T. Don Hutto Residential Center outside Austin,
Texas, although commissioners and even opponents of the facility say the
center could continue to operate without the county. Protesters marched
around the Williamson County courthouse and packed a meeting of elected
commissioners who voted 4-1 to cancel the contract with U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement starting in 2019. The vote comes amid global uproar over
the Trump administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy and families
that were split up by the government. Sofia Casini,
a campaign organizer with the group Grassroots Leadership that has worked
with mothers in the facility, said they had been pressing commissioners for
months but said the current crisis "really touched a different kind of
community nerve." "We told them there are mothers inside
Hutto," she said. A spokesman for ICE did not immediately return an
email seeking comment about the vote or the future of the facility. The
detention center is privately run by CoreCivic,
which was formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. The facility
opened in 2006 after being converted from a medium-security prison. It
originally held women and children until 2009, when the U.S. government
settled a lawsuit over how children were being confined. Advocates say
problems inside the facility have persisted. In March, a Salvadoran woman
whose attorneys say was sexually abused by guards and attempted suicide at
Hutto sued for her release. Advocates say U.S immigration officials later released
the woman, who had been held at the facility for months. Williamson County
neighbors liberal Austin but is strongly conservative. Terry Cook, the only
commissioner elected as a Democrat, said the contract wasn't "a core
county function" and was the only commissioner who spoke before the
vote, according to the Austin American-Statesman .
"While this vote today does not solve the larger issue of immigration,
the future of the women detained there, or the closing of the facility, I
hope these activists do not celebrate this vote, but redouble efforts in
changing immigration policy at the federal level," Cook said in a
statement.
Jun 26, 2018 kvue.com
Relationship between WilCo, Hutto detention
center could be decided Tuesday
WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas -- The relationship between Williamson County
and the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor could be decided on
Tuesday. The Williamson County Commissioners Court will vote whether to
terminate the county's contracts with ICE and CoreCivic,
the company that operates the center. A decision to terminate the contracts
does not mean the detention center will close, a county spokesperson told
KVUE. "ICE can go through the procurement process and reach an agreement
on their own or contract with another governmental entity for the use of that
facility," WilCo public affairs manager Connie
Odom said. WilCo and ICE have been in this current
contract since 2010, according to an op-ed by WilCo
Commissioner Terry Cook. As part of the contract, the county receives $1 a
day per detainee and $8,000 a month to pay for sheriff's deputies to monitor
the facility, Cook said. It's unclear why the contracts between the county,
ICE and CoreCivic are up for discussion, but the
facility has had a rough past. Several CoreCivic
employees have been accused of sexual abuse over the years. Laura Monterrosa, a Salvadoran woman who was detained at the
center while awaiting the outcome of her asylum case, claimed a guard abused
her, but an ICE investigation found no proof. Immigration advocates from
groups like Grassroots Leadership have been calling for the center's closure.
WilCo Commissioner Cynthia Long sent KVUE the
following statement regarding Tuesday's vote: "The item on the
Commissioners Court agenda tomorrow regarding T. Don Hutto is a contractual
issue. I believe there is no reason for the county to continue to be a party
to the contract, and the recommended termination period seems to give the
federal government ample time to make whatever type of transition they deem
fit. Immigration laws and policies are the federal government’s
responsibility, not the county’s. " On Monday,
the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sent the Department
of Homeland Security a seven-page letter, demanding the agency reopen two
sexual abuse investigations at the facility, including Monterrosa's,
and conduct an audit to ensure compliance. The Williamson County
Commissioners Court will meet Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. If the
commissioners vote to terminate the contracts, the termination will go into
effect on Jan. 31, 2019, according to the agenda item.
Mar 20, 2018 rewire.news
‘A Huge Victory’: Woman Who Alleged Assault by Guard Finally Released From
Detention
A Salvadoran woman who came forward four months ago with allegations of
sexual assault by a guard has been released from the T. Don Hutto detention
center in Taylor, Texas, where her abuser remained employed for the bulk of
her detainment. Laura Monterrosa was released from
detention Friday evening after a months-long campaign by the advocacy
organization Grassroots Leadership, culminating with a letter to the
Department of Homeland Security signed by more than 45 Congressional
representatives calling for an investigation into sexual abuse allegations at
Texas detention centers. The members of Congress demanded an expedited audit
to assess Hutto’s compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Getting
released from detention has been a long road for Monterrosa,
who Grassroots Leadership says is “adjusting to her new environment and
recovering from the trauma she has experienced.” In November, Monterrosa released a letter to the public outlining the
abuse she said she experienced at Hutto by a guard employed by CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America),
the for-profit company that contracts with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) to run the facility. More women then came forward with
allegations of abuse. Monterrosa in a phone
interview with Rewire.News said her abuser was
still employed at Hutto and that sexual abuse is “very widespread” at the
detention center. Many allegations of sexual abuse have emerged from Hutto. A
CoreCivic guard was accused in 2007 of sexually
assaulting a woman “while her son was sleeping in his crib inside the cell,”
according to Courthouse News. In 2010, another CoreCivic
guard was charged with sexually assaulting eight women whom he was tasked
with transporting. CoreCivic appeared to experience
no ramifications for allowing male guards to transport women detained in
Hutto, despite having a signed agreement with ICE that does not allow male
guards to transfer women detainees alone. Advocates with Grassroots
Leadership demanded a criminal investigation into Monterrosa’s
allegations, but ICE and the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, which has
jurisdiction over Hutto, failed to act. After investigating itself, ICE
reported on November 22 that it found Monterrosa’s
allegations to be “unsubstantiated,” and the agency continued employing the
guard accused of assault. In December, the FBI took over the investigation,
but Monterrosa’s mental health began to decline, as
she still regularly encountered her abuser at Hutto and reported that ICE was
retaliating against her by using solitary confinement. Monterrosa
attempted suicide in January after being placed in solitary confinement,
alleging that a Hutto guard was demanding she no longer work with Grassroots
Leadership. Monterrosa said the Hutto guard told
her that unless she recanted her claims of sexual assault, she would be
placed in solitary “indefinitely.” More than 500 women remain detained in
Hutto, subjected to the same system. “Our hearts are full knowing that Laura
does not need to spend any more time at Hutto,” Grassroots Leadership’s
Bethany Carson said in a statement, “but we will not stop fighting until
every injustice at Hutto is addressed and the facility is closed once and for
all.” “Despite facing retaliation inside, including solitary confinement,
Laura showed incredible courage in speaking out to tell her story,” said
Claudia Muñoz, immigration programs director at Grassroots Leadership. “This is a huge victory for Laura, for all
the women who have organized and spoken out, and for the community that came
to their support.”
Feb. 22, 2018 statesman.com
Lawsuit accuses Taylor facility of forcing immigrant detainees to work for
little or no pay
A class action lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday argues that a
company that manages immigrant detention centers — including the T. Don Hutto
Center in Taylor — is violating the federal Trafficking Victims and
Protection Act by forcing labor on those in the center. Martha Gonzalez — a
Harris County resident who was formerly detained at one center in Laredo, one
in Taylor and a third center just north of Laredo — is suing private prison company
CoreCivic on behalf of herself and “all others
similarly situated.” Gonzalez’s lawsuit says she was required to work at
these detention centers under threat of isolation, retaliation and other
deprivations. “CoreCivic threatened detainees who
refused to work with confinement, physical restraint, substantial and
sustained restrictions, deprivation, violation of their liberty and solitary
confinement,” the lawsuit says. “CoreCivic made
frequent examples of individual detainees who complained or refused to work.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts with CoreCivic
to operate the detention center. Neither entity immediately responded to
requests for comment. The suit mentions that "Hutto's facilities were
nicer than the Laredo Detention Center and there was more freedom during off
time, but the work was the same — forced labor — and was conducted using the
same system of reward and punishment." Some detainees who volunteered
for such work were paid $1 to $2 per day, which was only redeemable at the
detention centers’ stores, the suit says. “The money was not available for
outside purchases while detained. ... Some of the detainees were forced to
work without any pay at all,” the suit says. According to the lawsuit, the
plaintiffs in the suit had to perform the following types of work: scrub
bathrooms, showers and toilets; clean and maintain CoreCivic's
on-site medical facility; clean floors and windows; clean patient rooms and
medical staff offices; sweep, mop, strip and wax floors; laundry; prepare and
serve meals; clerical work; barber services; run and manage the law library;
clean intake areas and the solitary confinement unit; or maintain the
exterior and landscaping of the CoreCivic
buildings. Gonzalez was released in August and is a current visa holder, the
suit says. The plaintiffs in the suit are asking a federal judge to declare CoreCivic’s practices unlawful. They are also seeking
damages and to be paid for their work at the rate required “under the minimum
wage and overtime guarantees of the Fair Labor Standards Act.”
Feb 15, 2018 independent.co.uk
Laura Monterrosa: Woman put in solitary
confinement after claiming she was sexually abused by immigration prison
guard
A woman who claims she was sexually abused by a guard in a privately-run
Texas immigration jail has been placed in solitary confinement in what
advocates on her behalf say is part of a pattern of retaliation for going
public with her allegations. Laura Monterrosa, 23,
was put in solitary confinement Friday night, and was told Monday that she
would face repeated isolated until she publicly retracted her accusations of
sexual abuse, according to advocacy group Grassroots Leadership. “This is
incredibly egregious that they are trying to silence a victim of sexual
assault in this way,” Bethany Carson, an immigration policy and organising advocate with the group, told The Independent
via phone on her way to the Hutto Detention Center to visit with Ms Monterrosa. The solitary
confinement followed after Ms Monterrosa
visited the private prison’s medical facility Friday, seeking treatment
because she was concerned she might herself after an altercation with a guard
that morning. She was later put into solitary confinement in an area of the
prison used for booking, and after she was turned away by the medical staff,
according to Ms Carson. A spokesperson for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that the detention
facility does not have rooms for segregation purposes, and that medical
professionals occasionally will keep a patient under observation when deemed
necessary. "On Feb. 9, ICE received information that Laura Monterrosa was taken to the ICE
medical unit for evaluation after staff became aware of a self-reported
medical situation. Monterrosa was kept in medical
for close observation," the spokesperson said in a statement provided to
The Independent. "On Monday she was returned to the general
population. During the time she was in
medical observation, Monterrosa-Flores was in
communication with her attorney. In
addition, ICE offered to transfer Monterrosa-Flores
to another facility but she declined the offer." Ms
Monterrosa, who attempted to take her own life last
month, was first detained by US immigration in May after coming to the US
from El Salvador, and first came public with her accusations that a female
guard had sexually abused her in November. She has claimed to have been
subject to repeated verbal abuse since then, and urged by officials at the
facility — which is operated by the private prison corporation Core Civic —
to retract her accusations. Ms Monterrosa
has also told Grassroots Leadership that she has been denied medications for
both her mental health and for a pre-existing condition in her stomach, and
urged to tell advocates that she had been receiving the medications. The FBI
took over the investigation late last year, and interviewed Ms Monterrosa for the first
time sometime last week. Prison officials “were just blatantly asking her to
lie to us, and completely trying to obstruct the FBI investigation that was
happening,” Ms Carson said of the weekend
confinement. “So, this is pretty blatant obstruction. And, I’m actually
pretty shocked that it has risen to this level, and that [Immigration and
Customs Enforcement] is willing to go this far to cover the abuse that has
happened in one of its facilities.” Ms Monterrosa was the first of three women to come forward
with accusations that they had been sexually abused in they
facility. She remains, however, the only immigrant in the facility to have
come forward with her accusations. Ms Monterrosa’s case is pending a repeal after a judge
ordered her removal from the country. Her appeal was submitted last week. An
email to a representative of Rep John Carter, whose district includes the
Hutto Detention Facility, was not returned. The FBI confirmed that an ongoing
investigation exists, but declined to provide further information on the
probe.
Dec 5, 2017 spectrumlocalnews.com
FBI INVESTIGATING DETENTION CENTER SEXUAL MISCONDUCT CLAIMS
TAYLOR, Texas -- The FBI is looking into a woman's claims of sexual abuse
at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor after Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said it investigated the claim and didn't find
evidence to support it. "ICE and (the) Williamson Sheriff’s Department
concluded that the information provided by the detainee could not be
corroborated and the case lacked evidence to pursue any further action,"
ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said. The residential
center is an immigration detention center. It's overseen by ICE but operated
by a private company, CoreCivic. Claudia Muñoz with
the immigration rights advocacy group, Grassroots Leadership, says she has
heard from several women who claim sexual misconduct by guards. "We see
an agency that is reckless, where there is no accountability," she said.
"When there is an agency that can actually have accountability for them
like Williamson County, they chose not to act and they take (ICE's)
side." The Williamson County Sheriff's Office said Monday that federal
investigators took over the case a week ago.
Nov 22, 2017 statesman.com
Two more women accuse guard of sexual misconduct at immigration lockup
Two more women have accused guards at a Williamson County federal
immigration detention center of sexual misconduct following another immigrant
detainee’s recent accusation of being sexually assaulted at the Taylor
facility. The immigrant advocacy group Grassroots Leadership on Tuesday
announced that staff had spoken with one woman, accused of living in the country
illegally and formerly housed at the T. Don Hutto detention center for women,
who said a guard there had sexually harassed her. The organization identified
the woman only as Ana because she fears retaliation for speaking out. Ana
told the organization that a female guard at the privately-operated facility
repeatedly asked her about her sexuality, told her they were going to be
together one day, and stared at her inappropriately in the facility’s
recreational area. “I was harassed every time I was around her, but I was
scared of saying anything for fear that doing so may negatively impact my
case,” Ana said, according to Grassroots Leadership. “After other guards
noticed the harassment, they encouraged me to file a report, but nothing
happened to the guard and I was transferred in retaliation.” Ana is now being
held in a detention center in Laredo, a signal that she will be deported
soon, according to Grassroots Leadership. Grassroots also said they received
an anonymous letter from a woman they are identifying as Esmeralda currently
housed at T. Don Hutto. She said the same guard has harassed her in the
recreation area and said she no longer goes to the recreational area to avoid
the guard. Grassroots is not naming the guard, but the organization said she
was one of two guards previously accused of sexually assaulting an immigrant
from El Salvador currently being held at T. Don Hutto. That immigrant, Laura Monterrosa, came forward with the accusations earlier
this month. The Williamson County sheriff’s office has conducted interviews
regarding Monterrosa’s report. The sheriff’s office
had no updates on that situation on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement contracts CoreCivic,
formerly Corrections Corporation of America, to operate the detention center.
ICE did not immediately have a response for the most recent accusations, but
when contacted last week, the agency said it does not comment on pending
investigations, according ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda.
Nov 16, 2017 austinchronicle.com
More Trouble at T. Don Hutto
When members of Grassroots Leadership met with undocumented detainee
Laura Monterrosa on one of their recent routine
visits to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor to monitor human
rights abuses, she initially stayed silent about the alleged abuse she was
facing. She told me through an interpreter on Tuesday that a pending asylum
case, and memories of those in her shoes who faced retaliation for speaking
out – in the form of deportation threats or transfers to another facility –
kept the 23-year-old detainee from sharing her story. But then an anonymous
caller informed CoreCivic, the private prison
company that operates the all-women detention facility, that Monterrosa was being sexually assaulted by a guard. She
then broke her silence and confided to Grassroots in early November,
penning a letter that describes a pattern of abuse since June. "She
harassed me, telling me threatening words and forcing me to have unwanted
relations with her," Monterrosa wrote of the
female guard. "She looked for or took advantage of every moment she
could to touch my breasts or my legs. ... I got tired of all of this and
asked her 'no more,' because I was very scared, but she didn't care and I
told her that I was going to talk to the captain, but she laughed with a
sarcastic laugh and said 'Do you think that he will believe you? Please, they
never will.'" Monterrosa’s is just the latest
in a long string of alleged abuses at the for-profit detention center. When
prison officials got the anonymous call, they "threatened her with
solitary confinement in medical isolation," a term CoreCivic
uses instead of solitary confinement, said Sofia Casini
with Grassroots Leadership. (CoreCivic, founded in
part by T. Don Hutto himself, has a tendency to employ terms that soften
their meaning – including its own name, adopted last year as part of a
rebranding effort from the more direct Corrections Corporation of America.)
Casini said she's seen that room before. "It's
tiny and very cold at a painful level. It's designed to break the women
down." Eventually, Monterrosa's attorney
coordinated an investigation with two Williamson County sheriff's deputies
and officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but Casini says ICE's presence felt intimidating: "The
ICE side was extremely victim-blaming and questioned her testimony as either
lying or consensual to undermine her credibility." Monterrosa
provided multiple witnesses, including a former Hutto guard, but the
perpetrator remains employed, according to Grassroots. CoreCivic,
which operates Hutto for ICE, directed inquiries to the federal immigration
agency, but regional spokesperson Nina Pruneda
reminded that the agency does not comment on pending investigations.
"The agency is committed to ensuring all individuals in our custody are
treated in a safe, secure, and humane manner," she added.
"Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct are investigated thoroughly and
appropriate action is taken to ensure the safety and security of those involved
and the others in ICE custody." Grassroots Leadership is currently
calling on Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody
to launch a transparent investigation into the alleged abuses. "Anything
less than a full investigation is really concerning," said Casini. WCSO spokesperson Patricia Gutierrez declined to
comment on the potential of that investigation. Meanwhile, Monterrosa says her life is "like a hell right
now," and that she's been subjected to tight surveillance, searches, and
discrimination. "They aren't treating me the same as others," she
said. "I feel extremely controlled. They want to blame me for making the
complaint." Hers is just the latest in a long string of alleged abuses
at the for-profit detention center. In 2010, a former prison guard who
allegedly groped women in his custody while transporting them to the bus
station was arrested, and in 2007 a CCA employee was fired after
inappropriate sexual contact with a female detainee. Nationwide, sexual abuse
in detention centers is not only underreported but also underinvestigated.
Between May 2014 and July 2016, the Department of Homeland Security's Office
of Inspector General received 1,016 reports of sexual abuse filed by people
in detention – an average of more than one complaint per day – but
investigated only 24, according to a study by the Community Initiatives for
Visiting Immigrants in Confinement. "This kind of abuse retraumatizes
asylum-seeking immigrant women, most of whom are already fleeing sexual
assault, domestic abuse, and gender-motivated violence," said Robert
Painter, an immigration attorney at American Gateways. Indeed, Monterrosa said when we spoke that she fled a situation
of abuse in her native El Salvador, including being prostituted by family
members and giving birth to a daughter as a result of her uncle's rape.
"I came here looking for protection and safety in this country. Many of
us have come from mistreatment in our countries, and it's not right that
we're suffering the same abuses in this detention center." Painter's
group monitors for abuses at Hutto, and has heard claims of sexual assault,
lack of medical care, and mistreatment by some CoreCivic
employees. "This latest incident highlights the failure of detention
centers as an overall strategy in dealing with immigration enforcement.
Placing these women in prisonlike conditions makes them vulnerable to this
type of abuse." Casini echoes that point,
calling the detention system "ripe for these power imbalances. The
stakes are so high for these women who are seeking asylum that they often
will fear speaking up." Monterrosa indicated
that many of the 500 other women at Hutto are being "manipulated
psychologically" and are not speaking out about abuse due to fear of
deportation. While advocates pressure the WCSO to launch a full
investigation, Monterrosa's alleged abuser reminded
her of the power she wields over the detainee. "She began to tell me she
liked me, and that whatever she liked belonged to her," she wrote in her
letter; "she says that she is good friends with the boss."
Nov 10, 2017 patch.com
Sexual Abuse Claims Emerge From Hutto Immigrant Detention Site
AUSTIN, TX — An undocumented woman from El Salvador being held at a
Williamson County detention center says she was sexually abused by a guard at
the facility. Officials at Austin-based Grassroots Leadership, an immigrant
advocate group, said Thursday they recently received a letter from inside the
T. Don Hutto immigrant detention center in Taylor, Texas, from Laura Monterrosa, a 23-year-old immigrant being held at the
facility by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials given her
undocumented status. In the correspondence, the detained immigrant describes
a pattern of sexual assault at the facility that she has endured since June,
naming two different guards as perpetrators. The detained woman referenced an
alleged assault by a female guard.
"She harassed me, telling me threatening words and
forcing me to have unwanted relations with her," writes Monterrosa in her letter.
"She looked for or took advantage of every moment she could to touch my
breasts or my legs, she knew where and when she did it. I don't remember
dates because there are many. She worked in the recreation area and what she
did with me what she did with other residents." Monterrosa
initially broke her silence to a member of Grassroots Leadership's visitation
program, officials at the nonprofit told Patch. She claimed another woman in
detention was accused of lying and moved to a different location after making
a sexual assault complaint as part of an alleged pattern of abuse and
retaliation inside the detention center, Grassroots officials said. Patch
reached out to officials at the Hutto facility for comment. In response, a
spokeswoman for ICE — which contracts Corrections Corporation of America to
run the facility — emailed a prepared statement. "U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not comment on pending investigations,"
Nina Pruneda wrote. "However, the agency is
committed to ensuring all individuals in our custody are treated in a safe,
secure and humane manner. Accusations of alleged unlawful conduct are
investigated thoroughly and appropriate action is taken to ensure the safety
and security of those involved and the others in ICE custody." In her
email, Pruneda outlined what she said were
safeguards purportedly implemented at the facility to prevent sexual abuse:
"ICE has implemented strong protections against sexual assault in
accordance with standards set forth in the DHS Prison Rape Elimination Act
regulation." "It is ICE policy to provide effective safeguards
against sexual abuse and assault of all individuals in ICE custody, including
with respect to screening, staff training, detainee education, response and
intervention, medical and mental health care, reporting, investigation, and
monitoring and oversight." "Under our Family Residential Standards,
ICE facilities are inspected annually with safeguards against sexual assault
as a primary concern." Yet this isn't the first time allegations of
sexual abuse emanating from the all-women detention facility have emerged
from the facility. Grassroots Leadership officials point to a number of past
sexual assault accusations made from detaineees
there before. One such case led to formal charges being charged against a
former guard — three counts of official oppression and two counts of unlawful
restraint — in incidents during which he allegedly groped women in his
custody while transporting them to the airport or bus station. All told, of
some 33,000 complaints of physical and sexual abuse filed with the DHS Office
of Inspector General, less than 1 percent were actually
investigated at all ICE-run facilities nationwide from 2010-2016,
Grassroots officials said. Bethany Carson, immigration researcher and
organizer at Grassroots Leadership, said the same lethargic response has
resulted following Monterrosa's accusations. Carson
added that similar accounts from other women have been met with skepticism or
victim-blaming from the facility's officials, as relayed from the detainees
to Grassroots Leadership. Moreover, ICE officials have not contacted
Grassroots Leadership officials to apprise them of any investigation into Monterrosa's claims, Carson said. "We've not been
contacted by them at all," she told Patch in a telephone interview.
"They're being extremely victim-blaming and retaliatory in the way
they've responded to this asking why she didn't come forward sooner or
accusing her of having someone write the letter for her. This is extremely
ugly, and this is why victims of sexual assault don't come forward."
Grassroots Leadership labeled Monterrosa as
"courageous" for having spoken out and allowing use of her name,
even as other detainees making similar complaints are afraid to do so.
"We're really pushing for the county to conduct a just and transparent
investigation and treat this like any other crime," she said. Patch
telephoned the Williamson County Sheriff's Office, but an email and voice
message weren't immediately returned. An automated response following and
email to Sheriff Robert Chody spokeswoman Lisa
Gutierrez indicated she'd be out of the office until Nov. 13. But Carson
suggested she doesn't hold out too much hope Williamson County officials
would conduct a robust investigation either. Adding to that suspicion is the
vested interest Williamson County officials have in keeping the detention
facility humming. A previous request for information by this reporter found
the county has reaped millions of dollars over the years from a lucrative
agreement with the facility's operator, Corrections Corporation of America,
for essentially allowing the detention site — formerly a medium-security
state prison — to conduct its business within their borders. According to a
previous email from Williamson County spokesperson Connie Watson, payments
from ICE to CCA for May 2006 through September 2015 totaled $225 million.
Additionally, payments made from ICE to the county from May 2006 to September
2015 amounted $1.7 million in administrative fees, which are then deposited
into the county's general fund, she wrote. At the time of the request for
information, the latest renewal of the pact at the time, executed in December
2014, showed the county was getting $8,000 per month from CCA — up from
$6,000 a month previously — in addition to $1 per day per detainee. The exact
number of detainees at Hutto is somewhat secretive given that ICE falls under
the Department of Homeland Security — which states it withholds such
information for national security — but it has been estimated at that time to
be at least 400. Patch will seek updated figures from Williamson County
toward updating details of the CCA-Williamson County contract. Critics of the
facility — a guarded, fenced-in center used to detain non-U.S. citizens
pending the outcome of their immigration hearings — are legion. Despite ICE's
assertions to the contrary, critics view the site as tantamount to a prison —
notwithstanding its "residential center" label. One such critic is
former Georgetown Mayor MaryEllen Kersch, who took county commissioners to task two years
ago for allowing the facility to operate in their jurisdiction and profiting
from its operation. "Are you content to continue your complicity in this
endeavor even now?" she asked commissioners during the portion of their
meeting allowing citizens to air concerns. Kersch's
comments came amid a hunger strike by women held at the facility in protest
of conditions there. "You have continued to vote to renew that abhorrent
contract that is beyond reprehensible." Carson, too, finds the whole
arrangement reprehensible. But for now, she'd be content knowing the county
will at least take Monterrosa's accusations
seriously and launch a full investigation. "Speaking out about sexual
abuse perpetrated by a guard while still detained takes incredible
courage," Carson said of Monterrosa's outcry.
"As ICE has proven incapable of taking reports of abuse seriously, the
least the Williamson County Sheriff's Office can do is immediately launch a
just and transparent investigation into reports of sexual abuse by guards at
Hutto. This includes talking with any witnesses named by Ms. Monterrosa and ensuring that her attorney is always
present during any questioning."
Nov 5, 2015 rt.com
Isolation
& cold cells: Women asylum seekers go on hunger strike to protest
mistreatment
The
only all-women’s immigration detention facility in the country is reportedly
dealing with over two dozen hunger strikers demanding to be immediately
released. Government sources dispute the claim, but some women and their
lawyers are speaking out. Threats of transfer, deportation, and disciplinary
report filings, as well as intrusive surveillance and other retaliatory
tactics have been used against detainees at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center
in Taylor, Texas since 27 women inmates started refusing food on October 28,
according to immigrants, activists and lawyers. “We are not going to sit by
and let this happen,” Christina Parker, a program director for Grassroots
Leadership, told Shadowproof, adding, “we’re not
going to be quiet.” Grassroots Leadership, a group against private prisons,
released 18 letters from the hunger strikers telling their stories of coming
to the US and being a part of the detention process for asylum seekers. T. Don Hutto, which is run under government
contract by the Corrections Corporation of America for US Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), currently holds approximately 500 women. Many, if
not all, observed the initial hunger strikers holding a vigil on October 28,
as they were all outside for an evening recreation period. Since then, the
outdoor time has been restricted. One of the strikers was sent to medical
isolation, an official act of punishment, in Parker’s opinion. The woman was
visited by a lawyer and community advocate, both of whom reported that she
had no health problems. Other strikers complained of being placed in cold
rooms. ICE says there are no isolation rooms at the facility. The leader of
the hunger strike, Francisca Morales Macías, fled
her ex-husband in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where more women are
murdered than anywhere else in the country. Morales Macías
illegally crossed the US-Mexican border and is claiming asylum status because
her husband beat her and the Mexican government wouldn’t do anything about
it. Her daughter, Monica Morales, who was illegally brought to the country at
a young age, explained her mom’s situation to Fusion. “The government in
Mexico wouldn’t do anything because he has a lot of family members working in
the federal government,” Monica said. “Nobody would help her.” A request for
a Withholding of Removal order to keep Morales Macías
from being deported was refused, so she remains in detention while an appeals
process plays out. Monica’s mother called her from inside T. Don Hutto after
the hunger strike began. “She said they had her isolated, that she couldn’t
do anything, she was only allowed to be in her room, she couldn’t talk to
nobody,” Monica told Fusion. That was all she said before the phone call was
abruptly ended. Sometime following that phone call, Morales Macías was transferred to South Texas Detention Center,
though her family and lawyers received no notification. Lawyer Frances Valdez
contacted ICE, but was given no consistent answer as to why the transfer had
occurred. “They said they transferred her for medical reasons. I asked what
medical reasons and they said they didn’t know. And then the next day they
said, ‘Oh she’s fine,’” Valdez told Fusion. “Really what it is, is
retaliation for the hunger strike.” There have also been other hunger strikes
involving detained immigrants in recent weeks. Dozens of Bangladeshi, Indian,
Afghani, and Pakistani asylum seekers went without food from October 14 to
October 20 at the El Paso Processing Center in Texas, fourteen Indian and
Bangladeshi asylum seekers refused food on October 19 at the Lasalle
Detention Center in Louisiana, and 20 or more Central American men went on a
hunger strike on October 30 at the Adelanto Detention Facility in California.
Apr
15, 2015 courthousenews.com
AUSTIN,
Texas (CN) - A Corrections Corporation of America prison guard sexually
assaulted eight women while taking them away from a CCA prison, the women
claim in court. Kimberly Doe et al. sued CCA, the nation's largest private
prison company; their alleged assailant, Donald Dunn, former "escort
officer and resident supervisor" at CCA's T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor, Texas; and Dunn's then-boss, Evelyn Hernandez, in Travis
County Court. The eight women - from Eritrea, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala
and Honduras - seek punitive damages for sexual assault, false imprisonment,
gross negligence and negligent supervision. All eight say they fled horrid
conditions in their home country to seek asylum in the United States, where
they were arrested and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent them to
the T. Don Hutto prison. Corrections Corporation of America, founded in 1983,
was the first private prison company the U.S. immigration service hired to
imprison refugees. CCA claims on its website that it "benefit[s] America
by protecting public safety, employing the best people in solid careers,
preparing inmates for reentry, giving back to communities, and bringing
innovative security to government corrections - all while consistently saving
hardworking taxpayers' dollars." The Department of Homeland Security
changed its immigration policy in 2005 from one of "catching and
releasing" to "catching and detaining," according to the
complaint. The number of immigrant detainees rose from 200,000 in 2005 to
400,000 in 2010, with about 10 percent of them women. Most immigration
detainees have committed no crime other than entering the country without
inspection. Widespread sexual abuse of immigration detainees has been
documented by private attorneys, at the CCA prison in Laredo, and by groups
such as the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, which reported
on abuses at the Krome Avenue prison in Miami. A
guard at the Hutto prison was accused in May 2007 of sexually assaulting a
woman there "while her son was sleeping in his crib inside the
cell." In December 2007, ICE announced a zero-tolerance policy toward
sexual assault in immigration prisons, whether run by the government or
private contractors. In 2008, Homeland Security found the Hutto facility to
be noncompliant with ICE standards for sexual abuse. By 2009 ICE stopped
detaining families at the Hutto facility and used it exclusively to house
immigrant women. The plaintiffs in the new case, filed April 9, say Dunn
sexually assaulted them as he took them from the Hutto prison to an airport
or bus station. Sarah Doe, a 24-year-old native of Eritrea, says she fled to
the United States after being repeatedly raped and beaten by a military
commander. She was released from the Hutto prison on March 20, 2010. At 3:58 a.m.
she met Dunn, who was supposed to take her to the airport. Dunn locked her
into a cage-like area in the back of his van and they departed, stopping 10
miles later at a Conoco gas station. There, Dunn told Sarah to get out of the
van and move against the wall of the station. He groped her repeatedly
"for an extended period of time, touching all over her body, including
her breasts, crotch area, and buttocks," Doe says in the complaint. He
put her back in the van and took her to the airport. She says she never
reported it because she was terrified. Kimberly Doe, 38, fled Brazil in March
2010 because drug-using husband repeatedly raped and beat her. Her asylum
claim was approved and she was released from the Hutto prison on April 15,
2010. Dunn, who picked her up at 4:35 a.m., was her only
"escort." Again, he stopped
at the Conoco station, where he groped Kimberly "for an extended period
of time ... including her crotch area and buttocks," Kimberly says in
the complaint. Back in the van, Dunn fondled himself as he drove and tried to
touch her as well, Kimberly says. She says he stopped the van a second time
some distance off the road and assaulted her again. "Kimberly feared the
worst" and believed that "Dunn would rape and kill her," she
says in the complaint. She says she felt "horribly afraid and
depressed" and "remains to this day deeply afraid that defendant
Donald Dunn will find her and retaliate against her for acknowledging he
assaulted her." The six other women describe similar assaults: at the
Conoco station, off the side of the road, and in one instance in his own
home. The women say Dunn is known to have assaulted at least two other
detainees. He was eventually stopped because plaintiff Raquel Doe reported
her assault to police, who investigated. Dunn was arrested by the Williamson
County Sheriff's Department in August 2010 and was charged with multiple
counts of official oppression and unlawful restraint. He admitted that he
committed the assaults for "his own self-gratification and not for any
legitimate purpose," the complaint states. He pleaded guilty to the
Williamson County charges in November 2010 and was sentenced to a year in
jail plus probation. The federal government filed civil rights charges
against Dunn for four of the assaults not addressed by the Williamson County
case. This included Raquel Roe and Emily Roe, as well as two victims who are
not plaintiffs in the Travis County complaint. Dunn pleaded guilty to two of
the four federal charges and was sentenced in November 2011, according to the
complaint. The eight plaintiffs claim that CCA and its administrator
Hernandez violated their agreement with Williamson County as well as ICE
policy: that "during all transportation activities, at least one (1)
transportation officer shall be of the same sex as the residents being
transported." CCA and Hernandez
also flouted policies requiring transport staff to give the "name of the
person who approved the escort" and the "number of the facility-issued
cellular telephone," the complaint states. Transport staff are supposed
"to maintain periodic communication with Central Control at least every
(60) minutes ... by cellular phone and radio" and report odometer
readings for each call. But transport logs do not show compliance with such
policies, the women say. They also claim that "no officer reviewed or
commented on the log entries, and no supervisor, dispatch agent, or other
staff member engaged in and logged any sort of official communications with
the escorting officer during the transports themselves." These
failures "enhanced the ability" of escort officers like Dunn to
commit assaults, the women say. In May 2010, Hernandez was put on
administrative leave; she was demoted on July 12 that year and then fired for
failing to protect detainees from assault, according to the complaint. Also
in May, ICE reprimanded CCA and put it on probation for the assaults. ICE
also threatened to terminate all contracts it had with CCA. CCA responded to
ICE by promising to discipline any staff members who violated the transport
policy. But "despite the fact that at least 22 officers had, in fact,
violated this policy between October 19, 2009 and May 7, 2011 ... CCA did not
pursue a single disciplinary action of any kind against any of these
officers," the women say in the complaint. Neither CCA nor ICE responded
to requests for comment. The women's lead counsel is Mark Whitburn with
Whitburn & Pevsner, of Arlington.
May
10, 2014 courthousenews.com
Eight
women sexually assaulted at a privately run detention center for immigrants
cannot sue the U.S. officials who knew of lapses in protocol meant to keep
detainees safe, the 5th Circuit ruled.
The women had filed their suit in October 2011, as their attacker,
Donald Dunn, awaited sentencing in Texas after pleading guilty to state and
federal charges arising from the assaults. A federal judge in Austin
sentenced Dunn the next month to 10 months in prison. Dun had worked for
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private firm contracted by
Williamson County, Texas, to operate the T. Don Hutto immigration detention
center in Taylor, Texas. Each plaintiff had been released from detention
center after presenting a plausible case for asylum. Hutto sexually assaulted
the women while transporting them by himself to the bus station or airport.
But Williamson County's contract with CCA incorporates the terms of the
agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that "at
least one (1) transportation officer shall be of the same sex as the
residents being transported" during all transportation activities. The
women presented evidence that at least 22 male officers made 77 transport
trips with female detainees without a female officer present, in violation of
the terms of the contract. They also claimed that ICE contracting officers
George Robertson and Jose Rosado failed to monitor and enforce the contract,
showing a "deliberate indifference" to the "risk of assault
and sexual assault." Though a federal judge refused to dismiss the
claims against them on the basis of qualified immunity, a three-judge panel
with the 5th Circuit reversed Tuesday, saying the contract violations did not
automatically indicate a risk of serious harm. "The relevant service
agreement provision creates a background legal obligation that, if fulfilled,
likely helps minimize the risk of sexual assault during detainee
transport," Judge Emilio Garza wrote for the New Orleans-based panel.
"But plaintiffs, in effect, want us to ratify the inverse statement: If
an official knows of a contractual violation, then the risk of sexual assault
automatically becomes constitutionally 'substantial.' This we decline to
do." The opinion said the ICE officers had no knowledge of the previous
sexual assault of detainees during transports, and one previous assault of a
detainee in her cell is insufficient to show the detainees suffered a
persistent risk. "We hold that no clearly established law provides that
an official's knowledge of contractual breaches and of the breached
provision's aim to prevent sexual assault of detainees, standing alone,
amounts to deliberate indifference in violation of a detainee's Fifth
Amendment rights, because no controlling authority provides that such
breaches are 'facts from which the inference could be drawn that a
substantial risk of serious harm exists,'" Garza said.
February
12, 2013 Courthouse News
AUSTIN
(CN) - Immigration officials may be liable for sexual abuse that allegedly
took place under their watch at a detention center, a federal magistrate
judge found. George Robertson and his successor, Jose Rosado,
were contracting officer's technical representatives, or COTRs, for the T.
Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, at a time of multiple reported
sexual assaults on female detainees held there by U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE). Eight women represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union claim in court that escort officer and resident supervisor
Donald Dunn abused them while they were in transit to the bus station or
airport following their release from the Hutto detention center. Williamson
County received federal funds and contracted with Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA), the owner and operator of the detention center, to house
female ICE detainees at its facility. The ACLU argues that the
intergovernmental service contract (IGSA) between ICE and the county required
the presence of a female officer when Dunn transported detainees of that sex.
Previously, the parties stipulated to dismissing claims against John Foster,
the county's monitor at the detention center, and U.S. Magistrate Judge
Andrew Austin recommended granting Williamson County summary judgment on
Friday. "CCA's continued failure to follow the transport policy cannot
be attributed to a Williamson County policy or custom," Austin wrote.
"There is no evidence that any Williamson County official knew or should
have known that its stated policy was not being followed. Although Foster
failed to detect the fact that CCA was not complying with the transport
requirements of that contract for several months, the fact is that once he
did, he acted swiftly to remedy the issue. Once discovered, the county
investigated the claims and was instrumental in bringing criminal charges
against Dunn." The 29-page report further recommends dismissing some of
the claims against CCA and the facility administrator, Evelyn Hernandez, as
well as all claims against ICE contracting officer Jerald Neveleff.
Unlike Neveleff who carried out his duties offsite,
however, Austin determined that Robertson and Rosado would have direct
knowledge as to potential violations of the transport policy. "As the
COTRs at Hutto during the relevant time period, Robertson and Rosado worked
onsite at the Hutto facility, and thus were physically present at the
detention center," Austin wrote. "They were tasked, among other
things, with ensuring 'that the facility conditions, policies/procedures, and
handling of residents all conform[ed] to the performance standards' put forward
in the IGSA. As part of this process, the COTRs participated directly in
various aspects of operating the Hutto facility and had full access to
detailed information concerning any aspects they were not personally involved
in. Indeed, the IGSA notes that the very transport activities that gave rise
to the plaintiffs' injuries were to be 'scheduled by the COTR.' In a number
of cases federal courts of appeal have concluded that where an official
responsible for ensuring that a policy designed to prevent sexual assault is
followed does nothing to make certain the policy is being followed, then that
knowing failure can be sufficient to show subjective deliberate indifference.
Accordingly, the court concludes that plaintiffs' second amended complaint
makes sufficient factual allegations to prevent dismissal of the claims
against Robertson and Rosado." The parties have two weeks to file their
objections to Austin's Feb. 8 report and recommendation.
October 20, 2011 Chicago Homeland
Security Examiner
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) posed difficult questions and concerns to the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet Napolitano, at
this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Of particular concern for
Durbin, was the state of immigration detention facilities, especially the
Willacy Detention facility in Texas. According to documents obtained by the
ACLU more than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration
detention centers since 2007, nearly a third of which came from Texas.
According to the Huffington Post, “other states had far lower reports of
detainee sexual abuse, with the next highest reports coming from California
(17), Arizona (16) and Florida (12). (10/21/2011). Senator Durbin sought
further information and assurances from Secretary Napolitano regarding this
issue. Senator Durbin, the second highest ranking member in the Senate
Democratic leadership, remarked that detainee centers have become a huge
industry in which DHS spends more than $1.7 billion dollars yearly. Yet, the
issue of sexual abuse at the immigration centers has barely reached public
attention. Much of Senator Durbin’s framing of the issue stemmed from a
recent “Frontline” television expose. Durbin noted at the Senate Judiciary
hearing, that “there was an aspect of this program that was particularly
troubling. Maria Hinojosa in part of that program described a woman who was a
victim at this Willacy facility. She had been raped and her identity was
hidden from the camera. She told her story about how it was virtually impossible
for her to even seek justice in this circumstance because she was totally at
the mercy of the guards in this privatized facility.” (Transcript of Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing, October 20, 2011) According to the Huffington
Post, the ACLU obtained information under the Freedom of Information Act
documenting that “detention officers broke a rule that detainees must not be
transported without a same-sex officer present. Detention officers are also
instructed to call supervisors with their departure and arrival times when
transporting detainees, according to a 2007Immigration and Customs
Enforcement document.” Senator Durbin underscored his concern by noting that
some 85 to 90 percent of those who were detained under civil charges, not
criminal charges, but people with civil charges do not have benefits of
counsel. Durbin further noted, “That the due process requirements are very
limited on their behalf, and that many times they’re in facilities that are
privatized… As a group immigration detainees are especially vulnerable to
sexual abuse, and its effect on the detainees due to social, cultural,
language isolation, poor understanding of U.S. culture and the subculture of
U.S. prisons and the often traumatic experiences they’re endured in their
culture of origin. The commission (i.e., The National Rape Elimination
Commission) issued proposed standards. The Department of Justice is now
finalizing its national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to prison
rape. In April of this year I wrote a letter to Attorney General Holder
emphasizing the importance of strong standards.” In addition Senator Durbin
mentioned the bipartisan support he received from Senator Sessions
(R-Alabama) and others in passion the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003
which aimed at eliminating sexual abuse while in custody in the U.S. We want
zero tolerance on this.” (Transcript of Senate Judiciary Committee,
10/20/2011) At this point in the hearing Senator Durbin asked DHS Secretary
Napolitano “What is the Department of Homeland Security doing to ensure that
immigration detainees are safe from sexual abuse, whether they’re ICE
facilities or contract facilities? Secretary Napolitano’s response was not
reassuring for immigrants or Senator Durbin. She replied, “When I took over as
Secretary, we found that there were little or no standards being applied
uniformly across all the many detention facilities that we use in –in the ICE
context…Others are privatized, companies like Correction Corporations of
America. We have to have beds, and in particular given our priorities and how
we are managing the system, we need beds that are near the southern border…As
part of the process I brought in someone to actually look at the standards
and we redid our contracts with some of the private providers.” (Transcript,
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, 10/20/2011) Secretary Napolitano tried to
explain the process she instituted since coming to DHS. She said, “We do have
a process by which we are regularly auditing and overseeing what is happening
there. But that is not to say there aren’t cases that are particularly
horrific.” She further mentioned that she was not familiar with the
“Frontline” documentary focusing on sexual abuses at immigrant detention
centers but would review it and get back to the Senator Durbin. Earlier this
year the ACLU sued the Department of Homeland Security regarding sexual
abuses at immigration detention centers. The ACLU of Texas has filed a suit
in behalf of three women who say they were assaulted by detention guards and officers.
The victims say they were abused on the way to the airport after posting bond
to be released from detention facilities. According to theHuffington
Post, “The three women were held for a time in the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor ,Texas. The 512 bed facility, is
privately run on a government contract by private prison giant Corrections
Corporations of America.”
October 19, 2011 American
Independent
Amid a national push to expose incidents of sexual abuse at immigrant
detention facilities across the country, the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas filed a federal suit Wednesday on behalf of three women who say they
were sexually abused at a Central Texas facility with a history of abuse. The
suit names Donald Dunn, a former employee at the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor, just east of Austin, who pled guilty last fall to charges
he abused women he was driving to the airport and Greyhound stations.
Allegations by one victim prompted his arrest and a nationwide search for
more victims, the Taylor Daily Press reported last year. “Eight female
victims were discovered, and during the investigation, Dunn admitted to
abusing them during transports,” the Press said. Along with Dunn, though, the
suit also names U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement and the Corrections
Corporation of America — the country’s largest private prison operator, which
runs the Hutto facility, for ignoring regulations that should have kept Dunn
from driving the women on his own. “The lawsuit alleges that ICE, Williamson
County and CCA were deliberately indifferent and willfully blind to the fact
that Dunn and other employees regularly violated the rule that detainees not
be transported without another escort officer of the same gender present,”
the ACLU said in a statement. According to the suit, each of the three
anonymous women — asylum seekers from Brazil, Guatemala and Eritrea — were
being released from the facility after passing “credible fear” interviews, to
await a hearing on their cases, when they were assaulted. The women say Dunn
pulled over on the way to drop them off at the airport or bus station, groped
them, told them to undress and exposed himself to them. Between October 2009
and May 2010, the suit claims, Dunn assaulted six other women too. A CCA
spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the complaint. “The
long history of rampant sexual abuse at ICE detention centers, coupled with
the availability of the same opportunity Dunn exploited in the form of at
least 22 documented failures of other male officers to comply with the same
policy, supports a reasonable inference that other male escort officers at
Hutto engaged in similar abuse,” the suit claims. The Hutto Detention Center,
once a residential center for holding whole families of immigrants, has been
plagued by complaints about poor conditions and family separation, and has
been an ACLU target in the past. Separate allegations of sexual abuse at the
facility even prompted an ICE investigation in 2007. Bob Libal
with Grassroots Leadership — a group that promotes accountability for private
prison operators and runs a visitation program to the Hutto facility — said
the fact that CCA continues to operate the facility shows what light
consequences the country’s largest private prison operators face. “This is
the second time that there’s been an inappropriate sexual event at Hutto, and
ICE didn’t cut the contract,” Libal said. “There’s
no impact for the company that allowed this to happen.” After years of
campaigning by the ACLU, Grassroots Leadership and other groups, the Hutto
facility was converted from a family detention center to a 500-bed facility
for women who’ve come to the U.S. seeking asylum. The suit filed Wednesday in
Austin is part of a nationwide effort by the ACLU to uncover records of
sexual abuse and call for accountability. The group found more than 200
allegations of sexual abuse in immigrant detention centers across the country
from 2007 to 2010 returned from a public records request. “It is clear there
is an urgent need for the government to recognize just how pervasive a
problem the sexual abuse of immigration detainees is and take immediate steps
to fix the problem and ensure that everyone in the government’s care is
protected,” said David Shapiro, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison
Project. “The detainees in immigration detention are a particularly
vulnerable population. Even one incident of sexual abuse is one too many.”
The group found 56 allegations of sexual abuse in Texas, far more than the
next-highest total, 17 complaints in California. “It’s pretty disturbing, and
pretty telling, that such a high percentage of the sexual assaults happen
here in Texas,” Libal said.
September 7, 2011 The Statesman
A former residential supervisor at the T. Don Hutto Correction Center in
Taylor pleaded guilty this week to molesting women he was transporting them
from the center to the airport or bus terminal. Donald Dunn pleaded guilty to
two federal deprivation of rights charges, according to a press release from
the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Dunn admitted to touching illegal female
immigrants “in a sexual manner” between December 2009 and May 2010, the
release said. He said that he would stop the vehicle along the way, order
them to get out and convince them he was conducting a legitimate search, it
said. Dunn has not been sentenced but faces up to one year in federal prison
and a fine up to $100,000 for each charge, the release said.
November 9, 2010 American-Statesman
A former resident supervisor at a federal immigrant detention center in
Taylor was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail and two years of probation
after admitting to groping female residents of the facility. In a deal with
prosecutors, Donald Charles Dunn, 30, pleaded guilty on Sept. 8 in a
Williamson County court to three counts of official oppression and two counts
of unlawful restraint in connection with groping residents of the T. Don
Hutto Residential Center, said Dee Hobbs, chief of the criminal division for
the Williamson County attorney's office. He was sentenced to one year in jail
— the maximum sentence for a Class A misdemeanor — for each of the five
charges. Three of the sentences will run concurrently, Hobbs said. Two of the
official oppression sentences were probated; Dunn will serve them as two
years of probation when he is released from jail, Hobbs said. Dunn waived his
right to an attorney before his first court hearing in September and decided
to talk directly to prosecutors instead, Hobbs said. "He basically came
in and took responsibility for his actions," Hobbs said. Dunn also
agreed to relinquish his private security license and not seek to get it back
during his jail term or probation period, Hobbs said. As part of his job as resident
supervisor, Dunn drove men, women and children who were out on bail from the
detention center, which is overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, officials said. On
May 11, one of the women reported to an airport employee that Dunn had
inappropriately touched her, officials said.
August 25, 2010 Washington
Independent
Days after the ACLU called for additional protections against sexual abuse of
immigrant detainees, Human Rights Watch issued a report today demanding
Congressional action to improve detention center conditions. The calls come
after the Aug. 19 arrest of a former guard at the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Texas, who was accused in May of groping three women on their way
to deportation. Sexual abuse allegations at Hutto were particularly
disturbing because the facility was lauded as a symbol of ICE’s year-long
detention reform effort, as The Texas Independent pointed out last week. But
Human Rights Watch argued they were not an isolated incident, claiming the
problem is more widespread than officials realize because detainees are often
deported or otherwise unable to report abuse. ICE already made some steps
toward preventing sexual abuse in detention centers after Hutto abuse
allegations surfaced in May. Officials plan to publish revised standards for
dealing with sexual assault. ICE will also prohibit guards from searching or
transporting detainees of the opposite gender. Official policy already bans
male staffers from being alone with female immigration detainees — a rule
contract guards at Hutto, a Corrections Corporation of America facility, were
allegedly breaking. In May, ICE ordered the prison contractor to stop
allowing male guards to be alone with female immigrant detainees.
August 20, 2010 KXAN
Williamson County authorities said Friday that eight victims had been
identified in connection with a former transport officer at the T. Don Hutto
immigration detention facility , who police say groped several women he was
supposed to be taking to airports and bus stations. No sexual assault charges
have been filed, however -- although Williamson County officials said they
may be later on. Currently, Donald Charles Dunn, 30, faces three charges of
official oppression and two charges of unlawful restraint in connection with
five victims police said were molested in Williamson County. Charges have not
yet been filed in connection with three more victims authorities said were
attacked in Travis County. President Obama and Congressional members have been
briefed on this case because of its association with the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency. Nineteen women have been interviewed so far, from
Texas to Florida to Washington D.C., and another 11 still could be victims --
though they haven't been located. In his year of employment at the Taylor
facility, Dunn transported 72 people from the facility - where they were
being bonded out -- to airports or bus stations, so they could wait for their
immigration hearings in locations near family or friends or employment.
Thirty of the people he transported were women. Williamson County officials
said that they were tightening their grip over the facility being run by the
Corrections Corporation of America after it was discovered during the
investigation that Dunn was not supposed to be transporting those women alone
-- but that the facility was required, for the women's safety, to have two
officers on board the vehicle with the detainees. CCA is a private,
for-profit company that runs jail and detention facilities, and has come
under fire for cutting corners. Dunn was arrested in Austin Thursday after
police said he admitted stopping the van during the early morning trips, at
locations in Williamson and Travis counties, and touching them
inappropriately for his own "self gratification."
Dunn, a resident supervisor at the facility and employee of Correction
Corporation of America, told officers that on these trips, "he told the
women he was going to 'frisk' them and then inappropriately touched their
breasts, crotch and buttocks," according to a news release by the
Williamson County Sheriff's Office. "Mr. Dunn indicated to Detectives
that he had done this to numerous other women while performing his duties as
a transport officer," the release said. Dunn told officers he had done
this with several women, while he was transporting them late at night, and
would stop at several locations in Williamson and Travis counties to abuse
them on the way to Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The women were
being given the rides to the airport and bus stations as a courtesy while
they were out on bond, awaiting immigration hearings.
August 20, 2010 KXAN
A former employee of a federal immigration detention center has been arrested
after police say he admitted to groping several women he was supposed to be
transporting to the airport after being released on bond. Donald Charles
Dunn, 30, a resident supervisor at the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor and
employee of Correction Corporation of America, told officers that on these
trips, "he told the women he was going to 'frisk' them and then
inappropriately touched their breasts, crotch and buttocks," according
to a news release by the Williamson County Sheriff's Office. "Mr. Dunn
advised that he didn’t do this for safety concerns but as self
gratification," the release said. "Mr. Dunn indicated to
Detectives that he had done this to numerous other women while performing his
duties as a transport officer." Dunn told officers he had done this with
several women, while he was transporting them late at night, and would stop
at several locations in Williamson and Travis counties to abuse them on the
way to Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The women were being given the
rides to the airport and bus stations as a courtesy while they were out on
bond, awaiting immigration hearings. The first report came on May 11, 2010 ,
when Austin police told Williamson County Sheriff's deputies that a woman had
alerted an airport official that she had been abused on the way to the
airport from the facility in Taylor. That's when detectives met with Dunn and
listened to his description of groping "numerous women" while doing
his duties as a transport officer. "A large scale investigation into the
current locations of other possible victims began immediately after Mr.
Dunn’s interview," the news release said. "Detectives from
Williamson County and Immigration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(Office of Professional Responsibility/San Antonio) set out to make contact
with several of the possible victims, who had located across the country
since bonding out of the facility. "Mr. Dunn was subsequently terminated
from his contract employment with Correction Corporation of America when the
allegation was first reported to authorities." The investigation
revealed that all of the possible victims of Mr. Dunn had been released on
bond from the facility and were being transported to the Austin-Bergstrom
Airport or bus station when the attacks occurred. It was during these
"courtesy transports" that Dunn would stop at different locations
in the areas of both Travis and Williamson County. Three women said they'd
been inappropriately touched. Two of those victims said they were taken
against their will to a location near a convenience store, during which one
woman said she thought she'd either be killed or raped.
May 28, 2010 AP
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is investigating allegations that a guard
at a central Texas detention facility sexually assaulted female detainees on
their way to being deported. Agency spokesman Brian Hale said Friday the
guard has been fired and Corrections Corporation of America, which manages
the prison, is on probation pending the investigation's outcome. Several
women who were held at T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas, were
groped while being patted down and at least one was propositioned for sex,
ICE said. "We understand that this employee was able to commit these
alleged crimes because ICE-mandated transport policies and procedures were
not followed," David Sanders, the Homeland Security Department's
contracting officer said in a letter to Corrections Corporation of America
obtained by The Associated Press. ICE has ordered Corrections Corporation of
America to make changes, including not allowing male guards to be alone with
female detainees. Messages left with Corrections Corporation America
officials seeking comment were not immediately returned and a public affairs
officer stationed at Hutto had left for the day. The 490-bed Hutto facility
is a former prison where children and their parents were previously held. As
part of the Obama administration's immigration detention reforms, ICE ended
the family detentions at Hutto and converted it to a facility for female
detainees. The changes were considered a symbol of the overhaul of
immigration detention, where some detainees had died due to medical neglect
and U.S. citizens were illegally held. As part of the plan, ICE officials
said they would step up monitoring of its largest detention centers, removing
that role from private companies that operate the facilities under contract
with ICE. "This case at Hutto, it's inevitable when you are dealing with
such a massive web of detention with such little oversight," said Jacki
Esposito, policy coordinator for Detention Watch Network, which monitors
immigration detention centers. Hale said ICE is working to prevent the guard
under investigation from working again for the federal government and
pursuing financial penalties against the company. It has also set up sexual
harassment training for detention staff.
October 7, 2009 San Antonio
Express-News
In a move that could affect the revenues of private prison firms and county
jails, the Obama administration said Tuesday it will review, renegotiate and
possibly terminate some of its more than 300 contracts for detaining
unauthorized immigrants. The announcement by Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano is part of an overhaul aimed at ending the
reliance on penal institutions for detainees with noncriminal immigration
violations or valid asylum claims. The overhaul, first announced in August,
followed scathing reports and lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union
and other groups alleging inhumane conditions, denial of medical care, and
isolation in remote areas with limited access to pro-bono legal aid.
Napolitano, in a news conference with Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Assistant Secretary John Morton, said she inherited a scattered “nonsystem” of government and privately run facilities
that needed to be monitored. “It's a huge range of detainees,” she said,
“from those who have criminal records who need to be in a very prisonlike
setting to those who have no record at all and indeed have come seeking
asylum.” The system has ballooned from 5,000 beds in 1994 to more than 32,000
beds in 2008, used by about 380,000 detainees that year. Napolitano said the
capacity to detain people would remain, but the standards of “health and
safety, law, and indeed human decency” needed to be enforced. Plans include
centralizing operations, doubling the personnel involved in detention center
oversight, building new facilities in urban locations near immigration service
providers, and housing detainees in converted hotels, nursing homes, or other
residential facilities. Detainees would be classified by risk, with
nonviolent, noncriminal populations such as recently arrived asylum seekers
sent to less prisonlike environments. Detainees with criminal convictions
would remain in jails. There are also plans for an online system to locate
detainees, something family members and even attorneys are not always able to
do. The practice of detaining families at the T. Don Hutto Family Residence
Center in Taylor, which drew criticism because of its cells and barbed wire,
has already ended. The facility is now being used to house female detainees.
It was unclear what effect the changes will have on private firms or
communities that draw revenue from jailing detainees, but Willacy County
Sheriff Larry Spence said the reduced population at the Willacy Detention
Center in Raymondville — at 3,000 beds the nation's largest — has been
apparent and may cause problems for a county that counts on jobs, taxes, and
revenue from it. “I know the numbers are down from what they used to be,” he
said. “It means the county hasn't had the same amount of money coming in.”
The county subcontracts with Utah-based Management & Training Corp., a
private prison management firm. Kathleen Walker, past president of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she expected quite a few
disappointed contractors. “I would imagine that in the state of Texas, where
we have so many different county facilities and independent facilities run by
contractors, that they are not going to like seeing a potential dip in
revenues to retirement centers or abandoned hotels,” she said. “But to put
people in on civil violations with people that have felony exposure is really
just not acceptable.”
September 18, 2009 KRIS TV
The last immigrant families have departed a disparaged former Texas prison
that housed them while they awaited decisions in their immigration cases,
officials said Friday. The families have been deported, paroled or released
while they pursue asylum or another immigration status to remain in the U.S.,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. Less than two dozen
children and adults remained at the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor last week
and the last four families left by Thursday. ICE has said Hutto will now
house only female detainees. More women are expected to arrive there in the
next week, advocates said. Federal officials announced last month that Hutto
would no longer hold immigrant and asylum-seeking families as part of a
Department of Homeland Security plan to reform detention policies. Families
arriving at the U.S. border and entry points from now on either will be
placed under supervision or detained at the much-smaller Berks Family Residential
Center in Leesport, Pa. Hutto opened as a family detention center in 2006 to
ensure the families would show up to immigration court. ICE wanted to end the
"catch and release" practice that had permitted families in the
U.S. illegally to remain free while awaiting a court hearing. Some borrowed
other people's children and posed as families to avoid detention, ICE
officials maintain. But Hutto quickly drew criticism over conditions and
treatment of children. Guards working for the for-profit Corrections
Corporation of America and trained to detain violent criminal adults were in
charge of overseeing sad, sick or restless children - from babies to
teenagers. Parents complained children were disciplined with threats of being
separated from their family. ICE has said all at Hutto were treated humanely.
September 9, 2009 AP
As immigrant children and their parents depart a disparaged former Texas
prison that housed them while they awaited decisions in their immigration
cases, advocates are questioning if the government has fully thought out what
happens to the families now. Federal officials announced last month that the
T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor would no longer hold immigrant families and
they instead would be detained at the much smaller Berks Family Residential
Center in Leesport, Pa. But with only 84 beds — and more than 100 people once
housed at Hutto — some advocates wonder if there will be enough space, or if
immigrants will be released. "We still have a lot of questions and would
like to hear more details," said Denise Gilman, of the Immigration
Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, which along with other
advocates filed a lawsuit contending that family detention at Hutto was
inhumane. Hutto is set to stop holding immigrant families by the end of the
year, government officials say, and families have slowly been leaving.
Instead of transferring the families to Berks, the government has been trying
to process the cases of families at both facilities. The Texas facility went
from holding 127 men, women and children last month to just 22 people this
week. They were either deported to their home countries or released while
they pursue asylum or another immigration status to remain in the U.S. As the
change takes place, advocates are watching to see if the Pennsylvania
facility has better conditions, if cases are handled fairly and if new
problems arise because of the shift. Hutto opened as a family detention
center in 2006, ending a so-called "catch and release" practice
that had permitted families to remain free while their immigration cases were
settled. The facility was necessary, ICE officials maintained, because many
never showed up in court or some borrowed other people's children and posed
as families to avoid detention. But the facility quickly drew criticism, and
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates sued the government in
2007 over the detention facility's conditions. Attorneys and UT law students
visiting Hutto to assist detainees with their immigration cases were astonished
by the prison-like setting and regimen. Children wore drab prison scrubs.
Razor wire encircled the site. They lived in tiny cells furnished with bunk
beds and a steel toilet and were subjected to head counts several times a
day. Guards with the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America trained to
detain criminal adults were overseeing children. Parents said guards
disciplined children with threats of being separated from their family. The
Berks facility, by contrast, is a former nursing home and with a reputation
among attorneys for being more family friendly. Younger children stay with
their parents, while teenagers sleep in separate rooms. One former resident
told The Associated Press adults and children went on field trips during her
stay, refrigerators in the hallways were stocked with fruit and juice and an
interfaith prayer group is available. But still, the stays can be far from
smooth.
September 2, 2009 Taylor Daily Press
Williamson County Commissioners voted Tuesday to end their contract with
Corrections Corporation of America, the contracted operator of the T. Don
Hutto Residential Center for illegal immigrants. County Judge Dan Gattis said the move was more of a “housekeeping”
procedure than an indication the county no longer wishes to contract with CCA
to operate the facility. Gattis said Monday the
county is waiting for Immigrations Customs Enforcement to draft a new
contract so the facility can continue to hold women. In early August the
Obama administration ordered children and families at the facility to be
placed in a Pennsylvania facility deemed more suitable for children. Families
were expected to be moved in a matter of weeks and to be fully removed within
months. The Taylor facility’s population of families had fallen in recent years.
To help fill the 512-bed facility, ICE began housing female detainees at the
facility. By mid 2008, an entire wing of the former
medium security prison was devoted to housing women. Without that contract in
hand, Gattis said he felt a need to terminate the
county’s contract with CCA just in case the ICE contract does not come
through. “To protect ourselves we’re giving notification to CCA,” Gattis said. “It’s one of those legal things we felt we
needed to do because the funds come from the county.” CCA’s contract with
Williamson County will expire at the end of this year. Gattis
said he hopes to have a new contract with ICE before that, but if not, CCA
will be forced to cease operations at the south Taylor facility.
August 7, 2009 LA Times
Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration
announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention
system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private
prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees. The
reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses
about 33,000 detainees a day and that has been sharply criticized as having
unsafe and inhumane conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented
many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003. "With these
reforms, ICE will move away from our present, decentralized jail-oriented
approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on our civil
detention needs," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant
Secretary John Morton told reporters. "The population that we detain is
different than the traditional population that is detained in a prison or a
jail setting." The federal immigration agency plans to review the use of
350 local jails, state prisons and private facilities, including more than a
dozen in California. Within five years, officials said, detainees without
criminal records probably would be held in fewer, less-restrictive locations
with more federal oversight. Morton also announced that the agency would stop
sending families to the controversial T. Don Hutto Family Residential
Facility in Texas and instead hold them in the agency's only other family
facility, which is in Pennsylvania. The Texas facility, which will continue
to house women, opened in 2006 and faced lawsuits over substandard living
conditions. A settlement resulted in changes to how children were treated.
Immigrant rights advocates welcomed the changes but said there was still no
clear policy on how detention facilities would be penalized if problems were
found. "We are encouraged that the administration is taking a hard look
at what has traditionally been a dark spot in our immigration system,"
said Karen Tumlin, a staff attorney at the Los
Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center. "However, only time will
tell if the reforms announced today amount to lasting change or simply
creative repackaging of prior policies." Tumlin
and others said the detention standards needed to be made legally binding to
guarantee immigrants access to counseling, family visits, legal materials and
recreation time. Legislation has been introduced aimed at accomplishing this.
Advocates also said that the government should use less punitive and less
costly alternatives to detention, such as ankle bracelets or intensive
supervision, for certain immigrants. "We are very disappointed by the
failure to discuss alternatives to detention in the proposal," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an
attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
"The system now detains thousands of people who are not a danger and not
a flight risk." To increase oversight, the immigration agency would
place federal monitors in 23 large facilities, which house more than 40% of
the detainees. The agency also plans to hire experts in healthcare
administration and detention management, and someone to review medical
complaints.
March 18, 2009 Taylor Daily Press
The ultra-hip movie, multimedia and music festival South by Southwest, taking
place this week in Downtown Austin, will feature screenings of a documentary
depicting the controversial immigrant family prison located right here in
Taylor — the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility. The film, titled The Least of
These, is a 62-minute portrayal of recent story lines following the immigrant
detention complex, with the successful lawsuit over inhumane conditions
perpetrated by University of Texas law professor Barbara Hines and the
American Civil Liberties Union taking center stage. It traces the evolving
policy of housing children at the facility, showing how when it first opened
in 2006, the facility had scant educational programs for children — just one
hour of coloring according to one child featured in the film — that were
reportedly against the law. After catching the attention of Hines and her
pro-bono team of UT Law students, media attention began to grow, albeit
slowly. But the lawsuit took off when members of the ACLU’s national office
were contacted and began to help Hines in a lawsuit that attempted to shut
the entire facility down. The film features several local shots of downtown
Taylor and interviews with some local residents. It also features the story
of 9-year-old Kevin Majid, a Canadian citizen and son of Iranian immigrants
who was detained at the facility. His family intended to return to Canada
after being deported, but had to make an unscheduled stop in Puerto Rico
after a man died on their flight. The chance layover landed them in Taylor
for more than 100 days. When Canadian media became aware a citizen was being
held in a U.S. facility for illegal immigrants, T. Don Hutto came under the
spotlight of international media. Brothers Clark and Jesse Lyda directed the movie. During a post-viewing question
and answer session Monday, the brothers remarked about the challenges of a
film subject intentionally shrouded in government secrecy due to government
policy. “We tried to tell a story of both sides, but unfortunately the
government didn’t let us tell their case,” Jesse Lyda
said. Instead the Lyda’s used archival footage of
Bush administration officials to tell the story themselves. It regularly
features a Bill O’Reilly interview with Secretary of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff contradicting things Hines and activists say they saw with
their owns eyes. In a humorous moment, O’Reilly pledges to “take his word for
it,” directly after Chertoff misspeaks. The filmmakers admitted their story
will likely not alter many people’s opinions of immigration, but they hoped
to at least spread the word of the T. Don Hutto Facility, a place they still
find many people have little awareness of. One item of misinformation they
found was that detainees were criminals. In many cases, Hines said, immigrant
detainees came to the border and immediately declared their intentions to
seek asylum, thereby never entering the country illegally. However, they soon
found themselves in handcuffs and at the facility, she said. Any resident of
Taylor will know the outcome of Hines’ attempt to shut down T. Don Hutto. It still
stands, and many locals still earn their daily bread at the former medium
security prison. However, the lawsuit was not entirely unsuccessful, with
government agencies and operator Corrections Corporation of American being
forced to change their policy in attempts to make the facility more
“child-friendly.” But the film begs the question, is detention ever child
friendly?
July 25, 2008 Taylor Daily Press
Outgoing 9-1-1 calls placed by immigrants detained at T. Don Hutto
Residential Facility in Taylor will soon be blocked after Immigration Customs
Enforcement changes the phone system in the former prison. The block affects
telephones used specifically by immigrants housed in the facility. Also
blocked will be all incoming phone calls. The change came as part of a change
in the contract between Williamson County and Immigration Customs Enforcement
billed as “Modification ... relating to Low Cost Telephone Services” on the
county commissioners’ agenda Tuesday. The commissioners voted 5-0 in favor of
the item with no discussion of the matter. After the vote, County Judge Dan Gattis said he was unaware the alteration in the
agreement effectively blocked outgoing 9-1-1 phone calls. Regional Spokesman
for ICE Carl Rusnok said the ability of residents
at T. Don Hutto to place 9-1-1 phone calls is unnecessary because of the
presence of trained medical professionals inside the facility. “(T. Don)
Hutto residents already have access to emergency attention by contacting any
on-site resident supervisors. Medical professionals and facilities are also
on site and can provide immediate services inside the center while ...
personnel alert outside emergency responders through the 9-1-1 system, if
deemed necessary,” Rusnok said in an e-mail
response. Rusnok also said blocking 9-1-1 calls
prevents any possibility of abuse. Local League of United Latin American
Citizens member and T. Don Hutto critic Jose Orta
said ICE and Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the facility,
were “covering themselves” from any possible calls to police. He referenced
an alleged sexual assault that occurred in the facility in May of 2007. That
incident led to the firing of a CCA employee after he was caught on a
surveillance camera sneaking in and out of a detainee’s cell. No charges were
ever filed against the employee in that instance because of a now-corrected
loophole in federal law. The order approved Tuesday also expresses that
phones should have access to toll-free numbers that will allow residents to
use prepaid phone cards they purchase while at the facility, though it makes
no mention of toll-free numbers to consulates or embassies. “(Immigrants are)
already hogtied as far as reaching out into the community,” Orta said. “I get calls all the time — desperate families
— they Google and see they are at the facility and sometimes they can’t find
their family members. If (residents) can’t call out without these telephone
cards, who knows how they’ll ever get in touch.” Assistant County Attorney
Hal Hawes, who submitted the deal to the commissioners’ court, said blocking
9-1-1 calls would not cause any problems at the facility. “They (CCA
employees) provide security already,” Hawes said. “They have a good sense of
when 9-1-1 needs to be called.” The text of the alteration refers to 10 telephones
being purchased and service with the capabilities of blocking 9-1-1 calls.
The cost of the alteration is $942.01, a relatively small expenditure for the
county. Orta only partially blamed commissioners
for letting the agreement slip through without any debate. “This is the sad
part about the county commissioners; they’re not privy to all that goes on in
T. Don Hutto. Every time they amend their contract ... ICE ... is not going
to be forward about their intentions,” he said. Grassroots organizer and
frequent protester of the facility Bob Libal said
not allowing immigrants to place emergency phone calls is unsafe and that
residents need access should they feel a need to call the police. “It
certainly doesn’t seem like a good safety measure. And if ICE is upholding
(T. Don) Hutto as a place that is safe and secure, that doesn’t seem like a
very appropriate action,” Libal said.
June 19, 2008 Nashville Scene
In this week's cover story, we profile CCA and its starring role in a series
of scandals and embarrassments across the country. Perhaps the worst of the
assorted controversies is the Nashville company's neglectful management of
the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in a dusty Texas town, which, until
people began to notice, was a cheaply run gulag for immigrant families—the
type of place where mothers and sons once shared open toilets in the same
tiny cell. Meanwhile, I should add, CCA's well-respected CEO, John Ferguson,
sits on the elite board of the Nashville symphony while corporate counsel Gus
Puryear belongs to the rich and lilly white Belle
Meade Country Club. So, unlike the families in their care, Gus and John
probably take for granted the luxury of a quiet moment on the throne. Anyhow,
we digress: CCA along with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division,
which contracts with the private jailer, ultimately reformed the Hutto
facility after the ACLU took them to court. So it is a better place now. But
why wasn't it like that when it opened? Although CCA deserves most of the
blame for the initial conditions at the Hutto facility, ICE can't claim
innocence. Privately, ICE's own inspectors sharply castigated the private
company for how it ran Hutto, saying at one point that “CCA's attitude is one
of complacency and disinterest in their work performance.” But publicly the
federal immigration agency proudly touted the improvements to Hutto without
noting that it took a lawsuit to convince CCA that providing prenatal care to
detainees is kind of necessary. Even more revelatory is another secret memo
from ICE that details why a detention facility in Laredo would have been
preferable to Hutto, which is located hours from the border in Taylor, Texas.
First sent anonymously to lawyer Barbara Hines, a professor at the University
of Texas who helped bring the lawsuit against the Hutto facility, the memo is
an odd and contradictory document. Nearly all of it expresses concern for the
comfort and integrity of the immigrant detainees and states a strong
preference for housing families at a more suitable facility in Laredo. But
the last part of the document, if I'm reading it correctly, seems to suggest
that another disadvantage of Hutto is that it is close to Austin, where
there's a strong activist community. As it turns out, it was that community
that highlighted the problems with the place. After the jump, some excerpts
of the memo: “The Laredo facility has an 'open dorm' concept; the dorms at
Hutto are cells within bars.” “Barbed wire completely surrounds the Hutto
facility, whereas Laredo has barbed wire on the backside which is not visible
in front of the building.” “Hutto has not passed previous inspections as an
ADULT facility. It appears that it would be more difficult to meet standards
for juveniles.” “The railroad trains frequently block intersections to the
Hutto facility thus making access difficult. Evacuations at Hutto would be
more difficult. In the case of a train derailment, the risk of hazardous
material by families would be present.” “Austin, which is 25 miles from
Hutto, has a broader NGO and CBO base that have typically been very strong
advocates for immigrants. The Political Asylum Project of Austin also known
as PAPA is a pro-bono agency actively involved in the advocacy for
immigrants.”
June 19, 2008 Nashville Scene
Located in a bland, almost anonymous Green Hills office park of
fake lakes and fountains is the headquarters of the nation’s largest private
prison company, which, at the moment, may be the most disparaged corporation
in the country. Since its inception in 1983, CCA has encountered legions of
angry detractors who believe that the business of punishing criminals should
not be—well, a business. But if the company has become accustomed to
criticism over the years—like a best-selling author whose novels garner
predictably bad reviews—it is now mired in a series of scandals,
embarrassments and public-relations catastrophes that may tar its reputation
for years to come. In the last 18 months alone, CCA has been the target of
several stinging lawsuits supported by detailed affidavits and third-party
reports alleging dangerous and inhumane practices that have put inmates’
lives at risk. Whistle blowers, once in positions of trust at CCA, have
emerged from the shadows to tell vivid tales of corporate misconduct. Federal
authorities have castigated the publicly traded corporation for operating an
immigration detention facility in Texas on the cheap. And at that CCA
complex—which at one point forced children of immigrant detainees to dress in
prison garb—dozens of incarcerated women and children have come forward with
gut-wrenching tales of anguish and neglect. Here in Nashville, CCA’s officers
volunteer on the boards of noble nonprofits. But the company’s local
detention center, far removed from the world of tony fundraisers and
white-tie dinners, has been the setting for a string of grim events. One
inmate beat his cellmate to death. A mentally ill man apparently went nine
months without being allowed a shower. And another inmate lost his ear in a fight.
So considering the company’s problems in its own backyard, not to mention its
near-epic failings in Texas, it may seem odd to begin our story at a CCA
facility in West Tennessee, where last May a few inmates brawled inside a
prison chapel. The disturbance at the Hardeman County Correctional Center, located
in the tiny town of Whiteville, was no different from any other jailhouse
scuffle, and it’s not clear that anyone was even hurt. But an inmate
who saw the fight—and maybe even threw a punch or two—got a lesson
about the workings of CCA’s particular brand of law and order and its
longtime penchant of avoiding scrutiny. On May 16, 2007, James Ingram, an
inmate from Memphis who battled a drug problem, was serving a 17-year
sentence for aggravated robbery at the medium-security prison. Clean-cut and
not much older than 30, Ingram was walking to his pod at the time of the
brawl and overheard a group of inmates fighting at the chapel. Ingram
fell into a fetal position to demonstrate, in his lawyer’s words, “a spirit
of surrender and cooperation.” If that sounds implausible, consider the next
part of the inmate’s story. After prison officials quelled the fight,
they took Ingram to a back room and demanded that he give up the names of the
prisoners who squared off. Ingram saw who was involved, but he wouldn’t talk.
So the warden, a 40-something man named Glen Turner and the brother of one of
CCA’s corporate vice presidents, placed him in solitary confinement.
Shortly after, Turner shoved him to the ground and Ingram fell on his back.
The warden then punched him in the face, opening a 2-inch cut below his eye.
Typical convict hogwash, right? The state didn’t agree. Ingram called a
lawyer, who called the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) to look into
what happened. Joined by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, TDOC
investigated the incident and determined that Turner assaulted Ingram by
“throwing him to the floor and striking him at least twice in the head
with the closed fist of his right hand.” In August, Ingram resigned as
warden. A month later, he pled guilty to a charge of official
oppression. It’s not clear when CCA’s headquarters learned what happened at
its West Tennessee prison. But state authorities hint that company officials
were slow to act. In an email to his colleagues, Jerry Lister, then TDOC’s
acting director of internal affairs, notes that it was only when his
department learned of the allegations from Ingram’s lawyer that “anyone at
the facility [began] to acknowledge the excessive use of force by Warden
Turner.” As a private company, CCA doesn’t have to answer for what happened
at its prison. It refused a request from the Scene to review Turner’s
original résumé, job application and disciplinary file. Meanwhile, TDOC
never issued a press release about the findings of its investigation.
As a result, the publicly traded company escaped the rounds of bad publicity
that a state-run prison would have endured had one of its wardens pummeled an
inmate. Until now, the media has never reported the details of Turner’s
attack on Ingram. But if CCA was able to dodge a PR nightmare last summer,
its luck has since faded. Now it can’t seem to serve so much as a cold meal
without landing in hot water. The well-heeled company finds itself
embroiled in an array of ugly incidents, both in Nashville and throughout the
country, that have been featured on the pages of national newspapers and
magazines and in the bold type of heavy-hitting lawsuits. Taken separately,
the company’s struggles may not seem extraordinary. The business of
incarceration is a rough one, even for those who don’t view it as a business.
But for CCA, which for most of the decade has been able to avoid criticism
from everyone other than a thin cast of anti-privatization foes, there seems
to be a growing series of corroborated accounts that sketch a new portrait:
that of a reckless, callous enterprise that treats inmates—even those who
haven’t been convicted of a crime—as if they were cattle. Maybe, then, it’s
appropriate that we move our story to cattle country. Elsa is a sturdy woman
in her mid-20s with soft, round cheeks and straight, black hair that she
sometimes pulls behind her head. Before she found herself locked up in a
dusty Texas town, she lived in Honduras with her two children, Richard and
Angelina. Here is her story: Elsa was happy in her native country and “didn’t
need anything from anyone to be well-off.” Then one day, while walking on a
quiet road, a man grabbed her hair and put a gun to her head. He forced her
to take off her clothes, and then he hit her. He called her a “perra” or bitch and laughed as he ran his weapon over her
body. Elsa cried and screamed and then, after being raped, begged for her
life. “Please don’t kill me. I have two children.” The man struck her again,
but let her live so that he could haunt her once more, showing up on a whim
at her friend’s place to let her know he could have her again whenever he
chose. The man’s father worked for the local police department, and Elsa knew
the only way to flee him was to flee Honduras with Richard and
Angelina. When she arrived in the United States, an immigration agent took
her and her family to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas,
30 miles north of Austin. It would be anything but a safe haven. In 2005,
Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which
runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division (ICE), ended the
practice of “catch-and-release”—which permitted undocumented immigrants like
Elsa to remain free at-large while they awaited their day in court. Under
catch-and-release, no-shows were common. So after 9/11, the specter of
illegal immigrants from all over the world roaming the country became a
security issue. Pilot programs sprung up that tracked immigrants with
electronic bracelets, though Chertoff went with a draconian plan instead:
Throw many of these men, women and children in Hutto, a former
medium-security prison that was surrounded by a 15-foot fence topped with
rings of barbed wire when it reopened in 2006 as a place for immigrant
families. After she arrived in Taylor, Elsa and her family shared a tiny
living area, where they’d be loudly awoken at 5:45 a.m. Elsa, Richard and
Angelina then had 20 minutes to eat breakfast. When they didn’t finish
on time, guards would just snatch their food and throw it in the trash. “When
this happens, the children cry and cry,” Elsa later explained in an affidavit
that chronicled her plight. The detention center was very cold, so much so
that the guards walked around wearing gloves. But they’d yell at Elsa if she
asked for a blanket. One time they came into her cell and confiscated
two of her sweaters. “They don’t care that we are cold,” she said. “They
don’t care if we eat or if we don’t eat.” Elsa and her children wore prison
uniforms and spent hours in their pod, often with no toys or books for the
kids. One day, Elsa and her family were in the doctor’s office, where
all the kids were playing with crayons. Angelina drew a picture, but a guard
grabbed the girl’s artwork. She cried a lot at Hutto, wondering what her
family had done wrong. “Mommy, where is God that he doesn’t want to help us?
Mommy, tell God to come and take us out of here and take us to our house,”
Elsa recalled her daughter saying. “Mommy, why do they have us as prisoners
if we have never killed anybody?” In March 2007, the ACLU helped bring suit
against Michael Chertoff and the immigration officers who ran Hutto. As
a part of that litigation, attorneys collected more than 20 affidavits
from detainees like Elsa, nearly all of whom were bidding to receive
political asylum from their home countries. The detainees hail from different
continents—some are adults, others young children—but they all tell the same
story because they lived it together. Raouitee
Pamela Puran fled her home country, where her
husband was kidnapped and murdered. Seeking political asylum in the United
States, she and her daughter Wesleyann wound up at
Hutto. The young girl, just 4 years old, had trouble sleeping. It was always
cold, and it didn’t help that the guards kept turning the lights on and off
in their living quarters. The food was awful too. When Wesleyann
would talk to her aunt on the phone, she’d plead with her to cook her chicken
curry and rice. That always stung her mom. Even worse, Wesleyann
would hear the guards threaten the children who acted up. If you don’t
behave, they’d tell them, we’re going to separate you from your parents. Wesleyann was terrified. A sixth-grader at a junior
high school in Ohio, Aissha Ibrahim came to Hutto
with his mother, brother and sister on Nov. 30, 2006. Aissha,
whose family had fled war-torn Somalia, said in an affidavit that
when his sister Bahja got in trouble, the guards
threatened to take her away from her family. Another guard told Aissha that if he complained, he would never see his
mother again. “I would be scared if I never got my mom back, and I would
think of how she took care of me when I was a baby,” he said. Just about
every affidavit from a child or mother portrayed Hutto the same way—as
a rough and cold place, where kids lie awake at night hungry and crying in the
dark. And if they act up, like children often do, a guard would threaten to
remove them from their families. To hear the stories from inside the walls,
Hutto seems more like a medieval dungeon than a 21st century facility run by
a wealthy company. “The conditions were shocking,” says Barbara Hines, a
University of Texas law professor who spent many hours inside the facility
representing detainees. “There were children in prison garb dressed like
their parents; it was like an adult prison system. Seven times a day parents
and their children were required to stay in their pods so they could be
counted. Laser beams shined through the cells at night.” Just about everyone
else who walked through the gates at Hutto, including federal authorities,
saw it as a deeply troubling facility. In March 2007, ICE inspectors visited
Hutto and, in their own distinct bureaucratic language, corroborated the
anguished accounts of the detainees. The inspectors noted that their “overall
review of the facility can be accurately rated as deficient” and
determined that the staff wasn’t following basic standards of detention. “The
Review Team’s observation of CCA’s overall attitude is of disinterest and
complacency in their work performance,” the agency noted in its report. A
month later, an interoffice memo from ICE said that at Hutto, CCA is
“losing staff as quick as they can hire them.” That’s because the company was
only paying its detention officers around $10 an hour, nearly $4 less
than what they could make at the county jail. “As long as CCA continues to
hire employees at this rate per hour, they will continue to experience the
problems they are currently experiencing on the floor,” read the memo.
“The current problems CCA is experiencing are a direct result of what ‘they
are paying their employees for.’ Unfortunately, it is at ICE’s expense.”
Among other issues, the Scene asked CCA to address the portrayal of Hutto
that emerges from both federal officials and the people who lived
there. The company declined to comment on any and all matters in this story,
instead emailing news clips and a U.S. magistrate’s report of the facility.
That report, which came three months after the ACLU filed its federal
lawsuit, depicted a more humane place than other earlier accounts and noted,
“there have been attempts to ‘soften’ the feel of the building.” The
magistrate observed that the staff removed door locks and hung murals on the
walls, “although the building still retains a very institutional feel.” In
August, the ACLU announced a settlement with ICE over the treatment of
immigrant families at the Hutto facility. The settlement called for several
common-sense measures, including installing privacy curtains around toilets
in common areas and letting kids play with toys in their rooms. All 26 children
and their parents who took part in the suit were released into the custody of
family members who are legal residents of the United States. By all accounts,
Hutto is no longer as oppressive as it was when Elsa and her family first
arrived from Honduras. But why didn’t CCA get it right from the start? Or to
put it more bluntly, why did a rich company—one with $388 million in revenues
last quarter—have to be told by the ACLU to cease treating innocent children
like criminals? “The point I’d like to make is that none of these changes
were done voluntarily,” says Hines, the attorney. “When you look at CCA and
ICE, the question is, how would this facility have been if no one found out
about it?” The apathetic treatment of Hutto’s immigrants was hardly an anomaly.
CCA also operates a detention facility in San Diego that drew a separate ACLU
lawsuit last year. In the complaint, the group claims that CCA routinely
denied basic medical care to immigrant detainees with hepatitis, diabetes and
other serious illnesses. One man from Ghana died from heart failure after the
center’s staff allegedly asked him to fill out some paper work—even
though he was seen kneeling on the floor of his cell and complaining of
chest pains. At jails and prisons across the country, inmates routinely die
under dire circumstances; some commit suicide after nurses fail to fill
their anti-psychotic prescriptions, others find themselves on the wrong
end of a baton stick. And in fairness, CCA doesn’t have a monopoly on
jailhouse horror stories. For every dark tale of cruelty at CCA, there is an
equal travesty in a county jail or federal penitentiary. The difference,
though, is that CCA can duck responsibility for what happens inside its
walls, whereas a government-run facility can’t. CCA doesn’t have to turn over
the disciplinary file of a disgraced guard or give a press conference
when one of its inmates escapes over the fence. It has the luxury to operate
in the shadows and turn a booming profit without having to explain how
it runs the business. We don’t know a lot about Patrick Perry, a onetime
captain for CCA’s Metro Detention Facility, located on Harding Road in South
Nashville. But we do know that on the morning of Jan. 31, 2008, Perry arrived
at the Metro Health Department to talk about his employer and offer a glimpse
into some of its secret practices. Metro Health officials would later
write a memo detailing what the captain told them. Perry was worried about a
troubled inmate named Frank Horton, who was imprisoned on a drug conviction
and had stayed in the same segregation cell since May 2007. Perry said that
CCA’s policy dictates that an inmate has to leave his cell at least once
every three days or else guards need to remove him by force. But at CCA’s
Harding facility, the warden reprimanded the staff if they followed this
policy. That’s because every time they had to escort an inmate against his
will, it raised the facility’s “use of force” numbers. And that placed the
Metro Detention Center in a negative light when CCA officials evaluated
it against its other jails and prisons across the country. At first
blush, the warden’s directive may not seem out of order. If an inmate doesn’t
want to leave his cell, why should the guards care? But Frank Horton was a
special case. As Perry told Metro officials, the 23-year-old inmate
seemed disoriented and was speaking gibberish. At the very least, he needed
medical care. (Metro Health Department officials say they made sure
Horton received a psychiatric screening after their visit with Perry, but say
they can’t divulge any more details due to privacy concerns.) Horton’s
mother, Cytherea Braswell, had tried to visit her son before Christmas but
says that a guard couldn’t find the necessary forms. She later had a
lawyer, John Clemmons, drop in to see him in March, after she learned her son
wasn’t well. When Clemmons arrived, a guard told him that Frank was just fine,
that he’d received a shower and a shave. But when he went to see his client,
what he saw troubled him. “He had a big, unkempt goatee, and some stubble on
his face and lint on his hair,” Clemmons says. “He was completely naked
except for a blanket draped around him, and when they walked me back there,
they didn’t act like this was unusual.” Now contemplating a lawsuit against
CCA, Clemmons says that his client went nine months without taking a shower,
which dovetails with Perry’s account of how Horton went the better part of
2007 without leaving his cell. Even worse, Horton appeared as if he were
completely oblivious to the outside world and lost in his own muddled
thoughts. Brawell says that, as a child, her son
was diagnosed with hyperactivity and mild to moderate bipolar disorder. As a
young adult, he worked at a Waffle House and played basketball with his
friends. With the right treatment, she says, he could live a normal life. “He
was an average person,” she says. “He had a job, he went to work every day,
he had friends. He knew how to take care of himself.” But when Clemmons went
to visit Braswell’s son, he was talking in the same mysterious language that
Perry described in his visit with Metro officials. It was an odd blend
of broken Spanish and English, and Horton spoke it as if it were his native
tongue, repeating the same incoherent phrases to identical questions. “When I
saw him, he was in a state where he had no awareness of his mental capacity,”
Clemmons says. With the help of the Metro Legal Department and the Davidson
County Sheriff’s office, Clemmons was able to transfer Horton to a
state facility for inmates with special needs. Now in the process of researching
his case, Clemmons isn’t sure what kind of, if any, mental health treatment
his client received behind bars. For that, he may subpoena Patrick Perry to
discover whether the CCA facility risked Horton’s health to polish its
internal data. “When I was there, the only medical staff I saw was a nurse
who merely walked from window to window and looked at the inmates through a
slot in the door,” he says. “It just looked like all they were concerned with
was that their physical well-being was intact.” In his meeting with Metro
Health officials, Patrick Perry also said that an alarm for inmates to
trigger in the event of an emergency wasn’t working. He added that CCA knew
the call system was a problem “but did nothing about it.” The former captain
may find himself testifying about that observation as well. Two weeks
before Perry came forward, Gerald Townsend, a 36-year-old inmate at the
Harding facility who loved scary movies, died at Vanderbilt University
Medical Center after being diagnosed with internal bleeding. His spleen was
ripped open and blood had flooded his lungs. In his final hours,
Townsend told a nurse that Ronnie Sullivan, his 22-year-old cellmate,
assaulted him. Metro police later charged Sullivan with Townsend’s murder.
Attorney Blair Durham is representing Townsend’s mother, Jackie, who plans to
file a suit against CCA this week. Durham says he’s learned that
inmates were banging on their cells as Sullivan began to assault his
cellmate. But no one rushed to help. Durham also heard that the alarm, which
could have saved Townsend’s life, wasn’t working. A month after Townsend’s
death, an inmate fled the same jail through an air vent. At first,
the company announced that the man, who had a history of escape attempts, was
simply hiding inside the grounds. A day or so later, when the Scene called to
see if he had been found, the company refused to comment. Earlier this year,
after CCA endured a series of PR nightmares at the Metro Detention Center
during which the company largely ducked interviews with the media, the
private jailer reassigned the facility’s warden, Brian Gardner. For the
Davidson County Sheriff’s office, which contracts with CCA to run the
Harding jail, the company needed to reevaluate its management of the
facility. “We are satisfied that CCA has responded with a policy change
as well as the fact that they have changed their management since these
incidents have occurred,” says Karla Wiekal, the
sheriff’s spokesperson. “At some point, (CCA) recognized there needed to be a
leadership change and at this point forward we will see if these changes are
effective.” In June 2007, President George Bush nominated CCA corporate
counsel Gus Puryear to a federal seat in the U.S. District Court of Middle
Tennessee. Initially viewed as a safe bet to receive a lifetime appointment,
Puryear faltered badly in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee
in February, appearing to some as arrogant and unprepared. The 39-year-old
nominee, who twice served as debate coach for Vice President Dick Cheney, struggled
in particular to explain how his company handled the brutal 2004 death of
Nashville inmate Estelle Richardson, at one point wrongly stating that the
guards initially charged in connection with her murder were “exonerated.” Now
Puryear’s bid has turned into an unofficial referendum on CCA, and it
appears unlikely that the Senate will confirm him before the end of
Bush’s presidency. It’s been that kind of year for the private jailer.
Puryear’s struggles, playing out awkwardly on a big stage, make up just the
latest bout of bad publicity for the Nashville company, which has also been
battered in the national press. In February, The New Yorker reported the definitive
story about the company’s Hutto facility in Texas. The magazine detailed how
immigrant families shared a tiny cell with a bunk bed, thin mattress and an
exposed toilet, while ill-trained guards rounded them up seven times a day
for a head count. Then in March, Time.com detailed the accusations of a
former high-ranking CCA official who claimed that the company
repeatedly misled state and local authorities about the rate of violent
incidents at the prisons and jails it had under contract. In May, The New
York Times chronicled how an ailing detainee was treated at a CCA facility in
New Jersey just before he lapsed into a coma and died. The paper uncovered
records that show that the man, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who
overstayed a tourist visa, was “shackled and pinned to the floor of the
medical unit.” He vomited and moaned and then was dumped in a disciplinary
cell for 13 hours, even though he was foaming at the mouth. Operating 65
facilities in the country with more than 70,000 inmates and detainees in its
custody, CCA will never have a perfect record. But what may say more about
the company anchoring a Green Hills office park is not the middle-aged
detainee who died of a heart failure or the sinister warden who struck an
inmate, but the 9-year-old boy who was forced to live like a common criminal.
Kevin Yourdkhani, whose parents fled from
torture in their native Iran, wound up at CCA’s Hutto facility on Feb. 9,
2007. There, he shared a small cell with his mother and had to climb a tall
ladder to get to his bunk bed. He slept right next to an open toilet that
smelled. The boy also complained about the food—he called it “garbage”—saying
that all he was ever fed were beans. “We are lucky if we get 30 minute to
eat,” he said an affidavit for the ACLU’s lawsuit against the place.
“It is usually 20 minutes, and they are always rushing.” In his pod, a small living
area that he shared with other detainees, the children were always sick. Lots
of kids had eye infections. Kevin attended school but rarely learned
anything. All he did was watch “Spanish movies” and color and draw pictures.
One day his father, who was being kept at another part of the facility, came
to visit Kevin. That infuriated a guard, who told Kevin that he would be
placed in foster care if his dad ever dropped by to see him again. “I cried
and cried so much that I lost my energy and went to sleep.”
January 21, 2008 Taylor Daily Press
In May of last year, a guard had sex with a female detainee at the T. Don
Hutto Residential Center. Federal law criminalizes sex between detained
inmates and guards, regardless of whether the relations are consensual.
However, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the
Department of Homeland Security, falls within a loophole, only recently fixed
through Congressional action, that prevented the prosecution of the guard.
With more than 400 pages of documents logging the ICE investigation into the
incident in Taylor, no charges were ever filed against the guard, an employee
of Corrections Corporations of America, the for- profit company that owns and
operates the facility. Following an open records request filed by the Taylor
Daily Press, ICE released less than 80 pages of the investigation, most of
which is redacted and blacked out, including names, ages, identifying
information, a photo of the alleged victim and detailed testimony from both
parties. On Saturday, May 19, a guard was videotaped just before midnight
crawling out of a detainee's room, “in an attempt to avoid the (security)
camera,” according to the ICE report. Security officers monitoring the
cameras saw him leaving the woman's room and contacted CCA supervisors.
According to the ICE reports, later viewings of security tapes show the guard
entering the room on two occasions that night - once at 11:29 p.m. and
leaving at 11:36, when he is shown “adjusting his pants around the belt area.”
He reentered at 11:37 p.m. before crawling out about 10 minutes later. For
the next two days, CCA employees, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers, a Taylor Police Department officer, Williamson County Sheriff's
deputies and a Georgetown Police Department crime scene specialist filed
through T. Don Hutto. The outcome of the investigation, which included
testimony from both parties, semen samples found on the concrete floor of the
room, fingerprints on the toilet seat and sink and surveillance tapes of the
common area where the guard patrolled, was nothing. Both state and federal
prosecutors have since said they could not pursue the case. Officers called
for a possible sexual assault -- The night of the incident, in the very early
hours of May 20, CCA officials interviewed both the alleged victim and the
guard. The guard was immediately placed on administrative leave; he was
officially fired the next day. The company called ICE, which contracts out
the facility to CCA to house immigrants seeking asylum with their families.
In fact, the alleged victim's son was in the room during the sexual
encounter, according to the ICE report. The son's age was not reported but
the victim's room contained a crib. When the ICE Incident Response Team
arrived, they determined the case might carry criminal charges and called the
Taylor Police Department. “Based on our learned information ... it was clear
this investigation was to proceed as a criminal matter and that the local law
enforcement agency with investigational jurisdiction was to be notified,” the
report states. Pete Del Angel, an ICE official from San Antonio, called the
Taylor dispatcher, requesting an officer go to the center to investigate the
incident. “And medical staff here thinks there might have been some foul
play,” Del Angel said. Sgt. Mark Clark of Taylor PD arrived just before 5
p.m. on Sunday, May 20, according to a TPD call for service report. After he
arrived, Clark asked the dispatcher to see if a sexual assault nurse examiner
was working at Johns Community Hospital at the time. T. Don Hutto falls under
the jurisdiction of the sheriff's office, so Clark requested sheriff's
deputies take the case. Williamson County acts as a local intermediary
between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the center's contractor, CCA.
Sheriff's deputies arrived just before 6 p.m. on a call for “sexual assault,”
according to a sheriff's incident report. An hour later, Det. Larry Hawkins
requested a crime scene specialist from Georgetown PD, who arrived at 8 p.m. ICE
investigators and the Georgetown officer collected seminal fluid and
fingerprints from the room. The female detainee was examined by an emergency
nurse at a Williamson County hospital, who reported to the Williamson County
Sheriff's Office that the woman sustained trauma to her vaginal area. The
female detainee and her son were taken to a hotel before being transported to
an “alternative facility,” according to ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda. The victim was later deported. Officially, ICE
continued investigating the case under a possible charge of official
oppression. Crime avoided both state and federal jurisdiction -- On Monday,
May 21, the Williamson County District Attorney's Office declined to
prosecute the case, according to the ICE report. Jana McCown, first assistant
district attorney, said the incident and possible charges of official
oppression did not fall under Texas law because T. Don Hutto is a federal
detention facility. In state law, official oppression - a public servant's
abuse of their post for sexual advances - only applies to incidents in
municipal, county, state or juvenile detention centers, McCown said. So the
case moved to the U.S. District Attorney's office in Austin, and the FBI San
Antonio division investigated. U.S. District Attorney Tony Brown also
declined to prosecute the case, according to ICE documents, despite sexual
activity between a guard and detainee being against federal law. According to
U.S. federal code, “Whoever “knowingly engages in a sexual act with another
person who is in official detention; and under the custodial supervisory, or
disciplinary authority of the person so engaging; or attempts to do so, shall
be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
However, the law only applies to prisons under the U.S. Attorney General,
which does not include ICE detention centers, an oversight and loophole in
the law only changed in July 2007. The problem arose with the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security in 2003. The new federal agency took over the
detention of immigrants from Immigration and Naturalization Services, an
agency under jurisdiction of the Department of Justice, according to a press
statement from the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. Feinstein
sponsored an amendment that upon enactment would extend the current federal
law to immigrants in detention under ICE. “The Justice Department could not
pursue these allegations because it was no longer a federal crime,” a press
release states. However, four years passed between the time homeland security
took over the detention of immigrants and when the loophole was fixed - just
a few months after the incident at T. Don Hutto. Charges will never be filed
in the Taylor assault - according to Scott Gerber, a spokesman for the
senator, the change in legislation is not retroactive.
December 11, 2007 AP
Immigrant advocates have filed complaints over an 8-year-old girl who was
separated from her pregnant mother by immigration authorities and left
without her for four days at a detention center established to hold families
together. Attorneys with the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas
School of Law sent a complaint on Monday to the Office of Civil Rights and
Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees
detention of immigrants. They also made a complaint to the Texas Department
of Protective Services on Nov. 29, said Barbara Hines, a law professor who
helps oversee the clinic. After being caught in South Texas in August, the
child and her mother were sent to the T. Don Hutto Family Residential
Facility, a former Central Texas prison where noncriminal immigrant families
are held while their cases are processed. They were awaiting a decision on a
bid for asylum, which they eventually lost. When agents attempted to deport
the woman in October, she wouldn't comply. As a result, she was considered a
high risk for disruptive behavior and moved to a South Texas detention center
in Pearsall on Oct. 18., according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Guards and ICE staff watched over the child for four days and the pair were
reunited when they were deported, ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok
said. ICE officials have previously said detaining families at the facility
is meant to help "children remain with parents, their best
caregivers" while they are processed for deportation. They also told the
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that parents would be at
the facility with their children and would be responsible for their care, so
state regulation wasn't needed.
November 16, 2007 Houston Chronicle
An 8-year-old girl was separated from her pregnant mother and left behind
for four days at a detention center set up to hold immigrant families
together while they await outcomes to their cases. U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement officials say they had to transfer the Honduran woman
because she twice resisted attempts to deport her and was potentially
disruptive. ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said guards
and ICE staff watched the child after her mother was removed from the T. Don
Hutto Family Residential Facility. But others are critical of the agency's
handling of the case, saying it put the girl at risk and is another example
of why the facility should be closed. "Here, it's the government itself
that has the custody of this child and then leaves her without proper
supervision," said Denise Gilman, who oversees the Immigration Clinic at
the University of Texas School of Law, which provides legal services to Hutto
detainees. The 28-year-old mother and child lost a bid for asylum and are
back in Honduras. But Immigration Clinic attorneys plan to file a complaint
with the federal government. Since opening last year near Taylor, the Hutto
facility has been exempt from state child-care licensing requirements. ICE
officials told the state Texas Department of Family and Protective Services
that parents would be at the facility with their children and would be
responsible for their care, so state regulation wasn't needed. But if the
state's child care licensing division receives a complaint indicating child
care is being provided, it could investigate, said Patrick Crimmins, a
spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services. ICE officials
have previously said detaining families at the facility is meant to help
"children remain with parents, their best caregivers" while they
are processed for deportation.
November 5, 2007 KLBJ News Radio
A letter from Immigration and Custom's Enforcement charges illegal workers
were employed at an immigrant detention center in Taylor. In a letter dated
May 23, 2007 to Williamson County Judge Dan Gattis,
Senior, Contracting Officer Susan D. Erickson with the US Department of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) writes, “There have been two other
recent incidents whereby CCA has contracted for services they have been
performed by workers that are not legally authorized to work.” CCA is
Corrections Corporation of America, the private jail firm that operates the T
Don Hutto Residential Center. ICE is contracted with Williamson County. The
county, in turn, is contracted with CCA. In a written response, dated May 26,
2007, Acting Administrator of the facility Evelyn Hernandez with CCA says,
“CCA contracted for services that were performed by workers not legally
authorized to work in the US.” Hernandez then goes on to list what actions
the company is taking to insure this does not happen again. KLBJ obtained the
two letters as part of an on-going Open Records Request. Last week, the
Williamson County Judge and Commissioners voted to authorize CCA and ICE to
begin having direct contact, rather than routing communication through the
county. The commissioners court also voted to authorize the Williamson County
Sheriff to appointed liaisons between the facility and the court. Six people
from the sheriff’s department are now performing this duty. Included in the
appointees are three detectives, a captain and two sergeants. Detective John
Foster is one of the officers on the team. Foster says they have been asked
to, “go in and examine and look and continue to look at ….how things actually
work at the facility.” Over-time and additional cost for these officers will
be paid for by CCA. The county has asked to be reimbursed $5,000 per month.
In addition, the commissioners amended the contract with CCA to include
indemnity for the county in the event the operators of the facility are sued.
The county is asking for a $250,000 line of credit from CCA to insure funds
would be available from the private jail firm to cover any legal costs associated
with representing the county in any future lawsuits.
November 2, 2007 Austin Chronicle
The dirty little secret is out: The T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center, a
detention facility for immigrant families in Taylor, has employed
undocumented workers, as well as contractors with criminal records. The
revelation has put Williamson County, which administers the center for
owner-operator Corrections Corporation of America, in an embarrassing legal
bind. The infractions, ironic as they are, were cited in an official
reprimand of CCA by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
addressed to County Judge Dan Gattis on May 23. The
reprimand only came to light in October, when WilCo
commissioners began airing concerns about mounting liability. But it was an
alleged sexual assault of a detainee by a guard on May 19 that was the most
likely source of the county's jitters over liability. WilCo
and CCA were to "ensure that such an incident not occur again," the
reprimand stated. Commissioners initially voted to notify ICE and CCA of the
county's intention to terminate its contract, but they reversed course at
their Oct. 9 meeting after CCA put on a pageant to save the lucrative deal.
CCA employees pleaded for their jobs, and a teacher described her pride at
teaching "Third World children who ... don't know how to use a
toilet." It was the liability issue that most consumed commissioners.
CCA lawyer Jay Brown insisted that 2006 court decisions had strengthened
commissioners' "governmental immunity" against such claims. The
court took the bait, resolving to discuss the matter in executive session.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union, which has won 10 lawsuits filed
on behalf of 26 immigrant detainees, is currently analyzing the county's
liability. According to a far-reaching report – "Locking Up Family Values:
The Detention of Immigrant Families" – published by the Women's
Commission for Refugee Women & Children and the Lutheran Immigration and
Refugee Service, Hutto staff and providers may have crossed the line numerous
times. In an interview, the report's author, Michelle Brané,
said the report addresses only the more serious documented incidents. In the
medical wing, for example, pregnant detainees were X-rayed with no lead
screen; detainees received dental work without anesthesia; pregnant women
were not allowed milk and were shackled when taken outside the facility for
checkups. Additionally, the report reveals that overheated water scalded
children at times. To punish children deemed unruly, guards "would turn
up the air conditioning so that the room became very cold" and would
turn off hot water for bathing, the report states. But the worst offense was
that so-called errant parents and their children lived under the threat of
being separated. Concerning the alleged sexual assault of a detainee, the
question remains: Why was the guard not arrested or prosecuted? No one at the
Oct. 9 commissioners' meeting seemed to know or care. CCA Senior Vice
President Damon Hininger said the county was investigating
the case, but Sheriff James Wilson said he didn't know the whereabouts of the
case file and that District Attorney John Bradley had decided to forgo
prosecution. FBI spokesman Erik Vasys said a
subsequent federal inquiry was scrapped, too, but concurred that
guard-on-detainee sexual contact is a felony in Texas and generally regarded
as official oppression. Neither the sheriff's office nor the FBI has
jurisdiction in the case, officials from both agencies said. Carl Rusnok, spokesman for ICE's Office of Professional
Responsibility, said that the county's investigation "clearly
established it was not sexual assault, after evidence and statements from the
CCA employee and detainee indicated and established that the encounter was
consensual." ICE believes the county should have the case file, since it
served as the primary investigative agency. ICE also referred the case to the
FBI for any potential federal charges. Ultimately, on June 12, the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Austin declined to prosecute the case. Two days later,
ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its case. In any event,
the alleged incident created a major stir. The detention facility was
cordoned off, and a police officer noted in a report that an injury had
occurred and a rape test was performed at a local hospital. But with no
arrest, specific tapes or test results might never be disclosed. Detainees
reacted in fear, Austin immigration lawyer Barbara Hines said. "Some of
my clients were worried after the incident because they had adolescent
daughters," Hines added. Generally, said Brané,
author of the Hutto report, a climate of fear existed at Hutto, with
alliances between detainees and guards forged for "protection."
"I interpreted 'alliances' to mean 'favors,'" Brané
said. That, coupled with the threat of separation from family members, could
have contributed to a milieu of extortion, even retribution. ICE, too, grew
concerned about detainee safety, noting in its reprimand,
"Sub-contractors were found to have criminal histories that were not
conducive to the family residential environment of the facility and those
workers were denied access." If law enforcement passed the buck on the
alleged assault, ICE is currently assuming no blame for the 10 undocumented
workers the agency arrested and deported. Nor is CCA at fault, according to Rusnok. "It is the responsibility of the provider of
services [not CCA] including subcontractors to ensure the workers they
provide have legal status," he said. Could it be that there's only one
culprit left in the equation – the county? As the Hutto story continues to
unfold, immigration activists again this week called on officials to close
the controversial detention center. A crowd of activists arrived at the
Williamson County Courthouse Tuesday after a vigil and two-day walk from the
facility in Taylor.
November 1, 2007 Laredo Morning
Times
When Wendolyne Morales received a letter from the
Corrections Corporation of America on Saunders Street, and then spoke with
the detainee's wife in Wisconsin, she knew she was onto something. The
KLDO-Univision investigative reporter spent six months working on a series of
10 stories related to Tomas Contreras, a resident alien detained at the
border for a drug charge and fine he paid nearly 20 years ago. With the help
of photographers Elsa De Leon, Guillermo Rodriguez, Ruben Carranza and Sammy
de la Garza, Morales did stories on the detainee's plight with the
government's mandatory detention law. In particular, the last one she filed
in June, after Contreras was released, propelled her into the big leagues.
This weekend, at a sumptuous gala event in Dallas, her name was announced
after the presenter said, "And the Emmy goes to … " Morales had
just become Laredo's first television reporter to win an Emmy Award. "I
feel very happy and I'm so proud to belong to the team that I do," she
said. "More than anything, it feels good to know that our competitors
were the big sharks." Her entry beat out six other English- and
Spanish-language reporters from the Houston, Dallas and San Antonio
television markets in the Lone Star Emmy category for Specialty Assignment
Report-Single News Story. Since the Emmys opened a chapter in Texas five
years ago, this is the first time a KLDO entry made it into the finals, and
the first time that a Laredo television news network brought home a trophy. A
native of Guanajuato, Mexico, Morales came to Laredo in the seventh-grade and
graduated from Cigarroa High School and the Vidal
M. Treviño School of Communications and Fine Arts,
where she focused on television, film and communications. She is pursuing a
bachelor's degree in communications and previously worked for Univision in
Corpus Christi. Dressed in a long, red evening gown that Saturday night,
Morales was accompanied by Maria Montoya, Maria de la Luz de Alba and Alma
Blanco. These are her best friends, "my sisters," she said,
describing them as her mentors and role models when they worked together at
another local television station several years ago. "We grabbed hands and
when the announcer said my name, we screamed," Morales said. "I was
so excited and emocionada (emotional) and when I
get like that I stumble my words. I didn't even know what I was saying."
What attracted Morales to her award-winning story was how the mandatory
detention laws, enacted immediately after 9/11, are dividing families and
creating undue hardship and suffering, she said. Meant to catch terrorists at
points of entry, the mandatory detention laws are now detaining people,
regardless of their immigration status, for crimes committed decades ago.
"They need to modify the laws because they are punishing people who went
through the whole process to come into the country legally," Morales
said. "They are detaining people for long periods of time, for six
months or longer," Morales said. "It's dividing families and making
people lose their jobs, because what job is going to wait six months for you
to come back?" In her stories, Morales focused on Contreras, a resident
alien and successful businessman in Wisconsin. He was detained for an
18-year-old drug charge by Laredo officials at the bridge upon returning from
a family vacation in Mexico. In 1989, Contreras was fined for drug possession
when police found cocaine residue in a car he was borrowing from a friend.
Contreras has since built up a successful career. As part of her series,
Morales filmed part of Contreras' family protesting outside CCA on a cold
early Saturday morning, even though she and the photographer, Guillermo
Rodriguez, are off weekends. She also interviewed Contreras after he was
released six months later and learned about the mistreatment and poor
conditions facing detainees behind bars. After she spoke with his wife in
January, Morales said she knew she had to "at least investigate."
She began calling CCA officials and U.S. Customs officials in San Antonio,
and stayed on top of the story. "When we won on Saturday, we were able
to show that Hispanic reporters can also put out an excellent product and can
compete with the big North American chains," she said.
October 31, 2007 KXAN
The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is under scrutiny again, this time by the
Williamson County Sheriff's Office. The move comes just one day after
Williamson County commissioners voted to continue their contract with the
residential center. The controversial facility in Taylor holds illegal
immigrants, including women and children. The county gets a dollar a day per
person that's held at the Hutto facility, but with a new amendment, the
county will get an extra $5,000 to hire a liaison between Corrections
Corporation of America, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the county.
The money is going to the sheriff's department, and that means that CCA is
now being watched. A reported sexual assault at the immigration detention center
involving a guard and a detainee happened in May. Recently, a CCA employee
commented on the assault. "It was not an assault. It was something that
was consensual," said Evelyn Hernandez of the CCA. "Although that
happened when I was first at the facility, and that's something that's not
going to be tolerated." The guard was fired, and federal authorities
closed the investigation, saying there was no criminal activity. However,
lawyers with the Texas Civil Rights Project said the incident was swept under
the rug, and there is no such thing as consensual sex between an employee and
a detainee inside the center's walls. "It's obviously a real problem
when [there is] a balance of power that exists, so, you can't have consensual
sex," said Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "Texas
law clearly states that you can't."
October 30, 2007 American-Statesman
Williamson County leaders backed off plans Tuesday to sever ties early with
the owner of a much-criticized immigrant detention center in Taylor. Instead,
county commissioners voted unanimously to continue their contract with
Corrections Corp. of America, which operates the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center. Earlier this month, commissioners took steps to end the contract with
CCA by October 2008. While the facility has been controversial, commissioners
said they were worried about the county's potential liability stemming from
its relationship with the center. CCA subsequently offered free legal
protection and $250,000 for the county should it ever face litigation.
Commissioners said Tuesday that CCA's offer assuaged their fears. The
contract will now expire at its original date, Jan. 31, 2009. Commissioners
said they'll discuss the possibility of extending the contract closer to its
expiration date. The 512-bed center holds immigrant children and their
families while they await decisions in their immigration cases and has drawn
protests for its treatment of detainees. The county disburses federal funds
to CCA, but commissioners say the county has no authority over what happens
at the center.
October 10, 2007 American-Statesman
Williamson County leaders put off plans Tuesday to potentially sever ties
with the owner of a much-criticized immigrant detention center in Taylor. The
delay came after officials with Corrections Corp. of America, in an effort to
sway county commissioners' plans, offered free legal protection and $250,000
for the county should it ever face litigation for its involvement with the T.
Don Hutto Residential Center. Commissioners were scheduled to vote on a
notice to terminate their contract with Corrections Corp. but instead asked
county attorneys to review the company's offer. The contract is set to expire
Jan. 31, 2009, but county officials voted last week on steps to end it
sooner, by next October, citing potential liability concerns. Corrections
Corp. subsequently offered to find and pay for legal representation for the
county should litigation arise. The company is also offering the county
$250,000 worth of credit in case it loses or has to settle a suit, said
Steven Owen, a spokesman. Owen said negotiations are ongoing, so the amount
could change. The 512-bed center holds immigrant children and their families
while they await decisions in their immigration cases and has drawn protests
for its treatment of detainees. The county disburses federal funds to
Corrections Corp., but commissioners say the county has no authority over
what happens at the center. No lawsuits have been filed against the county
since it entered the contract a year ago, County Judge Dan A. Gattis said. Commissioners said it was too soon to
comment on whether Corrections Corp.'s offers changed their opinion about
leaving the contract early. "I want to hear all the facts. I want to
know what our true liability is," Commissioner Valerie Covey said.
Assistant Williamson County Attorney Hal Hawes said he will probably report
back to commissioners in two to three weeks. If commissioners vote to end the
contract early, federal rules require Corrections Corp. to find another
government entity to partner with; otherwise the contract for housing
detainees would be subject to competitive bidding. Owen said the company
would comply with those rules if the county ended the contract early or if it
didn't renew the contract after 2009. He said it was too soon to comment on
what would happen to the center if Corrections Corp. didn't win the bid or
find a partner. "I don't want to speculate, but obviously we've invested
a good deal of time and money," he said. "Our hopes and our efforts
will always be to keep that institution operational."
October 3, 2007 CBS 11TV
Williamson County officials agreed Tuesday to prepare a notice telling the
federal government they plan to end a contract next year for a detention
center that houses immigrant families. The Central Texas county is home to
the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, a former prison where immigrant
families are held while awaiting deportation or other outcomes to their
immigration cases. Williamson County Commissioners agreed to have the county
attorney draft a notice to terminate the contract with U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and Corrections Corporation of America on Oct. 2, 2008.
Commissioners plan to review the drafted document next week and decide
whether to submit it, said Williamson County spokeswoman Connie Watson.
"All commissioners and the county judge support the federal government's
position on immigration," Watson said. "However, they felt being
administrators of the contract was putting the county in a position where it
could be ..... liable for a facility it does not operate." ICE spokesman
Richard Rocha said Williamson County has been in constant communication with
the government. "ICE appreciates all the county has done in support of
the facility," Rocha said. Under a contract with Williamson County, the
512-bed former state prison is operated by Corrections Corporation of America
with oversight by ICE. The federal government pays about $2.8 million each
month -- or about $180 a day per person -- to house the detainees. The bulk
of the money goes to CCA. The facility once held some 400 people, including
children, but the population has decreased in the past few months. None of
the families at the facility, in Taylor, have criminal records or violent histories.
A federal judge approved a settlement agreement in August that calls for
changes at the Hutto facility, where families live in cells with bunk beds
and a toilet. Announcement of the deal came as a trial was about to start
over allegations the children were held in prison-like conditions at the
center. Some of the changes include installing privacy curtains around
toilets, adding a full-time pediatrician and eliminating a counting system
that required families to be in their cells 12 hours a day. A federal
magistrate also will periodically review conditions at Hutto.
October 2, 2007 Austin
American-Statesman
Williamson County commissioners voted today to terminate their contract
with the company that operates the controversial T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in one year. The 512-bed Taylor center is one of two in the country
that detains children and families while they await outcomes of asylum
petitions or deportation. It's operated by a private firm, Corrections Corp.
of America. Saying that the facility has become a liability for the county,
commissioners voted to give notice to CCA that the county will end the
contract within one year, effective today. Protesters have decried what they
say is the wrongful imprisonment of children at the center. But federal
officials say the facility provides a humane way to keep families together
while they are in immigration proceedings. The county's contract with CCA, in
which the county receives a fee for each person housed at the facility, had
previously been set to expire Jan. 31, 2009.
September 24, 2007 Laredo Morning
Times
For the first time in history, a television reporter working in Laredo
has been nominated for an Emmy Award. Univision reporter Wendolyne
Morales was recently named a possible recipient of a Lone Star Emmy Award in
the Specialty Assignment Report-Single News Story category. "I was very
surprised, but more than anything I was grateful for the support from God and
(Univision General Manager) Terry Elena Ordaz and
(anchor) Osvaldo Corral," Morales said. Morales said she received
tremendous support and encouragement from the Univision team when she was
working on the story of a resident alien, Tomas Contreras. Contreras was
living in Wisconsin but was detained by officials in Laredo when he crossed
the border while returning from a vacation with his family. "He had a
previous drug charge, and was detained under the mandatory detention
law," Morales said. "He is a successful businessman and a good
person. (The authorities) just wanted to detain him." Morales said
Contreras had long since paid his debt to society, but was detained at the
Corrections Corporation of America detention facility on Saunders Street in
east Laredo, nonetheless. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
Contreras owns five businesses and was only required to pay a fine after
police found cocaine residue in a car Contreras was driving in 1989. The car
belonged to another individual. After Morales' report, U.S. Rep. Tammy
Baldwin, D-Wis. became involved in the matter, and local news media in
Milwaukee also took notice of the issue. Contreras was freed shortly
thereafter. "I am proud of Wendolyne and the
entire news team," Ordaz said. "This
proves that the level of reporting at Univision really reaches high
standards. Maybe now, as a consequence, they may change the laws." Ordaz said the report came as a result of Morales being
well respected and having confidence in her sources, as do all the reporters
at Univision, she said. "Just to know that we were actually picked, it's
wonderful," Ordaz said. Morales has been at
Univision in Laredo for about two years, Ordaz
said. The Emmy awards ceremony takes place Oct. 27 in Dallas.
August 29, 2007 Houston Chronicle
A federal judge on Wednesday approved a settlement between the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security and attorneys for illegal immigrant families housed at a
Central Texas detention center. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin
signed the settlement, which was reached Sunday after months of negotiations
between lawyers for the government and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The settlement agreement calls for increased scrutiny of the length of time
families are detained and allows for independent monitoring by a federal
magistrate judge. Other concessions include installing curtains around
toilets and allowing children to go on field trips with their parents'
permission. Also, children ages 12 and older would be able to move freely
about the center. Immigration officials also would eliminate periodic head
counts, instead having immigrants check in on their own. Attorneys for the
ACLU and co-counsel sued in a U.S. district court on behalf of 26 children in
March, stating that detainees were subject to psychological abuse from guards
and received poor medical care and inadequate nutrition. The Texas center —
one of only two in the nation that house immigrant families facing
deportation — is privately run by the Corrections Corporation of America and
was once a medium-security prison.
August 26, 2007 ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union today announced a landmark settlement with
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that greatly improves
conditions for immigrant children and their families inside the T. Don Hutto
detention center in Taylor, Texas. Dozens of children were released from the
facility with their families as a result of the litigation. The settlement is
expected to be approved shortly by Judge Sam Sparks of the United States
District Court for the Western District of Texas. "This is a huge
victory not only for the children and families that have been released from
Hutto, but for every detainee held at the facility, now or in the
future," said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney
with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. "Though we continue to believe
that Hutto is an inappropriate place to house children, conditions have
drastically improved in areas like education, recreation, medical care, and
privacy." The settlement is the result of extensive litigation and
mediation in consolidated lawsuits filed earlier this year against Michael
Chertoff, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and
six officials from ICE on behalf of 26 immigrant children. The children are
between the ages of 1 and 17, and were detained at Hutto with their parents
who, in almost all cases, were awaiting determinations on their asylum
claims. The ACLU, the ACLU of Texas, the University of Texas School of Law
Immigration Clinic, and the international law firm of LeBoeuf,
Lamb, Greene & MacRae LLP brought the lawsuits.
Since the original lawsuits were filed in March 2007, all of the 26 children
represented by the ACLU and co-counsel have been released. The final six
children were released days before the settlement was finalized, and are now
living with family members who are U.S. citizens and/or legal permanent
residents while pursuing their asylum claims. For the children, the release
day was very emotional. Andrea Restrepo, a 12-year-old child from Colombia,
had been held in Hutto in a small cell for nearly a year with her mother and
9-year-old sister. "I feel much better, I feel tranquil, I can do things
now I couldn't do there," said Restrepo. "I am trying to forget
everything about Hutto. I feel free. It was a nightmare." Conditions at
Hutto have gradually and significantly improved as a result of the
groundbreaking litigation. Children are no longer required to wear prison
uniforms and are allowed much more time outdoors. Educational programming has
expanded and guards have been instructed not to discipline children by threatening
to separate them from their parents. "The ACLU has long been concerned
with poor conditions in immigration detention centers, but the inhumane
conditions in which the children at Hutto lived before this litigation
demanded our immediate attention," said Gouri
Bhat, an attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project. "This
agreement with ICE will make permanent important changes that already have
been made and will ensure additional improvements in the future."
July 11, 2007 Government Executive
Magazine
In a recent review of federal facilities used to detain suspected illegal
immigrants, the Government Accountability Office found a lack of telephone
access to be a pervasive problem, potentially preventing detainees from
contacting legal counsel, their countries' consulates or complaint hotlines.
The GAO review included visits to 23 detention centers housing immigrants
awaiting adjudication or deportation. The watchdog agency observed the
centers -- run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency within the
Homeland Security Department -- for compliance with nonbinding national
detention standards. Of the 23 facilities GAO reviewed, 17 had telephone
systems allowing detainees to make free phone calls seeking assistance. In 16
of these 17 facilities, however, GAO found systemic problems hindering phone
access. Issues ranged from inaccurate or outdated numbers posted by the
phones to technical problems preventing completion of calls, the report
(GAO-07-875) stated. The review found instances where the centers fell short
of standards in other areas, such as medical care, use of force and food
services, but said these instances did not necessarily indicate a larger
pattern of noncompliance. "While it is true that the only pervasive
problem we identified related to the telephone system -- a problem later
confirmed by ICE's testing -- we cannot state that the other deficiencies we
identified in our visits were isolated," said Richard Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues
at GAO, in the report. GAO recommended that ICE regularly update the posted
numbers for legal services, consulates and reporting violations of detainee
treatment standards and test phone systems to ensure that they are in working
order. In a response to a draft of the report, Steven Pecinovsky,
director of the Homeland Security Department's GAO/Office of the Inspector
General Liaison Office, said ICE concurred with its recommendations and had
taken immediate steps to implement them. In particular, ICE has started
random testing to ensure the phones can access the necessary numbers. While
GAO did not find evidence of widespread disregard for national detention
standards, there have been recent calls for more oversight of immigrant
detention facilities and codification of standards. According to the American
Bar Association's Commission on Immigration, the fact that the standards are
not codified means "their violation does not confer a cause of action in
court." On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union called on Congress
to codify the standards, expressing concern over the causes of death for the
62 immigrants who have died in ICE custody since 2004. GAO's report cited
several instances of noncompliance in the standards for medical care, but
almost all were a failure to complete the routine physical exams required for
all detainees. The only other issue cited was the failure of one detention
center to have a first aid kit available. The ACLU argued there are far more
serious medical failures occurring in immigrant detention centers.
"Inadequate medical care has led to unnecessary suffering and
death," the ACLU said in a statement. "In addition, there is no
mechanism in place for reporting deaths in immigration detention to any
oversight body, including the [Office of the Inspector General] and,
therefore, there are no routine investigations into deaths in ICE
custody."
July 2, 2007 Houston Chronicle
A Harris County grand jury declined on Monday to indict two protesters
facing felony charges for chaining themselves to a fence at a Houston
detention facility owned by a private prison operator criticized nationally
for inhumane treatment of immigrant detainees. Ashley Turner, 18, and
Benjamin Browning, 24, protested June 4 against the Corrections Corporation
of America's detention facility in Central Texas, chaining themselves to the
fence of the firm's Houston location with a bike lock. The two were arrested
by off-duty Houston Police Department officers working as security guards at
the immigrant detention facility in northwest Houston. They were charged with
possession of a criminal instrument and trespassing. Assistant District
Attorney Kristin Guiney said the locks were deemed "criminal
instruments" because they were used in a crime: trespassing. Both were
facing a prison sentence of up to two years. Guiney could not be reached for
comment on the grand jury's decision. Randall Kallinen,
defense attorney for the two protesters, said the district attorney's office
overreacted and used the charge to squelch his clients' rights. "They
were doing it for punishment and the fear factor to keep them from
protesting," he said. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit
this year against the Corrections Corporation of America over its T. Don
Hutto "Family Residential Facility," a converted medium-security
prison in the Central Texas town of Taylor. Since May 2006, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement has locked up immigrant children at Hutto. The children
are accompanied by parents, mostly from countries other than Mexico, who came
to America illegally or overstayed their visas. Many are asylum-seekers
fleeing war-torn areas. Hutto detainees have complained of a prison-like
environment with camera surveillance, inadequate medical care and abusive
guards. Children, the ACLU lawsuit says, have suffered weight loss, bed
wetting and nightmares as a result of the stress from incarceration. "We
felt like someone had to do something," Turner said. "There is a
travesty happening in our own backyard." ICE officials have said that
Hutto is a humane alternative to separating immigrant families while they
await asylum or deportation proceedings. Misdemeanor trespassing charges are
pending against Turner and Browning. Kallinen, an
ACLU member, said he will speak at a Houston City Council meeting this
morning about the charges brought against his clients. He will also ask the
council to ensure that conditions at the prison operator's Houston facility
are investigated.
June 1, 2007 Austin Chronicle
The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the hot seat again –
over an alleged incident of "inappropriate contact" between a guard
and a detainee on Saturday, May 19, at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in
Taylor. Operated by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America,
administered by Williamson County, and funded by ICE, the Hutto detention
center incarcerates federal detainees subject to deportation – specifically
women and children, a practice that has rained international ire upon the
facility. Rumors are flying about the exact nature of the inappropriate
contact, but none can be substantiated. ICE's announcement characterized the
contact as "relations between two adults," implying the contact was
both sexual and consensual but vowed it took such behavior "very
seriously." However, incident documents indicate that something more
serious was suspected at the outset by both federal and local law enforcement.
On May 20, Pete De Angel, a higher-up who works out of the ICE Detention and
Removal Operations Office in San Antonio, called the Taylor Police Department
to report a "possible assault on an inmate" and asked to speak to
an officer, according to TPD dispatch records. The phone number De Angel
called from was the extension of ICE agent supervisor Roy Armendariz, at the
Hutto center. TPD dispatched Sgt. Mark Clark to the scene; he requested a
determination of whether a sexual-assault nurse examiner was on duty at Johns
Community Hospital in Taylor. Clark was then instructed to call the
Williamson Co. Sheriff's Office, because that agency, according to county
protocol, must handle all calls at the Hutto center. Clark left the scene
when WilCo deputies arrived. According to the
subsequent WCSO police report, three WSCO deputies, Mike Hallmark, Gilbert
Unger, and Lindsey Aigner, arrived on scene, with Detective Larry Hawkins
assigned as the investigator in the case. The detainee was transported to
Round Rock Medical Center. The report said the incident was reported as an
"assault (victim)" that took place from "11:30 a.m. until
12:30 p.m." on May 19. However, after their investigation, WCSO officers
labeled the incident as "official misconduct," instead of assault.
The "evidence taken" notations were blacked out on the front page
of the report provided to the Chronicle. Our request for the full version is
before the Texas Attorney General's Office. Another confidential source told
us it had not really been determined yet if the contact was consensual or
not. However, WSCO Detective John Foster announced last week that the conduct
did not fall under any local or state laws, so WCSO turned the matter over to
ICE. Jamie Zuieback, public information officer for
ICE, said ICE "takes any allegations of wrongdoing by contract employees
at our detention facilities seriously and thoroughly investigates such
allegations." Neither Foster nor Zuiebeck
would answer specific questions about the incident, preferring to reread the
statement. For Corrections Corporation of America's part, a Capt. Wright (who
wouldn't give his first name), who works night duty at the Hutto center,
said, "I don't comment on anything!" when asked why his facility
reported the incident as an "assault, with victim." There has to be
an answer to that question, but it's not forthcoming from authorities at this
point. Despite ICE's assurances that the case is in good hands, the outlook
appears bleak; a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
report titled "Deterring Staff Sexual Abuse of Federal Inmates"
flatly states that custodial sexual abuse, as well as assault, often go
unpunished. Even if such sex is consensual, it is a crime, the report
emphasizes – though only a misdemeanor offense under federal law. (Most
states, including Texas, consider it a felony.) But victims are often afraid
to tell the truth, resulting in a lack of evidence to file charges or
convict. And in this case, ICE is essentially policing itself, proceeding
with an investigation through its Professional Responsibility Office, with
TPD and WCSO reportedly no longer involved. Perhaps the OIG should weigh in,
for objectivity's sake.
May 23, 2007 San Antonio Current
Call it Kidmo — a supposedly family-friendly
version of the Guantanamo Bay detention center deep in the heart of Texas.
While the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center houses mostly
“Other-Than-Mexican” immigrant families instead of suspected terrorists,
including more than 200 children from 30 countries, the policy of hide, deny,
and dodge civil-rights law is unmistakably familiar. Four months ago, U.S.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and its private contractor, Corrections
Corporation of America, attempted to dress up the converted medium-security
prison in plastic trees and rainbow murals for the family-detention center’s
first and only media tour since the facility opened a year ago. Now, citing
“pending litigation,” ICE has decided that secrecy is the better policy, and
has informed the media that it will no longer disclose information about the
facility, including population numbers. The access restriction doesn’t only
apply to the media. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of
Migrants Jorge Bustamante was denied entrance to the Hutto facility as well
as a detention center in Monmouth County, New Jersey, during an 18-day U.S.
tour this month. “I expressed an interest to visit detention centers in the
United States. [The U.S. State Department] responded, programming the visit
of three detention centers,” said Bustamante, who was Mexico’s nominee for
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. “Then they all of a sudden cancelled the visit
that had been approved for the Hutto detention center and the New Jersey
detention center. And so I requested an explanation of that decision to the
Ambassador of the United States in Geneva, and no response.” The explanations
ICE gave the media were contradictory: The Associated Press reported first
ICE’s claim that the United Nations had not given them proper notice. Now,
Richard Rocha, who works in ICE’s public-affairs department, says it was due
to the same “pending litigation.”
May 22, 2007 KXAN TV
KXAN learned an employee at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center was fired
Monday for inappropriate contact with a detainee. The controversial immigrant
detention center in Taylor has only been open for a year. According to the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, which operates the
facility, a male employee was fired after an incident with a detainee early
Sunday morning. ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda
released this statement to KXAN Tuesday: "The agency was notified Sunday
of alleged misconduct by a Corrections Corporation of America employee ...
involving 'relations' between two adults at the facility." Corrections
Corporation of America is a private, for-profit company contracted to staff
the center. The employee was immediately placed on administrative leave and
fired the next day. Earlier this month protestors gathered outside after a
United Nations inspector was denied access inside. KXAN was also denied
repeated requests to tour the facility after representatives said they made
improvements to the interior. Those calling for the facility to be closed
said the government should not be allowed to detain children. The facility is
hailed by ICE as a place that allows the agency to enforce immigration laws
while keeping families together during the legal process. KXAN learned about
this incident through confidential sources who said there is much more to
this story. KXAN has pressed the facility to release all its information and
was told that could happen soon. The Williamson County Sheriff's Office was
aware of the weekend incident, but KXAN was told the incident report was not
available.
May 11, 2007 Austin Chronicle
Access denied – again. Monday was the day that 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
nominee and U.N. "rapporteur" (investigator) Jorge Bustamante was
to have visited the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, the big house
of increasingly ill repute owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of
America, which does a booming business – about $35 million a year –
imprisoning immigrant families, including children. Bustamante had planned to
inspect TDH as part of his three-week fact-finding mission regarding migrant
living conditions, then present his results to the United Nations General
Assembly in June. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security clanged TDH's door
shut on Bustamante at the last minute, however. The Associated Press quoted a
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman last Thursday as saying
the visit was never approved, though Bustamante told News 8 Austin on Monday
that Homeland Security had actually invited him to tour TDH. According to
State Department spokesman Bill Strassberger,
"The U.S. State Department facilitated the visit of Jorge Bustamante.
ICE made the decision to deny access because the[y] are participating in
litigation at the Hutto facility. … Yesterday, ICE invited Bustamante to tour
the Berks County, PA., detention facility as a replacement." The
government's fortress mentality may have backfired, however, for a
contingency of media and protesters descended upon the area anyway, to probe
even harder the reason for all the secrecy. Free the Children, a coalition of
local and state activists formed to protest the Hutto child jailings, held an all-day vigil outside the facility.
"What if we could surround this hellhole [with protesters]? We could
shut this place down!" said FTC spokesman and border activist Jay
Johnson-Castro. Barring Bustamante's inspection, Johnson-Castro said,
"more than amply exposes the epitome of Texas corruption." His
group is tracking more than $60,000 in campaign contributions by CCA to
legislators, who in turn promote private, for-profit prisons. Early in the
controversy, critics had difficulty convincing nonbelievers that babies,
toddlers, and teens were actually doing time in Texas, but no more. The
turning point in detainees' having access to the outside world occurred early
in 2007, when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against DHS and
ICE on behalf of 10 immigrant children confined at TDH. In the course of the
lawsuit, the ACLU has documented several cases. A film just released on the
ACLU Web site shows a mother stating that confinement at Hutto was a
"psychological trauma" from which she and her daughter will never
recover. "It was really horrible, and if you'll excuse me, I'd rather
not reflect on it," her young daughter says. Free the Children recently
held a "citizens' public hearing" at the Capitol to protest the
Legislature's inaction on House Concurrent Resolution 64 – authored by Rep.
Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin – which calls on the federal government to seek
alternatives to family detention for immigration charges. At the hearing, FTC
presented alarming findings – for example, that women taken from TDH to
hospitals for prenatal visits have been blindfolded and restrained during
exams. Member Cynthia Valadez said workers "on the inside" are
afraid to report abuse because they believe they would lose their jobs. FTC
is demanding that HCR 64 be provided public hearings "so all our elected
leaders can take a stand on this issue," said Johnson-Castro, who also
noted that keeping a toddler behind bars at TDH reportedly costs taxpayers almost
$100,000 per year. For that price, "We could put them up at the
Omni," he said. The reality of child imprisonment in their own back yard
reportedly caught the new Williamson Co. Commissioners Court off-guard, but
that didn't stop them from voting in early 2007 to keep TDH open, possibly
because the deal brings hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the
county. Is there any excuse, however, for not knowing their predecessors
willfully signed the pact that disingenuously changed the purpose and name of
the facility? Taking effect May 1, 2006, a modification to the agreement
between ICE and WilCo stated that TDH would
"provide detention services for non-criminal alien families" and
that the "name of the facility will be changed from T. Don Hutto Correctional
Center to T. Don Hutto Residential Center." Despite the official
euphemism, the contract itself is frank: Detainees are "inmates," a
guard service employed by WilCo may transport
inmates to "unspecified, miscellaneous locations," and detainees
shall not be released without ICE's permission. If the word "child"
is subbed for "detainee," the effect is chilling. And the high
fences are still there. A Taylor resident and FTC member, Angela Kopit, whose family is Jewish, said the sight of railroad
tracks, on which the facility is built, is a "horrific image,"
reminding her of "Nazis' boxcars." In response to the mounting
controversy, DHS officials hosted an "open house" this spring, but
media and officials were allowed to see only what DHS and ICE wanted them to
see – pizza and plastic plants but no detainees. Afterward, U.S. Rep. John
Carter pronounced the facility "humane," insisting the policy
protects children from human traffickers. But Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff revealed a less flowery attitude toward detainees on Aug.
23, 2006, in a statement trumpeting the new catch-and-remove policy:
"Word has gotten out to people from countries other than Mexico that
they will not be released, [that] there's really a change in the incentive
process that was previously drawing them in." Yet, for most detainees,
many of whom are seeking asylum from torture and repression in their home
countries, the real incentive is to be free. According to the summary of the
ACLU lawsuit against TDH, many of the detained families "have fled
persecution, war, and devastation. Many … have been found by trained asylum
officers to have credible fears of persecution."
April 14, 2007 Wisconsin State
Journal
I wonder when the U.S. immigration officials realized they made a
terrible mistake by detaining Madison businessman Tom Contreras. Was it when
he turned down special privileges in the for-profit jail run by Corrections
Corporation of America near Laredo, Texas, asking, "What about these
other people?" Was it when he organized a six-day hunger strike against
conditions that included overcrowding and no medical care? Or when the TV
crew from Univision, the Spanish language station, arrived on the scene? Or
when the letters started arriving from U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold
and from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin and from regular Madison people who know Tom
Contreras as a businessman, employer and supporter of local charities?
Certainly, when Contreras, a legal U.S. resident since 1964, finally got his
day in court on March 30, it took immigration Judge Bertha Zuniga just a few
minutes of reading his file to realize that a mistake had been made.
"She told me she was proud to release me," Contreras said.
"She told me, 'Go back to your life and keep helping others.'"
Contreras and his wife, Carmen, made it home to Madison on Friday after
stopping by Fort Polk, in Louisiana, to see their son, Tomas, 21. He
completed basic training in the U.S. Army while his father was being detained
and is scheduled to be shipped out to the Middle East. While the family
members were traveling, an official government letter arrived at their home
in Madison inviting Tom Contreras to be fingerprinted as his application to
be a U.S. citizen took another step forward. While his wife and three children
are citizens, Tom Contreras had delayed because of a now-changed Mexican law
that forbade non-Mexican citizens from owning property there. On Saturday,
Contreras family members and their friends gathered in the April sunshine in
the side lot of T.C. Carpet Cleaning on Fair Oaks Avenue. There was the sound
of music, the smell of grilling meat, and the heartwarming sight of
Contreras' youngest granddaughter, Sophia, toddling over and giving Grandpa's
leg a big hug. "We want to thank everyone who supported us," said
Contreras' wife, Carmen. She said the family was overwhelmed with calls and
letters of support. "The mayor even sent people (to the family
businesses) to offer help." The family's nightmare began on Jan. 9, when
the Contrerases, along with their older
granddaughter, were returning to Madison from visiting family in Mexico.
While Contreras estimates he has crossed the border "a hundred
times," a new computer at the border came up with a minor drug
possession ticket from 1989. A federal law passed in 1996, which applies
retroactively, allows the government to deport noncitizens for crimes that
include any drug-related offense. Stories like his were common at the
deportation center. "There was a Cuban who was caught with a joint (of
marijuana) in 1982," Contreras said. "They can't deport Cubans
because Cuba won't accept them. He's been there six months, and he's still
there." Others were being deported to countries they don't remember.
"There were people who have been here all their lives and they're being
deported to countries where they don't even speak the language," he
said. Contreras said that conditions were awful: more than 100 people crowded
into a space for 30, only six toilets, awful food, and non- existent medical
care that left "people crying in pain." "You don't have any
rights because supposedly they're going to deport you, they're never going to
see you again, so they know you can't come back and complain," he said.
"And, they make money on you." But, here's the interesting thing.
Tomas Contreras took notes every single day of the 81 days he was in
detention of the abuse he witnessed. He hopes to sit down with the staffs of
the senators who helped him and expose what is going on in the name of
homeland security. As his wife, Carmen, said, they support keeping the
borders safe, yet oppose a system that would distinguish between people who
are threats and those who aren't. Contreras said he can't forget those he
left behind in detention: "I am going back to help the people who are
still there."
March 21, 2007 AP
A federal judge will expedite the case of eight children confined to a
highly criticized facility holding immigrant families. Judge Sam Sparks made
the ruling Tuesday in Austin while hearing from attorneys for the children
and the government. Civil liberties and immigration advocates sued federal
officials earlier this month on behalf of children at the T. Don Hutto
facility in Taylor. They said the government inappropriately houses children
in jail-like conditions at the former prison while their families await
possible deportation or other outcomes to their immigration cases. About half
of the approximately 400 people held at Hutto are children, officials said.
None of those families have criminal records. During Tuesday's hearing, child
psychologist Dr. Andrew Clark testified that children at Hutto are likely to
suffer serious psychological trauma. Families held at the center have
complained of weight loss, subpar schooling, long waits for medical care and
threats of separating children from parents.
March 9, 2007 Austin Chronicle
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed 10 lawsuits on behalf of 10
immigrant children from Lithuania, Canada, Haiti, Honduras, Somalia, and
Guyana, who were detained at the T Don Hutto Family Detention Center in
Taylor. The lawsuits allege that the facility inhumanely jails children and
violates standards in place for a decade. Representing the plaintiffs are the
national and state ACLU, the UT School of Law Immigration Clinic, and the
international law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene &
MacRae. Named as defendants are Michael Chertoff,
Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and six U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. The private jail, operated by
the Corrections Corporation of America, once housed overflow inmates for
county and state corrections facilities, as well as undocumented immigrants
from Mexico. Now, according to a contract specifying sponsorship by
Williamson County, TDH houses "Other Than Mexi-cans,"
or OTMs, for ICE. Detainees number about 400, including 200 children, which
has prompted the international outrage over the practice of incarcerating
children. Children, even babies, wear prison garb and sleep in cells; they
may not have toys in their cells, nor may they have nondetainee
visitors. The lawsuits also chastise TDH personnel for threatening children
with separation from their parents – to keep the youngsters in line.
"This terrorizes parents and children," said Barbara Hines, an
attorney with the UT Immigration Clinic. Generally speaking, TDH
"violates its duty to meet the minimum standards and conditions for the
housing and release of all minors in federal immigration custody set forth in
a 1997 settlement agreement in the case of Flores v. Meese," said Laurie
Beacham of the ACLU's national division. More bluntly, "Nothing at T Don
Hutto complies with the settlement," Hines said. The controversy has
reached monumental proportions, with TDH lambasted in media outlets the world
over. TDH proponents, in turn, have launched a veritable Operation Damage
Control. Speaking in defense of the facility, Chertoff assured FOX news host
Bill O'Reilly on Feb. 13 that the facility is not a "gulag," as
accused. But if released, detainees "might never be seen again,"
Chertoff cautioned. "So, we have to be tough. But we're tough in a way
that's humane." Congressman John Carter, R-Round Rock, took a tour of
TDH on Feb. 23, subsequently pronouncing on his Web site that TDH is a
"humane" facility. In a disconcertingly cryptic clause, he
justifies incarcerating families as a deterrent to human smuggling. Before
TDH, Carter explains, illegal immigrants were "freed" and ordered
to appear before judges. "This policy was often exploited by alien
smugglers. … By bringing children, smugglers likely avoided detention if
captured."
February 8, 2007 American-Statesman
Groups advocating the closure of an immigrant detention center in Taylor
applauded Wednesday a state resolution urging the Department of Homeland
Security to consider alternatives to detaining families and children.
"It is important that state legislators are aware of what is happening
in their own backyard and that they begin to take the necessary steps to
resolve this situation," said Rebecca Bernhardt, the immigration, border
and national security policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas. State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, on Monday filed House
Resolution 64, which is critical of federal policy that allows for detaining
families, children and infants at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in
Taylor. Immigrants are confined on noncriminal charges while the government
determines whether they should be deported. "It is immoral in my mind to
detain families," Rodriguez said Wednesday at a Capitol news conference.
"The children are the ones who suffer most." The government says
the facility in Taylor was designed for families and is a humane way to
maintain family unity while ensuring that families can't skip immigration
hearings. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency oversees the
facility, which is owned and run by a private company, Corrections
Corporation of America.
January 24, 2007 American-Statesman
Children held at a controversial immigrant detention center in Taylor are
receiving four times as much classroom instruction as before under a change
that federal officials made recently at the privately run facility. An
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency spokeswoman confirmed that daily
classroom instruction has expanded from one hour to four at the 512-bed T.
Don Hutto Residential Center, one of two in the country that detain families
and children on noncriminal charges while the government determines whether
they should be deported. Nina Pruneda did not
disclose when the change was made but said it was the result of an ongoing
evaluation of how best to address children's needs. She said recent protests
against housing families at the detention center did not factor into the
change. "The primary focus of the education component is to make certain
that these children are receiving the best academic structure they can during
the time they're in the facility," Pruneda
said. Critics who have campaigned in recent weeks against the government's
policy of detaining families on civil immigration violations said they
learned Jan. 3 from conversations with people held in the detention center
that classroom instruction had expanded. On Tuesday, they disputed that their
protests, including two jail vigils last month, had no impact. "It
wouldn't have changed had we not exposed what they were doing," said Jay
Johnson-Castro of Del Rio, who in December led supporters on a 35-mile
protest walk from the Capitol to the Taylor detention center. Johnson-Castro
said a third protest vigil is planned for 5:30 p.m. Thursday outside the
detention center, where supporters will again call on Williamson County
commissioners to end their lease agreement to operate the facility. The
agreement with Corrections Corporation of America expires Jan. 31 unless it
is renewed.
December 15, 2006 American Statesman
The T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a private detention facility in
Taylor, is emblematic of new federal policy that detains all unauthorized
immigrants from countries other than Mexico while the government determines
whether they should be deported. The Taylor center is used for that purpose,
but it and a smaller one in Pennsylvania share a distinction: They are the
only two such facilities in the country that hold immigrant families and
children on noncriminal charges. On Thursday, members of Texans United for
Families, a coalition of community, civil rights and immigrant rights groups,
sought to highlight that difference. Starting with a news conference at the
state Capitol and then embarking on a 35-mile walk to the Taylor jail, they
charged that detaining families and children under what they described as
poor conditions is immoral and violates human rights. "Housing families
in for-profit prisons not only calls to question our moral values and our
respect for human rights, but it is also a waste of taxpayer money,"
said Luissana Santibañez,
a 25-year-old University of Texas student and an organizer with Grassroots
Leadership, which works to stop the expansion of the private prison industry.
The Taylor jail began holding immigrant families in the summer under a
contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It is
owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. Williamson County
receives $1 per day for each inmate held there. A spokesman for the company
referred questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Antonio
office. Nina Pruñeda, a spokeswoman for the federal
agency, said it was looking into the groups' complaints but had no comment
Thursday. When he learned about the protests, Rick Zinsmeyer,
director of adult probation for Wiliamson County,
said, "I was told the purpose (of housing immigrant families) was to
keep the families together, instead of separating them, so this is
interesting." Organizers of Thursday's news conference and walk said the
Taylor jail houses about 400 people, including about 200 children. They said
children receive one hour of education — English instruction — and one hour
of recreation per day, usually indoors.
April 24, 2006 KGBT 4
A private prison in Taylor could become the second facility in the country to
house immigrant families detained by federal authorities. The T. Don Hutto
Correctional Center is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of
America. Assistant Williamson County attorney Dale Rye say a new agreement
approved by county commissioners allows housing detained families.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said noncriminal immigration
detainees would be held at the Taylor facility. But the agency wouldn't
confirm if those included families awaiting deportation. A spokesman for
Corrections Corporation of America declined to comment on the new contract.
Currently, the prison has no detainees. The nation's only facility allowed to
house detained families is in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
January 19, 2006 NEWS8
A private prison in Taylor has a new, long-term plan to stay up and
running. Since it opened, T. Don Hutto Private Prison in Taylor has fought to
stay relevant. Workers there spent most of 2005 worrying the jail might shut down
permanently. In the last year, financial struggles threatened to close the
prison for good. In fact, it was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2005,
until Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. With no inmates from Texas to fill the
cells, there was plenty of room for prisoners evacuating the areas hit by
Katrina last fall. After that need passed, all hope to keep the prison
running seemed lost. Then the Department of Homeland Security stepped in with
a new contract for T. Don Hutto – as a place to detain illegal immigrants
waiting to be deported out of the United States.
July
14, 2005
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (NYSE:CXW), the nation's largest
provider of corrections management services to government agencies, announced
today that it has entered into a new agreement with the state of Kentucky to
house some of that state's female inmates at the Company's owned and operated
Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Kentucky. CCA presently
manages nearly 1,200 male inmates for Kentucky at two CCA facilities located
in Kentucky. Under the agreement between CCA and the Kentucky Department of
Corrections, CCA will manage up to 400 female inmates at the 656-bed,
recently-vacant Otter Creek facility. This facility previously housed Indiana
inmates until May of 2005, when the inmate population was returned to the
state. The Company expects to begin receiving prisoners at the facility on or
before September 1, 2005. The terms of the contract include an initial
two-year period, with four (4) two-year renewal options. and operated T. Don
Hutto Correctional Center located in Taylor, Texas, effective early September
2005. The decision was based on the Company's assessment of near-term
customer demand, primarily the United States Marshals Service (USMS). The facility
currently houses approximately 100 USMS inmates, some of which will be
transferred to other CCA facilities. CCA will work closely with the USMS to
facilitate a smooth transfer of the inmates to other facilities. CCA will
immediately begin pursuing opportunities to fill the vacant space.
Tarrant County Jail
Tarrant, Texas
Aramark
July 20, 2004
For the third time in less than a year, Tarrant County commissioners are
expected Tuesday to award a jail food service contract. The recommended
contractor, Mid-America Services, will provide three daily meals for about
3,300 inmates. The contract is worth about $3.79 million a year.
Mid-America already runs the jail commissary, which sells snacks and personal
items to inmates. Its chief executive is Jack Madera, a controversial
businessman with long-running ties to several local politicians, including
Sheriff Dee Anderson and Commissioner J.D. Johnson. Both officials have
said Madera is a friend but have pledged that the friendship will in no way
color their decisions about the contract. Madera was indicted earlier
this year on charges of using forged documents to win a 1997 food-service
contract in Kaufman County, but the charges were dropped. With the
expiration date looming, county officials requested proposals for a new
contract, which was ultimately awarded to Aramark Correctional
Services. But inmates and county officials alike had many complaints
about Aramark, which is based in Philadelphia. Aramark resigned its contract,
and Mid-States, as the back-up contractor, resumed providing food service at
the jail. (Star-Telegram)
February 25, 2004
Mid-States Services - the Hurst company in line to take over Tarrant County's
jail food contract if the current company fails to do a better job -- has its
own food-quality problems, a former Mid-States manager told commissioners
Tuesday. Emilio Gonzalez, who until January was director of operations
for Mid-States, said the former jail contractor often took outdated food from
its commissary operations and served it to inmates after removing packaging
that listed the freshness dates. "Vendors need to make a profit,
but it doesn't need to be at the county's expense," Gonzalez told county
commissioners Tuesday during their meeting. Mid-States Chief Executive
John Sammons said the allegations are untrue and blamed them on a competitor
that he declined to name. Sammons said some boxes of outdated food were
found in Mid-States' stocks when the company provided food service to the
jail, but he said those boxes had already been designated for disposal when
jailers told the company to remove them. "This is another
desperate attempt by those who would like to cause Mid- States problems, at a
time when the commissioners are looking at us as a back-up supplier," he
said. Last week, commissioners put current contractor Aramark
Correctional Services on 30 days' notice to improve the quality of food and
service or be removed from the contract. Mid-States, which held the
jail food contract until December, was designated as a backup supplier if
Aramark failed to meet the terms. Sheriff Dee Anderson said Tuesday
that in the week since the commissioners issued the ultimatum, Aramark has
made improvements and inmate complaints are declining. Checks of the
food service have found improved food temperatures and larger portions, he
said. But the company still has a long way to go to be acceptable, he
said. "If I had to make a recommendation today, I'd cancel the
contract," Anderson said. As to Gonzalez's allegations about
Mid-States, Anderson said he would discuss them with commissioners.
"If any of it is true, it's disturbing," he said. Gonzalez
apologized to commissioners for not coming forward sooner, and said that
during contract deliberations last fall he was still employed by Mid-States
and feared retaliation. He said he resigned because of concerns about
Mid-States' operations. Sammons said that Gonzalez left Mid-States on good
terms to take another job and that he was disappointed by the comments.
An Aramark spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday
but has said Aramark officials believe they are meeting contractual
obligations. Commissioners did not discuss Gonzalez's comments at the
Tuesday meeting because the issue was not posted as an item for consideration.
After the meeting, however, commissioners questioned the timing of the
comments. "I'm always grateful for people to come forward, but
it's odd that he would come forward at this time," Precinct 1
Commissioner Dionne Bagsby said. Precinct 3
Commissioner Glen Whitley said he gave no credence to Gonzalez's comments and
would vote to bring in Mid-States if Aramark did not improve its
service. "It just amazes me that this guy shows up to speak
against Mid-States a week after we put Aramark on 30-days' notice," he
said. Mid-States was the food service operator that served meals to
inmates in the Tarrant County Jail until Aramark won a $3.3 million contract
over Mid-States, Mid-America and Canteen Correctional Services.
Mid-America -- run by former Mid-States executive Jack Madera -- operates the
jail commissary, which sells toiletries and snack items to jail inmates.
Madera has been indicted along with two other men on charges that they used a
forged document to win a jail food-service contract in Kaufman County.
The indictments stem from an investigation into whether Madera influenced
Dallas County Sheriff Jim Bowles with thousands of dollars in favors before
Bowles picked Madera's company for a $20 million jail commissary contract.
The scope has widened to include Madera's dealings with other counties,
including Tarrant and Denton. (Lawyer Texas Parole)
February
19, 2004
It would be easy to dismiss inmates' complaints about jail food simply as
whining -- not worthy of serious attention because incarceration is not meant
to be a pleasant experience. But in the case of the Tarrant County Jail
and the meals being served by its newly contracted food service provider,
Aramark Correctional Services, the food being distributed to prisoners not
only does not meet the taste test -- it may actually pose health risks.
Inmates have been complaining about the quality of the food since Aramark
began serving the county's four jail sites in December under a $3.3 million
annual contract. In response to the complaints and boycott of the meals
by some prisoners, county purchasing director Jack Beacham and other county
officials went to inspect the food service operation. Beacham said they
saw 17 pans of soured pinto beans, discovered foods that were being kept at
improper temperatures, and witnessed one employee drop tortillas on the floor
and then place them back on the service line. (Lawyer Texas Parole)
Texas Adolescent Treatment Center
San Antonio, Texas
Cornell Companies
April 3, 2008 KRIS TV
Eight immigrant teenagers held at a facility for unaccompanied minors
filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming they were abused and denied access
to attorneys. The teens from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Cuba were
being held at the San Antonio facility run by Houston-based Cornell Companies
Inc. under a contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Undocumented minors caught by authorities in the United States fall under the
care of ORR while their immigration cases are decided. But Susan Watson, an
attorney for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, said the teens were beaten and
subjected to other excessive force in violation of their constitutional
rights. At least one teen was knocked unconscious, but complaints to facility
administrators were ignored, according to the lawsuit. Officials at Cornell
also denied the teens access to attorneys by unnecessarily transferring them
to other facilities before scheduled lawyer meetings, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit names Cornell and 15 employees along with three employees of ORR. It
does not name ORR itself because the teens have not filed or exhausted their
administrative claims against the agency, a requirement that must be
fulfilled before the federal government can be sued. "We vociferously
dispute the charges in the lawsuit, and we'll make our case in court,"
said Cornell spokesman Charles Siegel. The facility has 122 beds, but Cornell
has a contract to house no more than 25 unaccompanied minors there, Seigel
said. Calls to officials at ORR were not immediately returned Thursday. The
allegations raised by the immigrant teens were not the first against Cornell.
Arkansas fired Cornell from the operation of a juvenile facility in November
2006 after finding employees inappropriately injected youth with anti-psychotic
medication to control behavior. And in September, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officials removed 600 detainees from an Albuquerque, N.M.,
facility run by Cornell, citing failure to maintain safety, health and
well-being standards there.
Texas Commission on Jail Standards
Austin, Texas
Adan
Muñoz: The TT Interview:
August 3, 2011 Texas Tribune by Brandi Grissom: A cautionary
tale on privatization.
Jan 17, 2019 PCWG
dallasnews.com
Private jail firm employs former Texas Ranger. Will Rangers investigate
deaths in those jails?
AUSTIN -- For years, private jails in Texas run by LaSalle Corrections
have been plagued by complaints of lax training and abuse. In-jail deaths at
their facilities across the state have resulted in multiple lawsuits for
wrongful deaths and negligence. So when the state passed a law in 2017
requiring Texas jails to have an outside law enforcement agency investigate
such deaths, the Texas Rangers seemed a perfect fit. Nearly every jail in the
state chose the Rangers, the state’s premier investigative agency, to oversee
their investigations - including seven of eight LaSalle-run jails -- overseen
by the state. Now, the Texas Jail
Commission, which oversees 241 jails across the state, is reviewing its
decision to appoint the Rangers as the investigating agency for eight
LaSalle-run jails, including ones in Parker and Johnson counties. The review
comes after The Dallas Morning News informed the commission that LaSalle's
director of governmental affairs, Bob Prince, is a former Texas Ranger whose
son, Randall Prince, now oversees the Rangers as a deputy director for the
Department of Public Safety. The younger Prince, who is part of Director
Steve McCraw’s three-pronged executive team, ran the Texas Rangers for four
years prior to his promotion last September. Brandon Wood, executive director
of the jail commission, said his staff had reached out to the Louisiana-based
private jail company to discuss designating another agency to investigate its
in-jail deaths after The News informed him of the company’s connections to
the Rangers. “While I have full faith and confidence in the Rangers not being
influenced one iota, we are looking at the possibility of having someone else
designated because we want to make sure there’s no room to doubt that deaths
in custody are being investigated properly,” Wood said. “We’re trying to make
sure no one could even question. We want people comfortable in knowing that
they conduct those investigations with complete impartiality.” Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public
Safety, stressed that there had been no impropriety in previous
investigations of LaSalle-run jails and emphasized the Rangers’
“well-deserved reputation for conducting comprehensive and unbiased
investigations.” But she said the
department would expand its practices to avoid conflicts of interest. “We do
recognize that perception matters,” Cesinger said
in a prepared statement. “We remain committed to operating beyond reproach to
assure the public that investigations are conducted thoroughly and
impartially.” If the Rangers were called to investigate LaSalle’s jails, she
said, they would still conduct the investigation, but Randall Prince would
recuse himself and one of the department’s other two deputy directors would
oversee the case. The Rangers already bring in outside agencies, like the
FBI, in investigations on in-jail deaths or officer-involved shootings when
an apparent conflict of interest exists, Cesinger
said. The department also takes Rangers off investigations when conflicts
exist. Jay Eason, director of operations for LaSalle, said the company “does
not view Bob’s role with the company as a conflict of interest when it comes
to the Texas Rangers investigating deaths in custody.” “Bob Prince’s job
duties are strictly Governmental Affairs,” Eason said in a statement. “He does not have any oversight of facility
operations.” Still, the jail commission is planning to replace the Rangers as
LaSalle’s outside investigating agency. Wood said the commission and LaSalle
had not decided on a course of action yet or when the change might happen,
but “they’re willing to do whatever we say or deem necessary.” The
requirement for an outside law enforcement agency to investigate in-jail
deaths was passed into law under the Sandra Bland Act of 2017. The law’s
author, Houston Democrat Garnet Coleman, said the law’s “language on
investigations was purposefully included to eliminate conflicts of interest”
and added that he would continue to work on tweaks to the law this session.
“We will look at the alternatives as part of the Bland Act follow-up,” he
said. Local jails were tasked with presenting an outside agency to
investigate them, which the commission then would sign off on, Wood said. All
but seven jails - including Dallas' which chose the local district attorney
investigator - chose the Texas Rangers. Wood said he was focused on meeting
the deadline for the requirement - which had to be in place by the beginning
of 2018 - and did not make the connection between LaSalle and the Texas
Rangers until The News brought it to his attention. “It’s one of those things
when you brought it up, I said, ‘You’re right.’ His dad does work for
LaSalle,” Wood said. “While it doesn’t violate the statute, there could be a
perception involved that someone does somebody a favor. We strive each and
every day to make sure we’re aware of the perception and that people are
comfortable with what we do and there is no room for questioning that.” The
only LaSalle-run jail not assigned the Texas Rangers as their outside law
enforcement agency was the Jefferson County Downtown Jail, which chose the
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. LaSalle officials said their jails are
overseen by local counties, which are responsible for naming the outside
investigating agencies required by the law. “When we have a death in custody
in one of the county jails we operate in Texas, we report the incident to the
Texas Jail Commission and the Sheriff’s Office,” Eason said. “ An outside law enforcement agency is appointed to
investigate the death in custody. Lasalle Corrections is not involved in that
decision and the investigation.” Diana Claitor,
executive director of the Texas Jail Project which advocates for improved
standards at jails, was critical of the Rangers investigating LaSalle jails.
“It’s disturbing to find out that the former Texas Ranger and longtime DPS
officer Bob Prince is a Director of Government Affairs for LaSalle Southwest
Corrections,” Claitor said in a statement. “Worse,
his own son works at DPS in an oversight position of the Texas Rangers. So
when a Ranger is sent to investigate LaSalle deaths, which occur frequently,
I’m sorry to say, there is likelihood of conflict of interest.” She called
for a closer watch on jails run by LaSalle, which she said had an “abysmal
track record.” In November, The News reported on LaSalle’s high use of
untrained jailers who don’t have the required 96 hours of training on how to
handle volatile prisoners, when to use force and what constitutes basic
safety techniques. Last year, LaSalle-run jails were found out of compliance
with Texas jail standards at least four times. In addition to jails in Parker
and Johnson, the company runs lockups in Bowie, Fannin, Haskell, Jefferson,
McLennan and Limestone counties. “If there are any jails in Texas that
deserve close observation and unbiased oversight, it’s the privatized
facilities run by LaSalle,” Claitor said. She
applauded the commission’s move to designate new investigating agencies for
LaSalle-run jails. “It’s essential that they get somebody else and I’m glad
that they’re doing that,” she said.
Apr 7, 2016 houstonpress.com
UH Students Urge University to Divest From For-Profit Prisons
Grad students at the University of Houston have launched a petition
urging the school to divest from the private prison industry, which is made
up of companies that profit from incarcerating people. Two social work
students, Julia Kramp and Nakia Winfield, learned
that UH had several million dollars invested in four major financial
corporations that, in turn, each had millions of shares in private prisons.
The two had been tasked with launching a social policy initiative as a class
project and had been following End Mass Incarceration Houston, which often
criticizes these private prisons for making a buck off mass incarceration. So
when Kramp and Winfield found out UH was,
indirectly, investing in this industry,
they reached out to End Mass Incarceration Houston and started putting
together a Change.org petition urging UH to stop “banking on bondage.” Now,
the petition has more than 200 signatures. "Private prisons really prey
on and exploit targeted populations: people of color, usually in poor
neighborhoods," Winfield said. "They try to pass legislation that
increases detentions, that rips apart families, that has people in jail for
longer sentences for nonviolent crimes. So it's really insidious on a
personal level because of the way it rips apart communities." The
petition is modeled after initiatives that student activists launched at the
University of California and Columbia University in New York, where they
successfully convinced their universities to divest from private prisons in
December and June respectively. Unlike UH, both of those universities were
directly investing in prison companies, like the Corrections Corporation of
America. Michael Allen, an activist with End Mass Incarceration Houston, had
been in contact with students and activists from each of those schools about
how they managed to pull it off, and he shared those tips with Kramp and Winfield. “They suggested it might take as long
as two years,” Allen said. “But we think we can do it more quickly if we can
bring the pressure to bear and keep it consistent.” Over the past couple of
decades, private prisons have been on the rise. Between 1990 and 2009, the
number of people held in private prisons increased by 1,600 percent,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Many are undocumented
immigrants: Sixty-two percent of all beds in Immigration and Customs
Enforcement facilities are run by private prisons, according to the national
social justice group Grassroots Leadership. Another report by In The Public
Interest found that roughly two-thirds of private prison contracts it
examined required that the prisons be 80 to 100 percent at capacity — and
that's regardless of the crime rate outside. Which means that the private
prison industry also has a big incentive to lobby lawmakers to keep their
tough-on-crime attitudes up. As Kramp, Winfield and
Allen note in their research, Corrections Corporation of America and another
private prison company, GEO, together had hired 270 lobbyists since 2003. And
they can do that, the UH students note, because of the millions of dollars
that others invest in their companies. Kramp,
Winfield and Allen are putting together a panel to raise awareness about the
issue on April 12. They said they hope this might lead to more student
interest in things like future rallies or sit-ins — things that were largely
a part of Columbia's campaign, for example. Allen said it helps to look at
what those students were able to accomplish. “We don't want to limit ourselves by thinking, oh,
we're not big enough —we're just activists or students,” Allen said. “We
don't want to limit ourselves to that. I really believe that this is within
our grasp.” We asked the University of Houston for comment on the petition.
We will update if and when the school provides one.
August
15, 2013 Grassroots Leadership
A
letter signed by 50 national, state, and local-level criminal justice,
immigrant rights, civil liberties, policy, labor and faith organizations was
delivered today to McAllen city officials calling on them to abandon plans to
construct a new 1,000-bed private prison. The new lock-up would be the
result of a more than thirtyfold increase in McAllen’s current detention
agreement with the United States Marshals Service (USMS). The letter warns
that the vast majority of people incarcerated in the McAllen prison for the
USMS would likely be immigrants charged only with unauthorized
border-crossing. The city would be contributing to the growing trend of
criminalizing migrants under the federal “Operation Streamline” program. The
letter also highlights the shameful history of Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA) and GEO Group, the country’s two largest for-profit prison
companies, both interested in bidding on the deal. Federal Judge
Carlton Reeves called the GEO Group-operated Walnut Grove Youth Correctional
Facility in Mississippi a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman
acts.” “As the disturbing experiences
of other jurisdictions have shown, handing control of prisons over to
for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse, neglect, and misconduct,” said
Astrid Dominguez, Advocacy Coordinator for the Lower Rio Grande Valley for
the ACLU of Texas. Additionally, the letter cites local governments that have
regretted contracting with for-profit prison companies in the past, including
that of Youngstown, Ohio. According to news reports, the CCA-run
Northeast Ohio Correctional Center was plagued with violence and unrest
almost from the moment it opened in 1997, seeing 13 stabbings, two murders,
and six escapes in just its first fourteen months of operation. Despite
having initially drawn CCA to the city, the mayor of Youngstown later told
reporters, “Knowing what I know now, I would never have allowed CCA to build
a prison here.” “Private prisons have a long and troubled history in Texas
and beyond,” said Bob Libal, Executive Director of
Grassroots Leadership, one of the letter’s signatories. “The City of
McAllen would be making a mistake to partner with a prison corporation with a
long record of human rights violations to incarcerate immigrants.”
Signatories of the letter urging McAllen city officials not to move forward
with plans to build a new for-profit prison for immigrants include the
American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, American
Federation of Government Employees Local 2272, Grassroots Leadership, The
Detention Watch Network, the United Methodist Church, RGV Community DREAMers, and La Union de Pueblo Entero.
Nov. 23, 1997
Gov. George W. Bush didn't preach a sermon about the fox and the henhouse
when he hosted one of his periodic seminars for government appointees last
week, but maybe he should have. The meetings were initiated several
years ago by Gov. Ann Richards to familiarize the men and women who serve on
the part-time boards the run most state agencies with some of the do's and don't's of public service. The seminars are
probably a good idea. The seminars, however, have been unable to cure
the huge lapses in ethical sensitivity and common sense that all too often
crop up in state government, most recently at the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards. It was discovered that Robert L. Dearing, the commission's
deputy director, was moonlighting for a private company that operates jails
regulated by the commission. He quit both jobs soon after publicity
about them broke, but both he and the commission's executive director, Jack
Crump, said they saw no conflict between the two positions. With all
due respect, it shouldn't require a degree in government ethics to come to
the opposite conclusion. The conflict was obvious. Dearing also
was being paid about $42,000 a year as a consultant to a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Bobby Ross Group, which operates three county jails in
Texas. According to the company's lawyer, Dearing didn't work for the
Bobby Ross Group in Texas, but only for a subsidiary that operated in
Georgia. The distinction, however, didn't remove the conflict.
The dual employment came to light after Dearing signed off on a commission
report giving a clean bill of health to the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, which is operated by the Bobby Ross Group. That report
contradicted an audit by the state of Montana, which until recently kept some
of its prisoners in the West Texas lockup. Dearing insisted his work
for the private company had "absolutely" no effect on his reviews
of their Texas jails. He said he was the victim of a "wrong
perception." Still, Crump said he saw no problem with Dearing's
arrangement. Neither, presumably, did Crump's bosses, the nine
commission members, six of whom were appointed by Bush. Bush, however,
had a big problem with it. After learning of Dearing's conflict, Bush
had his chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, call
Crump. Allbaugh, according to Bush
spokesperson Karen Hughes, conveyed the "governor's strong disapproval
and feeling that it was unacceptable." (Houston Chronicle)
Nov. 14, 1997
The deputy director of the state agency charged with regulating jails said
Thursday he did nothing improper by taking a sideline consulting job with one
of the private jail companies he regulates. "Under the same
circumstances ... I would do it today again," Robert Dearing said of his
$42,000-a-year contract with BRG of Georgia. BRG is a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Bobby Ross Group, which operates three county lockups in
Texas. As the No. 2 person at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards,
Dearing schedules, reviews and sometimes inspects county jails, including
those managed by private companies. Last month he gave a clean bill of
health to a Bobby Ross Group-managed jail in the West Texas town of
Spur. Dearing's assessment came despite claims by Montana officials
that the Dickens County Correctional Center was violating 29 terms of its
contract for housing Montana felons. Dearing said the job was approved
by his boss, Jack Crump, executive director of the commission, a fact Crump
acknowledged on Wednesday. Dearing said he also got the opinion of a
lawyer who told him there was no problem so long as his boss had approved
it. The attorney advising him, however, is the personal attorney of BRG
founder Bobby Ross. (Houston Chronicle)
Texas Department of Family and
Protective Services
Dec 5, 2016 democracynow.org
500 Immigrant Women & Children Released from Family Detention in Texas
Over the weekend, federal authorities in Texas reportedly released nearly
500 women and children from the nation’s two largest family detention
centers. Legal advocates say most families were released without travel
plans, and volunteers worked with a local church to open shelter space early
Saturday morning. The move followed a ruling Friday by a Texas judge that
bars the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services from issuing
child care licenses to family detention centers. Advocates say conditions at
the facilities are equivalent to prisons. The judgment effectively
invalidates the licenses now used to operate the facilities, which are owned
by GEO and CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections
Corporation of America. Human rights groups have called on the Obama
administration to end the practice of detaining families before the end of
his administration.
Dec 5, 2016 sacurrent.com
Texas Blocked From Licensing Immigration Lockups as Child Care Centers
Texas can't lower its standards in order to license a couple of South
Texas immigration lockups run by private prison corporations. That's the
result of a final judgement issued by a Travis County judge late Friday in a
lawsuit triggered by the state's unusual decision to license immigrant
detention centers as child care facilities. In her final ruling, Judge Karin
Crump said that allowing the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services to give family detention centers the state stamp of approval
"runs counter to the general objectives of the Texas Human Resources
Code." The new rules, which specifically exempted the family detention
facilities from certain longstanding state requirements for child care
centers, were created by DFPS earlier this year over loud opposition from
immigrant rights advocates, attorneys who represent asylum-seeking women and
children in the centers, and child welfare experts. In hearings before state
regulators, mental health advocates who'd toured the family detention centers
in Dilley and Karnes spoke of children losing weight, shedding hair and
exhibiting symptoms of anxiety and depression in lockup. Some of the
attorneys and advocates working at the sites claimed health care was so bad
that some kids had to be hospitalized once they were released. While Judge
Crump's ruling doesn't necessarily close lockups in Karnes or Dilley, which
are run by private prison giants Geo Group and the Corrections Corporation of
America, it could eventually make it harder for the feds to keep them open.
Many were stunned when federal government resuscitated the practice of family
detention in 2014, after large numbers of Central American women and children
started showing up on the southwest border to plead asylum. The federal
government's last foray into family detention had ended in 2009 when they
were forced to pull kids out of CCA's Hutto detention center in Central Texas
following a legal battle with attorneys representing families detained
inside. Attorneys described conditions that violated even the feds’ own
minimum standards for housing children – kids forced to wear orange jumpsuits,
sleeping with the lights on and locked in cells for hours at a time,
receiving up to an hour of school every day. But by 2014, the feds couldn't
figure out what else to do with all the new asylum seeking
women and children. And, with a directive from the top that detention become
an "aggressive deterrence strategy" to stop the flow of migrants,
the feds tapped Geo and CCA to run family detention centers in the desolate
South Texas towns of Karnes and Dilley, together capable of holding some 3,400
women and children at any given time. Thus came another federal court
challenge over the issue of family detention, and last year, a federal judge
in California again condemned the practice, issuing a scathing ruing that
advocates had hoped might again force the feds to phase out large-scale
family detention entirely. And then the state of Texas swooped in to help
out, offering to license Dilley and Karnes and designate them state-regulated
childcare centers. Many had worried state licensing could help the feds wiggle
around the federal court ruling that had threatened to shutter the centers.
Grassroots Leadership, a nonprofit that opposes private prisons, filed a
lawsuit earlier this year to block state licensing of the centers. Jerry Wesevich, an attorney with Texas RioGrande
Legal Aid who represented Grassroots, said that state licensing of detention
centers was never about ensuring the welfare of children. “The state’s
executives admitted in documents and testimony that DFPS wanted to license
these facilities to help the federal government, and not the children," Wesevich, said. "Motive matters and we believe it
was the key to the case." “The conditions at Karnes and Dilley are
equivalent to prisons, not childcare facilities,” said Grassroots director
Bob Libal. “We are glad the court heard our
concerns about the damage that family detention does to mothers and their
children and how lowering standards to issue licenses to these facilities
only exacerbates that harm." Libal also asked
that the Obama Administration "end the practice of detaining immigrant
families once and for all."
May 4, 2016 statesman.com
Judge issues restraining order in family detention center case
A state district judge in Travis County has issued a temporary retraining order against the Texas Department of Family
and Protective Services, preventing the agency from issuing a childcare
license to one of two controversial family detention centers in South Texas.
Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based nonprofit that opposes private prison
companies, and two detainee mothers on Tuesday asked Judge Karin Crump to
invalidate new regulations that went into effect in February and allow the
state to issue childcare licenses to the facilities. The state family
services department, the plaintiffs say, never had the authority to rewrite
the rules and give itself the power to regulate the centers. Crump on
Wednesday agreed to issue the restraining order until May 13, when the court
will take up the plaintiffs’ request on the new regulations. “This is a very
good sign that the judge has recognized that we must, at least temporarily,
halt the appalling practice of calling family prisons childcare centers,”
said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots
Leadership. A spokeswoman for the state family services agency has declined
to comment on the allegations, except to say, “We are reviewing and
consulting with the Texas Attorney General’s office.” The South Texas Family
Residential Center in Dilley and the Karnes County Residential Center in
Karnes City — which can house up to 3,300 families awaiting immigration
proceedings — were allowed to begin applying for permits on March 1, and the
state agency on Friday granted the Karnes facility its license. For a decade,
the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services had maintained that
it did not have the legal authority to license, inspect and investigate
family detention facilities. But that changed this year after a federal court
ruling in July found that children can only live in detention centers if they
are licensed by state child welfare agencies. The ruling threatened the
closure of the Dilley and Karnes City facilities. Grassroots Leadership first
took the Texas family services department to court over the issue in
November, winning a temporary injunction to stop the agency from using
emergency rule-making procedures to license the centers. The state then
published a new permanent rule and took public comments on whether the state
should implement it. Thousands of Texans, including groups such as the Texas
Pediatric Society and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, submitted
comments against adoption of the rule. Dozens of people also testified
against it at a public hearing. Formerly detained mothers, social workers and
child advocates described poor conditions at the facilities, including the
strain on families’ mental health and the lack of access to legal counsel.
But the state adopted the rule.
May 3, 2016 texasobserver.org
Immigrant Families Sue to Stop Licensing Detention Centers for Child Care
Two immigrant mothers, detained with their children in a privately-run
Texas lock-up, have filed suit to stop Texas from licensing two family
detention centers as child care providers. On Friday, the Texas Department of
Family and Protective Services (DFPS) issued a residential child care license
to the Karnes County Residential Center, despite deficiencies uncovered by
inspectors and months of opposition from immigrant rights activists,
attorneys and child welfare advocates. The Karnes County Residential Center
is the first immigrant detention facility in Texas to be licensed as a child
care provider.The Karnes County Residential Center
is the first immigrant detention facility in Texas to be licensed as a child
care provider. On Tuesday, Grassroots Leadership, an Austin nonprofit opposed
to private prisons, is also a plaintiff in the suit, which was filed in state
court in Austin. Grassroots Leadership and the detained mothers have asked a
judge to stop the licensure both of the Karnes facility and the South Texas
Residential Center in Dilley. Together, the two facilities currently house
about 1,800 immigrant mothers and children, many of whom are fleeing gang
violence and persecution in Central America. “By all reasonable measures,
family detention camps are prisons. They are not child care facilities,” said
Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership’s executive
director, in a press release. DFPS spokesperson Patrick Crimmins told the
Observer that the agency is “reviewing and consulting with the [Texas attorney
general’s] office” regarding the lawsuit. Last summer, a federal judge
ordered the release of migrant children from family detention centers, citing
“deplorable conditions” in violation of the 1997 Flores v. Meese agreement,
which states that children should not be held in unlicensed facilities. In
September, DFPS created a new licensure category for detention facilities in
order to accommodate the federal requirements. Anti-detention groups and
immigration activists have argued that DFPS’ move to approve the detention
facilities for childcare purposes is predominantly about enforcing federal
immigration policy, not preserving child welfare. “Changing an interpretation
of Texas law to help federal immigration officials enforce harsh detention
policies is disingenuous and detrimental to the health of children in Texas,”
said Libal. Grassroots Leadership, which has been
fighting to end immigrant detention since 2006, has succeeded once in briefly
halting the licensure. In November, the organization won a temporary
injunction, arguing that DFPS was moving forward without public input. A
Travis County judge sided with the organization and ruled that the state must
have a public hearing before issuing licenses. Since then, dozens of
immigration and human rights activists have testified against the child care
licenses at three public hearings, citing sexual abuse allegations, poor
supervision of children and little to no medical and mental health care.
Critics also submitted thousands of pages of comments to DFPS urging the
agency to abandon the effort. At DFPS, Crimmins said a residential child care
license for the Dilley facility could be issued as early as this week.
According to an inspection report obtained by the Observer, DFPS inspectors
found 12 deficiencies at the Dilley facility, ranging from worn walls and
playground equipment, expired juice, improperly stored medication and
supplies. The inspection report also cites an incident in which a child,
allergic to gluten, was experiencing fever and vomiting after facility
operators failed to provide alternative food or drinks. Crimmins said the
facility is required to address the documented deficiencies before the state
will issue a license. Alexa Garcia-Ditta is a staff
writer (and former intern) covering women's health, reproductive health and
health care access.
Texas Juvenile Justice Department
Jul
8, 2013 kwtx.com
ROCKDALE
(June 27, 2013)-- Disheka Larae Westbrook, 25, of
Cameron, a guard at a privately-run juvenile detention center in Rockdale,
has been charged with violating the civil rights of a person in custody in an
incident involving inappropriate contact with an inmate. She was free on
$7,500 bond after her arrest earlier this week, jail records showed.
Westbrook was charged in connection with an incident that happened while she
was working at the Rockdale Juvenile Justice Center, Milam County Deputy
Chris White said Thursday. Jim Hearly, spokesman
for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, in Austin, said he was aware of
the arrest and said TJJD is conducting an administrative investigation at the
center. Hearly said, the Rockdale facility is
operated by a private company that contracts to house juveniles for several
counties and is not operated by the state. "They still have to conform
to state standards and that's why we are conducting an administrative
investigation," Hearly said Thursday by
telephone from his Austin office. Hearly said the
Milam County Sheriff's Office is conducting a criminal investigation.
Texas
Legislature
Flush
With Prison Industry Dollars, Rick Perry Pushed Privatized Prisoner Care:
September 1, 2011, Tim Murphy, Mother Jones. Gov Perry's cozy
relationship with the for-profits.
Oct 4, 2017 sacurrent.com
Judge Denies Senator Uresti's Request to Dismiss
One of His 22 Charges
Texas State Senator Carlos Uresti’s attempt to
dismiss one of the 22 charges against him — specifically the charge that
alleges he acted as an unregistered securities broker— was rejected by a
federal judge on Monday, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Uresti, along with three others, is facing multiple
counts of wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud for his alleged
involvement in FourWinds, a San Antonio oil-field
services company that went bankrupt in 2015, and which prosecutors have
called an “investment Ponzi scheme.” Tab Turner, Uresti's
newest lawyer, argued that prosecutors hadn’t provided enough evidence to
charge Uresti for acting as an unregistered
securities broker, asking U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra to drop the
single charge, according to the Express-News. The request was denied. Uresti’s trial for his involvement in FourWinds
is scheduled to begin on October 23, 2017. Uresti
is also facing a second indictment, which accuses him of “conspiracy to
commit bribery” and “conspiracy to commit money laundering” for his
involvement in securing a private prison contract at a West Texas detention
center. He’s expected to go to trial for that indictment in 20
Nov
24, 2015 houstonchronicle.com
Powerful Senator says no TX inmates for proposed Emerald prison
A
private prison operator hoping to build an immigrant detention center near
Houston received a sharp rebuke last week from a top state lawmaker, who
warned the company that state officials would have "no part"
filling beds at the proposed facility with state inmates. "Gone are the
times of using prisons and correctional facilities for [economic
development]," Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire,
D-Houston, said in a letter to Emerald Correctional Management, citing the
troubled history of communities around the state funding private lockups. The
company, which operates six detention facilities in Texas, Montana, New
Mexico and Arizona and is constructing a seventh facility, has made headlines
in years past for its business practices, persuading small towns across the
country to build the jails on speculation - like one in Hardin, Mont., that
stood empty for years, leading officials there to offer to house suspected
terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At another, in the small south Texas
town of Encinal, in LaSalle County, Emerald's operations came under
additional scrutiny after it abruptly pulled out of the center there after
the inmate population dropped, saddling county officials with a facility with
a leaky roof, about $20 million in debt, and scrambling to find a new
operator to save the jobs of the 100 guards and staff. The letter comes a
month after the city of Shepherd voted to support construction of 1,000-bed
federal detention center to house immigrants awaiting deportation.
Louisiana-based Emerald Corrections is one of several companies expected to
submit bids to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to build a
detention center in the Houston area. Private detention facilities
proliferated across the state over the last two decades, in response in part
to a wave of illegal immigration. The facilities were originally seen by many
municipalities as a low-risk way to bring jobs and federal funds to small
Texas communities. In recent years, as capacity increased and apprehensions
dropped sharply, many facilities have struggled and had to seek inmates from
other avenues to stay afloat. "If the expected immigration population
dwindles or disappears altogether, the State will have no part in filling the
empty beds with state inmates," Whitmire warned in the Nov. 18 letter,
citing coverage by the Houston Chronicle last month of how Shepherd voted to
support the project less than a week after officials in the nearby city of
Cleveland rebuffed the private correction company's advances. Officials in
nearby Chambers County likewise voted recently not to support construction of
an immigrant detention center there. In a similar letter to Shepherd city
officials, Whitmire cited the failed lockup-partnership experiences in
Littlefield, a small community in remote West Texas, and in rural Jones
County, near Abilene. Officials in both places funded private lockups that
went empty, and were left paying off bonds at a high cost to local taxpayers.
Both tried to attract immigration detainee contracts, but were unsuccessful
as the numbers of those held have dropped. Emerald CEO Steve Afeman disputed Whitmire's characterizations, saying the
facilities had been financed through public facility corporations and that
local municipalities had not been required to make any payments on the bonds
required to finance the construction and operation. Afeman
said state officials abandoned operations at the Jones County facility -
originally slated as a drug education center - after it had already been
built. The facility in Littlefield has since found inmates to house, he said,
adding that the proposed project differed from both of Whitmire's examples.
"Remember, this is a federal project through the Department of Homeland
Security," Afeman said Tuesday. "It has a
10-year-guarantee, with a guaranteed population of 75 percent." Shepherd
Mayor Pro-Tem Sherry Roberts did not answer a phone
call Tuesday morning. Debra Hagler, the city secretary, said officials there
"just disregarded" Whitmire's letter. "The resolution had
already been signed and sent," she said.
Nov
3, 2015 chron.com
Senate
leader advises against Shepherd lockup
AUSTIN
-- Officials in the small community of Shepherd were warned Tuesday against
committing public funds to build a 1,000-bed detention center to house
immigrants awaiting deportation. Citing the failed history in Texas of
communities and counties funding private lockups, Senate Criminal Justice
Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said in a letter to Mayor Pro Tem Sherry Roberts that the project is ill-advised. The
Shepherd City Council a week ago voted to support the construction of the
lockup with Emerald Correctional Management LLC. "I hope you are aware
that many cities and counties in Texas have gone down the failed path of
partnering with private correctional entities to build both prisons and
immigration detention facilities," Whitmire said in the two-page letter.
"Many of these thousands of beds now sit empty, leaving the public
partner (city or county) responsible for paying off the debt issued to build
the facility." Whitmire cited the failed lockup-partnership experiences
in Littlefield, a small community in remote West Texas, and in rural Jones
County, near Abilene. Officials in both places funded private lockups that
went empty, and were left paying off bonds at a high cost to local taxpayers.
The Littlefield center was recently selected to house a sex-offender program,
after sitting empty for years. The Jones County facility is still barren.
Both had tried to attract immigration detainee contracts, but were
unsuccessful as the numbers of those confinees
dropped. During the 1990s, other small Texas communities and counties helped
fund private prisons that eventually went belly up, after state officials
refused to house state convicts there to help them pay off the debt.
"Texas has closed three, privately run state jails or prison facilities,
while our state inmate population continues to decline," Whitmire said.
"If the expected immigration population dwindles or disappears
altogether, the state will have no part in filling the empty beds with state
inmates. Again, thousands of beds built through speculation projects now sit
empty, with public entities on the hook. "I understand and appreciate
the desire to provide economic development within your community, but gone
are the times of using prisons and correctional facilities for that purpose,"
the senator stated. "I am hopeful that you will take under consideration
the failed speculative projects elsewhere in Texas and the potentially
significant financial liabilities your community would assume if a similar
scenario were to play out in Shepherd." No immediate response from
officials in Shepherd, a community of about 2,300 east of Houston.
Oct 22, 2015 texastribune.org
Lawsuit
Aims to Prevent Licensing of Detention Centers
A
watchdog group is suing the agency charged with protecting the state’s most
vulnerable Texans, alleging the department fast-tracked a policy change that
might help the federal government convince a federal judge to reverse her
order shutting down two immigration detention centers in Texas. The lawsuit
by Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit group opposed to for-profit prisons,
filed in a Travis County state district court, claims that by adopting an
emergency rule in September, the Texas Department of Family Protective
Services can issue temporary licenses to privately run detention centers in
Karnes City and Dilley without publicly detailing how it will ensure the
safety and well-being of the immigrants. The detention centers house as many
as 2,000 undocumented women and children that were part of the surge of
unauthorized migration that began last summer, when tens of thousands of
families from Central America illegally crossed into Texas. The Geo Group
operates the center in Karnes City, and Corrections Corporations of America
operates the facility in Dilley, under contracts with U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement. The emergency rule created a new category of state
facility: the family residential center. The detention centers have applied
for the designation and, if licensed, might come closer to complying with a
judge’s order mandating that the immigrants be held in an appropriate
setting, attorneys for the immigrants said. In July, U.S. District Judge
Dolly Gee ordered the immigrants released as soon as possible because their
detention violates the provisions of a 1997 legal settlement — the Flores v.
Meese agreement — which requires that undocumented juveniles be held in the
places that protect their overall well-being. In her ruling, she declared conditions
in the detention centers “deplorable.” “The court determined that while
detained by [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], families must be in
state-licensed facilities to provide ‘essential protection of regular and
comprehensive oversight by an independent child welfare agency,’” department
spokesman Patrick Crimmins noted in an agency fact sheet. “Although the
ruling did not require DFPS to license the facilities, it did highlight a gap
in the oversight of the children at these types of facilities. The new DFPS
rule closes that gap by requiring state licensing.” Gee gave the Obama
administration until Oct. 23 to comply with her ruling, but the government
has appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The licenses would
bolster the government's claim that the detention centers comply with the
law, said Amy Fischer, policy director for Refugee and Immigrant Center for
Education and Legal Services. Gee could still find the centers out of
compliance, Fischer said. "We
believe this is simply a case of a state agency being bullied by the federal
government to help them win a court battle to continue the detention of
mothers and children seeking asylum," she said. Critics of the licensing
process say they weren't given a chance to highlight problems at the centers.
“By improperly using ‘emergency’ procedures, DFPS deprived Plaintiff
Grassroots Leadership of its statutory right to comment on DFPS’s vague
licensing rule, and its statutory right to require the agency’s written
responses to all public comments prior to implementation of a licensing
rule,” the lawsuit states. If licensed, the agency's Residential Child Care
Licensing division will be able to inspect the centers and investigate
allegations of wrongdoing or abuse, Crimmins said. Advocacy groups argue that
licensing would perpetuate the abuse and neglect Gee said was rampant in the
facilities. “It is simply not possible for DFPS to regulate or license family
immigration detention centers without skirting the rules that it normally
requires facilities to follow in order to ensure the health and safety of
children,” a coalition of immigrants’ rights and civil liberties groups wrote
to Gov. Greg Abbott and agency Commissioner John Specia
last week. “To the extent that DFPS seeks to hold the family detention
centers accountable for the safety and well-being of its child residents, we
applaud its laudable goal. The licensing approach, however, is unnecessary
and unwise.” The Geo Group denied any allegations of abuse or other
wrongdoing. “The Karnes County Residential Center provides high quality care
in a safe, clean, and family friendly environment, and onsite ICE personnel
provide direct oversight to ensure compliance with ICE's Family Residential
Standards,” Pablo Paez, the company’s vice president
of corporate relations, said in an email. “Our company has consistently,
strongly denied allegations to the contrary. Earlier this year, the findings
of a comprehensive investigation conducted by the Office of the Inspector
General corroborated the unfounded and unsubstantiated nature of prior
allegations.” The Corrections Corporation of America said the company's
application signifies it is able to adapt to the changing detention needs of
the federal government. "Providing a safe, humane and appropriate
environment for those entrusted to our care is our top priority, and we work
in close coordination with our on-site partners at ICE to ensure that goal is
being met at South Texas Family Residential Center on an hour-to-hour and
day-to-day basis," CCA public affairs director Jonathan Burns said in an
email. "As always, CCA stands ready to support the changing needs of our
government partner, while providing a safe, humane and appropriate
environment for those entrusted to our care." Crimmins declined to discuss
the lawsuit but said the licensing process was thorough. “The process
involves a comprehensive inspection of both facilities to determine if they
meet minimum state standards for residential child-care operations, public
hearings that must be conducted by the facility operators, and a series of
unannounced inspections,” he said in an email. “Temporary licenses will be
issued initially, then, if appropriate, permanent licenses can be issued.”
Jan
23, 2015 breitbart.com
MCALLEN,
Texas — Texas State Representative Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) is denying any
wrongdoing after the former warden of a private prison on the Texas border
was charged for his alleged role in bribing a convicted Texas border judge in
order to get a bond lowered so that a Mexican drug smuggler could flee.
Canales was the attorney who represented the smuggler in court, and could
still face charges. Elberto Esiquiel
Bravo was the warden at the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a private prison
owned by LCS Corrections. Bravo is currently out on bond until his trial on
the charge of being an accessory to a felony. The charge stems from the 2010
arrest of Luis Martinez Gallegos, a Mexican drug trafficker who was in the
country illegally. Martinez had been caught by Texas border sheriff deputies
with 89 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records obtained by
Breitbart Texas. Bravo, another woman, and a local attorney worked to
get Martinez’s bond lowered so that federal authorities could deport him
before the case went federal, the criminal complaint shows. Justice of the
Peace Melo Ochoa set Martinez’s bond at $2.5 million but after taking a bribe
lowered the bond to $50,000, allowing Martinez to be turned over to federal
agents who deported him to Mexico. As previously reported by Breitbart Texas,
Ochoa pleaded guilty last month to bribery charges and received a probation
sentence in exchange for his cooperation. While the criminal complaint does
not name the attorney, Canales told The Monitor newspaper that he had been
Martinez’s attorney. He admitted that he had gotten Martinez a bond
reduction, but insisted it was a basic procedure and he had done nothing
wrong. Canales has not been criminally charged in the case. Canales’ attorney
John Ball said the representative was innocent of any wrongdoing and was
ready to go to trial if charges were brought against him.
June
11, 2013 statesman.com
Answering
a mandate from the Legislature, prison officials said Tuesday they will close
two private prisons in August — a pre-parole center in Mineral Wells and a
state jail in downtown Dallas. The closure of the two lockups by August 31
will reduce Texas’ prison capacity by 4,300 beds, at a time when the state
has upwards of 12,000 empty prison bunks — thanks to a declining crime rate
and successful treatment and rehabilitation programs that have cut recidivism
in recent years. They are the second and third closures of prisons in Texas
history. Two years ago, the aged Central Unit near Sugar Land was shuttered
because of encroaching development. Even with the closures, Texas still
operates the largest prison system of any state — with about 150,000 felons
housed at what will soon be 109 lockups. Senate Criminal Justice Committee
Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who has been campaigning to close
the lockups for four years, said the state will save at least $97 million
with the move. Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, said Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America was advised
Monday that its contracts to operate the two prisons will be terminated. With
a capacity of 2,100 prisoners, the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility
held just 796 prisoners on Tuesday. Clark said they would likely be
transferred to other prisons. Women in the Dawson State Jail in Dallas,
operating at near capacity on Tuesday with 2,201 convicts, will likely be
transferred to the Woodman State Jail in Gatesville and the men will go to
the Hutchins State Jail. State jails are different than prisons in that they
hold mostly non-violent offenders who are serving shorter sentences,
officials said. The city of Dallas just got one of its oldest wishes granted:
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice will close the Dawson State Jail on
the Trinity River on August 31. CCA officials have said that employees at the
two prisons will be given the opportunity to transfer to the company’s other
lockups. The Mineral Wells lockup — located on a former Air Force base — has
been plagued in recent years by security and operations problems, including
cell phones and other contraband getting to convicts. Dawson has been the
focus of complaints about several health-related deaths. While the Mineral
Wells site opened in 1989 is not owned by the state, the Dawson lockup is. It
was opened in 1997. Dallas officials have been wanting to redevelop the
Dawson site along the Trinity River, and prison officials have said they will
work with local authorities on a disposition of the site.
February
27, 2013 reporternews.com
If
the nation’s largest correctional officers union gets its way, then the empty
multimillion-dollar Jones County lock up will soon house a little more than
1,000 minimum-security state inmates from the privately run Lindsey State
Jail in Jacksboro. Built in 2010, the $35-million, 1,100- bed capacity prison
in Jones County sits empty at the edge of Anson, a town of 2,422. It was
supposed to create nearly 200 jobs with a $5 million annual boost to the
local economy. On Wednesday, the American Federation of State County
Municipal Employees — Texas Correctional Employees operates under that
umbrella — called on state legislators to end three contracts with the
Correctional Corporation of America, citing abuses and poor management. Along
with Lindsey in Jacksboro, two other private prisons included on the proposed
chopping block are Dawson State Jail in Dallas and Mineral Wells Pre-Parole
Transfer Facility. The union’s local 3807 chapter president, Lance Lowry,
said the proposal calls for the Jones County facility to be run by the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice and house the Lindsey inmates starting Sept.
1, should the state opt to not renew the private contract. Inmates from the
other private prisons also will be moved to state-run facilities. Lowry said
about 25 state and national organizations are calling for the closure of
Dawson for “extreme abuses, and other medical abuses,” accusing Correctional
Corporation of America of having a history of abusive practices. “There were
three female inmates that died there and a baby last year, and all of the
incidents were easily preventable” Lowry said. “What we’re finding is that
these private facilities are not paying their staff the equivalent of what
the state pays correctional officers.” U.S. Department of Labor data indicate
the median annual wage for correctional officers by the state is $38,850. In
contrast, officers employed in privately operated prisons earned a median
salary of $28,790. In 2011, the TDCJ derailed plans to house inmates at Jones
County facility when it terminated a contract with the county. More than
30,000 of the state’s 93,000 county beds sit empty — both at county jails and
at centers built through county-private partnerships, like Anson, according
to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. “Jones County will come out better
from this deal, than with a private prison in their community,” Lowry said.
“And we don’t want another (private) facility to open to open up. That’s
going to be disastrous like the other ones.” Lowry said the union notified
Jones County officials about the proposal.
April
29, 2013 mysanantonio.com
AUSTIN
— The Texas House has approved spending $19 million to buy an empty
correctional facility in an isolated West Texas county even as the state has
12,000 empty prison beds. Private-prison advocates also are pushing hard to
secure $90 million more in the proposed state budget for two facilities that
should be shut down to save taxpayer dollars, said Sen. John Whitmire,
D-Houston. Whitmire, chairman of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee,
expressed frustration that taxpayers are not seeing the full benefit of cost
savings realized by reforms that reduced prison populations. “I am fighting
night and day to keep from buying a prison that everyone will tell you they
are going to board up,” said Whitmire. “Can you imagine? People all over
Texas ought to start a revolution over that.” At issue in the supplemental
budget bill passed by the House last week is a 1,100-bed “pre-release
facility” built by the Texas Midwest Public Facility Corp., an entity set up
by Jones County officials to sell $35 million in bonds to build a facility
they believed would be an economic boon to Anson, population 2,300. Built to
the specifications of a request issued by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, county officials believed state contracts to house inmates would
produce a steady stream of revenue. According to Rep. Susan King, R-Abilene,
who represents Jones County, local officials secured a contract with the
state before proceeding with the project. The corporation was set up to sell
bonds, and the facility was completed in 2010. “They didn't just say hey,
let's build a prison,” she said. Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Senator-irate-at-House-plan-to-fund-private-prison-4474066.php#ixzz2Rwbd9Yrl
March
4, 2013 mywesttexas.com
AUSTIN,
Texas (AP) — A key Senate panel has endorsed the closure of a $54 million
private state prison in North Texas that ranks among the most dangerous
lockups in the state. The 2,200-bed prison in Mineral Wells is run by
Corrections Corporation of America and has been under lawmaker scrutiny for
several years. The Senate Finance Committee on Monday upheld recommendations
to let the contract expire in August. Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire
says there is plenty of room to transfer prisoners elsewhere because of
12,000 empty beds statewide. He said the Mineral Wells facility is so ill-designed
that a golf net is being used to stop contraband from being tossed over.
Republican Sen. Craig Estes, whose district includes the prison, said the
economic impact of closing the prison would devastate the community.
Feb
9, 2013 statesman.com
Senate
budget writers warned the leaders of Texas’ criminal justice agencies
Thursday to stop paying for thousands of empty beds at state-owned lockups
and shift that money to other, more pressing needs. The directive came as new
statistics revealed that the 111 state prisons might have as many as 10,000
empty bunks and hundreds more at the six state-owned lockups for teenagers,
even as the state pays $123 million a year to lease beds from private
corrections companies. “We’re spending millions of dollars to maintain bricks
and mortar we don’t need,” said state Senate Criminal Justice Committee
Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, expressing irritation that the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Juvenile Justice Department
between them are seeking about $400 million in budget increases — even as the
number of offenders in both agencies declines. “We’ve got to quit, once and
for all, running these facilities just because they’re there for economic
development purposes,” Whitmire said. “We need to use taxpayers’ money to
fight crime, on the public safety priorities of this state, rather than just
on bricks and mortar that in some cases we don’t need.” Adult-corrections
chief Brad Livingston and juvenile-justice chief Mike Griffiths told the
committee they are looking for budget efficiencies, though they gave no
specifics. Whitmire wanted specifics, asking why the state continues to lease
thousands of prison beds from private prison companies when state bunks sit
empty. On Thursday, Livingston said the adult system held just under 151,000
prisoners, down from nearly 157,000 two years ago. Whitmire wants to close
the 2,100-bed Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility and the 2,200-bed
Dawson State Jail in Dallas, both operated under contract by Corrections Corporation
of America. “It would seem wise to get out of the private-lease beds as the
contracts come up for renewal,” Whitmire said, insisting that as many as
10,000 state beds are empty. Livingston put that number closer to 4,600,
saying all the empty beds can’t be filled because prison officials need the
ability to properly manage convicts. “But there are other beds we don’t need
either,” the senator said, noting that 400 boot-camp beds in state prisons
now hold only 30 convicts. Whitmire said he is filing legislation to shutter
that program. Still, Livingston argued that his agency needs a boost beyond
the $3-billion-a-year budget it had already requested. The agency needs,
among other things, to repair existing prisons, hire more parole officers,
buy computers, hire 100 employees to help prisoners successfully reintegrate
into society, and replace old vehicles, including 20-year-old prison buses
with more than 600,000 miles on them and trucks with more than a million
miles. State Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, questioned why Texas continues
to incarcerate about 6,400 illegal immigrants convicted of state crimes who
could be turned over to federal authorities for deportation. Livingston said
the state recoups a small share of the cost, $12 million, from the federal
government. Griffiths said he needs more money to hire additional guards,
provide more treatment and diversion programs for youth offenders, repair
existing lockups and add more SWAT teams to deal with violent youths. Noting
that the juvenile-justice agency had about 1,100 offenders in lockups on
Thursday — “about the size of a junior high school here in Austin” — Whitmire
said the agency should close some lockups and consolidate offenders at the
remaining ones. Most juvenile lockups are operating at far less than their
capacity, some less than half full.
EMPTY
JUVENILE BEDS: At a glance
Lockup/
Capacity/ Population
Corsicana
Residential Treatment Center/ 198/82
Evins Regional Juvenile
Center/ 240/ 144
Gainesville
State School/340/258
Giddings
State School/376/252
McLennan
County State Juvenile Correctional Facility/352/288
Ron
Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Center/338/95
Totals:
1,492/831 (The remaining offenders are housed in halfway houses)
Sources:
Texas Juvenile Justice Department daily population summary report for
Thursday, Texas Youth Commission Facility Overview (2007).
March 7, 2012 USA
Today
A private prison management company's proposal to buy government prison
facilities, criticized for requiring states to maintain high occupancy rates,
also is prompting debate about the firm's executive who circulated it. Harley
Lappin, the former director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, made the offer to
48 prison officials across the country in a January letter on behalf of
Corrections Corporation of America, less than a year after retiring from his
federal post. Civil rights advocates, a state lawmaker and the chief of the
federal prison employees union said Lappin's involvement with the firm's
offer, so soon after leaving his high-profile government post, raises ethical
concerns. "He's clearly using his connections (in the public prison
industry) and is now attempting to profit from it," said Texas state
Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, who has spoken against
high-incarceration rates. David Shapiro, staff attorney for the ACLU's
National Prison Project, said Lappin's role is "part of the continuing
revolving door" between government and private industry. "It is
definitely a concern," he said. Company spokesman Steve Owen said
Lappin's involvement as the firm's corrections director was "very
appropriate," and did not include solicitations of his former agency.
USA TODAY initially sought to speak with Lappin, but questions were referred
to firm's media relations office. Federal law prohibits designated senior
federal government executives from doing business with their former agencies
for at least a year after leaving their posts. Owen said Lappin's letter was
not sent to his former agency. And Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci
Billingsley said the agency has received no such proposal.
June 10, 2011 The American Statesman
An amendment quietly added to a bill about fiscal matters in the Texas House
late Thursday would have given control of the state's prison health care
board to Gov. Rick Perry at a time when top Perry aides have been pressing
for the panel to privatize some or all the medical services provided to
convicts. By Friday, after questions were raised about the change by the
American-Statesman and some legislative and prison officials, it was gone.
"The wording is now back like it was," House Corrections Committee
Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, announced after a two-minute process on
Friday to reverse the change, which would have expanded the Correctional
Managed Health Care Committee from five to seven members and put Perry
appointees in the majority. "The goal was not to give anyone a majority
on the committee." Such a move would have made four of the board's seven
members appointees of the governor, and critics of privatization feared that
it would have allowed Perry to push ahead with outsourcing of the nearly $1
billion-a-year system, which has been plagued for years by mushrooming costs.
The committee currently has nine members: two representing the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice, two officials each from the University of
Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the Texas Tech University Health
Sciences Center, and three appointed by the governor. UTMB and Texas Tech
provide the medical care in Texas' 112 state prisons, and the ongoing costs,
driven in part by an aging prison population and by spiraling health care
costs in general, are of particular concern now that the state faces a
multibillion-dollar budget crisis. The amendment was attached to Senate Bill
1 without debate. Even Madden, who watches all things involving corrections,
didn't notice it. He has previously said that he does not oppose privatization
if done appropriately. But he also has said he does not support changing the
makeup of the committee to give anyone or a group a majority to make that
happen. On Friday morning, as the Texas Board of Criminal Justice convened
for a meeting in Austin, several officials of prison health care companies
and lobbyists who have been pushing for privatization lingered in the
corridors outside — unusual since there was nothing on the board's agenda
about health care. A board member mentioned that the amendment had passed. A
prison official confirmed it. A reporter began asking questions. When he
learned of the change, Madden moved immediately to reverse it. But state Rep.
Jim Pitts, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and author
of the amendment, initially said no. A House-Senate panel that negotiated the
issue in the waning days of the regular legislative session, which ended in
May, had agreed to expand the size of the committee — perhaps to as many as
11 members, depending on which negotiator tells the story. "I'm not
inclined to change it back. No," Pitts said just before lunch.
"We'll have to fix it in conference"— code words for rewriting the
provision during negotiations with the Senate on a final version of SB 1,
Madden told a reporter. Madden was then seen meeting on the House floor with
Pitts and other House leaders, and Mike Morrissey, a top Perry aide who had
advocated privatization during a closed-door Capitol meeting several months
ago with several vendors and prison officials. Earlier this year, a bill that
would have given the governor control of the committee was killed by House
and Senate leaders concerned about the perceived rush to privatization. That
bill would also have given the committee the authority to contract with
private vendors for the first time. An amendment to do much the same thing
was not adopted. Dead issue, Senate and House leaders had said when the
regular legislative session ended last week. By 2 p.m. Friday, Madden had
drafted an amendment to SB 1 to amend Pitts' amendment, leaving the committee
with just five members. That passed in two minutes, with the approval of
Pitts and without most House members knowing what had happened. Madden said
that Pitts and Perry's office were OK with his change. He did not elaborate.
Spokesmen for Perry had no immediate comment on the back-and-forth. In
earlier statements, they have said only that the governor would review
legislation when it reached his desk and decide then whether to sign it into
law. "I saw the change as a problem, and we've fixed it," Madden
said. "Let's leave it there."
April 23, 2010 Texas Observer
State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, a Brownsville Democrat, is following in his
father's footsteps by joining forces with Corplan
Corrections, a scandal-plagued prison development company. Lucio is
representing Argyle, Texas-based Corplan
Corrections in its bid to build an immigration family detention center in
Weslaco, a Rio Grande Valley town that is in Rep. Lucio's district. State
Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., also a Democrat Brownsville, “consulted” for Corplan in 2003 and 2004. Corplan
and its CEO, James Parkey, specialize in selling
desperate communities on risky government-financed prisons with promises of
jobs and economic development. Typically, the company talks local governments
into financing speculative jail facilities and then leaves the community to
figure out how to keep them open. In recent years, Corplan
has been at the center of numerous controversies, including a bizarre
prison-building scheme in Hardin, Montana that involved a private military
force called American Police Force run by an ex-con. The prison cost the
small town $27 million but never housed any prisoners. In one of his latest
gambits, Parkey has approached city officials in
several towns across the U.S. – Benson, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and
Weslaco, Texas – with a proposal to build a new detention center for
immigrant families. Parkey’s reputation, however,
has caught up with him in Las Cruces and Benson, where officials have nixed
the deal. That’s not the case in Weslaco. Weslaco Mayor Buddy de la Rosa told
me that he was first introduced to Parkey two or so
years ago and the project has been in the works ever since. Corplan, he said, is handling all the details. The
company recently brought Rep. Lucio on as an attorney for the project.
Weslaco is in Lucio’s district. In February, Lucio and Parkey
spoke to the Weslaco City Commission and urged the commissioners to pass a
resolution giving Corplan authorization to file a
“grant application” for the facility, according to minutes from the meeting.
(De la Rosa said he has not seen the application and doesn’t know to whom it
will be submitted.) It might be a lousy deal for the city – if it's a deal at
all. "James Parkey and Corplan
are prison developers who get paid when a prison is built," said Bob Libal, an anti-private prison organizer with Grassroots
Leadership. "It's not necessarily in their interest to make sure the
prison project is successful." The Weslaco project is particularly
fraught with risk, Libal says, because the Obama
administration has all but done away with detaining immigrant families. In
August 2009, federal officials removed immigrant families from the T. Don
Hutto Residential Center, a privately-operated jail near Taylor that
attracted international attention after advocates and detainees reported
inhumane conditions. The Obama administration has also let Bush-era plans to
add new family facilities expire, said Michelle Brane, director of detention
and asylum programs at the Women's Refugee Commission. “To my knowledge – and
I spoke specifically with Immigration and Customs Enforcement about this –
they insist they don’t have any requests for proposal out there or any plans
for building a new family detention facility,” said Brane. “I think they’re
being duped frankly.” Mayor de la Rosa said that he wasn’t aware of the shift
in federal policy but said it may explain why he hasn’t heard from Parkey or Lucio recently. “They have been remarkably
quiet for the past several weeks,” he said. Representing Corplan
appears to be a Lucio family business. According to Texas Ethics Commission
filings, state Sen. Eddie Lucio, also a Brownsville Democrat, worked as a
“consultant” for Corplan in 2003 and 2004 at a time
when the company was part of a consortium of private prison interests seeking
to build a 2,000-bed immigrant detention center in Raymondville, the seat of
Willacy County. (I did a feature story on Raymondville's prison boom in 2006.
You can read the whole gruesome story here.) During that time, Lucio also
represented other corporate entities involved in the bid: prison construction
company Hale-Mills, prison operator Management and Training Corp., and
Aguirre, Inc. Here's what I wrote in 2006: The consortium needed a deal
closer and found one in state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. The Brownsville Democrat
had worked as a "consultant" for Corplan
and Management & Training in 2003 and 2004, according to records filed
with the Texas Ethics Commission. He had suspended his consulting work in 2005
in the aftermath of the bribery scandal, but Hale-Mills hired him this year
for the federal detention center project. Lucio says Hale-Mills paid him
"to figure out what kind of impact this will have on the community, to
talk to the general public to see what their feel is." [Former Willacy
County Attorney Juan] Guerra alleges that Lucio made multiple appearances in
Raymondville pressuring the commissioners to select Management & Training
over Corrections Corp. "As far as I'm concerned, had it not been for
Eddie Lucio the commissioners would not have gone and put the county in a $60
million debt," Guerra says. "In my opinion, in his position as a
senator he let our commissioners, including me, know where he stood... Once
your senator lets you know what he wants, it's hard to go against
[him]." In 2005, Lucio ended his consulting work with Corplan after two Willacy County commissioners pleaded
guilty to accepting cash bribes in exchange for their votes to award a
contract for another Raymondville prison. Amazingly, no one was ever indicted
for supplying the bribe. Sen. Lucio no longer appears to be working for Corplan, at least according to personal financial
disclosure statements for the last four years filed with the Ethics
Commission. Rep. Lucio’s involvement with Corplan
is not disclosed on his latest disclosure filing. The form was turned in on
February 16th, the same day Lucio appeared at the Weslaco City Commission
meeting. It's not clear why Corplan is not listed
as a source of occupational income. For some, the whole thing stinks. “I
think that raises some pretty serious questions especially when he’s
presenting false information to a local body that’s in his district,” said Libal. “Does it break any law? I don’t know. Does it seem
like a big conflict of interest? Yes.”
March
8, 2010 Grits For Breakfast
At a House Appropriations Committee meeting today, House Corrections Chairman
Jim McReynolds asked TDCJ chief Brad Livingston if private prison-contracts
up for renewal might increase their rates and increase costs for the state.
Livingston said that was possible, since contracts covering the 12,000 or so
private beds for which TDCJ contracts are 5-7 years old. Most of these are up
within the coming year and all new contracts should be negotiated by mid-2011.
Livingston said that in general, for every dollar increase in per-inmate
costs represented a $4.5 million cost increase to TDCJ. The committee was
also told that after the first two days, all health care costs for inmates at
private prisons are paid for by TDCJ. So the
committee was cautioned against comparing per-inmate costs between private
units and TDCJ's state facilities because the privates' costs per-inmate
don't include healthcare costs.
February 24, 2010 AP
Hit with accusations of spreading "cronyism" throughout state
government, Gov. Rick Perry is hitting back, arguing that the law firm where
Kay Bailey Hutchison used to work with her husband, Ray, was found by a
federal civil jury to have defrauded investors in a 1990s-era private prison
deal. Hutchison's campaign called the move an 11th-hour dirty trick, saying
the court had already absolved Ray Hutchison and his firm and that the civil
jury was acting without proper authority. At issue are private prisons built
in six Texas counties, financed by bonds that the Hutchison law firm helped
put together. The project was a financial disaster and the state wound up
buying them at a fire sale price. The records show Ray Hutchison was the
lawyer who affirmed that the developers' debt-financing plan met legal
requirements. Kay Bailey Hutchison listed her husband's law firm, Hutchison,
Boyle, Brook & Fisher, as her employer in 1989, and she reported $25,000
in income from the firm that year. Hutchison's campaign says she did no work
on the prison bonds.
February 16, 2010 Mineral Wells
Index
Facing a budget shortfall in 2011, Texas leaders Gov. Rick Perry, Lt.
Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus asked Texas agencies and
institutions of higher education to identify a 5 percent reduction to their
2010-11 general revenue and general revenue-dedicated appropriations. While
agencies faced a Monday deadline this week, Texas corrections officials,
looking for perhaps as much as $300 million in cutbacks in the 112-unit
system, have not ruled out closing some prisons. Last Wednesday the
Austin-American Statesman reported that Senate Criminal Justice Committee
Chair John Whitmire, D-Houston, publicly suggested that the state consider
closing the privately run, 2,100-bed Corrections Corporation of America’s Mineral
Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility and perhaps aging prisons that are much
more expensive to operate and maintain than newer ones. While the cost of
imprisoning a felon in Texas averages about $47.50 a day, prison agency
figures from 2008 show some older prisons cost more than $50 per inmate per
day. The Mineral Wells prison is located on the former Fort Wolters property.
Warden Mike Phillips said of Whitmire’s suggestions, “That’s just his
opinion.”
July 10, 2009 Dallas Morning News
A private prison company's history of filthy conditions, sexual abuse,
suicides and riots in some of its Texas lockups isn't stopping the state from
paying it $7.5 million to run a new psychiatric hospital near Houston.
Lawmakers inserted an earmark into the state budget to fund the future
Montgomery County facility starting in 2011. But they said they didn't know
until this week that the county had selected the GEO Group to operate it,
although GEO lobbyists were pushing for it as early as February. The new
facility came as a post-session shock to mental health advocates, who
acknowledge the need for it. But they say they weren't informed about it and
never would have signed off if they knew Florida-based GEO was operating it.
"Why would we want to use an entity that hasn't had a stellar
reputation?" asked Monica Thyssen, children's mental health policy
specialist with Advocacy Inc. "If the process had been more transparent,
there probably would have been other state officials who would've said, 'I
don't know if GEO is the best use of state dollars.' " GEO officials,
who run more than 50 facilities in the United States, including five mental
health facilities in Florida, declined to comment, saying in an e-mail that
they don't discuss "specific business development efforts and/or
contracts." But state lawmakers say the psychiatric facility, which by
2011 is expected to house more than 100 criminal offenders awaiting trials or
competency findings, will solve a major backlog. The Montgomery County jail
has hundreds of inmates awaiting mental health treatment. The nearest state
forensic mental hospital is more than 100 miles away, and when a bed opens up, it takes at least two deputies to take an
offender there. "It's a problem we sorely need to address, instead of
leaving people who need mental health care in prison," said Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, one of the Senate's budget writers.
But the budgeting process and the choice of contractor have raised some
eyebrows. Department of State Health Services officials, who oversee psychiatric
care in Texas, say the Montgomery County facility was not something they
requested funding for in the budget. It was added to the budget in conference
committee. Mental health advocates, who track psychiatric hospital
legislation closely, say they never heard any public discussion about it. And
neither Deuell nor Sen. Tommy Williams, who
represents Montgomery County, knew until a reporter's phone call that county
officials had selected GEO subsidiary GEO Care to run the facility – though
legislative documents indicate the company was pushing for it as early as
February. "I know [GEO] has had problems," said Williams, R-The
Woodlands. "Certainly I would expect them to run it in accordance with
our state guidelines. I'll insist on that." GEO's track record in Texas
has been rocky. In the midst of the Texas Youth Commission's 2007 sexual
abuse scandal, agency officials shuttered the company's Coke County Juvenile
Justice Center, saying they had found atrocious conditions – including feces
on the walls – at the facility. They also fired a GEO prison worker after
learning he was a convicted sex offender. Earlier that year, an inmate in
isolation at GEO's Dickens County facility slashed his throat, leaving
letters complaining of blood-coated blankets and pillows, and floors and
walls covered in mold. And in 2006, a woman committed suicide at a GEO jail
in Val Verde County, after complaining that she had been raped by another
inmate and sexually harassed by a guard. As recently as this winter, inmates
at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center rioted, starting fires and taking
hostages, to demand better health care. And in April, a Texas appeals court
upheld a $42.5 million verdict against the company for the 2001 death of an
inmate who was four days from finishing his sentence at a Willacy County
facility. The man was beaten to death by other inmates using padlocks stuffed
in socks. Montgomery County officials, who selected GEO to operate the
psychiatric facility late last month, say that the company has a good track
record with its other mental health hospitals and that they're not
"overly concerned" with the problems that have been documented in a
few of Texas' 17 GEO lockups. A presentation that GEO prepared for Texas
lawmakers in February boasts of improved clinical programming, shortened
waiting lists, and the elimination of the use of restraints and seclusion in
its Florida psychiatric facilities. Company executives say they won the
support of wary mental health advocates in that state. The GEO prison incidents
"obviously shouldn't have happened," Montgomery County Commissioner
Ed Chance said. "But when you're dealing with inmates, you're going to
have problems. You're going to have some headlines." After the 2007 TYC
scandal, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised serious concerns with
GEO. Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa,
D-McAllen, said "a simple Internet search" should have made GEO a
bad contractor choice for the state. And Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, told
lobbyists for the firm it was best if they didn't contribute to his campaign
at that time. But GEO has continued its full-court press in Texas. Within
months, these lawmakers and 13 others had accepted campaign contributions
from the company. "Some of their facilities are pretty darn good, and
some are not as good as the others," Madden said. "But that's the
exact same problem we have with the state-run facilities."
June 29, 2009 Texas Watchdog
In the 2009 legislative session, the GEO Group, a Florida-based private
prison company, poured money into lobbying, selecting some of the priciest
and best-connected hired guns in Austin. The reason was simple: The company
had a lot of explaining to do before state lawmakers. For at least three
years now, the GEO Group has endured a rash of dangerous, embarrassing
episodes that call into question the outfit’s ability to run prisons and
jails. The state shut down one of its facilities, citing filthy conditions,
while two riots broke out at its prison in West Texas. Then in April, a high
court upheld a massive judgment against the GEO Group after an inmate was
fatally beaten at another one of its prisons. This year state lawmakers (all
Democrats) arrived in Austin with their sights set on the GEO Group. They
authored six separate bills targeting private prison companies, most of which
outlined more public accountability and state oversight. Anti-private prison
activists were confident that some of the measures would be approved. But in
a remarkable turnaround for the corrections outfit, if not the entire
troubled industry, not a single anti-private prison bill passed. In fact,
none of the measures even received a floor vote. Despite an ongoing bout of
bad press and public mishaps, the GEO Group emerged unscathed this
legislative session thanks to a team of high-dollar lobbyists with deep roots
in state government. “At the beginning of the session there were several
people who were rightfully outraged by what happened over the last two
years,” says Bob Libal, the Texas campaigns
coordinator for Grassroots Leadership, a social justice organization that
opposes private prisons. “So for there to be nothing to come out of this
session out of six or seven good thoughtful bills that would have just
provided basic accountability, it’s really sad. And it really speaks to the
private prison industry and the amount of influence they have.” That is
particularly true of the GEO Group and its mental health unit, GEO Care, which
shelled out a maximum of $370,000 this year on lobbyists in Austin, neatly
coinciding with the company’s slate of troubles that made national news.
Meanwhile, its rival, the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America,
spent a maximum $50,000, according to records on file with the Texas Ethics
Commission. Both prison companies do comparable business with the state, with
each firm operating all or part of at least nine state facilities. But it’s
not just the GEO Group’s expense account that makes it noteworthy. A lot of
companies pay top dollar for a crew of lobbyists. But few of them can match
GEO’s well-connected team, a team that, over the last two sessions, have
helped the outfit expand their business and beat back efforts to regulate
their operations. In the 2007 legislative session–before the GEO Group’s
troubles made headlines– lawmakers passed a bill that essentially allowed
private prison companies to house more inmates, enabling them to make more
money off their contracts with the state. During that session, two of the
company’s lobbyists had close ties to then-House Speaker Tom Craddick. Bill
Miller once served on Craddick’s transition team and as his consultant while
fellow GEO lobbyist Michelle Wittenberg had served as the speaker’s general counsel.
Both were also on hand for the company this session with each slated to make
up to $50,000 this year, according to state ethics records. Also in the 2007
legislative session, the GEO Group enlisted the services of former House
Republican Ray Allen, who resigned in the middle of his seventh term a year
earlier to become a lobbyist for the company. He certainly had all kinds of
experience. In 2003, Craddick appointed the Grand Prairie Republican to serve
as the chairman of the House Corrections Committee even though at the time
Allen was lobbying for a private prison company outside Texas. Interestingly,
when Allen decided to quit his elected office, one reason was that he was
“tired of being broke,” according to the Dallas Morning News. Almost immediately,
Allen signed on to join the GEO Group’s team of lobbyists and was slated to
earn as much as $100,000 from the prison company. He also lobbied for the GEO
Group in 2007 with the same pay plan. The GEO Group’s top lobbyist is Lionel
“Leo” Aguirre, a former executive with the state comptroller’s office.
Aguirre is the widower of Lena Guerrero, who became the first Latina chair of
the Texas Railroad Commission in 1992 after serving three terms in the state
House. A state and federal lobbyist for the GEO Group, Aguirre topped the
list of the state’s highest compensated prison lobbyists with a maximum
salary at $250,000 in 2007. This year, Aguirre’s compensation remained
unchanged. In that same list of hired guns, put together by Texans for Public
Justice and Grassroots Leadership, the GEO Group had the four highest paid
lobbyists of all the prison companies doing business in Texas. (The GEO Group
did not return a call for comment.) The corrections firm’s local attorneys
also have close ties to state government. In April, we reported how Carlos
Zaffirini, the husband of state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, is a lawyer for the
firm and has lobbied on behalf of the GEO Group before the Webb County
Commissioners Court. The GEO Group also uses the Brownsville law firm of
state Rep. Rene Oliveira as its local defense counsel. The House member’s
cousin David Oliveira, a partner at the firm, has represented the company on
a lawsuit alleging misconduct that one court described as “reprehensible.”
That the GEO Group’s lobbyists helped beat back a half a dozen anti-private
prison bills is remarkable considering the problems that have plagued the
company lately. In April, a state high court upheld a record $42.5 million
judgment against the GEO Group after inmates at its Willacy County prison
beat a man to death while the warden merely chuckled. Earlier this year a
riot and a fire broke out at its Reeves County prison, just two months after
inmates took a pair of prison employees hostage. But
the worst incident came in 2007, when state officials closed down the GEO
Group’s 200-bed youth detention center in Coke County. Inspectors had
reported that feces and urine littered the common areas, while the inmates’
education program consisted of a daily crossword puzzle slipped into their
cell. Inmates would sometimes go 72 hours without taking a shower, days
without brushing their teeth and were sometimes forced to defecate in
something other than a toilet. Inspectors also found discrimination based on
race. Whitmire -- After the state took action
against the company’s youth facility, an angry state Sen. John Whitmire, the
powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, decided to
take action. He ordered a probe into the embattled firm and concluded that it
had done a “terrible job” operating the Coke County facility. But for the GEO
Group, that rebuke was about all it would ever hear out of Austin. The GEO
Group is hardly the only prison company that chooses its Texas lobbyists
wisely. The Corrections Corporation of America, whose embattled immigrant
detention facility in South Texas was the focus of a federal lawsuit last
year, can count on Mike Toomey to navigate the corridors of the state
capitol. Toomey is a former three-term House member. On his online bio with
Texas Lobby Group, where he is listed as one of three consultants, Toomey is
also billed as “only individual in Texas history to be Chief of Staff for two
Texas Governors”–Rick Perry and William Clements. Open government advocates
say that companies often seek out lobbyists who either worked for lawmakers
or served in the legislature. “It’s a huge advantage. You know how things
work, you know the system and most specifically you know the members you are
lobbying,” says Mary Boyle, the spokesperson for Common Cause, a Washington
D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting good government practices.
“Lobbying is all about relationships.” Those relationships aren’t exactly out
in the open either. They’re often fostered after hours, perhaps at a
dimly-lit restaurant where lobbyists might present their case to a lawmaker
between glasses of wine. If they’re good at their job, they’ll avoid a messy
floor vote and figure out how to silence a bill they don’t like without a
pitched public debate. Just look at HB 3903, which was killed on the House
floor without anyone explaining why. Ortiz -- Authored by House Democrat
Solomon Ortiz Jr., the bill would have made privately-run state prisons
subject to open records laws, prompting companies like the GEO Group to be
more transparent about how they operate public facilities. But seven House
members, including Jerry Madden, the former corrections chair, signed a card
to send it back to the Local Consent and Calendar Committee. That was a delay
tactic that, at that late date, had the effect of killing the bill. “I am
disappointed that HB 3903 was removed from the calendar,” says Ortiz in an
e-mail to Texas Watchdog. “My bill would have allowed more oversight of the
private prison industry. The public deserves a say on whether they want a
private prison in their area, and the media need better access to information
about these facilities to ensure that they are properly run.” Did the GEO
Group’s lobbyists play a role in defeating Ortiz’s accountability measure?
Ortiz, a Corpus Christi Democrat, wouldn’t say. But it couldn’t have hurt
that the firm employs two lobbyists with close Craddick ties, considering
that Madden himself was one of the former House Speaker’s most loyal allies.
Madden -- Madden readily admits to Texas Watchdog
that he had conversations with GEO lobbyist Wittenberg, who once served as
Craddick’s general counsel, about Ortiz’s bill. Suffice it to say she didn’t
like it. But the Richardson Republican says that just because he talks to
lobbyists doesn’t mean he listens to them alone. In this case, though, he
agreed with Wittenberg’s position that Ortiz’s bill would have singled out
prison companies to comply with open records laws when other private firms
have no such mandate. “A lobbyist is effective when a legislator gets to know
them,” he says. “When you get information from them that it is true, they
gain your respect. But in my case I’ve always had an open door and try to
listen to all sides.” But critics of the private prison industry say that
only one side is really heard. “The private prison industry pours money into
the Texas Capitol, building connections and allies,” says Libal
with Grassroots Leadership. “This legislative session is as good an example
as any of how that money pays off.” Contact Matt Pulle
at matt@texaswatchdog.org or 713-980-9777.
June 28, 2009 Brownsville Herald
It took about five years, but state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. seems to have
phased out his paid consulting jobs for construction and engineering firms.
Last year, however, he still received at least $25,000 in consulting fees
from the Houston-based TEDSI Infrastructure Group, according to his personal
financial statement on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. "I was
fulfilling a prior obligation on a contract that I had with TEDSI which expired
in 2008," Lucio wrote in a statement to The Brownsville Herald
Wednesday. Lucio, D-Brownsville, did not say what he did for the firm, but in
2002 said that he would set up meetings and introduce the firm to officials
in Brownsville. In 2004 amid mounting criticism of possible conflicts of
interest, Lucio told the Herald that he would phase out consulting for firms
that do business in the Rio Grande Valley and the state. Besides consulting
for TEDSI, Lucio also was retained by CorPlan
Corrections of Dallas, Management & Training Corp. of Utah, Aguirre Inc.
of Dallas, and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. of
Houston. At the start of 2005, Lucio severed ties with CorPlan,
Aguirre, and MTC amid federal inquiries into the federal detention center in
Willacy County. A Webb County commissioner and two former Willacy County
commissioners were convicted of bribery. Companies involved in the project
were not accused of any wrongdoing. Lucio also stopped consulting for Dannenbaum, which he said he introduced to the Brownsville
Navigation District. The BND paid Dannenbaum $15.4
million of $21.4 million spent toward developing a still non-existent
international bridge at the Port of Brownsville. But, he continued consulting
for TEDSI until last year. Lucio's prior financial statements show that in
2007 TEDSI paid him from $10,000 to $24,999 and $25,000 or more in prior
years. Lucio had been on CorPlan's payroll since
1999. Aguirre, MTC and Dannenbaum then contracted
him, but in interviews prior to 2004 he wouldn't specifically say when or how
much each paid him. It was not until 2004 that Lucio started specifically
listing the companies that retained him in his financial statements and
these, coupled with prior interviews with the senator, reflect that the five
firms paid him at least $340,000. Embattled former Willacy County District
Attorney Juan Angel Guerra obtained an indictment against Lucio last year,
charging him with profiting from the elected office. Administrative Judge
Manuel Bañales Jr. dismissed the indictment following
arguments from Lucio's attorney, Michael R. Cowen, that the indictment was
defective and that Guerra was seeking revenge against those who he perceived
to be his political enemies.
May 5, 2009 Texas Prison Bidness
Amongst the interesting statistics in the Texas Senate Criminal Justice
Committee's interim report on private prisons (PDF), was the shocking
statistic that TDCJ-contracted private prisons have a 90% annual staff
turnover rate. The report also presented numbers on differences in guard pay
between public and private facilities. "The wages and benefits paid to
employees of private contractors are generally lower than that paid to
employees of state-operated facilities... Correctional officer salaries in
the private prisons vary among facilities, with the highest peaking at
slightly more than $24,000 annually." For comparison to this figure,
TDCJ Director Brad Livingston told the Austin American Statesman ("Big
raises sought for prison workers," August 14) that starting pay for correctional
officers in public facilities is $26,016, and the maximum salaries range from
$34,624 to $42,242. This means the lowest-paid TDCJ guard's annual salary is
$2,000 more than the highest-paid guard at TDCJ-contracted private prisons.
This probably contributes to the high turnover at private facilities noted in
the report: During FY 2008 the correctional officer turnover rate at the
seven private prisons was 90 percent (60 percent for the five
privately-operated state jails), which in either case is higher than the 24
percent turnover rate for TDCJ correctional officers during FY 2008. It's
hard to understand how ANY organization can operate with 90% staff turnover.
April 27, 2009 Texas Watchdog
Two state lawmakers from South Texas have financial ties to a private prison
firm that runs facilities for the Texas state prison system — at a time when
lawmakers are debating sweeping new measures to clamp down on corrections
companies. State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, and state Rep. Rene
Oliveira, D-Brownsville, have financial links to the GEO Group, a
Florida-based firm that runs 19 correctional facilities in Texas, including
nine under contract for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Zaffirini’s
husband, Carlos, is a lawyer and advocate for the firm, formerly known as
Wackenhut. In December 2007, the Zaffirinis’
hometown commissioners in rural Webb County considered whether to stop
supplying water and sewer lines to a local GEO-owned prison after residents
voiced concerns about the company’s track record. The Laredo Morning Times
reported that Zaffirini put on a spirited defense of the firm, claiming the
complaints against his client were “steeped in emotion and void of logic.”
Oliveira, meanwhile, also has a cozy relationship with the prison company.
His Brownsville law firm serves as its local defense counsel. The House
member’s cousin David Oliveira, a partner at the firm, has represented the
company on a lawsuit alleging misconduct that one judge described as
“reprehensible.” The lawmakers’ ties to the company raise all sorts of messy
questions: Can either one of them vote on any legislation that would place
tough regulations on how the GEO Group does business? Why haven’t they
disclosed their interest in the firm on their personal financial statements?
And should any lawmaker have a financial interest in a company that feeds out
of the public trough? “The private prison industry is dependent on taxpayer
dollars,” says Alex Friedmann, the associate editor of Prison Legal News, a
newsletter dedicated to protecting inmates’ legal rights. “So, yes, I believe
Zaffirini and Oliveira have a conflict of interest, or at least a perceived
conflict of interest.” Oliveira did not return repeated phone calls for
comment left beginning March 24. Zaffirini, meanwhile, says that she is
largely unfamiliar with the company’s recent struggles, even though her
husband works for the firm. “I quite frankly have not given private prisons a
lot of thought,” she says. “I spend most of the time focusing on the issues
of the poor, the elderly and people who can’t represent themselves.”
Lawmakers could vote this spring to get tough with private prison companies,
including the GEO Group, after the company’s missteps have brought Texas
prisons national attention for poor, unstable conditions. Critics say
Zaffirini and Oliveira, because of their personal ties to the company, should
recuse themselves from prison-related votes. But Zaffirini says she would
vote on the private-prison measures, and that her legislative aides have no
knowledge of her husband’s work. Two years ago, the Texas Youth Commission
slammed the GEO Group’s Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, discovering
illegal contraband and filthy cells that “smelled of feces and urine.” Other
findings included racially segregated cells and a limited education program
that consisted of one daily worksheet slipped into the juvenile’s cell. The
agency later pulled 197 of its inmates out of the facility and canceled its
contract with the firm. Then, earlier this month, the Court of Appeals in the
13th district in Corpus Christi upheld a massive judgment against the GEO
Group, then known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., after an inmate was beaten
to death at one of its facilities. The court concluded that the company tried
to cover up the attack and that its conduct “constituted a disgusting display
of disrespect.” “The GEO Group is an appalling company to represent,” says
Bob Libal, the Texas campaigns coordinator for
Grassroots Leadership, a social justice organization that opposes private
prisons. “It’s staggering to think about how many problems the GEO group has
had in Texas.” The GEO Group last year earned $59 million in fees from the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice for managing nine state facilities. More
notably the GEO Group has endured a rash of problems in Texas that have
garnered the attention of their colleagues in Austin, as well as media
outlets across the country. In 2007 State Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston
Democrat and chairman of the criminal justice committee, called for a special
hearing on GEO’s state contracts after the Texas Youth Commission issued the
devastating report on the company’s youth facility. He then lashed out at the
firm when he felt like its lobbyists were attempting to downplay its
troubles. The corrections outfit also generated headlines when two prison
riots broke out at the GEO-operated Reeves County Detention Center, which
houses inmates detained on federal immigration violations. The first rash of
violence came last December after inmates complained about a lack of health
care, followed by more rioting two months later in which the West Texas
facility was engulfed in flames. Both riots cost Reeves County, which owns
the detention center, more than $1 million to repair the damages. Zaffirini’s
husband, Oliveira’s firm defended GEO Group in 2001 prison beating case --
But despite the GEO Group’s recent bout of bad publicity, it was a brutal
prison beating nearly a decade ago that may raise the most questions about
Zaffirini and Oliveira’s financial interest in the company. On April 26,
2001, two inmates at a GEO Group-operated facility in Willacy County stuffed
prison-issued padlocks into socks and beat Gregorio de la Rosa on his head,
neck, ribs and back, striking him dead just four days before his intended release.
The family of de la Rosa, an honorably discharged National Guardsman who was
incarcerated on a drug charge, would later file a wrongful death lawsuit
against the GEO Group. They claimed that the beating was no isolated
incident. Rather, de la Rosa’s attorney, Ronald Rodriguez, alleged that
facility’s guards allowed inmates to enforce their own brand of order that
included rape and extortion. The Laredo attorney put on quite a case. He
introduced evidence of assaults in which inmates were also attacked with
padlocks wrapped inside socks — just like de la Rosa had been. Rodriguez
showed that the guards didn’t follow policy when they failed to pat down
inmates who entered the area where the deadly beating took place. Finally, in
order to point to a wider culture of dysfunction, Rodriguez introduced into
evidence a prison training videotape in which a guard tells an inmate that if
he didn’t want to be raped, he shouldn’t have come to prison. $47.5 million
judgment -- A jury would later award the de la Rosa family $47.5 million, one
of the top 10 jury verdicts in 2006. The judge and jury also found that the
company destroyed the videotape of the beating. The GEO Group appealed the
case, but earlier month the court of appeals in the 13th district of Texas upheld
the ruling. The court noted testimony that the prison’s warden and officers
“smirked and laughed” as the inmates attacked de la Rosa. Judge Gina
Benavides, who wrote the opinion, also concluded that Warden David Forrest
intentionally disposed of incriminating evidence and that “these cover-up
attempts show intentional malice, trickery, and deceit.” “We hold that nearly
all the indicators of reprehensible conduct exists
in this record,” the judge said. In October 2007, Zulema de la Rosa Salazar,
the older sister of the late inmate, wrote a letter to Whitmire, who had
recently called for a hearing on the GEO Group’s track record in Texas. In
her letter, Salazar says that she tried to warn officials in Webb County when
the company proposed building a prison there. But no one would ever meet with
her. “They will not listen,” she writes, her anger nearly crystallizing on
the page. “Why? I’ll tell you why. One of the GEO Group’s attorneys, Mr.
Zaffirini, is married to Senator Judith Zaffirini. Is this not a conflict of
interest?” Of course, it wasn’t just Zaffirini’s ties to the company that
came under scrutiny. Oliveira’s 15-member law firm, Roerig
Oliveira & Fisher, has represented the GEO Group in the post-verdict
hearings of the De La Rosa’s wrongful death suit after the firm’s original
attorney, Bruce Garcia, went to work for the Texas attorney general’s office.
In the 2007 legislative session, Oliveira sat on the House Corrections
Committee, which considers legislation that regulates private corrections companies
like the GEO Group. The committee, like its Senate counterpart, can also
probe into the conduct of corrections companies. “Oliveira should have been
conducting investigations into these very disturbing facts surrounding de la
Rosa’s death at the hands of the GEO Group in his capacity as a member of the
Texas House Corrections Committee,” says Rodriguez, the attorney.
“Incredibly, instead Oliveira’s law firm was and is representing GEO Group in
the de la Rosa litigation.” Rodriguez is just as critical of the Laredo
Democrat. “Senator Zaffirini is supposed to be looking out after the state’s
interest and the interest of her constituents like the de la Rosas, and not
after her own self-interest by getting her community property estate paid by
representing one of Texas’ major private prison providers,” he says. “The de
la Rosas reside in Zaffirini’s district but cannot go to her for help in her
official capacity as their state senator because such pleas will only fall on
deaf ears.” Zaffirini: Wife would not be compromised; Webb County official:
Recusal from prison debate necessary -- Carlos Zaffirini scoffs at the claim
that his lawyering for the GEO Group has compromised his wife’s
responsibilities as a state senator. “From the sound of it, he would like to
have my wife influence the judicial process in favor of his clients,” he
says, referring to the continuing litigation in the De la Rosa case. “She’s
not going to do that for him or anyone.” Rodriguez says that he has no need
for Zaffirini to influence what happens in court; afterall,
his record judgment was just upheld. He’s just questioning whether her
husband’s legal work has cast a pall over her stature as an elected official.
In any case, he is not the only one concerned about her loyalties. Webb County
Commissioner Sergio “Keko” Martinez, a Democrat,
also doubts whether Zaffirini can vote objectively on anti-private prison
legislation. “Ethically, I would expect my wife to disqualify herself on any
deliberations that would have to do with a company I have represented in the
past or would be representing,” he says, speaking hypothetically. “Whatever
money I would make, she would have an interest in half of it.” A loophole for
lawyers in the state’s disclosure requirements -- Neither Oliveira nor Zaffirini
listed their ties to the GEO Group on their 2008 personal financial
statements (Zaffirini statement here/Oliveira statement here), which are
supposed to alert voters to instances when lawmakers’ fiscal interests might
shape votes. The law does not require it, and the exemption extends to
lawmakers whose spouses are lawyers. But there’s nothing preventing state
elected officials from disclosing more than what the law allows, a practice
that could allay questions about their votes and positions. In fact, Oliveira
apparently did just that. In an addendum to his 29-page financial statement,
the House member writes that his firm represents many banks, insurance
companies and government associations. Oliveira explains that some of them
may employ lobbyists who have contacted him, but it would not be related to
his legal work. Overall, he lists nearly a dozen of his firm’s clients,
including Geico, State Farm Insurance Companies and the Texas Municipal
League, but not the GEO Group, which arguably has just as much at stake in
the 2009 legislative session as any company doing business in the state.
Lawmakers have proposed stiffer regulations for private prisons following the
Youth Commission’s closure of the GEO Group’s Coke County facility. House and
Senate Democrats crafted every single measure. Here is a listing of the main
bills that were proposed–the first two of which never made it out of
committee. HB 1714: The most severe of the anti-private prison bills, this
bill, authored by Rep. Harold Dutton, would prohibit counties from
contracting with private prisons. HB 3247: Rep. Armando “Mando” Martinez’s
bill would not allow counties to contract with private prison corporations if
the corporation’s employees do not have collective bargaining rights. HB
3903: This bill, sponsored by Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr. requires more
accountability for private prisons including a mandatory public hearing in
each commissioner’s precinct before a county enters into a contract with a
private prison firm. SB 1680: Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa’s
bill requires that voters approve any county contracts with private prison
operators. SB 1690: This bill, also sponsored by Hinojosa, allows for
stronger state oversight of county-owned (and usually privately-operated)
jails with federal and out-of-state prisoners. Sen. Zaffirini: Husband
‘doesn’t influence me’ -- In a lengthy interview with Texas Watchdog,
Zaffirini said she would vote on the prison measures if they make it to her
desk, though she doesn’t know which way. Typically, she said, her aides
carefully research new bills and recommend how she should vote, and “99
percent of the time,” she follows their recommendation. In regard to her
husband’s work for the GEO Group, Zaffirini said her staff doesn’t really
know about his ties to the company. “I have a system for deciding how to
vote, and my staff is totally unaware of my husband’s clients,” says the
state senator. “They are in Austin, and he is in in Laredo.” Throughout the
interview, Zaffirini was amiable and composed. She never sounded a defensive
note. Still, the Laredo Democrat’s defense of her unusual situation assumes
that spouses can draw an indelible line between their professional and
personal lives. “My husband and I never, ever discuss his clients because
they have standards of confidentiality,” she says. “He doesn’t influence me
on legislation that impacts them; nor does he even talk about it.” Carlos
Zaffirini echoed his wife’s remark while adding that as an attorney he works
for many clients who come under the jurisdiction of the state. “She doesn’t
know half of what I do or 10 percent of what I do,” he said. “I represent a
lot of clients. I represent GEO and oil-and-gas producers. I represent land
owners and developers and people in international trade.” Rene Oliveira’s firm
is representing the GEO Group in an effort to overturn the record judgment in
the de la Rosa case. Meanwhile, the Brownsville lawmaker may be asked to vote
on bills that would severely restrict how his client does business.
Rodriguez, the de la Rosa attorney who has become an impassioned critic of
the private prison company, questions how Oliveira will approach any bills
that come up for a vote. “How can he be objective when his law firm is on the
GEO Group’s payroll?”
November 14, 2008 Magic Valley
Times-News
Families of two Idaho inmates who apparently killed themselves in lockups
run by private prison company GEO Group Inc., pleaded Thursday with Texas
state senators to bar out-of-state prisoners from the Lone Star State. The
Idaho Department of Correction has housed more than 300 prisoners at GEO-run
Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, but recently announced
plans to move them to the private North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre,
Okla. The move follows allegations that GEO falsified reports and
short-staffed the Texas facility where Idaho inmate Randall McCullough, 37,
died. Families of Idaho inmates spoke Thursday at a Texas state Senate
hearing in Austin, Texas. The hearing, which dealt with general oversight of
the Texas prison system and did not result in specific action, was webcast
live over the Internet. Among those testifying was lawyer Ronald Rodriguez,
who represents McCullough's family as well as that of Idaho inmate Scott
Noble Payne, 43, who killed himself last year at another GEO-run prison in
Dickens, Texas. "Idaho prisoners need to be in Idaho where they have
access to their court - Where they have access to their families,"
Rodriguez on Thursday told the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.
Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, spoke to Texas lawmakers last year and again
on Thursday. "It seems that no lessons were learned," Noble said.
"If changes had been placed - Randall would not have been so desperate
to take his own life, as my son did." Texas Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston,
chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, questioned why the
"little" state of Idaho recently decided to pull its prisoners from
Geo-run Bill Clayton. "Should we be following their lead?" he
asked. But a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official told Whitmire that
Texas inmates aren't held at Bill Clayton, and warned against painting
private prisons in Texas with a broad brush. Inmate McCullough's sister,
Laurie Williams, told Texas senators that they should do a review of all private
prisons in their state - including GEO competitor Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA). Idaho prisoners are to be taken to CCA-run North Fork in
Oklahoma, where another Idaho inmate, David Drashner,
was allegedly murdered in June. IDOC's decision to move prisoners from one
privately run lockup to another out-of-state facility concerns Williams, as
well as Drashner's wife, Pam Drashner,
who have said they want Idaho to stop shipping away its inmates. Idaho
doesn't have enough room for all its prisoners, and sending them out-of-state
has been widely unpopular. Williams also wants to talk to Idaho lawmakers,
she said. "We should be addressing the Idaho Senate," said
Williams, after Thursday's hearing in Texas. "This is Idaho sending its inmates
out of state whether it's Texas that takes them or Oklahoma and that's what
we have to have stopped." GEO made $4.9 million in annual operating
revenues off its contract with Idaho to manage prisoners at Bill Clayton. GEO
officials said shareholders won't lose out from Idaho's withdrawal because of
an expanding contract with the state of Indiana.
December 5, 2007 Yahoo
The GEO Group (NYSE:GEO - News) (“GEO”) announced today the appointment of
Gary Johnson as Regional Vice President of GEO’s Central Region, which oversees
GEO’s current operations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana and is responsible
for business development activities in the central United States. Mr. Johnson
will begin his duties as Regional Vice President on January 2, 2008. George
C. Zoley, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive
Officer of GEO said: “We are very fortunate to have Gary Johnson join our
management team as Regional Vice President of our Central Region. As a former
Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Mr. Johnson
has extensive experience managing a large and complex correctional
organization. Mr. Johnson’s expertise and background give him outstanding
qualifications to lead our efforts to provide high quality detention and
correctional services that meet our clients’ needs and help address the
increased demand for detention and correctional bed space in the Central
Region of the United States.”
October 12, 2007 KRIS TV
The delayed discovery of squalid conditions at a privately run Texas Youth
Commission jail was "a human failure" and stronger oversight is
needed to prevent similar incidents, a key state senator said Friday.
"It was very simple that the monitors were not doing their job and there
was a human failure," said Sen. John Whitmire, head of the Senate
Criminal Justice Committee. "Who's monitoring the monitors?"
Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, called a committee hearing about a week after a
Coke County juvenile lockup in Bronte operated by The GEO Group, Inc., was
closed because of filthy conditions. A Texas Youth Commission ombudsman
discovered the conditions, even though the facility had passed previous
inspections by TYC monitors. The TYC system was rocked earlier this year by
allegations of rampant sexual and other physical abuse against juvenile inmates
in the system. The star witness at Friday's hearing on adult and juvenile
prison monitoring was Shirley Noble, who told how her son, 43-year-old Idaho
inmate Scot Noble Payne, endured months of horrific conditions then slit his
own throat at a private Texas prison run by GEO Group. "It seemed there
was no end to the degradation he and other prisoners were to endure with
substandard facilities," Noble said. Her son died March 4 in a private
prison in Spur. Noble questioned why Idaho sent its inmates to Texas and why
the Florida-based GEO Group was allowed to keep prisoners in what she
described as "degrading and subhuman conditions." "Please,
please hold them accountable for all the injuries and misery they have
caused," Noble said. A spokesman for GEO Group did not immediately
return a telephone call from The Associated Press to respond to comments made
at the hearing. TYC Acting Executive Director Dimitria
Pope, who took over the youth agency earlier this year, testified that she's
putting more monitoring safeguards in place. That includes sending executive
staff members out to view the lockups, something she said hadn't been done
regularly in the past. "Because of my concerns of what I saw in Coke
County, I have implemented a blitz of every facility, either the ones that we
operate, that contract, district offices, anything that has TYC affiliated
with it," she said, adding that each site will be visited by the end of
October. Adan Munoz Jr., executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards, said he has four inspectors do annual inspections of the 267
facilities under his oversight. He defended his agency's practice of giving
two- to three-week notices about inspection visits but said recently there
have been more surprise inspections. Sen. Juan "Chuy"
Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said privatizing prisons is an "easy way out."
He said he worries about the state continuing to contract with companies that
have a history of abuse. "It's a myth that the private sector does a
better job than government" in running prisons, Hinojosa said.
"They're there to make a profit and they'll cut corners, and they'll cut
back on services and they'll many times look the other way when abuse is
taking place." Because of Texas' size and high rate of locking up convicts,
the state is in the national spotlight for its dealings with private prison
firms, said Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "It puts a special burden on
us," he said. "If it needs to be improved, improve it, because
everybody looks to us." Noble was the panel's final witness. The room
hushed as she told the senators her family's emotional tale. Her son, a
convicted sex offender, was kept in solitary confinement for months with a
wet floor, bloodstained sheets and smelly towels. She said he wrote long,
detailed letters to family members in which he said the only way to escape
the prison's harsh conditions was to join his late grandfather in the spirit
world. Noble said she begged for psychological help for her son. She said he
wasn't supposed to have been given a razor, and she still wonders how he got
the one he used to end his life. "After he tried to unsuccessfully slash
his wrists and ankles, he knelt in the shower and cut his own throat,"
she said. "Surely only a person in utter disillusionment and horrifying
conditions would bring themselves to this end."
October 12, 2007 Dallas Morning News
Three monitors fired by the Texas Youth Commission last week for failing
to report filthy and dangerous conditions at a privately run juvenile prison
in West Texas had previously worked for the company they oversaw. Two of the
quality assurance monitors were hired directly from caseworker positions with
The GEO Group Inc. at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, according to
their job applications. The monitoring unit's supervisor also briefly worked
for GEO at the youth prison near Bronte four years before being hired by TYC,
records show. A clerk who was fired had previous GEO employment as well. TYC
spokesman Jim Hurley said agency executives were unaware of the terminated workers'
ties to GEO before The Dallas Morning News filed an open-records request this
week. Officials said last week that they were concerned about entanglements
between TYC employees and the company they monitored. TYC's inspector general
has launched a criminal investigation of operations at the Coke County
prison, including the possibility of financial transactions between GEO and
TYC employees. GEO's relationship with the fired TYC monitors is a likely
topic at a hearing today of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in Austin.
It is intended to examine GEO's operation of youth and adult prisons in
Texas. State Sen. John Whitmire, the panel's chairman, was angered to learn
from a reporter Thursday that TYC monitors had previously been employed by
GEO. "I think it's outrageous," the Houston Democrat said. "It
just confirms what many of us suspected – that there was too close a
relationship between the TYC employees and GEO employees." He said the
committee also would seek answers from the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice and county jail and juvenile probation officials about their own
monitoring of private corrections companies. "Anyone that confines
individuals in the state of Texas needs to make certain they know who their
monitors are – and that they go behind their monitors and literally monitor
their monitors," Mr. Whitmire said. Mr. Hurley said the prior employment
with GEO raised questions about whether the monitors had been objective in
their evaluations of the facility. "How do you monitor the monitors?"
he said. "We need a very good answer to that." For years, quality
assurance reports on the Coke County prison had been overwhelmingly positive.
Twice, TYC named it contract facility of the year. "You have to worry
about conflicts of interest," Mr. Hurley said Thursday. "I'm not
saying there is a conflict of interest. But there is a perception." TYC
Executive Director Dimitria Pope fired four
monitors at the Coke County prison and a clerk last week after she and others
toured the facility. It was in such deplorable condition, Ms. Pope said, that
she ordered the removal of all 197 inmates. She also fired another employee
at the Coke County facility who had not worked for GEO, and two contract care
supervisors at TYC's district office in Fort Worth. The head of contract care
at TYC's headquarters in Austin resigned. Ms. Pope canceled TYC's $8 million
contract with Florida-based GEO, which had operated the Coke County facility
since it opened in 1994. GEO initially tried to reinstate the contract but, after
criticism, said it accepted the decision. The Coke County facility was the
state's largest private youth prison. It was the only Texas juvenile facility
operated by GEO, one of the nation's biggest private prison contractors. As a
result of the problems discovered at Coke County, Ms. Pope ordered a
wholesale review of the agency's contract care system. "Who the monitors
are and where they come from will be one of the issues that we're going to
look at," Mr. Hurley said. TYC employs more than 40 quality assurance
specialists and supervisors, according to personnel records provided to The
News. Some are stationed at the facilities they monitor, several of which are
in remote rural areas. Mr. Hurley shied away from discussing what actions the
agency might undertake if it learns that other monitors had previous
employment with contractors they inspect. "What we need to do is make
sure that first of all, every one of these contracts is being monitored and
that it's being monitored correctly," he said. "If the remoteness
is a problem, I think that monitoring these contracts accurately will show us
that," he said. "We need to have a sort of evidence-based
determination." The Coke County prison is in a one-stoplight town about
30 miles north of San Angelo. It was the town's second-largest employer after
the school district. One-third of the school district's $6 million budget is
tied to programs at the prison. Two of the fired TYC employees lived in
Bronte. Valerie Jones, former supervisor of the monitoring unit, has two
children in the Bronte schools. Patti Frazee, her clerk, is married to a
member of the Bronte school board. Ms. Jones, who worked for GEO as a
chemical-dependency counselor from October 1995 to July 1996, declined to
comment Thursday. She was hired by TYC as a quality assurance monitor in
spring 2000, records show. Ms. Frazee, reached at her home, said officials of
the youth agency never raised any questions about her previous employment
with GEO. "There were not very many jobs out here," she said.
"Any time you could take a state job, it was a better job for everybody
because it paid more money. That's the only reason. It was like a step up
from GEO. That's the way everybody viewed it." Ms. Frazee was paid
$17,950 per year working as bookkeeper for GEO. As a clerk for TYC, she
earned $25,035. The two monitors hired directly from GEO, Brian Lutz and
David Roberson, earned $26,800 and $24,500 per year, respectively. With TYC,
Mr. Lutz was paid $33,945,while Mr. Roberson
received $37,393, agency records show. Several attempts to locate Mr. Lutz
for comment were unsuccessful. Mr. Roberson, reached at his home in San
Angelo, declined to be interviewed. Lisa Williamson worked as a TYC quality
assurance monitor at the Coke County facility from 1998 until 2004. She said
she knew Mr. Roberson and Ms. Jones well. She described them as honest,
hard-working people devoted to their jobs. "There is not anybody there
who I wouldn't trust with my own children," said Ms. Williamson, who now
works as a juvenile probation officer in Young County. Ms. Williamson said
she had not worked for GEO. But she said she never saw any of her colleagues
who had worked for the company ignore any problems. While she and the GEO
warden, Brett Bement, frequently tried to tell each
other how to do their jobs, Ms. Williamson said, she didn't feel pressured
and didn't obey him. "He knew I wasn't a pushover, and he couldn't get
by with it. He couldn't have done that with any of us," she said. GEO
Group gave money to several state officials' campaigns -- State Rep. Jerry
Madden held his annual "How Sweet It Is" dessert party in Plano on
Thursday night to raise money for a future campaign. One of the sponsors at
the $2,500 "cherries jubilee" level was to be The GEO Group Inc., a
Florida-based corrections company. Until last week, GEO operated the Coke
County Juvenile Justice Center near Bronte under contract with the Texas
Youth Commission. In recent years, the company has donated to the campaigns
of some legislators who oversee the youth agency. Two of them, Mr. Madden and
Sen. John Whitmire, are co-chairmen of the special legislative committee
established this year to oversee reforms of TYC in the wake of a sexual abuse
scandal at the West Texas State School in Pyote.
Mr. Madden, R-Plano, received a total of $2,500 from GEO's political action
committee in 2005 and 2006, according to campaign finance records. Mr.
Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, received $2,000 from the political action
committee of Wackenhut Corrections Corp., as GEO was previously known, in
2003 and 2004. Other recipients of GEO or Wackenhut contributions are Lt.
Gov. David Dewhurst, who received $2,500 in 2006, and House Speaker Tom
Craddick, R-Midland, who received $1,000 in 2005, state records show. In
addition to Mr. Madden, the chairman of the House Corrections Committee, two
other panel members received donations from GEO or Wackenhut. Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, received $250 in 2006. And Pat
Haggerty, R-El Paso, received $500 from the Wackenhut Corrections PAC in
2004. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, chairman of the House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and another member of the Joint Committee on
the Operation and Management of the Texas Youth Commission, received $250 in
2006. Mr. Madden's predecessor as head of the corrections committee, Ray
Allen, received $3,500 in 2003 and 2004 from Wackenhut. He since has left
public office and is a lobbyist for GEO. Mr. Madden acknowledged that
lobbyists for GEO might attend his fundraiser at the Southfork Hotel on Thursday
night. But he said he had told the lobbyists that he did not want a check.
"Just right now, I think it would be a bad idea to specifically look for
contributions from GEO," he said.
April 18, 2007 Daily Texan
These former lawmakers now push agendas as lobbyists on the current
Legislature. By 2009, perhaps we'll have a fresh batch of lawmakers-turned-
lobbyists unleashed on Austin, using connections at the Capitol to score
lucrative deals for their clients. In Texas, there's no law against going
directly into lobbying after serving in the Texas House or Senate. In fact,
six representatives who served in 2005 have lobbying contracts this year that
each could potentially be worth $100,000. (The Texas Ethics Commission makes
lobbyists declare a maximum and minimum to their contract, not the exact
amount.) The minimum and maximum value of their contracts, including major
clients, include: Ray Allen: $395,000 to $835,000, including at least $50,000
for AT&T, Public Strategies, GEO Group, Inc. and Jones Lang LaSalle.
February 8, 2007 American-Statesman
Groups advocating the closure of an immigrant detention center in Taylor
applauded Wednesday a state resolution urging the Department of Homeland
Security to consider alternatives to detaining families and children.
"It is important that state legislators are aware of what is happening
in their own backyard and that they begin to take the necessary steps to
resolve this situation," said Rebecca Bernhardt, the immigration, border
and national security policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union
of Texas. State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, on Monday filed House
Resolution 64, which is critical of federal policy that allows for detaining
families, children and infants at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in
Taylor. Immigrants are confined on noncriminal charges while the government
determines whether they should be deported. "It is immoral in my mind to
detain families," Rodriguez said Wednesday at a Capitol news conference.
"The children are the ones who suffer most." The government says
the facility in Taylor was designed for families and is a humane way to
maintain family unity while ensuring that families can't skip immigration
hearings. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency oversees the
facility, which is owned and run by a private company, Corrections
Corporation of America.
July 28, 2006 Texas Observer
During 12 years in the Texas House, the legislative duties of Rep. Ray
Allen, a Grand Prairie Republican, have periodically cross-pollinated his
private business enterprises. So when this one-time chair of the House
Corrections Committee recently left the Legislature to lobby, he seemed
predestined to hustle for prison interests. Yet destiny has its twists. This
conservative, who amassed a dismal House environmental record, is working
closely with Austin environmental activist Jeff Heckler. While Allen has yet
to report any clients with obvious prison ties, Heckler and Allen’s former
chief of staff do lobby for corrections-industry clients. Asked about his
odd-fellow relationship with Allen, Heckler says, “We’re not working on any
environmental stuff. We’re mostly working on corrections stuff.” Welcome to
the lobby, where nothing is as it seems. When Allen resigned in January, he
expressed frustration over trying to support himself while working as a
poorly paid lawmaker during yet another special session. “I simply cannot
afford to serve on a $600-a-month salary with no other source of income,” he
told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. While candid about his competing personal
and legislative obligations, Allen—who now reports lobby income of up to
$485,000—has been sensitive to suggestions that this juggling act created
occasional conflicts. The Houston Chronicle previously reported on Allen’s fortuitous
timing in founding Grand Prairie’s Academy for Firearms Training in 1995.
This occurred soon after two House panels that Allen chaired discharged
legislation to let Texans carry concealed guns—if they first obtained
handgun-safety training. Three years ago, the Observer and Texans for Public
Justice reported that Allen, who then chaired the House Corrections
Committee, was promoting a prison-privatization bill while he and his top
aide lobbied outside Texas for private prison interests. Allen responded that
his client, the National Correctional Industries Association (which counted
two major private prison companies among its many members), promotes prison
labor—not prison privatization. With this in mind, we turn to the delicate
matter of Allen’s latest ties to the prison lobby. So far Allen has reported
in public filings that eight clients are paying him a total of between
$230,000 and $485,000 this year (Texas lobby incomes are reported in ranges).
While none of Allen’s reported clients boast obvious prison ties, at least
one of them has a keen interest in prison contracts. Allen also works closely
with two lobbyists who represent prison companies. One is Scott Gilmore, who
previously served as Allen’s legislative chief of staff and was also the lawmaker’s
lobby partner. The other is Heckler, the Austin activist. Four of Heckler’s
six lobby clients double as clients of Allen or Gilmore. Meanwhile, Gilmore
is under contract to the Solutions Group—Heckler’s lobby firm. Gilmore left
Allen’s office to form his SEG Strategic Alliances lobbying firm in late
2004. Last year Gilmore reported lobby income of up to $220,000 from six
clients. Leading them were clients from the industry that he and Allen
recently oversaw. Gilmore and Heckler both lobbied last year for AT&T
Inmate Calling Services and Atlantic Shores Healthcare—the mental-health
subsidiary of private prison giant GEO Group Inc., formerly known as
Wackenhut Corrections. Gilmore also has been representing the Keefe Group—the
nation’s leading supplier of prison commissaries. This year Gilmore signed CentraCore Properties Trust, a for-profit investor in
prisons. Consider California-based Bottom Line Utility Solutions, which
advises clients on how to lower utility bills. Last year Bottom Line hired Heckler
and Gilmore as it promoted legislation to require Texas prisons to install
water-conservation devices (HB 2905). Approved by Allen and the six other
members of the Corrections Committee, the bill passed the House too late in
the session for Senate action. This year Bottom Line hired a third Texas
lobbyist: Ray Allen. Such revolving-door abuses undermine public faith in
elected officials and government—a cost that is offset for Allen and Gilmore
by the up to $100,000 that they will receive from Bottom Line this year.
While Allen’s old legislative colleagues could crack down on revolving-door
abuses, too many of them already are looking ahead to lucrative future
lobbying careers of their own.
July 23, 2006 Express News
The Willacy County attorney is speaking out against his county's new
contract for a massive detention center because he said it involves companies
still under a cloud from the 2004 bribery convictions of three elected
officials. Juan Angel Guerra also accuses veteran Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville,
of going back on his word by continuing to represent the same firms. Former
Willacy County Commissioners Israel Tamez and the
late Jose Jimenez were convicted in 2004 of accepting bribes in exchange for
favorable votes regarding a 600-bed prison that opened in Raymondville, the
county seat, in 2003. The third convicted official, Webb County Commissioner
David Cortez, was an associate of CorPlan
Corrections, a consulting company at the time of the prison project. Cortez
was accused of funneling the bribe money for favorable votes on contracts. No
company employees, however, have been charged. Federal prosecutors wouldn't
comment on the case, but observers believe the investigation is ongoing
because the commissioners' sentencing dates have been pushed back several
times. Meanwhile, the same firms are building a 2,000-bed detention facility
near the same prison. Willacy commissioners voted 3-2 on Monday to approve
$60.6 million in bonds for the new facility, which is on a fast-track
construction schedule to house mostly non-Mexican undocumented immigrants in
a series of tentlike structures for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
or ICE. Utah-based Management Training Corp., or MTC, will operate the
facility; Houston-based Hale-Mills Construction Inc. is building it; and
Argyle-based CorPlan is consulting on the project,
said Guerra, who is the county and district attorney. A May 27, 2005, letter
from commissioners to the county's nonprofit corporation set up to oversee
the federal prison project asked it to "terminate its contractual
relationship with CorPlan," because a Willacy
County lawsuit against the firm alleged it was involved with the bribes.
"Now they are asking me to sign a contract that includes CorPlan," Guerra said. "I told the commissioners
you can't have it both ways. First you pass the resolution saying you don't
want to deal with CorPlan. Now you do a contract
that I know for a fact includes CorPlan. So we are
back to square one." The lawsuit was dropped in April. County Judge Simon
Salinas said he wasn't aware of the letter and resolution that prompted it.
It's probably too late anyway, he added. "The contract is already
signed, the work is already begun," he said. Regardless, Salinas said,
the county can't proceed under the assumption that leaders of the companies
are criminals. "In this country we are innocent until proven
guilty," he said. "And nobody out there pressed charges against the
companies. ... Just because these (commissioners) plead guilty doesn't mean
everybody in the world is guilty." Guerra favored Tennessee-based
Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which offered to finance the
detention facility on its own rather than through the county. He said the
commissioners initially favored CCA, but later picked MTC. Commissioner Noe Loya said Guerra "is trying to find every excuse to
hire CCA, and change our minds, but it's over." Guerra said he met with
Lucio two weeks ago and the veteran lawmaker pushed MTC. "I asked him,
'Are you talking to me as my senator or as an employee of one of these
companies?'" Guerra said. "He told me he was talking to me as a
consultant." Lucio said he met with Guerra because it "appeared
that he had quite a bit of influence on the Commissioners Court." Lucio
said he told Guerra he favored MTC because it treats its employees well.
Lucio said he thought CorPlan had been cleared
because the lawsuit filed on behalf of Willacy County against James Parkey, president of CorPlan,
was dropped and there have been no other arrests. Parkey
did not return a call seeking comment. "My main focus on talking with
Johnny (Guerra) was trying to sell him on the fact that MTC was a very
reputable company," Lucio said. "I feel very comfortably
speaking on their behalf and asking them to consider us and that was my main
focus." According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Lucio reported in 2005
that MTC and CorPlan paid him a total of at least
$50,000 through his Brownsville company, Rio Shelters Inc. In the wake of the
bribery scandal, Lucio said he had stopped representing the firms and
wouldn't again until the matter was cleared up. "I know there has been a
case, a problem, a situation there where somebody associated with (Parkey) out of Laredo was indicted and convicted,"
Lucio said, referring to Cortez. "But when the lawsuit against him was
dropped, I felt that he was exonerated." Told that the bribery
investigation may still be open, he said: "If it is, I am not aware of
it." Asked if he was being paid by MTC or CorPlan
for encouraging the detention center contract, he said: "It's up to them
if they feel I did a good job." Lucio said it was "very hard to
draw a fine line" between his job as a lawmaker and his private work,
but added: "I can tell you this: I do my best." "I get paid
$600 a month to be a state senator, and I do it just about on a full-time
basis," he said. Damon Hiniger, a vice
president of CCA in Tennessee, said he was surprised by the county's decision
because CCA was going to invest its own money, pay about $1.8 million in
property taxes, and shoulder the risk. Judge Salinas said he was influenced
by the bottom line, nothing more. "I have nothing against CCA, they are
a good reputable company, but they are in the business to make their own
bucks," he said. The detention facility is to open Aug. 1 with 500 beds,
and then have 1,500 more available Oct. 1. It is part of President Bush's
Secure Border Initiative.
July 20, 2006 Valley Morning Star
State Sen. Eddie Lucio resumed consulting work with a company that he
says offers Willacy County hundreds of jobs and a steady flow of revenue for
years to come. Last year, Lucio suspended business with Management Training
Corp. and two other companies involved in the development of a $14.5 million
prison project that was the focus of a federal bribery investigation. That
investigation led to the convictions of former Willacy County commissioners
Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez. In letters to the
companies, Lucio wrote he was taking "a leave of absence" from
consulting work "until this matter is resolved." At the time, Lucio
asked the Texas Attorney General's Office and the state Ethics Commission to
review his work as a consultant. "I can do business with companies that
do business with the federal government," Lucio said the agencies
determined. Lucio resumed work for MTC as the company sought a Willacy County
contract to operate a $60.6 million detention center to hold illegal
immigrants. Last week, commissioners voted 3-2 to give MTC a two-year
contract to operate the detention center. "They're an outstanding
operation," Lucio said of the Utah-based company that operates a 525-bed
county-owned prison here. Lucio declined to disclose his fee. Monday,
commissioners voted 3-2 to issue $60.6 million in bonds to build the
detention center that's part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
crackdown on illegal immigration. "I think Willacy County will come out
ahead," Lucio said. "I think it's a wonderful opportunity for
hundreds of jobs." Lucio said his work with MTC was limited to a meeting
with County Attorney Juan Angel Guerra. In the meeting, Lucio talked 30 to 45
minutes with Guerra, who recommended that commissioners hire Corrections
Corporation of America, which proposed working with investors to fund the
project's costs. "He had questions whether MTC was a reputable
company," said Lucio, who owns Rio Consulting in Brownsville. "He
was very, very out to get the commissioners to hire CCA. All we did was talk
about the qualifications of MTC and why it would be a better deal."
Under MTC's contract, the county will own the detention center, Lucio said.
"It's a ($60) million asset at the end," Lucio said, referring to
county payments that run through 2009. "This is going to be a ...
facility for the future. They can continue the same situation. I'm going to push
MTC to make sure they fulfill the wishes of Willacy County. What we need to
do is insure that inmates are brought to that facility." Lucio said he
stood behind company projections that show the federal government will fill
the detention center with more than 1,800 illegal immigrants. "The
federal government is in dire need," Lucio said of detention center
beds. County commissioners Aurelio Guerra and Abiel
Cantu voted against hiring MTC because they questioned whether the federal
government could fill the detention center with illegal immigrants for which
the company would pay at least $2.25 a head. But steps such as hiring more
U.S. Border Patrol agents and the placement of National Guard troops along
the border will increase arrests of illegal immigrants, Lucio said.
"Even President Bush is beefing up the border," he said.
"(But) nothing is going to stop people from (crossing the border) to
seek the American dream. I think more people are going to get caught."
Cantu and Aurelio Guerra also voted against the company's hiring because they
argued that the federal government would restrict the county from spending
detention center revenues on county expenditures. Lucio said he did not know
the specifics of the contract. "That's up to the Commissioners Court to
look into the specifics of the contract," he said. Lucio denied Juan
Angel Guerra's claim that he was working for Corplan
Corrections, an Irving-based prison consulting firm, in the detention center
project. Juan Angel Guerra said Lucio told him that he worked for James Parkey, Corplan's president.
Last year, Lucio said he suspended ties with Corplan,
MTC and Aguirre Corp. of Dallas after Tamez and
Jimenez pleaded guilty to taking more than $10,000 in bribes in exchange for
votes to hire a consultant in the $14.5 million prison project that the
companies helped to develop. Lucio said he resumed work with Corplan after McAllen attorney Ramon Garcia, Hidalgo
County's judge, dropped a lawsuit against Corplan
and Houston-based Hale Mills construction in April. "When they were
exonerated ... it cleared the path," Lucio said. "I work for them
anytime I like to. I like Mr. Parkey. He's a good
man. As far as I'm concerned, he's a reputable person." However, Lucio
said his work with Corplan did not involve the detention
center project. Last month, Willacy County commissioners entered into a
two-year contract with Homeland Security to construct tent-like domes to hold
500 beds by Aug. 2. As part of the contract, the detention center will expand
to 2,000 beds within 90 days.
September 22, 2004 Dallas Morning
News
Who would have thought a race to represent the working-class residents of
Grand Prairie and South Irving would include cameo appearances by Howard Dean
and the Moonies? Anything's possible in the spirited race for state House
District 106 between Republican state Rep. Ray Allen and Democrat Katy Hubener, who moved from nearby Duncanville for the chance
to unseat the incumbent. During a recent interview, Ms. Hubener's
campaign manager accused Mr. Allen of "using taxpayer dollars to fund
his prison privatization-lobbying firm" – a reference to Mr. Allen's
lone lobby client, the National Corrections Industry Association. It has two
private-prison members in addition to the public prison systems in all 50 states,
the federal prison system, city and county jails and corporations that
contract with prisons.
May 29, 2003
It was horrible and sickening, but I could not stop watching the final days
of the Texas Legislature. Fellow Texans, the ripple effects of this disaster
will come to haunt us all. Just for starters, this budget is
going to cost about 144,000 jobs. Perhaps its most serious effect is on
public hospitals. A health-care system so fragile that it is almost
overwhelmed now -- turning away ambulances for hours at a time, unable to
admit a single patient -- will be swamped after this. The counties will be
desperate, the cities not much better. Every area of social service has been
cut, not because we have a $9 billion deficit but because House Republicans
do not believe government SHOULD help people. We are watching
government morph into something very strange. Benito Mussolini said,
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power." The real driving force behind this
session is something I bet most of you have never heard of -- ALEC. ALEC is
the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded, extremely
right-wing group that sponsors conferences for state legislators and draws up
model bills that are introduced all over the country. ALEC is particularly
interested in privatizing government services and deregulating everything,
and is anti-environment to an extent that's almost loopy. Let's be very
clear about this: People who want to privatize prisons and schools and social
services are in it for the money. The real questions of government are
always: Who benefits, and who pays? And the answer given this session with
jaw-dropping regularity is private corporations profit, while people pay the
price in worse services. If government provides a certain service --
say prisons -- for X dollars, how does a private corporation do the same job and
make a profit? You ask that question, and you get a lot of pious piffle
from the right about private industry is more efficient and less bureaucratic
than government. Dilbert and I doubt that. The right says that, in the
private sector, pay and performance are related. I look at the CEOs of
American corporations, and if there's a connection between pay and performance
there, I missed it. What you get when you privatize and outsource is
something like the Department of Defense and the military-industrial complex.
We spend $399 billion a year on defense, and if you think that money is well
spent because much of it gets run through defense contractors, you have not
been paying attention. DOD is the happy home of the $700 hammer, the endless
cost overrun, and the revolving door, with accompanying conflicts of interest
and dubious contracts. It's a fiscal nightmare. The Pentagon once had to
announce that it couldn't account for $17 billion. You get nightmare
public policy consequences, as well. What happens if you privatize prisons is
that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons.
The result is even more idiocy, like the three-strikes law and long terms for
small-time drug possession. One veteran lobbyist said of this session,
"You look up and you suddenly realize that these people are playing a
different game." They don't want to make government better. They don't
want it to work well. They don't want it to help people. It used to be
a joke that when a legislator was contemplating some scurvy piece of special
interest legislation, he would go to ridiculous lengths to make the spurious
claim, "And so you see, members, we must do this for the sake of the
children of Texas." Man, you stand up in the Texas House today with a
bill that really will help the children of Texas and you will not get a
single Republican vote. They are playing a different game. They are out
to take government apart, and then they turn around and say, "See, I
told you government doesn't work." And they believe in all this with a
self-righteous certitude that has to be seen to be believed. When we
weren't watching rigid, ideological lockstep on corporatization, we got a lot
of Christian right nonsense. Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth wanted a bill to provide
a special license plate reading, "Pro-Life." Under this bill, the
state could charge a premium to people who want this specialized plate on
their cars, just as we currently have for people who pay extra for
specialized plates supporting Texas critters or A&M. No one before
now has thought of putting anything on a Texas plate that was in the least
controversial. These suckers are pretty much in the "I'm in Favor of
Bluebonnets" school of political controversy. So suddenly here comes
Wohlgemuth, with a bill that says any of us can tote around a license plate
that reads, "Texas -- Pro-Life." She wanted $22 of the $30 extra
charged by the state to go to church groups and non-profit organizations that
counsel pregnant women to give their babies up for adoption. The House
would not even accept an amendment to offer another plate saying,
"Choose Choice." Fortunately, the bill was finally shot down on a
point of order. During the debate on tort reform, Democrats took to
referring to the part of the gallery where the big business interests lobbyists sit as "the owners' box." It
sure ain't the people's legislature. (Molly Ivans
- Creators Syndicate)
May 29, 2003
Legislators rushed Tuesday night to put dying legislation onboard a massive
government reorganization bill that became the last train off the House
floor. "This is a cross between a flea market and a Moroccan
bazaar," said Rep. Jack Stick, R-Austin. "Everybody's got a pet
project, a pet bill or a pet amendment that has not found a home. This bill
is nothing if it's not a pet store." Midnight Tuesday was the
deadline for legislation to get tentative approval by the House and remain
alive. At one point, lawmakers had filed 500 amendments, but time ran out on
most of them. A section that would have privatized more state prison
beds was changed so that it now authorizes only a study of
privatization. (Austin American-Statesman)
May 12, 2003
A major government reorganization bill that would give more power to the
governor and is crucial to state leaders' plans to balance a new budget
without raising state taxes was temporarily derailed Saturday. House
debate on House Bill 2 had barely begun before Speaker Tom Craddick was
forced to postpone further action in the face of a successful parliamentary
challenge. "If we don't have this bill, we probably don't certify
the budget," Craddick told reporters. But he said he was confident the
technical flaw in the bill's preparation, raised by a Democratic lawmaker,
would be quickly corrected in committee and the measure rescheduled for
debate on Tuesday or Wednesday. He said proposed savings in the bill
are worth $227 million toward bridging a $9.9 billion revenue shortfall. The
timing for debate of the measure is critical because Thursday is the deadline
for House bills to be given tentative approval by the full House, or they
will die. Debate on House Bill 2 promises to be lengthy. The bill is
418 pages long, and at least 84 amendments had been pre-filed before debate
was halted. A new state budget must be balanced by the time the regular
session ends June 2, or Gov. Rick Perry will have to call lawmakers back into
special session this summer to complete the job. The current state budget
expires Aug. 31. Further complicating the bill's outlook is a simmering
controversy over Republican efforts to pass a bill redrawing the state's
congressional districts to favor the GOP. Debate on the redistricting bill,
which could be lengthy and charged with partisanship, is scheduled for
Monday, ahead of the budget-balancing bill. The House on Saturday gave
tentative approval to several other bills also crucial to the budget-writing
effort. Representatives also resurrected their version of House Bill 5,
a school finance bill, by attaching it as an amendment to House Bill 3459,
one of the budget-balancing bills. The provision would add $1.2 billion
to the present school finance system and set a deadline for repealing the
controversial "Robin Hood" school law by the summer of 2004, if a
replacement is approved by then. Identical language was approved two
weeks ago by the House in House Bill 5, but that measure was rewritten by the
Senate to provide for a massive school finance tax trade-off. The Senate's
plan died Friday night when the House refused to seek a compromise. Craddick
and Gov. Rick Perry want to wait to tackle a school finance overhaul in a
special session later this year or next. One part of the government
reorganization effort, a proposal to take $464 million from school districts
as a penalty for being top-heavy in administrative costs, already was
generating controversy before debate began. The bill sponsor, Rep.
David Swinford, R-Dumas, said the provision was
necessary to hold school officials "accountable." "We're
not taking anything (money) out of education. We're sort of rearranging the
chairs," he said. Under Swinford's
proposal, $215 million of the $464 million would be spent on one-time bonuses
of $800 for each schoolteacher in the state. The remainder would be
redistributed for other educational spending. The plan would penalize
districts that spend more money than most districts of their size for such
purposes as counselors, nurses, health services, transportation, food service
and security. According to an analysis, the Houston Independent School
District wouldn't lose any money under that proposal, but a number of other
Houston-area districts would. Brad Shields, a former member of the Eanes School Board in Austin and a lobbyist for several
school districts of above-average wealth, said the proposal would "wipe
out" districts whose school maintenance taxes are already at the state
limit of $1.50 per $100 valuation. "The decisions to hire these
additional nurses and counselors were made by locally elected school board members.
That represents local control," Shields said. Richard Kouri, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers
Association, had a mixed reaction. He said the proposed bonuses would be
welcome. "But is it going in the right pocket and out the left
pocket?" he asked, referring to other legislative actions that would
penalize teachers, such as cuts in health insurance payments. Some of
the sweeping changes in House Bill 2, which are supported by Perry, would
enhance the power of the governor. Among other things, the governor would be
given the authority to order the reorganization and operation of every state
agency not controlled by some other elected official. In those cases,
he could hire and fire agency heads, most of whom are now hired by boards and
commissions appointed by the governor. The measure also would create
the Texas Enterprise Fund, which Perry is seeking as a source of funds for
job training and other incentives to encourage businesses to move to
Texas. Some other changes in HB 2 would: Consolidate several small
regulatory agencies -- including the Funeral Services Commission and boards
regulating plumbers, barbers and cosmetologists -- into the Texas Department
of Licensing and Regulation. Encourage the use of more private prisons
and create the Private Correctional Facilities Commission to oversee
contracts with private vendors. Require the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice to study administrative efficiencies, including the use of
inmate labor in construction projects. (Houston Chronicle)
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
GEO Group, VitaPro
Texas
prison boom going bust: by Mitch Mitchell, September 3, 2011, Star-Telegram.
Expose on troubles facing many communities that bought into the private
prison bonding scam.
Texas:
Wichita County Jail and Correctional Healthcare Management Inc
Sep 13, 2016 bondbuyer.com
Federal Withdrawal Spurs Private Prison Bond Downgrades
DALLAS – Bonds for three private prisons in Texas suffered downgrades well
below junk-bond status after the U.S. Department of Justice announced plans
to discontinue their use. The bonds used to finance lockups in Garza, Reeves,
and Willacy Counties were among eight issues under review by S&P Global
Ratings before the DOJ letter. The Justice Department's change in private
prison policy was a major factors in the downgrades,
announced late Friday. "This policy shift has the potential to have a
significant and near-term impact on the credit quality of the bonds due to
the nature of the federal contract," said S&P Global Ratings credit
analyst Kate Boatright. Reeves County bonds issued for the largest detention
center in West Texas fell six notches to B-plus from BBB-plus and retained a
negative outlook. Willacy County Local Government Corp. bonds used to build a
now-vacant detention center in South Texas dropped to CC from CCC-plus. The
federal Bureau of Prisons canceled its contract with the operators after an
inmate uprising that left the facility uninhabitable. The Garza County Public
Facility Corp. was dropped to B-plus from BBB and also retained a negative
outlook. The prison bonds were already on review because S&P said that it
had applied the incorrect criteria in rating the debt. "In prior
reviews, we incorrectly applied our "Special Tax Bonds" criteria,
published June 13, 2007, to these bonds," the ratings agency wrote.
"They should have been analyzed pursuant to our Human Service Providers
criteria, published June 13, 2007." The DOJ's Aug. 19 announcement
affected only private prisons with contracts from the federal Bureau of
Prisons. Private detention centers that house undocumented immigrants have
more than twice as many inmates. Ten days after the DOJ announcement,
director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said that his department, which includes
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was considering a similar move.
Johnson said he asked Judge William Webster, chair of the Homeland Security
Advisory Council to report its findings by Nov. 30. "I asked that the
subcommittee consider all factors concerning ICE's detention policy and
practice, including fiscal considerations," Johnson said in the Aug. 29
statement. Johnson's announcement added further stress to high-yield bonds
used to build dozens of detention facilities faced with falling inmate counts
and growing competition. Nine of 21 Texas counties that created conduit
issuers for about $1.3 billion in municipal bonds for private detention
centers have defaulted on their debt in Texas over the past decade, according
to disclosure notices and news reports. More immediately, federal Bureau of
Prisons decision raises questions about whether private prisons with those
contracts can make annual debt service payments, S&P's Boatright wrote.
In the case of Reeves County, "a contract cancellation, which would
likely cause revenues to cease, we believe that the current reserves on hand
could not cover debt service beyond the next year," Boatright wrote.
"In that scenario, absent the identification of alternative revenue, we
would likely lower our rating by more than two notches." In Willacy
County, "the downgrade reflects our view that the current shortfall of
pledged revenues on these bonds could lead to a potential default by December
2017," Boatright said. "We expect a default on these bonds to be a
virtual certainty based on a lack of revenues that will be available for
payment on these bonds even under the most optimistic performance scenario
over an extended period of time." Of the 14 private prisons facing the
loss of BOP contracts, five are in Texas -- the most of any state. The
contract cancellations will have a domino effect on the budgets of small
towns and local communities that built the detention centers as a form of
economic stimulus. "We are very concerned about what is going to happen,"
Howard County Judge Kathryn Wiseman in Big Spring told the Houston Chronicle. GEO Group employs
480 people at its detention facility here. Wiseman fears that nearly all the
jobs at the Big Spring prison will be lost when the company's federal
contract expires in March. The bureau had already announced that it would not
renew its contract with CCA to operate the 1,200-bed Cibola County
Correctional Center in Milan, N.M., which will close Oct. 1, costing 300
jobs. Faced with loss of the BOP or Homeland Security contracts, public
facility corporations, the alter egos of city councils and county commissioners courts that created them, would have to find
some alternative use for the facilities. However, state governments are also
reducing their inmate counts to reduce costs amid tight budgets, especially
in the oil producing states. The number of inmates housed by the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice is down nearly 10,000 as a result of diversion
programs launched several years ago.
June 12, 2013 online.wsj.com
Corrections
Corp. of America (CXW) said it has lost contracts for facilities in Texas and
Mississippi, but said its full-year guidance remains unaffected. The prison
operator said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice elected not to renew
its contracts for the CCA owned and operated Mineral Wells Pre-Parole
Transfer Facility and the Dawson State Jail, which is owned by the state of
Texas but operated by CCA. The TDCJ was legislatively required to close two
facilities due to budget reductions, the company noted. Upon expiration of
the contracts in August, CCA will cease operations of the Dawson facility and
idle the Mineral Wells facility. CCA also disclosed it was not selected for
the continued management of the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility owned
by the state of Mississippi. CCA will cease operations of this facility at
the end of the month, upon expiration of the contract. The Wilkinson facility
was operating at a loss, the company said. CCA had previously disclosed it
could lose the contracts for the continued management of these facilities. It
expects to report charges of about $3.5 million related to with the closure
of these facilities during the second quarter. CCA recently converted to a
real estate investment trust, a move the company has said could lower its
cost of capital, draw a larger base of potential shareholders, provide
greater flexibility and create a more efficient operating structure. Last
month, CCA reported its first-quarter earnings soared from a year earlier
boosted by a large tax benefit primarily resulting from its REIT conversion.
However, revenue for the period slipped 2.2%. Shares closed at $33.76 and
were unchanged after hours. The stock is up 28% over the past 12 months.
April
25, 2013 timesrecordnews.com
Four
former employees of the Wichita County Jail and Correctional Healthcare
Management Inc. (CHM) have filed a lawsuit against several Wichita County
Sheriff’s Office employees, including Sheriff David Duke and CHM. The lawsuit
filed March 28 by attorney Rickey Bunch alleges the employees’ constitutional
rights were violated. The case is styled as Larry Duffie,
Sheryl Ware, Alice Stoddard and Tessa Martinez, plaintiffs vs. Correctional
Healthcare Management, Inc., Allison Smith, R.N., Sheriff David Duke, Deputy
Chief Derek Meador, Chief Deputy Kevin Callahan, Captain Donny Johns and
Deputy Mark Whipple, defendants. Duffie, Stoddard,
Ware and Martinez collectively brought the civil lawsuit against their former
employer and supervisors claiming the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to
free speech and their right to due process were violated. CHM is an outside
company contracted to provide medical care to Wichita County Jail inmates.
According to the lawsuit: The incident began with an illegal medical
operation by head nurse Smith, who was promoted in November 2010 with less
than one month experience as an RN over other applicants who had
substantially more experience. In mid-January 2011 an inmate was bitten by a
spider and it became “fested and very painful.” The
inmate was assessed Feb. 4 and it was determined she needed medical treatment
by a physician and should be transported to the emergency room. Smith began a
procedure on the inmate and did not take her to be seen by a doctor. The
inmate believed Smith was a licensed physician because Smith did not identify
herself otherwise, the suit says. “Without calling or leaving the nurse’s
station or consulting with any physician, and without any written
instruction, standing orders, or medical protocols, Smith unilaterally
decided ... she would lance the infected area without (the inmate’s) informed
consent.” The allegations continue: Smith did not document the procedure in
the inmate’s medical file and later told the jail doctor she did something
she wasn’t supposed to. Stoddard reported the incident to Martinez, who was
directly under Smith at the time, and the information was then shared with Duffie. Both Martinez and Duffie
were “shocked” by the allegation and felt they had an obligation to report
the incident to the Texas Board of Nursing. Duffie
pulled the inmate’s medical file and found there were no physician notes,
orders or other documentation concerning the “unlawful medical procedure” by
Smith. Ware met with Martinez at a restaurant and delivered an exact copy of
the inmate’s file on Feb. 8, 2011. After Smith discovered Ware and Martinez
reported her to the Texas Board of Nursing, she claimed medical notes and
records were missing from the file. The plaintiffs claimed they were
wrongfully terminated after interviews by Johns, Meador, Callahan, Duke and
Whipple in March 2011. The lawsuit also claims: Whipple conducted a
perfunctory investigation of these allegations and took no further action.
The plaintiffs state they were not discharged because of unsatisfactory job
performances. The plaintiffs claim the defendants conspired with Smith so she
could interfere with their employment and did so in retaliation for filing
the confidential complaint against Smith with the Texas Board of Nursing, a
complaint they were all legally and morally obligated to file as licensed
vocational nurses in the State of Texas. The plaintiffs are seeking to
recover exemplary damages from Smith, individually, for intentionally
interfering with their employment and having criminal charges pressed against
them; a monetary judgment equal to the wages and benefits lost in back pay
and future pay and benefits they are likely to suffer; and a monetary
judgment for emotional pain and suffering and a sufficient amount to punish
CHM, Smith, Whipple, Johns, Meador, Callahan and Duke to the greatest extent
of the law for their conduct. Ware and Martinez were no billed by a Wichita
County grand jury in June 2011 for charges of tampering with governmental
records.
10/09/2013
Texas Prison Bidness.
With the Texas legislative session underway, Texas Prison Bid’ness
is shining the spotlight on five of the Texas Capitol top private prison
lobbyists in our state. As we’ve covered before, GEO Group, CCA, CEC,
and MTC pay hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for lobbying services
and campaign contributions for state and federal legislators. Here are
five men and women who profit the most from peddling private prisons, jails,
and detention centers in Texas: 1. LIONEL AGUIRRE Leo is no stranger
to the Texas Prison Bid’ness blog. He’s been
earning top dollar as a GEO Group lawyer for years; his $200,000+ contracts
with GEO are some of the fattest in the state. He reported a
$100,000-$150,000 salary in 2011 and $50,000-$100,000 in 2012. Aguirre was
married to the late Lena Guerrero, a three-term state representative and the
first Latina chair of the powerful Texas Railroad Commission, the agency in
charge of regulating the oil and gas industry. Lionel himself was the
executive of the state comptroller’s office before moving into the private
sector. 2. MICHAEL TOOMEY Last year, CCA paid Toomey $50,000-$100,000
to lobby for them in the Texas state government. He’s earned himself a lot of
press as one of Rick Perry’s inner circle, including articles in the New York
Times, the Huffington Post, and Mother Jones. Between 2008 and 2011,
Toomey’s clients won $2 billion in state government contracts, according to a
study by the NYT and the Texas Tribune. 3. FRANK R. SANTOS Santos, the founder of Santos Alliances, calls himself
the top Hispanic lobbyist in Texas, and was named the #3 Lobbyist in the
State by the San Antonio Express-News in 2006. Santos is the chairman
of the Board of Directors for the Senate Hispanic Research Council; the chief
national consultant and strategist for the National Hispanic Caucus of State
Legislators. He is also one of GEO Group’s top paid lobbyists in Texas,
earning $50,000-$100,000 in both 2011 and 2012. GEO Group operates
seven detention centers and twenty prisons in Texas. 4. LARA LANERI KEEL Ranked
as the 2011 Top Female Hired-Gun Lobbyist in the state by Capitol Inside,
Keel took in $50,000-$100,000 from Corrections Corporation of America in both
2011 and 2012. Keel is a member of the powerful Texas Lobby Group and
director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. She’s
married to John Keel, the State Auditor since 2004. 5. DEAN McWILLIAMS Co-founder of McWilliams Governmental
Affairs Consultants, McWilliams has earned a spot as a top grossing lobbyist
in this state; he held a $50,000-$100,000 contract with Community Education
Centers (CEC) in 2011 and 2012. On his website, Dean boasts of his
close ties to the government, having served on the Legislative Budget Board
Task Force on Health Care Reform and the Lieutenant Governor’s Task Force on
Prison Overcrowding.
March 15, 2010 Grits for Breakfast
According to a new state auditor's report (pdf), the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice's "contracts with [private prison and treatment
contractors] do not consistently include the contract requirements necessary
to assess the quality of the services its providers deliver."
Specifically, "The Department did not consistently include in its
contracts performance standards to help ensure that the Department can hold
its providers accountable for unacceptable performance or contract
non-compliance." Importantly, in a year when most of Texas' private
prison contracts are up for renewal and costs are likely to increase,
"The Department did not maintain documentation to justify its decision
to renew provider contracts." That seems like a pretty big deal,
especially since TDCJ responded that it agreed with the critique.
Specifically, For the contract renewals for 16 providers that auditors reviewed,
the supporting documentation showed that the Department based its contract
renewal decisions on management’s review and approval of the requests to
renew a contract, and it did not include specific information or factors
related to a provider’s contract compliance or performance history. ... The
lack of established performance-based criteria in the Department’s contract
renewal process increases the risk that the Department may renew a contract
with a provider that is operating facilities or programs with a history of
poor performance. And since they didn't gather the information in the first
place, now that the contracts are up for renewal there's no way to go back
and fill that gap. It's also not clear, according to the audit, who is
overseeing which parts of these contracts at TDCJ and whether their efforts
are coordinated well enough: The Department did not clearly define the roles
and responsibilities of its three divisions that oversee providers that
operate substance abuse treatment programs. Although the [Private Facilities
Contract Monitoring and Oversight] Division is recognized by the Department
as the contract monitoring entity over substance abuse treatment program
providers, the Division’s role is limited to monitoring a provider’s
compliance to certain contract requirements. The Rehabilitation Programs
Division and the Parole Division are responsible for monitoring the quality
of the substance abuse treatment programs. However, the monitoring
relationships among the divisions are not defined and documented to ensure
that the monitoring activities are efficiently coordinated and communicated
among the divisions. That's too many cooks hovering over the stew pot, none
of whom appear to be engaging in data-driven analyses of contract compliance.
March
8, 2010 Grits For Breakfast
At a House Appropriations Committee meeting today, House Corrections Chairman
Jim McReynolds asked TDCJ chief Brad Livingston if private prison-contracts
up for renewal might increase their rates and increase costs for the state.
Livingston said that was possible, since contracts covering the 12,000 or so
private beds for which TDCJ contracts are 5-7 years old. Most of these are up
within the coming year and all new contracts should be negotiated by
mid-2011. Livingston said that in general, for every dollar increase in
per-inmate costs represented a $4.5 million cost increase to TDCJ. The
committee was also told that after the first two days, all health care costs
for inmates at private prisons are paid for by TDCJ. So
the committee was cautioned against comparing per-inmate costs between
private units and TDCJ's state facilities because the privates' costs
per-inmate don't include healthcare costs.
May 5, 2009 Texas Prison Bidness
Amongst the interesting statistics in the Texas Senate Criminal Justice
Committee's interim report on private prisons (PDF), was the shocking
statistic that TDCJ-contracted private prisons have a 90% annual staff
turnover rate. The report also presented numbers on differences in guard pay
between public and private facilities. "The wages and benefits paid to
employees of private contractors are generally lower than that paid to
employees of state-operated facilities... Correctional officer salaries in
the private prisons vary among facilities, with the highest peaking at
slightly more than $24,000 annually." For comparison to this figure,
TDCJ Director Brad Livingston told the Austin American Statesman ("Big
raises sought for prison workers," August 14) that starting pay for
correctional officers in public facilities is $26,016, and the maximum
salaries range from $34,624 to $42,242. This means the lowest-paid TDCJ
guard's annual salary is $2,000 more than the highest-paid guard at
TDCJ-contracted private prisons. This probably contributes to the high
turnover at private facilities noted in the report: During FY 2008 the
correctional officer turnover rate at the seven private prisons was 90
percent (60 percent for the five privately-operated state jails), which in
either case is higher than the 24 percent turnover rate for TDCJ correctional
officers during FY 2008. It's hard to understand how ANY organization can
operate with 90% staff turnover.
December 5, 2007 Austin American
Statesman
Gary Johnson, the former head of Texas’ prison system, has been hired as
a regional vice president for a Florida-based operator of private prisons
that became mired in controversy two months ago over conditions at a West
Texas youth lockup. Geo Group Inc. announced that Johnson will head its
central region, which includes Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The territory
includes the ill-fated Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, which made
headlines in October after Texas Youth Commission officials yanked more than
100 youths from the lockup after alleging squalid conditions. Geo operates
private prisons in several states and in other countries. Johnson replaces
Don Houston, who heads to the firm’s Florida office. Its Texas office is in
New Braunfels. Johnson, a veteran corrections official, served as executive
director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from August 2001 until
he retired in late 2004 after 28 years. He has since been a corrections
management consultant based in Austin. He could not immediately be reached
for comment. His wife, Bonita White, is director of the criminal justice
agency’s Community Justice Assistance Division. While Johnson was executive
director, the agency signed five-year contracts with Geo to house state
prisoners at several lockups. He will oversee the operation of those lockups
in his new job at Geo.
September 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A federal judge has overturned the 4-year-old bribery convictions of a former
Texas prisons director and a Canadian businessman, ruling that the
prosecution's key witness lied to curry favor with a federal prosecutor in
Louisiana. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes late Thursday acquitted James
"Andy" Collins, former executive director of the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice; and Yank Barry, owner of VitaPro,
a company that made a soy-based meat alternative fed to inmates. The judge
ordered that should the U.S. Attorney's Office successfully appeal his
decision, Collins and Barry will get a new trial. Hughes' decision comes four
years after the pair's convictions because of delays in obtaining a trial transcript
so that the defense could file a motion seeking the acquittal. The court
reporter suffered a nervous breakdown and the transcript was filled with
errors, according to Hughes' opinion. A federal jury in August 2001, found
that Barry paid two $10,000 bribes to Collins in return for pushing a no-bid
contract with VitaPro to feed its product to Texas
prisoners. The two were convicted on bribery, conspiracy and money laundering
charges. Hughes overturned the convictions, ruling that the government's key witness,
Patrick Graham, lied during the trial to please then-Assistant U.S. Attorney
Jim Letten in the Eastern District of Louisiana.
May 9, 2003
Rep. Ray Allen (R-Grand Prairie) and Scott Gilmore are inseparable. Not
only does Gilmore work as Allen's chief of staff but he is also policy
director for the House Corrections Committee of which the representative is
chairman. Together the two men are trying to expand the ability of
private companies to run Texas prisons. They are also busily pushing
initiatives to increase prison work programs. Among the contributors to
Allen's campaign are officials from the Corrections Corporation of
America. CCA along with Wackenhut Corporation stand to benefit from
privatization, if by nothing else, through an increase in stock prices fueled
by speculation over the possibility of future contracts. Allen and
Gilmore are also business partners. They work together in a company
Allen founded called Service House, Inc. The sole client of Service
House, Inc. is the Correctional Industries Association (CIA). The
nonprofit trade association represents private prison companies in their
effort to encourage putting inmates to work. It also represents
companies that sell products to state prison systems. Two of the
corporate sponsors of the trade association are Wackenhut and CCA.
Allen's legislation would create a new 9-member commission under the
governor's office that would move toward privatizing half the state jail
system, if the for-profit companies could come up with at least 5 percent in
savings. Florida has tried a similar
commission that has been wracked by scandal. Initially, the corrections
committee, in which Democrats dominate, was lukewarm to privatization.
No matter how much Allen crunched the numbers, the promised savings just
didn't seem to be materializing. Then a curious thing appears to have
occurred. Records indicate uberlobbyist Bill
Messer took on Corrections Corporation of America as a client midway through
the session. Messer, you may remember, was part of House Speaker Tom
Craddick's transition team. He also raised considerable sums for the
Midland Republican after he became Speaker. After Messer signed on with
CCA, the private prison initiative found a new home in a mammoth government
reform package called House Bill 2. (Texas Observer)
April 21, 2003
In the area of criminal justice, tight budgets can be both painful and
dangerous. Case in point: Facing a 7% immediate fiscal year agency
budget cut and 12.5% cut for the next biennium, two members of the House
Corrections Committee have filed bills that propose privatizing the entire
state jail system -- facilities that house the state's lowest level felony
offenders. Legislators are clearly focused on the prison industry's
claims of "cost savings: to the state through privatization -- a
seductive notion coming from the PR mouths of large corporations like
Wackenhut or CCA, especially in cash-strapped times. Three reports
available for review at press time seem resoundingly opposed to privatization
-- even including that submitted by TDCJ, which takes pains to avoid directly
taking sides. "Let me give it to you in a bumper sticker,"
said TDCJ spokesman Larry Todd, "you've got to compare apples to apples
and not apples to something else." Meredith Martin Rountree,
director of the ACLU's Prison and Jail Accountability Project, makes a
similar argument in her report. "Modern private prisons do not
offer Texas a cheaper, safer alternative to the publicly run facilities
currently operated by (TDCJ)," she writes. "On the contrary,
recent history strongly suggests that expanded reliance on private prisons
will shift significant financial obligations back onto Texas.
Further," she continues, "delegating the management of an entire
division of TDCJ to private prison contractors threatens to embroil TDCJ and
Texas once again in litigation over how it treats prisoners, just as Texas
emerges from judicial oversight of its prison system." Private
prison corporations have not secured sterling reputations -- of which Stick
should be well aware. Under a subcontract with Travis Co., Wackenhut
Corrections Corporation assumed operations of the Travis Co. Criminal Justice
Complex and also ran operations of the jail from 1997-99. In 1999 the
relationship ended under a cloud of criminal allegations, including numerous
charges of sexual assault of inmates by guards -- a handful of the cases are
still pending in district court -- as well as allegations of misappropriation
of funds. Similar allegations have followed the corrections giants
around the country and across Texas, most notably in Wackenhut facilities in
Harris Co. and Caldwell Co., were a former inmate said she was repeatedly
raped over a four-month period by a guard. The well-publicized
allegations of corruption and abuse inside private prisons often come down to
a single problem: Private prisons are profit-driven. (Austin
Chronicle)
November 19, 2002
With a new generation of leadership to take over in Austin, consumer
advocates are hitting the panic button about cadre of corporate lobbyists
hitching a ride into the halls of government. From the man who would be
House speaker to the governor and lieutenant governor, the state's newly
elected top leaders have tapped, or are expected to tap, lobbyists for
insurance companies, utilities, chemical makers, tobacco companies, drug
makers and other corporate interests to join transition teams, guide their
policies and oversee their offices. In stepped state Rep. Tom Craddick,
R-Midland, who announced that he has the votes to become the next speaker
when members convene in January. Also on the Craddick team is Bill
Messer, a former Democratic House member whose clients include State Farm
Insurance, the Texas Chemical Council and the McDonald's restaurant chain.
Bill Messer. Experience: Former state representative from Belton,
1979-86: chairman of calendars in the state House. Lobby clients: Texas
Chemical council; Atlantic Richfield, an oil and gas company; CSC., a private
company in the prison business; IBM; McDonald's; State Farm Insurance.
(Star-Telegram Austin Bureau)
September 11, 2002
A decade after embarking on a massive prison expansion that tripled the
state's inmate population, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will ask
the Legislature next year to slash its budget by $44 million. "We
really took a hard look at the numbers and went over them with a very sharp
pencil, and we got the budget down as low as we could," Criminal Justice
Board Chairman Mac Stringfellow said Tuesday.
"We think we found a level where we can operate a
safe and secure correctional system and hold down spending to the
minimum. In 1990, for instance, the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice's operating budget, which doesn't include construction costs, was
$793 million. The budget had climbed to $1.7 billion by 1995 and to
$2.24 billion by 1999. Even with the tripling capacity, the state had
to contract with numerous counties, using their jails to handle the
overflow. The state's contracts with the counties reached $49 million
in 2000. Spokesman Larry Todd said the prison system was able to end
the county contracts last month, which accounts for a substantial part of the
proposed budget cutback. (Star-Telegram Austin Bureau)
August 21, 2001
Former Texas prisons chief James A. "Andy" Collins and the
president of a Canadian company that makes the meat substitute VitaPro were found guilty Monday of federal charges
stemming from a kickback scheme in 1995 to distribute the product to state
inmates. Collins and Yank Barry, president of VitPro
Foods Inc. in Montreal, will be sentenced Nov. 19. Both face up to 70
years in prison and fines of up to $2 million if given the maximum sentences
for their convictions on bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy
charges. Collins, who was forced out as executive director of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice in December 1995 before the VitaPro scandal broke early the next year, declined to
comment. Jurors determined that Collins took $20,000 in bribes to push
through a five-year, $33.7 million contract to feed VitaPro
to Texas inmates and to market it elsewhere. Collins ordered his staff
to finalize the contract two days before announcing his forced resignation in
September 1995. "He traded and swapped his position of influence
for money," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Frels told jurors before deliberations began.
Collins was forced out when Texas officials learned that while he was still
head of the prison system, he agreed to run a private juvenile prison in
Louisiana after retirement. (AP)
August 16, 2001
Former
world heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali was back in a Houston federal
courthouse Thursday, the same place where he was convicted of
draft-dodging in 1967. But this time he was in a courtroom under
different circumstances, to show support for a Canadian businessman accused of
bribing a Texas prison official. Jurors were agape when
they filed into the courtroom after an afternoon break. "The
Greatest" was standing in the gallery. Some gasped, many craned their necks,
some openly gawked. A juror leaned over to another and said in a
loud whisper, "That's Muhammad Ali." Defense attorneys
got the reaction they had hoped for. Ali is a longtime friend of
Yank Barry, president of the Montreal-based VitaPro
Foods Inc., manufacturer of a soy-based meat substitute. Barry
is accused of bribing former prisons executive director James A.
"Andy" Collins in exchange for securing a five-year, multimillion-dollar
state prisons contract for VitaPro. Collins
and Barry are on trial on federal bribery and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors
have suggested that Barry lied about his relationship with the likes of Ali
and other celebrities while soliciting business from potential VitaPro customers. But Barry's attorney says
Barry and Ali have been close friends since they met in 1963 or 1964, when
Barry was touring the country as a musician. Ali is now a
spokesman for VitaPro and Global Village Market, a VitaPro Foods spinoff that provides free meals and medical
supplies to charities around the world. (Houston Chronicle)
August 16, 2001
James A. (Andy) Collins, former Texas prison chief who is on trial in Houston
on federal bribery and money-laundering charges, said he had two major
objectives when running one of the world's largest prison systems: Ensure
public safety and save money. During his tenure as executive director
of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 1994-95, he thought a
Canadian-made meat substitute would help him meet the second objective.
"It was a real program that we had a great deal of faith in," he
testified Wednesday of what turned into a five-year, $33.7-million contract
between Texas and Montreal-based VitaPro Foods Inc.
to feed the soy-based nutrient to inmates and market it to prisons and other
entities in other states. But VitaPro proved
unpopular among inmates and prison staff. Collins retired from the state at
the request of his superiors in December 1995 when they learned that while
still at the top post for Texas prisons, Collins had agreed to run a juvenile
prison in Louisiana after he retired. Collins, 50, now a credit manager for a
concrete company in Austin, is charged with bribery, fraud, conspiracy and
money laundering in what federal prosecutors call a scheme to accept $20,000
in kickbacks for pushing through the VitaPro
contract and work as a marketing consultant for the meat substitute company
after his retirement. Prosecutors say Collins created a shell
consulting company to accept the money from VitaPro
president Yank Barry in exchange for the multimillion-dollar contract. Barry
is being tried on the same charges. (CBC)
August 8, 2001
A federal jury will decide whether a former Texas prison chief took kickbacks
in a scheme to distribute a soy-based meat substitute in state lockups or
simply accepted consulting fees on the eve of his post-corrections
career. "You're about to hear the story of a man who worked his
way up to to be executive director of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice," said federal prosecutor Gary Cobe, referring to Andy Collins, as he addressed the jury
on Tuesday, the first day of the trial. "And then, through greed,
he threw it all away because he decided to start lining his own
pockets." (AP)
August 7, 2001
The main course at an Austin taste-testing buffet organized by Texas prison
officials was something called VitaPro. It was
January 1995, and prison administrators saw the soy-based meat substitute
made in Canada and fed to Texas inmates as a cheap food source and a cash cow
if they could persuade managers of other jails and prison systems to buy the
granular pebbles, which would be distributed exclusively by Texas. VitaPro is long gone from Texas, but the indigestion
lingers. Today, Andy Collins, the former executive director of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice, is set to go on trial in federal court on
bribery, fraud, conspiracy and money laundering charges related to a $33.7
million contract for VitaPro. Also being tried with
Collins on the same charges is Yank Barry, president of VitaPro
Foods Inc. of Montreal, manufacturer of the meat substitute. Barry is an
ex-con who did time for extortion and conspiracy under his given name of
Gerald Barry Falovitch. (AP)
Texson
Management Group
August 2000
Up to $ 1 million in bond money may be missing and city cancels
contract. Investigation is under way. (The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal,
August 1, 2, 7, 2000)
Tom
DeLay
Sugar Land, Texas
CCA, Cornell
September 29, 2005 Star-Telegram
In a move denounced as a political witchhunt, Rep.
Tom DeLay was indicted Wednesday with two associates on a felony charge of
conspiring to circumvent Texas' prohibition of corporate campaign donations
to secure the Republican takeover of the Texas House in 2002. Shortly after
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle announced the indictment, the
Republican congressman from Sugar Land resigned his powerful majority leader
post in Washington, at least temporarily. DeLay, 58, is accused of conspiring
with two associates to convert $190,000 in donations from several
corporations into campaign contributions on behalf of seven Republican
candidates who were involved in what many had believed would be close
contests for seats in the Texas House.
September 28, 2005 Bloomberg
U.S. Representative Tom DeLay, the No. 2 Republican in the House, was
indicted by a Texas grand jury for criminal conspiracy in connection with
illegal corporate political donations, prompting him to give up his
leadership post. Two former campaign aides, John Colyandro
and Jim Ellis, were also charged with conspiracy by the state grand jury in
Travis County, according to the single-count indictment. The charge stems
from an investigation into alleged use of illegal corporate contributions by
DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, in the
2002 races for the state House of Representatives. The four-page indictment
charges that DeLay conspired with Ellis and Colyandro
to use donations from companies including Williams Companies Inc. and Sears,
Roebuck and Co., now Sears Holdings Corp., to help finance the election
campaigns of seven members of the Texas House in 2002. Under Texas law,
corporations aren't permitted to donate to candidates. Other companies named,
but like Williams and Sears, not charged in the indictment were Diversified
Collections Services Inc., Cornell Companies Inc., Bacardi U.S.A. Inc. and Questerra Corp.
September 13, 2005 American-Statesman
A Travis County grand jury today added new felony charges against two
officials with Texans for a Republican Majority who first were indicted last
fall. The grand jury re-indicted political consultants John Colyandro and Jim Ellis on first-degree felony charges
that the two laundered a $190,000 corporate check into campaign donations
during the 2002 elections. It added lesser felony charges of unlawfully
making a contribution to a political party and criminal conspiracy involving
the $190,000 transaction. Just weeks before the 2002 election, Colyandro, who was executive director of the political
committee created by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, sent
a blank check to his counterpart, Ellis, in Washington.
September 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A Travis County
grand jury indicted a business organization and a political
committee founded by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Thursday on
felony charges of violating election laws by using corporate money to
influence state elections. The indictments accuse the DeLay-founded Texans
for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee of two counts of
illegally soliciting corporate money for political campaigns. The indictment
of TRMPAC is significant because it reflects on DeLay's role in overseeing
the committee. DeLay served on its board of advisers and helped raise some of
the corporate money at the core of the controversy. Texas
election law prohibits the use of corporate or labor-union money
to influence races for elective office. TRMPAC could face a fine of up to
$40,000, but the committee filed articles of dissolution with the Texas
Ethics Commission in July. Earle said the dissolution does not matter because
TRMPAC's management or board of advisers can be held liable for its criminal
conduct.
August 9, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A state district judge refused Tuesday to dismiss charges of money laundering
and accepting illegal political contributions against two associates of U.S.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Judge Bob Perkins denied
arguments from John Colyandro and Jim Ellis that
the charges were based on an unconstitutionally vague law and that the
indictments were improperly worded. Lawyers for Colyandro,
who worked for DeLay's fundraising committee Texans for a Republican
Majority, and Jim Ellis, who worked for Americans for a Republican Majority,
have said they will appeal, likely delaying any trial for at least several
months. The charges stem from the 2002 Texas legislative elections. The
money-laundering charges are based on $190,000 in corporate money that was
sent to the Republican National State Elections Committee.
July
13, 2005 Houston Chronicle
A state district judge declined Tuesday to dismiss charges of accepting
illegal political contributions against an associate of U.S. House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay. Lawyers for John Colyandro, who worked for DeLay's fund-raising committee
Texans for a Republican Majority, had claimed that the indictment against him
was based on an unconstitutionally vague law. Judge Bob Perkins also
declined to dismiss a charge of money laundering against Colyandro,
although that issue remains technically alive. The charges stem from
the 2002 Texas legislative elections.
The money-laundering charges are related to $190,000 in corporate
money sent to the Republican National State Elections Committee. The committee then gave the same amount to
seven Texas House candidates.
May 27, 2005 Star-Telegram
A fund-raising operation founded by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay broke the
law when its treasurer failed to report more than $500,000 in corporate money
funneled into Texas campaigns during the pivotal 2002 elections, a judge
ruled Thursday. Texas District Judge Joseph Hart ruled that the treasurer,
Bill Ceverha, must pay five Democratic candidates
who lost their elections a combined $196,660 in damages. It was the first
time -- amid a flood of lawsuits and criminal investigations surrounding the
Republican Party's rapid rise to power in Texas -- that part of the GOP's
aggressive fund-raising operation has been found illegal. Hart's decision,
which came in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic candidates, added quickly
to the pressure mounting against DeLay, the Sugar Land Republican who has
been under siege for ethics issues and questions about his relationships with
lobbyists.
April 21, 2005 New York Times
A children's charity established by Tom DeLay, the House majority leader,
has been underwritten by several of the nation's largest companies and their
executives, including companies that routinely lobby lawmakers on issues
before Congress, according to a review of charity records released by the
companies and other documents. The 19-year-old charity, the DeLay Foundation
for Kids, has consistently declined to identify its donors, citing their
desire for privacy. But a review of corporate and charitable records shows
that recent donors have included AT&T, the Corrections Corporation of
America, Exxon Mobil, Limited Brands and the Southern Company, as well as
Bill and Melinda Gates, the Microsoft founder and his wife, and Michael Dell
of Dell computers. The Gates and Dell family foundations have donated at
least $350,000 to Mr. DeLay's charity since 2001. Among the largest corporate
gifts was a $100,000 check given to Mr. DeLay last year by the Corrections Corporation
of Nashville, which manages federal prisons. AT&T and Exxon Mobil say
they have each donated $50,000.
April 15, 2005 Salon
"The time has come that the American people know exactly what their
representatives are doing here in Washington. Are they feeding at the public
trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by
special-interest groups? Or are they working hard to represent their
constituents? The people, the American people, have a right to know. I say
the best disinfectant is full disclosure." That populist polemic was
delivered on the House floor in November 1995 by well-known reformer Tom
DeLay, R-Texas. Now nationally notorious for his own lobbyist-paid luxury
trips to Scotland, Russia and South Korea, among other places, where he has
been wined and dined by a bewildering variety of special-interest groups, the
House majority leader is no longer quite so strict about full disclosure,
either. Even the trait often described as his most admirable -- his concern
for abused children -- has been tainted by his penchant for backroom
influence peddling. Last year, DeLay was forced to cancel an ambitious series
of charitable events to be held at the Republican Convention in New York,
following a blast of public criticism over the grossness of the solicitations
sent out to lobbyists and corporate donors. For donations ranging between
$10,000 and $500,000, these potential benefactors of abused children were to
be feted at an exclusive Long Island golf club, as well as provided with a yacht
cruise, a VIP suite at the convention, and a special suite for viewing the
president's acceptance speech. As the Houston Chronicle noted sourly at the
time, the 13-page promotional brochure "had exactly one sentence
mentioning abused and neglected children." While that venture was
abruptly canceled, DeLay hasn't stopped soliciting corporate interests to
raise funds for his charity -- and himself -- at venues around the country.
These events aren't publicized and in fact are rarely reported. Last August,
for example, DeLay appeared at a luncheon in Lexington, Ky., hosted by Rep.
Hal Rodgers, R-Ky., at which donors coughed up money for the DeLay legal
defense fund, but this event wasn't reported in the local press until four
months later. Among those attending the Lexington luncheon was an executive
of the Corrections Corporation of America, who handed the majority leader a
$100,000 check made out to the DeLay Foundation for Kids. As the largest
private prison contractor in America, CCA relies on the federal government to
fill its prisons and its coffers, and is seeking to privatize the prison
system in Texas, where DeLay has a bit of influence, too. A spokeswoman for
the company told the Lexington Herald-Leader that CCA gives to charities and
politicians alike without any expectation of favors in return. In fact, those
present at the DeLay luncheon were reportedly emotionally moved to see that
big check being handed over.
March 16, 2005 The Free Press
Some civilians believe the definition of an honest Texas pol is one who stays
bought. But among pols of the old school, the saying was, "If you can't
take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their women and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in the Legislature."
Many of our pols have the ethical sensitivity of a walnut. All this has led
many to conclude erroneously that Tom DeLay, an alumnus of the Texas
Legislature, is somehow our fault. I grant you a certain resemblance to some
of our more notorious standards: "Everybody does it" and "They
did it first" are actually considered excuses here. But I categorically
reject cultural responsibility for Tom DeLay. Real Texas politicians are
neither hypocritical nor sanctimonious. A pol does what he must -- fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly --
but no pol of the Old School, when DeLay served in the Lege,
would add self-righteousness to shady dealing. Doing favors for big campaign
donors may indeed be an "everybody does it," but when those favors
take the form of laws that directly hurt your people, you're supposed to draw
the line. Over the line is where Texas pols would put using a children's
charity as a cover for collecting soft money from special interest groups and
then spending it on dinners, a golf tournament, a rock concert, Broadway
tickets and so forth. Because the money was supposedly for a charity,
Celebrations for Children, Inc., special interests who wanted favors from
DeLay were able to give him money without revealing themselves as campaign
donors. Cute trick, Tom, but a really cruddy thing to do. In another example
of ethical rot, DeLay took a $100,000 check from the Corrections Corporation
of America, a company that runs private prisons in Texas and has a 20-year
history that includes mismanagement and abuse. CCA wants the Texas Lege, over which DeLay exercises considerable sway
because he's a money conduit, to privatize the prisons. And that check? Made
out to DeLay's children's charity, the DeLay Foundation for Kids. Barf.
December
13, 2004 Newsweek
Faced
with mounting lawyers' bills to fend off ethics complaints and a grand-jury
probe in Texas, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is increasing efforts to
raise money for his legal-defense fund. But DeLay, who has raked in more than
$400,000 for the fund since last July, could face new questions over how he's
raised the cash in the past. In addition, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader last
week reported that, while attending a fund-raiser for DeLay's legal fund last
August, the head of a private prison firm handed DeLay a $100,000 check for a
foundation he operates for abused children.
December
1, 2004 Democrats.org
House
Republican leader Tom Delay, after being shielded from losing his leadership
position upon indictment by a grand jury, is yet again pushing the ethical
envelope. Recently, Delay took a check for $100,000 for his charity from
Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company that was looking
to add to its list of government prison contracts. So Delay's ethical
problems cost him a sizable amount of money in legal bills, then House
Republicans changed their ethics rules so that he could stay in the
leadership even if indicted on criminal charges, then those same House
Republicans helped organize a fundraiser to help him pay for his bills, then
at the fundraiser he took a check for $100,000 from a company looking for
federal prison contracts and yet, the Republicans still want this man as
their leader?
December
1, 2004 Star Telegram
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose
aggressive campaign fund raising is the subject of a Texas grand jury
investigation, took a $100,000 check from a private prison company at a
Lexington fund-raiser in August for a charity he operates. DeLay, R-Sugar
Land, has refused to identify donors to his nonprofit DeLay Foundation for
Kids, despite calls for disclosure from government-ethics groups that
criticize anonymous, unlimited gifts to the charities of powerful members of
Congress. However, Corrections Corporation of America confirmed last week
that its chief executive officer, John Ferguson, traveled to Lexington to
present $100,000 to DeLay's charity. "We absolutely get no favors in
return, and we expect no favors in return," Louise Chickering said.
Ferguson announced the $100,000 gift before scores of guests at a fund-raising
luncheon for DeLay's legal defense fund, organized by Rep. Hal Rogers,
Kentucky's senior congressman. Through
its political-action committee, CCA contributed nearly $180,000 for federal
races during the 2004 elections. DeLay and Rogers took at least $4,500 and
$6,000, respectively, from CCA for their campaigns or their "leadership
PACs," used to help their colleagues' campaigns. Calls to Rogers'
congressional office were not returned this week. "These political foundations have
become methods for well-heeled corporate executives, lobbyists and others to
purchase influence and face time with top politicians, and without the limits
or disclosure required of campaign donations or lobbying," said Rick
Cohen, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive
Philanthropy.
October 22, 2004 AP
Two associates of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who have been indicted
for alleged campaign finance violations will be allowed to put off answering
a civil lawsuit until their criminal charges have been resolved. State District Judge Joe Hart on Thursday
postponed a civil lawsuit against John Colyandro
and Jim Ellis, who were charged last month with laundering corporate
donations during the 2002 elections.
September 22, 2004 AP
The money laundering allegation in a congressional ethics complaint filed
against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay involves the same $190,000 in
political contributions that led to indictments of the Texas congressman's
aides on similar charges. DeLay is accused in an ethics complaint of misusing
the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to launder
$190,000 in illegal corporate contributions through the Republican National
Committee for use in Texas legislative races. On Tuesday, a grand jury in
Texas indicted Jim Ellis, a paid consultant to Texans for a Republican
Majority, and John Colyandro, former executive
director of the Texas committee, on money laundering charges involving the
same $190,000 check. A third aide was indicted on separate charges. The
indictments allege that on Sept. 13, 2002, Ellis delivered a check for
$190,000 to the Republican National Committee. The check was signed by Colyandro and made out to the Republican National State
Elections Committee. Accompanying it was a list of several GOP Texas
legislative candidates and the amount of money that each should get from the
RNC, according to the indictment. The indictments said the $190,000 came from
corporate contributions to Texans for A Republican Majority. Givers included
Diversified Collection Services Inc., $50,000; Sears, Roebuck and Co.,
$25,000; Williams Companies Inc., $25,000; Cornell Companies, $10,000,
Bacardi USA, $20,000 and Questerra Corp., $25,000,
the indictments said. They did not account for the remaining contributions.
The Republican National State Elections Committee subsequently wrote checks
totaling $190,000 to seven Texas candidates, the indictment alleges. Texas law prohibits
the use of corporate money for direct political purposes.
Travis County Community Justice Center
Austin, Texas
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
June 28, 2005 American-Statesman
Travis County plans to send 100 inmates to a jail near San Antonio that,
although recently upgraded, has been cited for violating state rules and recently
lost a federal contract after five inmates escaped in broad daylight. Travis
is moving the inmates to ease crowding in the county jail system. The inmates
are being sent to the Frio County Detention Facility in Pearsall. The
391-bed, privately managed facility has the room Travis County was looking
for and will take inmates at less cost than the other available jail, in
Limestone County. But the space in Frio County is available almost one year
after the U.S. Marshals Service removed 240 federal inmates because five of
their prisoners escaped in August 2004. A surprise inspection by the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards in July 2004 resulted in citations for
understaffing and crowding, including housing inmates in a classroom.
Federal officials also were concerned last year that prisoners were not
properly monitored, said Gary Brown, an assistant chief deputy for the U.S.
marshals' western Texas division. The August escape was at least the
fifth in the nine years, according to state and federal records. Tavis
County Judge Sam Biscoe and Commissioner Gerald Daugherty said they hadn't
heard about Frio County's troubles. Daugherty said he's asked the Travis
County sheriff's office to give the commissioners a detailed rundown of
Frio's recent history. "I fully expect that when something like
this goes before the commissioners, these traps have been sprung,"
Daugherty said. "If we think Frio County hasn't cleaned their act up,
then we have to really think about whether we should be sending our inmates
there."
February
13, 2003
Eight years after Texas finished
the biggest prison building boom in its history, the state's cellblocks are
virtually full again. Now, the
Legislature again is looking for options, hoping to avert another crisis in
its $2.5 billion-a-year prison system without adding to a state budget
shortfall estimated at $9.9 billion over the next 2 1/2 years. * Privatizing. Private companies can house
a prisoner for about $35 a day, compared with $44 a day for state-run
prisons, said Larry Todd, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice. Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin,
the chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, is leery of
giving more business to the private sector. Keel said he's
willing to look at the idea, but "it was a dismal failure
here." At the Travis
County Community Justice
Center ,
a state jail in East Austin that had been run by
Wackenhut Corrections Corp., 12 employees were indicted in 1999 on charges of
harassing and sexually abusing prisoners. Many were later acquitted. Soon after, the state took over the jail's
operations, terminating Wackenhut's contract. (American-Statesman)
September 9, 1999
The state of Texas retook control of this prison. 11 former guards and a case
manager were indicted on criminal sex charges. They are charged with felony
charges of sexual assault and improper sexual activity as well as misdemeanor
charges of sexual harassment. The state is also investigating fraud.
University
of Texas
Lehman Brothers
October 26, 2002
Kevin
Pranis and May Va Lor of
the Not With Our Money! campaign criticized private prisons
Wednesday for profiting from a new wave of immigrant imprisonment
spurred by the attacks of last September. In the presentation at
the University Teaching Center, titled "Immigrants on Lockdown,"
Pranis told an audience of about 50 students that
undocumented immigrants of Middle Eastern descent are targeted
for incarceration in order to increase profit for private
prisons. "A corporation is profiting off of the
incarceration of immigrants," said Tracy Thottam, a communication sciences and disorders graduate
student and member of the Asian American Relations Group, which
co-sponsored the presentation with the Campus Greens. "They
can claim that they are fighting the war on terrorism and that
they are helping their country, but they are really helping
their business." Pranis and Lor
also presented the message that students in the United States should
tell their universities to stop giving bond business to Lehman Brothers,
an institutional-investment bank, until the company stops funding private
prisons. Bob Libal, a communication
studies senior and a member of the Campus Greens, said the
presentation marked the start of a campaign to pressure UT System officials
to refuse to do business with Lehman Brothers if they are helping fund
private prisons, similar to the campaign against Sodexho Marriott. (Daily
Texan Staff)
United States Immigration Detention
Center
Burns International
Bayview, Texas
October 17, 2001
After trying to take their case to court for nine years, four former guards
have appealed a lawsuit that charges women were sexually assaulted at the
U.S. Immigration Detention Center near Bayview. Officials at United
International Investigative Services, a security firm that hired guards for
the INS facility, did not respond to a message requesting comment. In
August 1992, the former guards charged they lost their jobs after reporting
female guards and detainees were sexually abused inside the U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Service's largest detention center. In 1998, the
former guards settled out of court with Burns International, one of the
security firms that hired guards for INS facility. When the former
guards included the INS in the lawsuit, the case moved to federal
court. (Valley Morning Star
U.S. Prisoner Transportation Services
Feb
4, 2019 krdo.com
MMA fighter Cedric Marks captured after escaping van, suspected in 2
killings
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas - Update: After being on the run for several
hours, escaped prisoner, Cedric Joseph Marks, is now back in custody with
police. Marks, 44, managed to get away early Sunday morning while
transporters had stopped for food in a van. He was found hiding inside a
trash can between homes in Montgomery County for up to 9-hours. He was taken
into custody without incident. The Associated Press noted police said Marks
escaped from a prison van around 7:30 a.m. near the 800 block of N. Loop 336
West. He got away when the transport vehicle he was in stopped at a
McDonald's. Several law enforcement agencies are on the lookout for an
escaped prisoner who is a professional MMA fighter and has three pending
murder charges against him. According to WFAA, the prisoner, 44-year-old
Cedric Joseph Marks, escaped from a "private prisoner transport" in
Conroe, Texas, near the 800 block of N. Loop 336 West. Marks has made
headlines in Central Texas after his ex-girlfriend Jenna Scott and her friend
Michael Swearingin disappeared on Jan. 4. Their
bodies were discovered several days later, on Jan. 15, in the small town of
Clearview, Oklahoma. Marks was not named as a suspect in their deaths as of
Jan. 18 but he remained in a Kent County, Michigan jail awaiting extradition
to Temple for allegedly breaking into Scott's home on Aug. 21. Marks was released
from the Kent County Jail in Michigan Thursday morning and picked up by U.S.
Prisoner Transportation Services to be extradited to Texas, according to Kent
County Jail officials. At the time of his recent escape, Scott Spencer, a
lieutenant with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, said transporters had
stopped for food when Marks took off. They say he is not wearing a shirt.
Deputies located the article of clothing after he had gotten away. Officials
say Marks was once an MMA trainer at Title Boxing in Killeen and is
considered extremely dangerous. If you have seen Marks, please contact law
enforcement immediately. Do not approach him.
Valley Transitional TC
Weslaco, Texas
Texson MG
October 12, 2000
Weslaco won another round in its fight to keep a controversial halfway house
closed. The Texas Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal by Texson that claimed the city acted improperly when it
shut down the residential treatment center last year. (Valley Morning Star,
Oct.13, 2000)
September 1999
Hidalgo County state district Judge Aparicio issued an injunction closing the
treatment center. City officials revoked a special zoning permit after
finding that up to one-third of the residents were registered sex offenders.
(Valley Morning Star, Oct.13, 2000)
Val Verde County Correctional Facility and Jail
Del Rio, Texas
GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections)
Oct
14, 2016 kltv.com
Ex-private prison supervisor gets prison for sex with inmate
DEL RIO, Texas (AP) - A former supervisor at a privately managed prison
has been sentenced to just over a year in federal prison for having sex with
a federal inmate at the prison. A federal judge sentenced 59-year-old Leticia
Martinez Garza in Del Rio on Thursday to 13 months in prison followed by
three years of supervised release. Court documents show Garza was the
supervisor of laundry, property and supply at GEO Group's Val Verde
Correctional Facility when she had sex with a federal prisoner under her
custody between May and September of 2014. Garza could have been sentenced to
up to 15 years in federal prison and fined up to $250,000.
Oct
15, 2015 kltv.com
Ex-private prison supervisor accused of sex with inmate
DEL RIO, Texas (AP) - A former supervisor at a privately managed prison
has been indicted on a charge accusing her of having sex with a federal
inmate at the prison. A federal grand jury in Del Rio has indicted Leticia
Martinez Garza on a single count of sexual abuse of a ward. Court document
show Garza was the supervisor of laundry, property and supply at GEO Group's
Val Verde Correctional Facility when she had sex with a federal prisoner
under her custody between May and September of last year. If convicted, Garza
could be sentenced to up to 15 years in federal prison and fined up to
$250,000. She is free on bond. There was no answer to a call to Garza's home
Wednesday, and no attorney was listed on court documents.
April 19, 2012 San Antonio Express-News
A former guard at a privately run jail in Del Rio has been indicted on
charges of providing contraband — a cell phone and marijuana — to an inmate. Isau Juarez, 20, was arrested Thursday in San Antonio.
The indictment by a grand jury in Del Rio said Juarez provided the items to
an inmate identified only as B.H. at the Val Verde Correctional Facility,
which is run by Florida-based The GEO Group. The indictment said Juarez
smuggled the cell phone on Dec. 19, 2011, and the drugs on Aug. 11, 2011 and
Feb. 13, 2012. If convicted, Juarez faces up to five years in prison.
June 19, 2009 Del Rio News-Herald
A variance will be sought for a “pretty minor” issue that arose during
the county jail's latest audit by the state jail commission, the warden of
the facility told county commissioners court this week. Warden John Campbell,
who runs the Val Verde Correctional Facility for The GEO Group, during
Monday's meeting of the Val Verde County Commissioners Court asked the court
to schedule a special meeting to allow him to request the variance from the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Campbell discussed the reasons behind his
request during the “Citizen Comments” portion of the commissioners
court agenda. “Previous jail commission administration had given the facility
an option as to how to house prisoners out there and legislatively, any
facility that houses strictly federal prisoners does not fall under jail
commission standards. So back in '04 and '05, when we had just a tremendous
amount of inmates in the facility, we were notifying the jail commission on
why we had so many prisoners; we were overcrowded. And the jail commission
itself, Terry Julian, who was the director of the jail commission at that
time, told us in order to be able to meet the needs of the federal government
in housing these prisoners, to take all the county prisoners and put them in
the old existing county jail,” Campbell told the court. Campbell added, “That
way the new facility would only have federal prisoners and would not fall
under jail commission standards.” “We operated that way for several years and
without any problems passed all our audits with flying colors, which we still
continue to do to this day, except for one small issue. The head of the jail
commission changed, and during the change, the philosophy changed, whereas we
couldn't separate the facility any longer, and when that happened, we had
added some beds in certain parts of the facility in order to house additional
prisoners and they came in here this year and told us we had to take those
beds out and they didn't pass us on the audit, just strictly for those
reasons,” Campbell said. “Now I'm here to report to you; those beds have been
removed, and it's been reported to the jail commission. There's still one
other issue, though. With the addition of the new beds, the jail commission
requires that you have10 percent of your beds be single-cell and we don't
meet that because when we added the new beds, those that we added to weren't
under jail commission standards.” It is that 10 percent requirement, Campbell
said, for which the variance will be requested from the state. Campbell also
told the court that despite the finding, the Val Verde Correctional Facility
is still ranked as one of the top five jails in the state of Texas. “I'm just
letting you all know that I'll be coming to you to see if we can get a
special session together in the next couple of weeks cause we need to get
this variance in before the August meeting of the jail commission, so the
sheriff and I can go up there and get that done,” Campbell said.
May 20, 2009 Del Rio News-Herald
Two former jailers recently became guests of the facility where they once
worked, after one of them was arrested for burglarizing the home of a friend
and the other allegedly tried to smuggle a bottle of cheap wine and love
letters to an inmate. Cristela Ramirez, 20, no address available, was
arrested following an indictment on a charge of burglary of a habitation, and
Bertha Alicia Martinez, 25, Lot 10 Cerezo St., was
arrested on a felony charge of prohibited substances and items in an adult or
juvenile correctional or detention facility, investigators with the Val Verde
County Sheriff’s Office said. Ramirez was arrested and indicted as the result
of an investigation by the Del Rio Police Department, said the VVSO’s Lt.
Larry Pope. DRPD Sgt. John Kirtley said the case
against Ramirez stemmed from a November 2006 burglary of an apartment in a
complex in the 100 block of Rockwell Way near Del Rio High School. Kirtley said Ramirez is alleged to have taken a camera
and other items from another apartment in the same complex. Pope said Ramirez
was indicted on the burglary charge by the grand jury in January 2007 and had
been employed as a jailer by The GEO Group for two months as a detention
officer. Pope said Martinez was arrested following an investigation by the
sheriff’s office. Working on information, VVSO Sgt. James “Mac” McGonagill,
Pope and Mark Scott, assistant warden for The GEO Group, established
surveillance outside the jail about 11:30 p.m. Mary 12. McGonagill, inside a
vehicle in the jail parking lot, saw Martinez drive into the parking lot, get
out of her vehicle and carry something to the perimeter of the fence around a
section of the jail known as Area 6. “He also observed her bend down and
appear to shove something under the fence,” Pope said. McGonagill followed
Martinez after she got back into her vehicle and left the jail parking lot
and called Pope and Scott to report what he had seen. Pope said he and Scott
checked the fence and found a 750 milliliter bottle of MD 20/20 with two love
letters taped to it and addressed to an inmate in the jail. McGonagill
stopped Martinez’s vehicle on Gregory Drive, arrested her and brought her
back to Pope’s office for an interview. “She stated that she met the inmate
while he was incarcerated in the county jail and she was employed there as a
guard,” Pope said. “She said she had previously smuggled a photo of herself
to the inmate and that she had spoken to him on the telephone and that he had
asked her to put the bottle of wine under the fence.” Pope said Martinez
resigned from her job at the jail last November after she was discovered
passing a personal note to the inmate.
November 14, 2008 Del Rio
News-Herald
A former jailer was sentenced Wednesday to 16 months in federal prison for
violating the civil rights of an inmate at the Val Verde County Detention
Center and for obstructing the subsequent investigation. U.S. District Judge
Alia Moses Ludlum ordered that Emmanuel Cassio, 20, whose residence address
at the time of his arrest was listed as Lot 6, Margo Drive, serve 10 months
for the offense of deprivation of rights under color of law and six months
for the offense of hindering communication of information relating to federal
offense. Ludlum during the sentencing hearing Wednesday also ordered that
Cassio serve the two sentences consecutively, according to a press release
issued Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio. Ludlum also
ordered that Cassio be fined $3,000 and be placed on a supervised release
period for three yearsafter completing his term in
federal prison, the press release noted. Cassio was employed as a jailer at
the Val Verde Cunty Detention Center, which is operated by The GEO Group, a
private company, under a contract with Val Verde County, from late April 2006
until he was fired in late November 2006, Val Verde County Detention Center
Warden John Campbell told the Del Rio News-Herald in a previous interview.
Cassio pleaded guilty to the two charges on April 30, 2008. “Cassio admitted
that on Oct. 31, 2006, while working as a corrections officer at the Val
Verde County Detention Center, he used unreasonable force when he repeatedly
punched an inmate without provocation,” the press release from the U.S.
Attorney’s Office noted. “Cassio agreed that his assault violated the
inmate’s constitutional right to be free of unreasonable force by law
enforcement officers. Additionally, Cassio admitted that he obstructed
justice when he provided false information about the incident to investigators,”
the press release read. Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office investigators, who
initiated an investigation of the allegations against Cassio at the request
of Campbell and Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne
Jernigan, said Cassio walked into a cell and “struck an inmate with his
fist.” “The inmate then made a remark and the jailer returned and hit him
again. This incident was witnessed by another jailer who reported it to jail
administration. Warden Campbell immediately notified Sheriff Jernigan and
requested an investigation,” said VVSO Lt. Larry Pope, head of the sheriff’s
office criminal investigations division and who attended Wednesday’s
sentencing of Cassio in federal court here.
March 25, 2008 Del Rio News-Herald
A jailer at the Val Verde Correctional Facility was arrested Friday for
allegedly bringing marijuana into the jail for an inmate or inmates in the
facility. Jose Alberto Ybarra, 20, 102 Gilchrist Lane, was arrested Friday
and charged with the offense of prohibited substances and items in adult or
juvenile correctional or detention facility or on property of Texas
Department of Criminal Justice or Texas Youth Commission, said Val Verde
County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Larry Pope, who heads the VVSO’s criminal
investigations division. Pope said Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan Friday asked him to meet with John
Campbell, warden of The GEO Group’s Val Verde Correctional Facility, about
Ybarra. “The warden suspected a jailer of bringing (marijuana) into the
jail,” Pope said. “We set up a surveillance and when the suspect jailer
arrived at work Friday, he was stopped and escorted into a conference room.”
Pope said Ybarra was found to be carrying 1.1 ounces of marijuana concealed
in the rolled-up cuff of his left shirtsleeve. Pope said Ybarra was also
carrying four $50 bills. “He later admitted that this is what he was being
paid to deliver the marijuana,” Pope said. The sheriff’s office investigator
noted that Ybarra said he was paid the $200 to deliver the marijuana to an
inmate tank in the Val Verde Correctional Facility that houses suspected
members of the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Pope said Ybarra had access to the
tank in the course of his work as a jailer employed by The GEO Group Inc.
Pope said Ybarra has worked for the jail since October 2007. “During the
course of the interview, the subject also admitted that he has done this at
least once before in the past,” Pope said. He said the charge against Ybarra
is a third-degree felony.
December 28, 2007 AP
Fifty-five Idaho inmates who were moved out of a troubled Texas prison on
Thursday have been forced by a contract delay to make a temporary stop before
going to their final destination, a lockup near the Mexican border. More than
500 Idaho prisoners are in Texas and Oklahoma due to overcrowding at home.
The prisoners being moved are bound for the Val Verde Correctional Facility
in Del Rio, Texas, after more than a year at the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas, where one Idaho inmate killed himself in March. Because
a Texas county official has yet to approve the contract to house Idaho
prisoners at Val Verde, they have first been sent 100 miles away to the Bill
Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas. There, they will sleep in
groups of up to 10 men on makeshift cots in day rooms until resolution of the
contract allows them to complete the final 250-mile leg of their journey to
Val Verde sometime in early January. The inmates "were a bit dubious and
questionable about that," said Randy Blades, the warden in Boise who
oversees Idaho's out-of-state prisoners. That's one reason why his agency has
sent two officers to make sure the move runs smoothly, Blades said. Both the
Dickens and Val Verde prisons are run by private operator GEO Group Inc.,
based in Boca Raton, Florida. Pablo Paez, a
spokesman for GEO, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. GEO no
longer has the contract to manage the Dickens facility after Tuesday. Because
Idaho recently rejected an offer from the new company that will run Dickens,
GEO on Thursday had to move the Idaho inmates to temporary quarters in
Littlefield. Though Idaho officials thought details of the move to Val Verde
had been resolved, Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said he
learned only last week that a Texas county judge wanted a lawyer to look at
the contract one last time. "It was something we did not
anticipate," Reinke said. "GEO is paying the transport costs."
This is just the latest uprooting of Idaho inmates since they were first
shipped out of state in 2005. Since then, they have bounced from prison to
prison in Minnesota and Texas amid allegations of abusive treatment. There
also has been the criminal conviction of at least one Texas guard for passing
contraband to inmates; at least two escapes; and the death of Scot Noble
Payne, a convicted sex offender who slashed his throat last March in a
solitary cell at Dickens County. Idaho officials who investigated concluded
the GEO-run prison was filthy and the worst they had seen. As a result, about
70 Idaho inmates were moved from Dickens to Littlefield, where about 300
Idaho inmates were already housed, while the state continued talks with GEO
over sending the remaining 55 to a new 659-bed addition at Val Verde. Despite
the stopover, GEO has a hefty incentive to make sure the move to Val Verde
goes smoothly, Reinke said. The company hopes to win contracts with Idaho to
build a large new prison here to help accommodate the state's 7,400 inmates.
"They're really monitoring this closely, and doing a good job at this
point," Reinke said. "It's not a lot different than triple
bunking."
November 27, 2007 Idaho State
Journal
A company that's due to take over a troubled privately run Texas prison in
2008 made a sales pitch Monday to Idaho Department of Correction officials,
saying it hopes the management shake-up and $1.2 million in proposed
renovations will overshadow past problems and persuade Idaho to ship more
inmates to the lockup. Civigenics, a unit of New
Jersey-based Community Education Centers, Inc., with prisons or treatment
programs in 23 states, will manage Dickens County Correctional Center in
Spur, Texas, starting Jan. 1 after winning a competitive bid. Until now, The
GEO Group Inc., based in Florida, ran the facility. In March, Idaho prison
officials called Dickens under GEO's oversight ''the worst'' prison they'd
seen, citing what they called an abusive warden, the lack of treatment
programs and squalid conditions they said may have contributed to the suicide
of inmate Scot Noble Payne, who was held for months in a solitary cell. Idaho
is nearly ready to move 54 prisoners who remain at Dickens to a new GEO-run
facility near the Mexican border, after shifting 69 inmates elsewhere this
summer. Dickens County and Civigenics officials
came to Boise to offer assurances they'll remedy concerns over their
15-year-old prison as they aim to stay in the running to house some of the
hundreds of prisoners that Idaho plans to ship elsewhere in coming months to
ease overcrowding. Some 550 of Idaho's 7,400 inmates have been sent out of
state since 2005. GEO ''thought they were too good,'' Sheldon Parsons, a
Dickens County commissioner, told Idaho officials. ''They're used to running
bigger facilities. That just kind of didn't fit into our program. Civigenics will definitely fit.'' Idaho plans to send 120
additional prisoners to a private prison in Oklahoma in January. It's also
looking for space in other states for groups of inmates in increments of
about 100 starting in mid-2008. Bob Prince, a Civigenics
salesman, said his company could house as many as 150 Idaho inmates at a
revamped Dickens. The $1.2 million from Dickens County, which owns the
prison, would cover new fencing, exterior lighting, security improvements,
kitchen renovations and more rooms for education and treatment programs.
Still, Idaho officials including Department of Correction Director Brent
Reinke indicated the plan may not be enough to address complaints that have
prompted him to vacate Dickens. Idaho, which earlier this year conceded it
lost track of how its inmates in Texas were being treated before Payne's
suicide, has outlined its concerns in several reports over the last nine
months. Lingering shortcomings include a lack of cell windows and a drab,
dingy atmosphere in an aging facility built as county jail, not for long-term
prisoners. ''The cells inside that facility are pretty dark and dank,'' said
Randy Blades, the Idaho warden who oversees out-of-state prisoners. ''What
are you looking at to change the cells themselves?'' Texas officials conceded
that wasn't considered. ''We haven't looked into any of that,'' Parsons said,
before adding, ''We'll try and do anything we can to make people happy that
are coming in. Nobody has ever brought that up before.'' Despite past
problems with GEO, Blades said Idaho aims to soon finalize a contract with
that company to move inmates still at Dickens to a new 659-bed addition at
the Val Verde Correctional Facility, near the Mexican border. That contract
also calls for roughly 40 inmates currently in Idaho to be sent to Val Verde.
Val Verde has seen its own share of problems under GEO leadership. GEO
settled a wrongful death case after a female Texas prisoner killed herself
following allegations she was sexually humiliated by a guard and raped by an
inmate. Earlier this year, the local government was forced to hire a monitor
for the facility. Even so, Blades said a visit to the new cellblock slated
for Idaho inmates earlier this year convinced him and other officials that
the prison is appropriate and safe. ''It's a very good facility, very
secure,'' Blades said of Val Verde. ''There's a good dayroom. The cells are
well lighted.''
November 16, 2007 Del Rio
News-Herald
A former jailer at the Val Verde Correctional Facility was arrested
Thursday after he was indicted for violating the civil rights of an inmate in
October 2006. Agents of the Del Rio office of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested
Emmanuel Cassio, 20, Lot 6 Margo Dr. about 8 a.m. Thursday, said Lt. Larry
Pope, who heads the VVSO’s criminal investigations division, which initiated
the investigation last year. Pope said Cassio was indicted earlier this week
by a Del Rio federal grand jury on one count of deprivation of rights under
the color of law, a felony. Pope said the civil rights violation is alleged
to have occurred during a confrontation between a federal prisoner and Cassio
while Cassio was employed as a jailer in the facility. Val Verde Correctional
Facility Warden John Campbell said Thursday afternoon that Cassio was
employed at the facility from late April 2006 until he was fired in late
November 2006. Pope said the incident between Cassio and the inmate is
alleged to have occurred on Oct. 31, 2006, when Cassio walked into a cell and
“struck the inmate with his fist.” Pope said the inmate then made a
derogatory remark to Cassio, who is then alleged to have punched the inmate a
second time. “The inmate made a remark and the jailer returned and hit him
again,” Pope said. Pope said, “This incident was witnessed by another jailer
who reported it to jail administration. Warden Campbell immediately notified
Sheriff (A. D’Wayne) Jernigan and requested an
investigation.”
August 22, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Fears of a mysterious outbreak at a corrections facility here were
allayed somewhat Wednesday, when area officials were told that four inmates
who became ill with similar symptoms around the same time did not appear to
have the same disease. "We don't think these are necessarily related to
each other right now based on the information we have," said Dr. Sandra
Guerra-Cantu, regional medical director of the Texas Department of State
Health Services. "So we feel fairly confident there's not an ongoing
exposure, that people are as safe as they always have been within the
facility." Guerra-Cantu briefed local government and law enforcement
officials on the preliminary findings of an investigation that included a
team of 20 state and federal disease experts at the facility last week,
perhaps 30 more who were consulted by phone, and multiple laboratories in San
Antonio, Austin, Georgia and California. Four men — three of them foreign
nationals from Honduras and Mexico held on immigration charges, the fourth a
local prisoner — became sick with similar symptoms while in Val Verde County
Jail beginning in July. Two of them died. One remains in a San Antonio
hospital that has not been identified. The other was treated at a Val Verde
County hospital. Symptoms included seriously altered behavior, followed by
incontinence and respiratory illness. The timing of the illnesses and the
similarity of symptoms led to concerns of an outbreak or toxic exposure. Two
of the inmates were infected with HIV, and one of those also had tuberculosis,
Guerra-Cantu said. A third inmate turned out to have a mental illness and
apparently did not have the other symptoms. The investigation produced little
information on the fourth inmate. He was one of the two who died, and he did
so shortly after becoming ill. He apparently was a Honduran whose body was
embalmed and shipped to his country after the Bexar County medical examiner's
office declined a request to perform an autopsy. Although health officials
have not identified any of the inmates, a San Antonio attorney, Joseph Berra,
said he was representing the family of 25-year-old German Alberto Reyes
Alvarez, who died July 28 and whose embalmed body was returned to Honduras.
"At this point, the family is still concerned about the causes of his
sudden and mysterious death," Berra said. "They feel they haven't
received an adequate explanation. I've requested the medical records on their
behalf." Alvarez and his younger brother were picked up by the Borer Patrol shortly after entering the country and were
soon separated. The younger brother awaits deportation, Berra said. The Val
Verde facility, an 850-bed medium-security facility privately run by Boca
Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc., is under contract to house federal
detainees for the U.S. Marshal's Service and the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, as well as local prisoners. Still, it was Val Verde
County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan who became
concerned about the similar illnesses and requested an investigation. "I
couldn't get anybody to respond," Jernigan said after the briefing.
"Didn't really know who to call at the time. I called the governor's
office, and they put me in touch with these fine folks. They were here
instantly."
August 12, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
A new medical team, including federal disease experts, is expected to arrive
here this week to try and find the cause of the mysterious illness that has
killed two inmates and hospitalized two others from the Val Verde County
jail. "We would like someone with a new set of eyes to come and take a
look. We're asking for a multi-faceted team to come, including the Centers
for Disease Control," said Dr. Sandra Guerra-Cantu, regional medical
director of the Texas Department of State Health Services. Officials are
frustrated at not knowing what's behind the ailments and the fact that one
opportunity to learn more was missed when an autopsy was not conducted.
"I'm very concerned that we have been unable to figure out the causes of
their deaths," said Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne
Jernigan, who sounded the alarm several weeks ago but had difficulty finding
anyone to listen. "There's a very high level of frustration. I'm
responsible for the welfare of every inmate, every employee and the
community." Common ailment? There are about 850 inmates and 300
employees at the Val Verde Correctional Facility, a medium-security facility
overseen by Jernigan but privately operated by GEO Group Inc. of Boca Raton,
Fla. Most of the inmates are placed there for immigration violations by the
U.S. Marshals Service. All four of those suspected to be suffering from a
common ailment were held at the facility at one point or another. Two died in
area hospitals after coming down with symptoms that included erratic
behavioral changes, incontinence and dehydration. The third is in critical
condition at a Del Rio hospital and the fourth is in stable condition in a
San Antonio hospital that officials would not identify. The state already has
sent two teams of investigators to review the jail. A variety of tests for
medical conditions and toxic exposures have failed to identify a cause.
'Missed opportunity' A chance to learn more about the fatal disease
apparently was missed in late July when a Honduran man died in a Del Rio
hospital and no autopsy was done despite efforts to arrange one. A day or two
later, the body was embalmed by a funeral home, making an autopsy moot and
eliminating most opportunities to investigate the mysterious ailment.
"Knowing what we know now, we would've tried to get a court order to get
an autopsy," said Fernando Karl, assistant chief of the U.S. Marshals
office in San Antonio. Dr. Randall Frost, the chief medical examiner in Bexar
County, said the urgency and extenuating circumstances about the Honduran's
mysterious death were apparently not made clear in the call to his office. He
said he only learned about the importance of the case on Thursday. "If
ever there was a case made for a statewide medical examiner this is it. You
have a non-medical individual, a justice of the peace, calling up and talking
to our investigator," he said. "What should have happened is what
happened (Thursday). A doctor talking to a doctor." Guerra-Cantu said
the apparent slip-up won't happen again. "I think it was a missed
opportunity to get additional information, but I don't know that it would
have resolved anything," she said. "I know that we're making
arrangements in the unfortunate event that someone else dies, we'll have an
autopsy done. The CDC has offered to do that for us if we need it." Val
Verde County officials are keeping a close eye on the other inmates and
employees.
August 9, 2007 Express-News
A mysterious illness at a Del Rio detention center that has killed two
inmates and hospitalized two others within the past month has baffled health
authorities, who have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
for help. All four men — three of them foreign nationals from Honduras and
Mexico held on immigration charges, the fourth a Val Verde county prisoner
who was one of the dead — were described as in their 20s and 30s, and
apparently healthy when they arrived at the Val Verde Correctional Facility
and County Jail. The privately operated 850-bed medium-security facility is
under contract to house federal detainees for the U.S. Marshal's Service and
the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as local
prisoners. One of the ill inmates was brought to an unidentified San Antonio
hospital; the other remains hospitalized in Del Rio. Their conditions have
not been released. "It's still a big mystery to us," said Dr.
Sandra Guerra-Cantu, regional medical director of the Texas Department of
State Health Services, who is heading the investigation. "I can't tell
you that we've figured it out. But we're in the process of requesting
assistance from CDC and others to come and help us." The first inmate
became ill in mid- to late July, she said. In each case, symptoms began with
erratic behavioral changes, followed by incontinence and dehydration. A host
of tests for medical conditions and toxic exposures failed to identify a
culprit. And no autopsy has yet been performed on either of the men who died.
"As far as we know, these individuals did not have any contact with one
another," said Guerra-Cantu, adding that health officials have not yet
recommended any change in operations at the jail except to closely monitor
prisoners for similar symptoms. She said local officials contacted them late
last week after the sheriff and local doctors became concerned. "We have
had two sets of teams from the Texas Department of State Health Services
visit the facility to interview the medical staff, review the medical
records, look at all the laboratory results, as well as request consults from
various experts in different fields of health care, to get their ideas about
what's going on." The facility is operated under contract by the Geo
Group Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company that also runs correctional
facilities in San Antonio, Pearsall and Karnes City, and has a regional
administrative office in New Braunfels. The company is cooperating with the
investigation, Guerra-Cantu said. "It would be irresponsible for ICE to
speculate on this particular matter, but it is something we definitely will
be looking into immediately," said Nina Pruneda,
a spokeswoman for the federal agency that detained the three foreign
nationals, adding she had no information about them late Thursday. Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan's office referred all questions to state
health officials. According to the Geo Group's Web site, the facility is undergoing
an expansion that will increase its capacity to more than 1,400 beds. In
March, Val Verde County and the Geo Group settled a lawsuit with the family
of LeTisha Tapia, a 23-year-old federal inmate
found hanged in her cell after reporting she'd been sexually assaulted in
2004. Last week, the Associated Press reported that under the terms of that
settlement, the county had hired an independent monitor for the prison.
July 26, 2007 The Olympian
Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke next Thursday will visit a
private Texas prison where he intends to shift 56 inmates in September, after
problems including abuse by guards, deplorable conditions and a suicide
emerged at previous facilities in that state. Reinke, who concedes lax
oversight by Idaho contributed to problems, and three other Idaho officials
will review the Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas,
run by Florida-based private prison firm The GEO Group. The prison area where
Idaho inmates are due to be housed at Val Verde is part of a new 659-bed
addition, Reinke said. Still, he wants to make sure the facility located near
the Mexican border meets Idaho standards so the recurring problems at the two
previous GEO-run prisons aren't repeated. "On contracts in general,
we're going to be stepping that up," Reinke told The Associated Press
this week. "We want to take a firsthand look." About 450 Idaho
inmates were first moved beyond state borders in 2005 to relieve overcrowding
at prisons here, where there are more than 7,000 inmates - but not enough
room to house them all. They were incarcerated at the Newton County
Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, until August 2006, when they were moved
following allegations of abuse by guards to the Dickens County Correctional
Center in Spur, Texas. But Reinke, who took over in January, acknowledges his
agency didn't do enough to scrutinize conditions at Dickens before Idaho
inmates were shipped there. And from August 2006 to March 2007, Idaho prison
officials only visited the Dickens County facility one time. The March 4
suicide by Scot Noble Payne, a convicted sex offender, and a subsequent
investigation illuminated conditions that one Idaho prison official described
as "beyond repair." One concern: There have been problems at Val
Verde, too. Inmate LeTisha Tapia killed herself
there in 2004 after alleging she was raped by another inmate and sexually
humiliated by a guard. And a black guard accused his captain of keeping a
hangman's noose in his office and a photo of himself in a Ku Klux Klan hood
in his desk. Val Verde County has been forced to hire a full-time prison
monitor to keep a watch on prison operations as part of a settlement with
Tapia's family. Some family members of Idaho inmates now at Dickens told the
AP they're pleased Reinke is scrutinizing Val Verde personally. Still, they
said they're frustrated their relatives are being moved again - especially
since many problems at Dickens have been remedied since Payne's suicide in
March. "Things are OK now," said the wife of a sex offender who
asked not to be identified by name. "They don't want to move."
Reinke has pledged to improve oversight of conditions at Texas prisons
through what he's calling a "virtual prison" that his agency
adopted earlier this week. It's modeled after a similar system in Washington
state, he said.
May 20, 2007 Del Rio News-Herald
Two former jailers recently became guests of the facility where they once
worked, after one of them was arrested for burglarizing the home of a friend
and the other allegedly tried to smuggle a bottle of cheap wine and love
letters to an inmate. Cristela Ramirez, 20, no address available, was
arrested following an indictment on a charge of burglary of a habitation, and
Bertha Alicia Martinez, 25, Lot 10 Cerezo St., was
arrested on a felony charge of prohibited substances and items in an adult or
juvenile correctional or detention facility, investigators with the Val Verde
County Sheriff’s Office said. Ramirez was arrested and indicted as the result
of an investigation by the Del Rio Police Department, said the VVSO’s Lt.
Larry Pope. DRPD Sgt. John Kirtley said the case
against Ramirez stemmed from a November 2006 burglary of an apartment in a
complex in the 100 block of Rockwell Way near Del Rio High School. Kirtley said Ramirez is alleged to have taken a camera
and other items from another apartment in the same complex. Pope said Ramirez
was indicted on the burglary charge by the grand jury in January 2007 and had
been employed as a jailer by The GEO Group for two months as a detention
officer. Pope said Martinez was arrested following an investigation by the
sheriff’s office. Working on information, VVSO Sgt. James “Mac” McGonagill,
Pope and Mark Scott, assistant warden for The GEO Group, established
surveillance outside the jail about 11:30 p.m. Mary 12. McGonagill, inside a
vehicle in the jail parking lot, saw Martinez drive into the parking lot, get
out of her vehicle and carry something to the perimeter of the fence around a
section of the jail known as Area 6. “He also observed her bend down and
appear to shove something under the fence,” Pope said. McGonagill followed
Martinez after she got back into her vehicle and left the jail parking lot
and called Pope and Scott to report what he had seen. Pope said he and Scott
checked the fence and found a 750 milliliter bottle of MD 20/20 with two love
letters taped to it and addressed to an inmate in the jail. McGonagill
stopped Martinez’s vehicle on Gregory Drive, arrested her and brought her
back to Pope’s office for an interview. “She stated that she met the inmate
while he was incarcerated in the county jail and she was employed there as a
guard,” Pope said. “She said she had previously smuggled a photo of herself
to the inmate and that she had spoken to him on the telephone and that he had
asked her to put the bottle of wine under the fence.” Pope said Martinez
resigned from her job at the jail last November after she was discovered
passing a personal note to the inmate.
March 21, 2007 San Antonio
Express-News
Suffering from depression after she was labeled a snitch and reportedly
raped, according to claims in a lawsuit, federal inmate LeTisha
Tapia ate her last meal in Val Verde County Jail at 5:30 p.m. on July 23,
2004. Three hours later, officers at the Del Rio jail found the 23-year-old's
body hanging in her cell, a bedsheet wrapped around her neck. On Thursday,
Val Verde County and the private company that's under contract to operate its
jail agreed to pay $200,000 to settle the lawsuit filed by Tapia's family.
The suit alleged a pattern of sexual activity took place at the facility
because women and men were housed in the same general area. Tapia complained,
according to the suit, and was raped in retaliation. The suit also alleged
guards physically and psychologically beat her down. Soon afterward, the suit
said, Tapia fell into a depression, a condition from which she'd previously
suffered. A report submitted Thursday by an attorney handling the interests
of Tapia's young son, however, contradicts the suit's allegations. The report
said it appears the sex Tapia had with a male inmate was consensual, and that
the incident doesn't appear to be related to her suicide. The report also
said a psychiatrist who examined her in the jail infirmary a day before her
death found no signs of depression or "suicidal ideations."
"Appropriate suggestions were made for managing (her) mild
anxiety," the report said. Nonetheless, under the terms of the
settlement, Tapia's son will receive $85,000. Court records show the rest is
to be distributed among Tapia's adult relatives pending a probate of Tapia's
estate and approval by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez. County officials
didn't return calls seeking comment. Nor did the GEO Group Inc., the Boca
Raton, Fla.-based company that runs the jail. Scott Medlock, an attorney with
the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin, which represented Tapia's family,
said Thursday he was barred from discussing the case. Filed last year by
Tapia's family, the suit alleged that the jail for several weeks housed women
in the same cellblock with male inmates, and that guards knew women opened
men's cells and had sex with them but ignored the activity. The defendants
identified in the suit as a handful of guards, the county and the private
firm have denied the allegations. The suit said Tapia — who was in jail
serving a short sentence for a drug conviction — told the warden about the
sexual activity, but that the warden did not move the male inmates and the
activity continued. Other prisoners learned that she had stepped forward and
retaliated against her by allowing a male inmate to rape her, according to
the suit. The county jail houses 850 inmates, most of them federal pretrial
prisoners held as part of an intergovernmental agreement the county has with
the U.S. Marshals Service. Tapia was a federal inmate, but the Marshals
Service, which pays the county almost $1.4 million per month, was dismissed
as a defendant in February. The report submitted Thursday by the child's
attorney said there was evidence that a day before her death, Tapia was
kicked, slammed into walls and forced to kneel on the ground after guards
learned she had smuggled a phone into her cell.
March 10, 2006 Texas Observer
The horrors of the Texas prison system rarely escape the jailhouse walls,
but a recent lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project reveals a
climate of negligence and violence in one privately run South Texas prison.
The suit, filed February 15 in San Antonio federal district court, alleges
that 23-year-old LeTisha Tapia, a prisoner at the
Val Verde County Correctional Facility, was allegedly raped, beaten, and
deprived of urgent mental health care. Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights
Project filed suit on behalf of Tapia’s family against the private prison
company, GEO Group, that operates the facility. A number of prison guards,
the jail’s warden, and the United States Marshals Service are also listed as
defendants. The complaint portrays the Val Verde prison, located in Del Rio,
as a madhouse where guards allowed male and female inmates to have sex. The
lawsuit partially blames Tapia’s death on the jail’s inadequate medical care
and supervision of the inmates. Medlock says this kind of corner cutting on
prisoner treatment is common in private prisons. “It’s pretty obvious that
privately run facilities are in it to make a profit,” he said. “They try to
provide that to the company at the expense of inmate safety and health.”
February 16, 2006 Houston Chronicle
A civil rights lawsuit announced Wednesday blames the private corrections
system for the 2004 suicide of a South Texas woman found hanging in her cell
after reporting that a male inmate raped her. LeTisha
Tapia, who died at the Val Verde County Jail in July 2004, was housed in the
same cell block as male inmates and reported that guards allowed male and
female inmates to have sex with each other, according to the lawsuit filed by
the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of the woman's family. "It's
unbelievably outrageous what happened here. Sexual relations between inmates
is just beyond the pale," civil rights attorney Scott Medlock said
Wednesday. "When prisons and jails are privatized, the company's bottom
line is placed above inmate health and safety." The lawsuit, filed in
the federal district court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio,
names GEO Group Inc., the nation's second-largest private prison company,
among the defendants. "We obviously haven't had an opportunity to review
the lawsuit. So, at this point, I wouldn't have any comment," said GEO
Group spokesman Pablo Paez. Also declining
immediate comment were the U.S. Marshals Service and several Val Verde County
officials named as defendants in the civil action. The Marshals Service
contracts with Val Verde County for jail space and the county, in turn, hires
GEO Group to run the jail, which houses 784 inmates. Tapia, who spent nearly
six months in the jail before her death, was awaiting transfer to a federal
facility after pleading guilty to a marijuana possession charge, Medlock
said, adding that she had about a year left on her sentence. While in the
county jail, male inmates were moved into maximum-security, solitary
confinement cells that are connected to the women's cells by a common day
room, the lawsuit said, but jailers allowed the inmates to have contact with
each other. "Female inmates discovered they could open the cells of the
male inmates using a toothbrush," the lawsuit alleged. "Guards
would open the door between the hallways and tell the inmates to 'do what you
want to do, or what you gotta do.' Some female
inmates began to have sexual relations with male inmates." The close
quarters for male and female inmates continued for more than a month, the
lawsuit said. Tapia reported the sexual contact to the prison warden in April
2004, but he did not move the male inmates to another section of the jail,
the lawsuit said. Tapia was raped after female inmates forced her into a male
inmate's cell as punishment for being a "snitch," the lawsuit said,
and her mental state deteriorated. Tapia later reported feeling depressed and
anxious and asked to see a psychiatrist in a medical request marked
"URGENT," according to the complaint, but she did not see a doctor
for another 10 days. After Tapia smuggled a telephone from the infirmary into
her jail cell, an individual described only as "Lt. Duggar"
physically and psychologically abused her and sexually humiliated her in
front of others, the lawsuit alleges in graphic detail. The next day, Tapia
was found dead in her jail cell, hanging by a sheet. polly.hughes@chron.com
February 16, 2006 Press Release
Grieving Family Files Suit Against County and Private Jail After Wife and
Mother is Raped, Commits Suicide. The Texas Civil Rights Project filed suit
today on behalf of the family of Mrs. Letisha Tapia. Mrs. Tapia was found
hanging in the Val Verde County Jail on July 23, 2004 after she had been
raped by a male inmate. The jail housed Mrs. Tapia in the same cell block as
violent male inmates. Permissive guards allowed male and female inmates to
have sexual relations. Mrs. Tapia told the warden about these sexual
transgressions, but he ignored her pleas and male inmates remained in the
cell block. Mrs. Tapia was raped by one of the male inmates after making her
report to the warden. Mrs. Tapia reported the rape to the authorities, who
refused to press charges. She received no psychiatric treatment after the
rape, despite experiencing depression and anxiety. The night before she died,
Mrs. Tapia was abused by a guard. Lt. Duggar interrogated Mrs. Tapia about a
rules violation by forcing her to her knees and kicking her. He threatened
her with rape, telling her “if you were my cellmate, I’d make you my bitch.”
He called her a “low-life prostitute ho” and told her she would spend the
next fifteen years in jail. He ordered three female officers to strip search
Mrs. Tapia, and watched as they made her expose herself to him. Despite
telling Lt. Duggar she would kill herself if placed in administrative
segregation, Duggar threw Mrs. Tapia into a segregation cell and left her
there, naked, without blankets for the entire night. Jail policy requires
that every inmate see a psychiatrist before being placed in administrative
segregation, but Mrs. Tapia never saw a doctor. The jail guards failed to
inspect her cell every fifteen minutes (as required by policy), and Mrs.
Tapia was found hanging in her cell that night. “The jail drove this young
woman to kill herself,” said Scott Medlock, the Texas Civil Rights Project’s
Prisoners’ Rights Attorney. “From the minute she was booked into this facility,
she was abused and ignored by jail officials.” Medlock said the private
prison system was to blame for Mrs. Tapia’s death. Val Verde County and the
US Marshals Service contract with GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Security, to
run the jail. “When prisons and jails are privatized the company’s bottom
line is placed above inmate health and safety. GEO cuts corners by hiring
poorly trained guards, providing inmates with cut rate medical care and
running their facility in a grossly unprofessional manner. Mrs. Tapia’s
family had their wife, mother and daughter sacrificed to corporate greed.”
Mrs. Tapia’s family is seeking monetary damages, but that is little
consolation. “No amount of money could bring her back,” her husband, Eliodoro Tapia, said. For more information, please
contact Scott Medlock, at (512) 474-5073 ext. 105.
November 20, 2005 Del Rio News
Herald
Raymond Edward Haynes has filed a federal lawsuit charging the company he
works for, The GEO Group Inc., discriminated against him because of his race.
But the GEO Group Inc.'s attorney, Bridget R. Robinson, of the Austin law
firm of Walsh, Anderson, Brown, Schulze and Aldridge, said Haynes' "hurt
feelings" about several isolated incidents at the GEO Group's Val Verde
County Detention Center are not enough to justify his claims that he was
discriminated against. Haynes' attorney, Mark Anthony Sánchez, of the San
Antonio law firm of Gale, Wilson & Sanchez, filed the suit in U.S.
District Court here earlier this year. Haynes said he was grateful to get a
job as a correctional officer at the Val Verde County Detention Center, which
the GEO Group operates as part of a contract with Val Verde County. He went
to work there in February 2003, and he continues to work there today. Haynes,
who comes from a family of career lawmen, said his gratitude became
disbelief, then horror, then outrage when, in September 2003, he said he saw
a hangman's noose displayed in the office of a supervisor, Capt. Albert Lacy.
Sánchez in the complaint also charged that the same supervisor, Lacy,
"took photographs of himself in Ku Klux Klan head regalia while in his
GEO Group or Wackenhut Corrections Corporation uniform. He (Lacy) maintained
these photographs in his desk drawer at the Val Verde County Jail,
photographs that were eventually discovered and made public. Together with
the hangman's noose, the introduction of Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia by
Plaintiff's (Haynes') supervisor into Plaintiff's workplace resulting in a
suffocating pall of hate to permeate the Val Verde County Jail." The
complaint also charges that Haynes "informed his supervisors and filed
internal complaints about Lacy's racist conduct in
October 2003, but (the GEO Group Inc.) delayed until December 2003 before
commencing any type of investigation."
September 7, 2005 Del Rio
News-Herald
Val Verde County Commissioners Court quickly and amicably passed the proposed
2005-2006 county budget Tuesday morning. The approved budget estimates that
the county will receive a total of $23,333,485 in general fund revenues during
the 2005-2006 Fiscal Year, which begins Oct. 1, 2005 and ends Sept. 30, 2006.
The $23,333,485 in estimated county revenues for the coming fiscal year
include payments totaling $13,440,000 the county will receive through its
contract with the U.S. Marshal’s Service for the housing of federal prisoners
in the county jail. As the approved budget shows, that $13.4 million will go
right back out again as an expenditure, with most being paid to The GEO Group
Inc., the private company that has a contract with the county for operation
of the jail.
August 15, 2005 San Antonio
Express-News
Inside the walls of the Val Verde Correctional Facility in Del Rio, a
hangman's noose was displayed in a jail captain's office and a picture of the
uniformed guard in a Ku Klux Klan hood was found in his desk. Those are the
claims made in a lawsuit filed by corrections officer Raymond E. Haynes. In
the lawsuit, filed earlier this year against the Florida-based company that
runs the jail, Haynes contends he and other blacks were subjected to a
hostile work environment. Haynes, who has worked at the jail since February
2003, alleges that there existed a pattern of racial slurs and pejorative
stereotypical comments by other ranking officers. He also alleges that his
superiors denied him promotions and unfairly disciplined him because of his
race. The photo of the captain, in his jail uniform and wearing KKK regalia,
was found in his desk during his absence, according to internal jail
documents. The EEOC found that there was reasonable cause to believe the
captain hung the noose, creating a racially offensive work environment. But
the agency said it could not conclude whether Haynes was disciplined and
denied promotions because of his race, or whether he was subjected to racial
slurs. "Specifically, the evidence shows that there was a noose hanging
in a captain's office, and at least two of (the jail's) lieutenants were
aware of the noose but did not take immediate or corrective action," the
EEOC determination states.
January 13, 2005 Del Rio News-Herald
With nearly three-quarters of the fiscal year still ahead, Val Verde County
officials already have been warned to expect a significant shortfall in the
county budget. Housing local prisoners in the county jail and paying for
court-appointed attorneys are the two expenses being blamed for the expected
shortfall. “These two line items are absolute devastating to us right now,”
County Auditor Frank Lowe told Val Verde County Commissioners Court. “We
budgeted $25,000 to $30,000 a month for local prisoners, but we’ve been
running $85,000 to $90,000 a month,” Lowe said.
January 1, 2005 Del Rio News-Herald
A former jailer at the Val Verde County Jail spent a night locked up there
recently and faces up to 10 years in prison after he admitted to sheriff’s
office investigators he smuggled marijuana into the jail to give to an inmate
– for a fee of $30. “He definitely, at least in my opinion, ruined his life
for $30,” said John Campbell, who serves as warden of the jail for The GEO
Group Inc., the private company that operates that jail under contract with
Val Verde County. “It’s hard to comprehend that someone would risk all that
for $30,” he said. Valentin Nava Jr., 21, 202 E. 2nd St., was charged with
bringing in and possessing a prohibited substance in a correctional facility,
a third degree felony. CID Lt. Larry Pope said Nava is accused of picking up
a baggie containing 8.3 grams of marijuana in the parking lot of the Burger
King restaurant while he was on a break from his jail job. “Bringing contraband
into jails, whether it’s marijuana or cigarettes, anything like that, is not
an uncommon problem,” Pope said in an interview earlier this week. Pope wrote
in his report that after his arrest, Nava “admitted he was bringing the
marijuana in to give to a prisoner.”
Weatherford, Texas
March 26, 2009 NBC DFW
A prisoner who escaped from a private transport van in Weatherford
Wednesday has turned himself in to the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office in Dallas. Enzo Edenilson
Campos, 24, of Dallas, fled at about 8:40 p.m. when the van stopped at a truckstop in the 1100 block of West Park, police said.
Campos was being transported from Dallas to a private jail facility in
Haskell County. He had been handcuffed to another prisoner. Guards noticed the
other prisoner still had the handcuffs on, but Campos was gone, police said.
Campos has gang ties and was in federal custody for immigration violations,
police said. It was not immediately clear if he had been arrested on other
criminal charges.
Webb County Correctional Facility
Laredo, Texas
GEO Group
December 11, 2007 Laredo Morning Times
The violation of GEO Group policies by some of its employees, which court
documents allege led to the suicides of former inmates in GEO-run prisons,
should be reasonable to expect from a company that employs 10,000 people
worldwide. That defense of the company was offered by GEO Group attorney
Carlos Zaffirini at the Monday meeting of the Webb County Commissioners
Court. The meeting bore witness to more than half a dozen citizens'
impassioned speeches in which they told the court they are adamantly against
the company with an alleged history of physical and sexual abuse setting up
shop in Webb County. "Let's send out a message to the criminals in suits
that enough is enough," said Raul Salazar, the brother-in-law of
Gregorio De La Rosa. De La Rosa was beaten to death at a GEO facility in
Willacy County. Laredo attorney Ron Rodriguez subsequently won a $47.5
million settlement in a lawsuit in which he represented the De La Rosa family
against GEO. Rodriguez was one of the more outspoken opponents of the company
at Monday's meeting. The debate, which lasted more than two hours, was the
result of an agenda item sponsored by Pct. 4 Commissioner Sergio "Keko" Martinez after he said he was approached by
concerned constituents who wished to speak out against the facility. The item
sought to address whether the county's "non-standard service
contract" with GEO Group to provide water and sewer lines was valid.
"The contract was void from the very beginning," Rodriguez said,
adding that it lacked substantial data, including plat information, site
specifications and a letter of credit. Zaffirini countered by saying the
outcries were "steeped in emotion and void of logic," and added the
merits of GEO's current troubles in Texas, which include a current lawsuit
alleging sexual abuse by a GEO prison guard in Coke County, should be
discussed in those courts and not in Webb County. "We do not intend to
go into those issues as they are irrelevant," Zaffirini said. Zaffirini
then told the court the genesis of bringing the facility to Webb County was
the result of a request by two federal judges. Zaffirini also warned the
commissioners that if they entertained the thought of rescinding the contract,
which he said was a valid agreement, they would be committing a felony under
state law. Martinez said the Zaffirini's warning was a stretch. County
Attorney Homero Ramirez was questioned repeatedly
on whether or not the county was legally obligated to provide the services,
to which he replied that it was. "There is a very narrow list of reasons
why you cannot (provide water)," Ramirez said. "They don't
apply." A motion was made by Martinez to instruct Ramirez to investigate
whether the exhibits missing from the contract were enough to materially
affect it to where it would be void. The motion was voted down 3-2, however,
with only Martinez and Pct. 1 Commissioner Frank Sciaraffa
in favor. The court's last piece of action, however, was to approve a motion
by Pct. 3 Commissioner Jerry Garza for Ramirez to return to the court with
the exact laws that specify the court was obligated to provide the water and
sewer lines. Garza said his vote against Martinez's motion was because he
thought, if passed, the motion would not have affected the situation. He said
with his motion the court would be able to prove they were required, by law,
to provide the utility.
November 14, 2007 Laredo Morning
Times
Webb County Commissioners Court unanimously voted Tuesday against
accepting a $250,000 donation from Geo Group - a company contracting with the
federal government to build a jail in southern Webb County. The vote followed
public comment where the money was characterized as "dirty" by
attorneys who represent the family of an inmate killed inside one of the
company's privately owned prisons. "Commissioners, this is not a
donation, this is a payment," said Ron Rodriguez, who represents the
families of Guillermo De La Rosa, an inmate who died while serving time in a
Geo Group facility in Willacy County. "This transaction is dirty, the
money is dirty and everybody that touches it will have dirty hands,"
Rodriguez continued. "If you look at the history, you will see that
these people are the functional equivalent of a sexual predator," said
Craig Smith, who also represents the De La Rosa family. Rodriguez added that
Commissioner Rosaura "Wawi" Tijerina, who
was represented by the company's attorney, Carlos Zaffirini, years ago in a
separate matter, should avoid the vote altogether due to a possible conflict
of interest. When the item was officially before the court, a motion was
initially made to table the item by Pct. 1 Commissioner Frank Sciaraffa, but was later withdrawn after the court
expressed doubts about the money's intent. "I don't know what the
donation is for. It is not earmarked for anything," Sciaraffa
said, adding that his constituents in south Laredo have expressed their
concerns about the prison. Pct. 3 Commissioner Jerry Garza agreed with Sciaraffa and added that he had some concerns regarding
his principles. "I don't know what this money is for," Garza said.
"I have some ethical consideration regarding this money." Pct. 4
Commissioner Sergio "Keko" Martinez was more blunt. "I see this money as something to buy our
influence," he said. "I think it's inappropriate." Tijerina
told Rodriguez that he didn't know how she was going to vote, to which
Rodriguez responded that he wasn't predicting or telling her how to vote, but
that she should abstain altogether. Neither Zaffirini nor the company's
spokesman returned immediate calls seeking comment. Rodriguez and Smith also
took issue with the county and their commitment to provide the facility with
water and sewer facilities. Rodriguez and Smith said the county was under no
obligation to legally provide the water and sewer services. After the meeting
County Attorney Homero Ramirez said the county is a
government entity and a water utility and is required to provide water to any
individual who meets the requirements, without discrimination. Judge Valdez
told the prison's opponents the issue was one that was inherited by the
court, and reminded the group of the fact that his administration voted
against partnering with the prison group and footing the bill for the
prison's construction, which would have required taking out between $80 and
$100 million in bonds.
Webb County Detention Center
Laredo, Texas
CCA
November 1, 2007 Laredo Morning Times
When Wendolyne Morales received a letter from the
Corrections Corporation of America on Saunders Street, and then spoke with
the detainee's wife in Wisconsin, she knew she was onto something. The
KLDO-Univision investigative reporter spent six months working on a series of
10 stories related to Tomas Contreras, a resident alien detained at the
border for a drug charge and fine he paid nearly 20 years ago. With the help
of photographers Elsa De Leon, Guillermo Rodriguez, Ruben Carranza and Sammy
de la Garza, Morales did stories on the detainee's plight with the
government's mandatory detention law. In particular, the last one she filed
in June, after Contreras was released, propelled her into the big leagues.
This weekend, at a sumptuous gala event in Dallas, her name was announced
after the presenter said, "And the Emmy goes to … " Morales had
just become Laredo's first television reporter to win an Emmy Award. "I
feel very happy and I'm so proud to belong to the team that I do," she
said. "More than anything, it feels good to know that our competitors
were the big sharks." Her entry beat out six other English- and
Spanish-language reporters from the Houston, Dallas and San Antonio
television markets in the Lone Star Emmy category for Specialty Assignment
Report-Single News Story. Since the Emmys opened a chapter in Texas five
years ago, this is the first time a KLDO entry made it into the finals, and
the first time that a Laredo television news network brought home a trophy. A
native of Guanajuato, Mexico, Morales came to Laredo in the seventh-grade and
graduated from Cigarroa High School and the Vidal
M. Treviño School of Communications and Fine Arts,
where she focused on television, film and communications. She is pursuing a
bachelor's degree in communications and previously worked for Univision in
Corpus Christi. Dressed in a long, red evening gown that Saturday night,
Morales was accompanied by Maria Montoya, Maria de la Luz de Alba and Alma
Blanco. These are her best friends, "my sisters," she said,
describing them as her mentors and role models when they worked together at another
local television station several years ago. "We grabbed hands and when
the announcer said my name, we screamed," Morales said. "I was so
excited and emocionada (emotional) and when I get
like that I stumble my words. I didn't even know what I was saying."
What attracted Morales to her award-winning story was how the mandatory
detention laws, enacted immediately after 9/11, are dividing families and
creating undue hardship and suffering, she said. Meant to catch terrorists at
points of entry, the mandatory detention laws are now detaining people,
regardless of their immigration status, for crimes committed decades ago.
"They need to modify the laws because they are punishing people who went
through the whole process to come into the country legally," Morales
said. "They are detaining people for long periods of time, for six
months or longer," Morales said. "It's dividing families and making
people lose their jobs, because what job is going to wait six months for you
to come back?" In her stories, Morales focused on Contreras, a resident
alien and successful businessman in Wisconsin. He was detained for an
18-year-old drug charge by Laredo officials at the bridge upon returning from
a family vacation in Mexico. In 1989, Contreras was fined for drug possession
when police found cocaine residue in a car he was borrowing from a friend.
Contreras has since built up a successful career. As part of her series,
Morales filmed part of Contreras' family protesting outside CCA on a cold
early Saturday morning, even though she and the photographer, Guillermo
Rodriguez, are off weekends. She also interviewed Contreras after he was
released six months later and learned about the mistreatment and poor
conditions facing detainees behind bars. After she spoke with his wife in
January, Morales said she knew she had to "at least investigate."
She began calling CCA officials and U.S. Customs officials in San Antonio,
and stayed on top of the story. "When we won on Saturday, we were able
to show that Hispanic reporters can also put out an excellent product and can
compete with the big North American chains," she said.
July 22, 2007 Laredo Morning Times
Webb County Sheriffs deputies arrested two suspects
Saturday night for possession of more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana with an
estimated value of more than one-half million dollars. Deputies also
confiscated several AR-15 assault rifles. A sheriffs
official said 1,119 pounds of marijuana were wrapped in clear cellophane, and were found in the garage and bathroom of
the house. Street value was estimated at $566,000. Tessie Medina, spokeswoman
for the Sheriffs Department, said Eduardo Guadalupe
Martinez, 29, and Gloria Guevara, 27, were arrested Saturday evening at a
house on the 2000 block of Quail Creek Road. Martinez is employed by the Corrections
Corporation of America, Medina said. A CCA spokesman Saturday night referred
questions concerning Martinezs employment to a
public information officer who would not be available until Monday. Medina
said a Crime Stoppers tip led deputies to the home, where they received
consent to search and made the arrests at about 6 p.m. Medina said
investigators were still questioning Martinez and Guevara several hours after
their arrests.
July 19, 2007 The Capital Times
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. "One night
after midnight, I was sleeping and a whole bunch of people showed up. They
tied me up and beat me," Contreras, his voice catching, told a forum on
immigration issues in Whitewater last week. Contreras appeared with a
"Reality Tour" of the state organized by Voces de la Frontera -- a
rally at the State Capitol in Madison, a forum in Whitewater, a stop in
Milwaukee -- to tell of what he calls abuses in U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. "Every time I get into what was
going on back there, what happened to these people, it breaks me,"
Contreras said in a recent interview at his family's east side carpet
cleaning business. The experience took 90 pounds off his 260-pound frame, he
said, weight that he's putting back on since he was released following an
order by a federal judge on March 30. Contreras was taken into custody in
early January after a computer check at the border as he and his family were
returning from Mexico. The check turned up a 1989 arrest in Illinois, where a
trace of cocaine was found in the car in which Contreras was riding. He said
he paid a $250 fine and was told he would have no record. Although he has
lived legally in the United States since 1964, Contreras is not a U.S.
citizen, so his drug conviction was a deportable offense under a 1996 law. He
has crossed the border without incident many times since then, but ICE
recently upgraded its computers at the border, which may be why he was
detained this time. Tough Texas treatment: Contreras was held at three ICE facilities
in Texas run by private companies under contract with the federal government.
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. He saw
fights among detainees and unprovoked force used by guards on detainees. His
objections to rough treatment by guards of other detainees brought threats of
retaliation, he said. Contreras launched a hunger strike and encouraged
others to join him in protest of treatment there, as his wife, Carmen, gave
reports on the protest to Spanish-language media. Contreras said in an
interview that he and six other men who challenged guards' treatment of detainees
were shackled and beaten as they were transferred to another facility. He
said after he was awakened in the middle of the night and yanked from his
bunk, his wrists and ankles were shackled to his waist, and he was prodded
repeatedly -- hard -- by a guard wielding a police baton. Because their
shackled feet could not step up high enough to get into a transport van,
Contreras said, he and others we picked up and thrown in. "They tossed
us all in there like animals." Contreras said the incident left bruises
on his legs and arms, and his arms were cut when guards used tools to snap
off the plastic restraints. He was transferred to Corrections Corp.'s Webb
County Detention Center, also in Laredo, where he continued his hunger
strike. After a letter from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin to ICE officials,
solicited by Contreras' family, he said he was transferred to the South Texas
Detention Complex in Pearsall, run by the international GEO Group Inc. After
a dispute with a guard about an assignment to a lower bunk, which Contreras
said was made by GEO's medical unit, he said he was put in a 5-foot-by-6-foot
isolation cell. He stayed in the metal cell, with bunk, toilet and sink, for
two weeks, he said. The prescribed periods of release, for showering,
exercise and visits, sometimes were not given because there weren't enough
guards on duty, he added. Steve Owen, Corrections Corp.'s director of
marketing, referred requests for comment to ICE, saying that was ICE's
policy. Nina Pruneda in ICE's public affairs office
in San Antonio said she could find no record in Contreras' file "of the
things he said he witnessed and endured. We are looking into the
matter." GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said as a
matter of policy, the company does not comment on "third party
allegations" like those made by Contreras, but said that all of GEO's
facilities are run in accordance with the American Correctional Association's
standards for humane treatment. A spokesperson in Baldwin's office said they
had received no further requests from Contreras since his release, but said
Baldwin would ask the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to
"investigate issues raised by the Contreras case in its review of
possible civil liberties violations and its review of the consequences of
privatizing basic government services." The committee, under Chairman
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is reviewing Bush administration practices and
policies. Waxman's office said that on Baldwin's request, the committee would
look into it. "If she thinks this is an important issue, the committee
will treat it very seriously," Waxman said in a prepared statement.
Contreras said he and six others held in the detention centers are preparing
a federal suit. The San Antonio attorney he said was representing them did not
return calls seeking comment. Contreras said the suit will seek to force the
government to improve conditions at the prison. "I'm not doing it for
the money. I'm doing it so they treat people right," Contreras said.
"Somebody has got to say enough is enough.' "
February 8, 2007 Laredo Morning
Times
A former employee of the Corrections Corporation of America federal
prison in Laredo has pleaded not guilty to charges of trafficking fake drugs
in the prison and trying to hire a hit man to kill her boss. Velma Lydia
Garza voluntarily turned herself over to authorities Friday after she was
indicted on charges of unlawful delivery of a simulated controlled substance
and first-degree felony criminal solicitation. Garza worked as a guard at CCA
in Oct. 2005, when she is accused of delivering fake cocaine to man who was
not identified by prosecutors. She is also accused of trying to hire someone
to kill her CCA supervisor. Garza waived her arraignment Tuesday, entering
not guilty pleas on both charges. Garza was originally arrested on the drug
charge in March 2006 along with another former CCA guard Patricia Orozco.
Orozco was indicted separately on a charge of delivering simulated cocaine.
Prosecutor Edward Nolen said Orozco was not involved in Garza’s alleged
murder-for-hire scheme.
March 1, 2006 KGBT
Two now-former correction officers at a privately run unit have been
arrested today on charges they dealt drugs at the prison.
Thirty-five-year-old Velma Lydia Garza and 53-year-old Patricia Orozco are in
the Webb County Jail. They're expected to appear tomorrow before a judge in
Laredo. Investigators say both were arrested at their homes following a
multi-agency investigation that included Corrections Corporation of America.
C-C-A runs the federal prison where the women worked. William Gruenz with the U-S Marshals Service says neither had
been currently employed at the prison. He offered no further details. Both
women are charged with delivery of a controlled substance and engaging in
organized criminal activity.
West Texas Detention Facility
Sierra Blanca, Texas
Emerald Corrections
June
6, 2013 yourhoustonnews.com
The Rainmakers Banking on private
prisons in the fleecing of small-town America. By Beau Hodai
(Click here)
SAN
ANTONIO — Four men who served time at a West Texas minimum security unit have
been arrested on manslaughter charges in the fatal beating of another inmate.
Terry County jail records show three suspects were being held Thursday over
the death of Joe Hernandez. The attack happened last July at the West Texas
Intermediate Sanction Facility. Hernandez was in prison for violating parole
for indecency with a child and burglary in Bexar County. he San Antonio
Express-News reports Manuel Leal was arrested Friday in Bexar County, where
Jose Rafael Valdez Jr. was caught Monday. Leal, Christopher McDonough and
Arthur Maldonado were jailed in Brownfield on bond of $100,000 each. Valdez,
who’s also charged with parole violation and failure to register as a sex
offender, was held without bond facing extradition.
November 25, 2008 Midland
Reporter-Telegram
A 238th District Court jury on Tuesday issued first-degree felony indictments
in two of the five slayings recorded in Midland this year. Alex Ricardo Saldaña, 22, was true billed in the Nov. 16 shooting
death of 44-year-old Stephen Adams, who was hit in the head by a .40-caliber
pistol bullet allegedly fired by Saldaña in the
Whataburger restaurant parking lot at 3206 N. Midkiff Rd. Benjamin Franklin,
a 30-year-old former correctional officer at West Texas Detention Facility in
Sierra Blanca, was indicted in the Sept. 4 death of Monica Beasley, who was
shot in the throat with a heavy caliber pistol in the living room of a house
in the 1400 block of West Michigan Avenue.
September 10, 2008 Midland
Reporter-Telegram
A 26-year-old Midland woman did not suffer much, if any, when shot in the
lower throat with a heavy caliber pistol in her mother's home last week, a
Midland County justice of the peace said Tuesday. While 30-year-old suspect
Benjamin Franklin remains incarcerated in lieu of a $500,000 bond, funeral
services are being held at 1 p.m. today for Monica Sandra Beasley at True
Lite Christian Fellowship, which she and her three small children attended.
"Franklin didn't like it when I put that bond on him Friday, but that's
too bad," said Precinct 1 JP Joe Matlock. "He never said a word and
wouldn't sign the warning forms." District Judge Robin Malone Darr will now assign a lawyer to represent the Southwest
Texas prison guard on a first degree murder charge if he does not hire one of
his own choosing, a court official said. Beasley's mother Rosie called 9-1-1
at 6:50 p.m. last Thursday to say she had "heard a noise" and found
her daughter bleeding and unconscious on the living room floor. Witnesses
outside in the 1400 block of West Michigan Avenue then told police they saw
Franklin come out of the house and drive away in a gray 2006 Nissan Altima.
Matlock declared the 5-feet-2-inch, 118 pound woman dead at the scene.
"She didn't go to the hospital," he said, shaking his head.
"The doc said it tore her up pretty bad. I'd say that woman was dead
when she hit the floor. She probably suffered more from arguing than anything
else. Once she was popped, it was over." District Attorney Teresa
Clingman plans to take the case to a grand jury in November. "We expect
the report from the police department at any time," said Clingman.
"We're interested in all severe crimes that impact the citizens of
Midland. This is a horrific crime that will be highly scrutinized by our
office." Dr. Marc Krouse of the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office
said in a preliminary report on the autopsy he performed last Friday in Fort
Worth that a .40 caliber, or 10 millimeter, bullet traveling slightly downward
cut the victim's right subclavian artery, punctured her right lung and
fractured her first and third right ribs. City spokeswoman Tina Jauz said Franklin, a correctional officer at the private
West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca, had been staying "for
some time" with Beasley and her children and mother before the shooting
was reported at 6:50 p.m. that day. She said Beasley and the 5-feet-9 inch,
180 pound suspect "had an on again, off again boyfriend-girlfriend
relationship." When asked how Franklin got into the home, Jauz said, "He was already there. He was visiting
and had been there for some time." She said he is charged with killing
Beasley with one shot from the Smith & Wesson Sigma semi-automatic pistol
that MPD SWAT officers and U.S. Marshals found in his car when he was
arrested at 1:30 a.m. last Friday in a Motel 6 parking lot at Grant Avenue
and Interstate 20 in Odessa, where he was sleeping. Franklin told officials
he was a prison guard in Hudspeth County near the Texas-Mexico border,
according to jail records. West Texas Detention Facility Warden Barbara
Walrath of Sierra Blanca told the Reporter-Telegram Tuesday she was aware of
Franklin's incarceration in Midland County Detention Center. Walrath said her
private prison houses 1,000 men and referred additional questions to Emerald
Correctional Management Chief Operating Officer Steve Aspman
in Scott, La., a Lafayette suburb. Efforts to contact Aspman
Tuesday were unsuccessful.
West Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility
MTC
Jun 3, 2017 kcbd.com
State Prison in Brownfield closing after losing funding in State's budget
Brownfield's city manager says they will lose about $250,000 because of the
closure of TDCJ's West Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility. It will also
cause 60 to 70 people to lose their jobs. This closure will also impact the
Rudd Unit in Brownfield. Those inmates are being relocated to other state
prisons so the Rudd Unit can be converted into an intermediate sanction
facility. "From an economic standpoint, it was hard for the city to deal
with an increase in staff, but I think as time goes on, and the West Texas
ISF closes, and the Rudd Unit absorbs it, it gives the city enough time to
try to bounce back from it," Charles Horsley, warden at Rudd, said.
"But initially, I think it was a big shock for the city." Employees
at the private prison were able to apply for jobs with the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice. "TDCJ had a recruiter come to West Texas ISF and
all of those that qualify will be relocated through TDCJ if they meet those
standards," Horsley said. 246 offenders have successfully been moved to
the Rudd Unit. "It was a little stressful but our staff was very
professional, we got them all moved, it was a culture shock for some of them
but I think it's going to work out," Horsley said. The offenders that
were transferred to the Rudd Unit will be separated from the rest of the
population. TDCJ had to relocate 390 offenders to other units across the
state to make room. The quick and easy transfer from the West Texas ISF made
the most sense. "The transfer from the West Texas ISF to the Rudd Unit
was a good idea logically because the proximity of it," Horsley said.
"Resource wise it was easy to move the offenders probably 500 feet from
one unit to the other and that saved the state a lot of money because you
didn't have to take them very far, if there were some things that were
missing you could go back and get them." TDCJ officials say they are
actively recruiting displaced private sector employees in order to fill vacancies.
Willacy County Adult Correctional Facility
Raymondville, TX
Corplan/MTC
The Rainmakers Banking on private prisons in the fleecing of small-town
America. By Beau Hodai (Click here)
Mar 28, 2017 valleycentral.com
Former Willacy County prison guard sentenced to 18 months in prison
A judge sentenced a former Willacy County prison guard to 18 months in
federal prison Monday for bribery. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced
former Willacy County prison guard Harry Cordero to 18 months in prison on
the federal bribery charge, according to court records. Cordero worked at the
Regional County Detention Center in Willacy County, a private prison operated
by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. The company contacted the U.S.
Marshals Service last year after an internal investigation involving Cordero,
according to a statement provided by Management and Training Corp. A grand
jury indicted Cordero and another prison guard, Stephen Salinas, during
November. They were accused of smuggling cell phones and alcohol to inmates.
Both Cordero and Salinas pleaded guilty to bribery charges. The judge
sentenced Cordero to 18 months in federal prison followed by three years of
supervised release.
Jan 10, 2017 valleycentral.com
Two former private prison guards plead guilty to bribery
Stephen Salinas and Harry Cordero — who worked for Utah-based private
prison company Management and Training Corp. — pleaded guilty to bribery.
Cordero pleaded guilty on Dec. 21, according to federal court records. He's
scheduled for sentencing on March 27. An attorney for Cordero didn't respond
to a written request for comment. Salinas pleaded guilty on Jan. 3, according
to federal court records. He's scheduled for sentencing on April 11. An
attorney for Salinas wasn't available for comment. Both men face three to 10
years in federal prison. Salinas signed a plea agreement providing new
details about the bribery allegations. During the investigation, Salinas
admitted accepting about $2,000 for smuggling cell phones and gallon jugs of
alcohol to inmates, according to the plea agreement. An inmate, though, told
the U.S. Marshals Service that Salinas received $3,000 to $4,000. The inmate
said Salinas provided six cell phones, MP3 players and alcohol to inmates.
October 21, 2009 Valley Central
Former Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra has filed a federal
lawsuit against Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. and 28 others. The
former district attorney alleges that Lucio and the others used their positions
to derail an investigation into private prisons in Willacy County. Guerra
claims in his 35-page lawsuit that he secured three corruption convictions
against three Willacy County officials in state and federal courts. The
former district attorney claims he was investigating the April 2001 death of
inmate Gregorio de la Rosa when he began to uncover a massive kickback and
corruption scheme between the private prison companies and public officials.
Guerra claims then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales ordered then-U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Don DeGabrielle
to halt a public integrity investigation. The former district attorney claims
that several public officials with connections to the prisons dragged his
name through the mud and raised false criminal charges that ultimately cost
him a bid for re-election and obstructed the investigation. The lawsuit names
the following defendants: • Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio • Willacy County
• City of Raymondville • Former Willacy County Judge Simon Salinas •
Raymondville Police Chief Uvaldo Zamora • Special
prosecutor Mervyn Mosbacker • Special prosecutor
Gustavo Garza • Raymondville Police Detective Daniel Cavazos, Jr. • State
District Judge Migdalia Lopez • State District Judge Janet Leal • Willacy
County Sheriff’s Department Deputy David Martinez • Willacy County District
Clerk Gilbert Lozano • Corporation Wackenhut Correction Inc. • Hale Mills
Construction Inc. • Hale Mills Construction Ltd. • James Parkey,
Corplan Correction, Inc. • Corplan
Correction Inc. • Michael Harling, Municipal Capitol Market, Inc. • Municipal
Capitol Market Inc. • Ramon Vela • Phil Parker, Hale Mission Construction •
J. C. Conner, Management and raining Corporation, Inc • Management and
Training Corporation, Inc • Bill Bryan • R Scott Marquardt, Management and
raining Corporation, Inc • Texas Rangers Captain Clete
Buckaloo • Former U.S. Attorney for Southern
District of Texas Donald DeGarbrielle • U.S.
Attorney for Southern District of Texas Tim Johnson • Former U.S. Attorney
Alberto Gonzales Among the accusations are engaging in organized criminal
activity, accepting of an honorarium, abuse of official capacity, official
oppression, murder and manslaughter. The former district attorney had secured
a criminal indictment involving similar accusations against former Vice
President Dick Cheney and several others named in this new lawsuit back in
November 2008. The case was thrown out but Guerra continues to fight against
abuses in private prisons in Texas and other states.
June 28, 2009 Brownsville Herald
It took about five years, but state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. seems to have
phased out his paid consulting jobs for construction and engineering firms.
Last year, however, he still received at least $25,000 in consulting fees
from the Houston-based TEDSI Infrastructure Group, according to his personal
financial statement on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. "I was
fulfilling a prior obligation on a contract that I had with TEDSI which
expired in 2008," Lucio wrote in a statement to The Brownsville Herald
Wednesday. Lucio, D-Brownsville, did not say what he did for the firm, but in
2002 said that he would set up meetings and introduce the firm to officials
in Brownsville. In 2004 amid mounting criticism of possible conflicts of
interest, Lucio told the Herald that he would phase out consulting for firms
that do business in the Rio Grande Valley and the state. Besides consulting
for TEDSI, Lucio also was retained by CorPlan
Corrections of Dallas, Management & Training Corp. of Utah, Aguirre Inc.
of Dallas, and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. of
Houston. At the start of 2005, Lucio severed ties with CorPlan,
Aguirre, and MTC amid federal inquiries into the federal detention center in
Willacy County. A Webb County commissioner and two former Willacy County
commissioners were convicted of bribery. Companies involved in the project
were not accused of any wrongdoing. Lucio also stopped consulting for Dannenbaum, which he said he introduced to the
Brownsville Navigation District. The BND paid Dannenbaum
$15.4 million of $21.4 million spent toward developing a still non-existent
international bridge at the Port of Brownsville. But, he continued consulting
for TEDSI until last year. Lucio's prior financial statements show that in
2007 TEDSI paid him from $10,000 to $24,999 and $25,000 or more in prior
years. Lucio had been on CorPlan's payroll since 1999.
Aguirre, MTC and Dannenbaum then contracted him,
but in interviews prior to 2004 he wouldn't specifically say when or how much
each paid him. It was not until 2004 that Lucio started specifically listing
the companies that retained him in his financial statements and these,
coupled with prior interviews with the senator, reflect that the five firms
paid him at least $340,000. Embattled former Willacy County District Attorney
Juan Angel Guerra obtained an indictment against Lucio last year, charging him
with profiting from the elected office. Administrative Judge Manuel Bañales Jr. dismissed the indictment following arguments
from Lucio's attorney, Michael R. Cowen, that the indictment was defective
and that Guerra was seeking revenge against those who he perceived to be his
political enemies.
December 13, 2008 Brownsville Herald
This year's Willacy County grand jury investigation into alleged criminal
activity surrounding for-profit prisons and high-profile public officials is
not the first, and District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said it is tied to an
earlier investigation. A federal inquiry resulting in convictions in 2005
stirred up a dust storm in Raymondville when it looked into a money-for-votes
and bribery scheme to favor firms involved in the Willacy County Adult
Correctional Center, a project that started in 2000. The firms, which did
business in Texas and were involved in the project, were CorPlan
Corrections, Aguirre Inc., Management & Training Corp., and Hale-Mills
Construction, according to Guerra and public records. That federal
investigation resulted in the bribery conviction of former Webb County
commissioner David Cortez - identified in federal court records as the
representative of "a company" - who gave $39,000 over three years
from 2000 to 2003 to several officials to secure their votes on the
Commissioners Court for the firm's participation in the jail project.
However, that firm is never mentioned by name in the court record. Federal
officials would not discuss the case, so the reason for the omission could
not be learned. Among the officials who received money in return for favoring
a jail consultant - also unnamed in the court record - and whom Cortez
represented were Israel Tamez of Raymondville, at
that time a Willacy County commissioner, and the late Jose Jimenez of
Sebastian, also a Willacy commissioner. Cortez, Tamez
and Jimenez all pleaded guilty, the federal court record shows. U.S. District
Judge Andrew S. Hanen sentenced Tamez to six months
in jail, three years probation and a $25,000 fine.
Cortez was sentenced to three months in jail, followed by a period of six
months of home confinement, two-years probation and
a $25,000 fine. Jimenez died in 2006, while Cortez and Tamez
were sentenced in late 2006 and directed to serve their sentences last year.
The unnamed companies were never charged. The dust storm never quite settled
after those convictions. Court records show that a series of continuances
delayed when the sentences would begin. Tamez did
not serve his sentence until last year. Jimenez was convicted but died before
sentencing. In reference to the Jimenez and Tamez
cases, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim McAlister told the court in the fall of
2005: "Both defendants are actively cooperating in helping the
government identify and prosecute other individuals involved in unlawful
activity. The investigation is ongoing and both defendants are expected to
continue their efforts in assisting the government. The government and the
defendants agree that sentencing Mr. Tamez and Mr.
Jimenez at this time could result in a miscarriage of justice."
McAlister's motions to continue Cortez's case are sealed. However, federal
court records show that Cortez gave money to yet a third elected official, so
that he would favor corporate interests involved in the design, construction,
financing, maintenance and management of the Willacy correctional center that
was to house federal inmates. During Cortez's sentencing in 2006, his lawyer,
Mike DeGeurin Sr., of Houston, told Hanen: "I
think, to convince people that he (Cortez) is still a person you can count on
to get things done, he (Cortez) makes some payments to Mr. (Israel) Tamez and a couple of others - two other commissioners
that, we'll leave their names unspoken." However, Jimenez was the only
other person charged, aside from Cortez. There were believed to be additional
conspirators, known and unknown, the federal record shows. Neither the third
commissioner to which DeGuerin referred, nor the other conspirators that
McAlister referred to in 2005, was never mentioned by name or location in
court documents and was not part of the court record. DeGeurin
did not respond to a recent request for comment. Tamez's
attorney, John David Franz, of McAllen, also could not be reached for
comment. Jimenez's lawyer, Nemecio E. Lopez Jr. of
Harlingen, declined to talk about the case. Enter Guerra and his
investigation into the management and operation of for-profit prisons in
Willacy County, which led to the recent indictments of, among others, U.S.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville. The indictment
charges Cheney and Gonzales with profiteering from the jails and neglect of
conditions due to self-interest. The indictment against Lucio charged him
with influence peddling in receiving consulting fees from the firms for
services he would not have been requested to provide were it not for his
official position. Guerra now says the FBI and Texas Rangers told him in 2006
that "higher-ups" in both agencies directed their agents to halt
the federal inquiry into the original money-for-votes and bribery scheme.
Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas
declined to comment on Guerra's allegations, and Tela Mange of the Texas
Department of Public Safety said no one in the department knew anything about
Guerra's allegations, including the Texas Rangers. The FBI did not return a
request for comment. Guerra says that he reopened the investigation because
he wants to ensure justice is done before he leaves office at the end of this
month. "If I know that a crime has been committed, I have to make a
diligent effort to make sure that the crime is addressed in my tenure. My job
is to make sure that criminals don't get away. That is what a prosecutor
does," he said. James M. Parkey, president and
founder of CorPlan, on Monday verified for the
Brownsville Herald that Cortez had been one of the firm's consultants, but
said he had not known of any payments from Cortez to Tamez,
Jimenez or others. "Our position is that Mr. Cortez pleaded
guilty," said CorPlan's lawyer, Edmundo O.
Ramirez, of McAllen. There is no other position, he said. Public records -
yearly financial statements that the Texas Ethics Commission requires of
elected officials - show that Lucio was one of CorPlan's
consultants. The Nov. 17 indictment against Lucio alleges that because of his
position he received consulting fees from six firms, including CorPlan Corrections, Aguirre Inc., Management & Training
Corp. , and Hale-Mills Construction. Guerra said the
firms were tied to the Willacy County 500-bed jail project, which county
commissioners approved in 2000. Parkey said he was
not at liberty to disclose the services Lucio provided his firm without Lucio's
consent. Lucio told The Brownsville Herald in 2002 that he received
consulting fees from the firms for introducing them to public officials and
setting up meetings. In 2002, Parkey said,
"Public relations doesn't require a product in terms of written material.
He (Lucio) keeps our name in front of people." Texas Ethics Commission
records show that Lucio listed receiving at least $135,000 or more from CorPlan Corrections, Aguirre Inc. and Management &
Training Corp. in 2003 and 2004. Hale-Mills is not on the list. Lucio also
told The Brownsville Herald in 2002 and again in 2005 that he had been
consulting for CorPlan since 1999 and that Aguirre
and Management & Training Corp. soon contracted with him for consulting,
marketing and public relations. He would not say at that time when or how
much money each company paid him. It was not until 2004 that Lucio reported
the companies in his personal financial statements to the Texas Ethics
Commission, which requires that officials list retainers and sources of income.
Lucio's chief of staff, Paul Cowen (uncle of Lucio's lawyer, Michael R.
Cowen) said in 2002 that the fees had been reported, but under the umbrella
of Rio Shelters Inc., a firm owned by Lucio that provides advertisements on
bus shelters. Hale-Mills and Aguirre Inc. did not return a request for
comment Tuesday, and Carl Stuart, communications director for Management
& Training Corp., said, "We just don't make comment on pending
litigation." During the inquiries in 2005, Lucio wrote to CorPlan Corrections, Aguirre Inc. and Management &
Training Corp. advising them he was taking a leave of absence because news
reports had named the three companies as those involved in the building and
management of the facilities in Willacy County. Lucio at that time brought
copies of his letters to the Brownsville Herald. Cowen, Lucio's lawyer, on
Monday said he has instructed his client not to comment "as long as Mr.
Guerra is in office." Contrary to his client's Nov. 17 indictment, which
presiding District Judge J. Manuel Bañales
dismissed Dec. 1, Lucio did not do consulting work for Hale-Mills, Cowen
stressed. (Bañales also threw out the indictments
against Cheney and Gonzales on Dec. 1.) "In fact, we ask the public to
take all of Mr. Guerra's accusations with a grain of salt, and to consider
the misrepresentations he has already been caught making under oath in this
case," Cowen said in a written statement to The Brownsville Herald.
Cowen said he and the senator are disappointed that Guerra continues his
vendetta against Lucio, even after the court dismissed all charges against
the senator. Lucio has to do outside work to earn a
living, Cowen said, noting that the senator is paid only $600 a month by the
for his legislative services. Cowen said Lucio earns less than the minimum
wage, and cannot support his family on $7,200 a year. "However, he has
been very careful to ensure that any work he does is not only legal, but also
wholly ethical," Cowen said in a written statement. Lucio has gone to
great lengths to ensure that the consulting work complies with all legal and
ethical requirements, Cowen said, noting that he requested a formal attorney
general's opinion on whether a legislator can provide consulting, marketing
and public relation services to clients who have dealings with government
officials. Cowen said Lucio also consulted with two attorney generals, the
Texas Ethics Commission and hired a private attorney to ensure that his
business affairs followed the law. In a July 2003 opinion, Texas Attorney
General Greg Abbott told Lucio that laws do not categorically prohibit a
legislator from representing a client's interests before government officials
or entities. Still, Abbott said, legality depends on the specific facts of a
case. Abbott wrote that Lucio did not elaborate on the nature of his clients'
businesses nor on his dealings and communications on their behalf.
Furthermore, whether a public servant's outside employment creates a conflict
of interest frequently requires resolving fact questions, which is beyond the
purview of the opinion process, Abbott's opinion states. Abbott wrote that a
legislator should be aware of the provisions in Chapter 36 of the Texas Penal
Code. A legislator may not solicit or accept any benefit unless it falls
within one of the exceptions recognized by the code, the opinion states.
Abbott noted that the primary exception allows a legislator to accept fair
compensation for work performed in a capacity other than as a public servant.
"Should you have a specific concern, you may wish to consult with
private counsel," Abbott advised Lucio. Lucio told The Brownsville
Herald in 2002 that he did not consult with an attorney. Cowen on Monday said
that Lucio provided legitimate services to the firms that contracted him.
"Senator Lucio has nothing to hide, and is happy to have a competent,
unbiased prosecutor review all of the evidence in this matter. Unfortunately,
Mr. Guerra's words and actions show him to be neither unbiased nor
competent," Cowen said. Guerra vehemently denies that his charges against
Lucio are part of a vendetta against the senator. "The problem with
Eddie Lucio is that he has not explained what he does for these
companies," Guerra said. During a recent court hearing, Guerra said that
if a jury found companies hired Lucio because he is a senator and not because
of services he provided "then that's kickbacks and that's it." On
Thursday Guerra said, "He (Lucio) says that he has permission from the
attorney general, but the attorney general opinion did not give him permission
(to receive fees from the firms). And then he said he got permission from the
Texas Ethics Commission, and he has not produced one document showing that.
The accusation that I have a vendetta is a smokescreen." Bañales on Dec. 1 dismissed all charges against the high-profile
defendants. And Wednesday, he removed Guerra from bringing any further
charges in the cases against Lucio and others in which he has a "clear
bias and prejudice." However, even though Guerra appears hamstrung in
his proclaimed quest for justice, the saga may be nowhere near an end. DA Pro
Tem Alfredo Padilla, whom Bañales
appointed to review the indictments, said Thursday that he wants to present
all of the evidence that Guerra gathered to a new grand jury, which will be
impaneled early next year.
December 8, 2008 Valley Morning Star
District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said Monday that state Sen. Eddie Lucio's
elected position conflicts with his job as a consultant for companies that
work within his jurisdiction. Guerra said he believes that companies hire
Lucio because of his position as a state senator and that Lucio uses his
influence to obtain the consulting work. "These people are hiring him
because of his position and not because of his skills," Guerra said in
an interview. "There's no way to justify it." Lucio could not be
reached for comment Monday afternoon. Guerra said that Lucio could work as a
consultant but not within his state Senate District 27, that includes
Cameron, Kenedy, Kleberg, Willacy and part of
Hidalgo counties. Lucio was first elected in 1991. But Edmundo Ramirez, a
McAllen attorney who represents Ronald Holmes, an attorney for CorPlan Corrections in Dallas, one of the companies for
which Lucio is a consultant, noted the Texas Ethics Commission has sanctioned
Lucio's work as a consultant. "The ethics commission has found nothing
wrong with those payments," said Ramirez said, referring the consulting
fees Lucio is paid. Lucio owns an advertising and public relations firm in
Brownsville. "Sen. Lucio gets hired because of what he brings to the
table," Ramirez said. "He's a PR man. He's a good one. He brings
value to the table. "Regardless of what Mr. Guerra believes, (payments)
are legal and have been properly reported by Sen. Lucio. The law is the
law." The Texas Attorney General's Office sanctioned Lucio's work as a
consultant in a legal opinion issued in July 2003. Texas law states that
"it must be the services rendered and not the status of the public
servant rendering the services that is of value to the person for whom the
services are performed," the Attorney General's opinion noted. CorPlan, a prison consulting company, requested on Monday
that a judge quash Guerra's subpoena that orders the company to appear in
court Wednesday. Guerra said he wants CorPlan to
appear in court to disclose the nature of the services it pays Lucio to
perform. Last month, Guerra pushed for grand jury indictments against Lucio,
Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and
several local elected officials. State District Judge Manuel Bañales threw out those indictments. But Michael Cowen,
Lucio's attorney, believes Guerra will try to re-indict Lucio before Guerra's
fourth term expires Dec. 31. The grand jury is set to meet Friday for its
last scheduled session before its term expires Dec. 31, District Clerk
Gilbert Lozano said. Cowen will request that Bañales
on Wednesday disqualify Guerra as prosecutor, arguing Guerra's "personal
animosity toward Lucio creates a conflict of interest." Guerra filed
subpoenas on Dec. 5 to order CorPlan, Management
and Training Corp., Aguirre Inc., Hale Mills Corp., TEDSI Infrastructure
Group Inc. and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. to
appear in court. Lucio has worked as a consultant for these companies. CorPlan, Management and Training Corp., Aguirre and Hale
Mills are companies that worked on a $14.5 million prison project that was
the focus of a bribery scandal that led to the convictions of former Willacy
County commissioners Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez
and former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez.
February 7, 2008 Valley Morning Star
Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence on Tuesday denied accusations that he
failed to comply with bookkeeping laws. Spence said he did not break any laws
and has not done anything illegal. He said no one in the county government
has ever told him to operate the Sheriff’s Department differently than the
way he’s been running it for years. County Treasurer Ruben Cavazos said
Spence failed to keep receipts, failed to charge federal officials for
services and improperly deposited money. The accusations come as Spence faces
longtime Chief Deputy David Martinez and Constable Ben Vera in the March 4
race for the office he’s held since 1985. “We’re not trying to hide anything
here,” Spence said. “We have open books. There’s no intent to defraud here.”
Cavazos accused Spence of failing to deposit certificates of deposit into a
county bank account. Instead, Spence uses a Sheriff’s Department account to
which Cavazos does not have access, Cavazos said. “If he had CDs in the bank,
the bank will not tell me because he’s not using the county’s (account),”
Cavazos said. Spence said the Sheriff’s Department has used its account for
years but added the department had no certificates of deposit in the account.
“Nobody has brought that to our attention until this came up,” Spence said of
the accusation. “If there was something that needs to be adjusted, someone
should tell us.” Cavazos also accused Spence of failing to charge Management
Training Corp., the company that runs a federal immigrant detention center,
to conduct background checks on job applicants. “They have a lot of employees
(so) that would be a lot of money for the county,” Cavazos said. In response,
Spence said MTC told him that county commissioners said he couldn’t charge
for background checks. Company spokesman Carl Stuart did not respond to a
message requesting comment. County Commissioner Aurelio Guerra said he was
“not aware of the situation or if any fees should be charged.”
January 24, 2008 Valley Morning Star
The Willacy County jail is close to breaking even more than a year after
local officials feared investors would foreclose on it, Commissioner Eddie
Chapa said this week. The jail must lure higher numbers of federal prisoners
to make a monthly average of $58,000, Chapa said. So far, average inmate
counts have generated between $40,000 and $45,000 a month, Chapa said. “The
latest results show it’s almost paying for itself — not quite, but almost,”
Chapa said. “That’s good news for us.” An influx of federal prisoners helped
the 96-bed jail boost last year’s average inmate counts to about 80, Sheriff
Larry Spence said. “We worked hard to try to make ends meet,” Spence said.
Last year, officials also hiked the fee it charges the federal government to
house prisoners from $30 a day to $45 a day at the jail that opened in 2004,
Spence said. Four months after county commissioners set aside $25,000 for a
jail administrator, the county still hasn’t hired the official who would
handle billing while contacting the U.S. Marshals Service and Kleberg County
to bring inmates to the jail. Now, the county might not need to hire the
administrator, Chapa said. If the job was (created) to help the jail make its
goal, why would we want to spend the extra money?” Chapa said. In October
2004, the county opened the jail that replaced an old jail that was plagued
with a long string of escapes before it fell below state standards. Under the
county’s plan, the new jail would hold federal inmates, for whom the Marshals
Service would pay the county $30 a head per day. But federal inmates trickled
in. Then in April 2006, the Marshals Service pulled female inmates out of the
jail after a guard was arrested for having sex with a female prisoner. Two
weeks later, county commissioners put up $137,000 to help the jail make its
first payment to investors. For some county officials, the jail stood at the
brink of foreclosure. “We got to a time when people were looking at other
options,” Spence said. In November 2006, investors postponed a $433,000
payment after the jail ran short of money. “It was a struggle,” Spence said.
“It had a rough start getting going,” In January 2007, the county entered
into a contract with the Marshals Service that boosted the daily rent to $45
per prisoner.
February 25, 2007 AP
The engine of the old, borrowed camper chugs away in the parking lot of the
county jail – three goats, a rooster and a horse alongside. It is the
temporary home and office of Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel
Guerra. Mr. Guerra, 52, has brought down public officials and continues
investigations. Most recently, he filed – and then dropped – motions to have
the sheriff and two elected officials removed from office. Now, he says,
they're all out to get him. A special prosecutor raided his office recently
and filed public theft charges against Mr. Guerra. They were dropped Friday.
Depending on whom you talk to, Mr. Guerra is either a lone-wolf champion for
South Texas justice or a chronic malcontent with some shady dealings of his
own. "He's just been fighting with us for so many years," said Paul
Cowan, chief of staff for state Sen. Eddie Lucio. "Anything you want to
do, he wants to fight it, fight it, fight it. We have no problems working
with any other officials. The problem lies with him." In 1991, with just
two years' experience practicing law in a mechanic's garage, county
commissioners appointed Mr. Guerra to fill in after the incumbent district
attorney died. He began investigating the big landowners and business owners
for crimes such as embezzlement and receiving double federal payments for
fictitious crop losses. Now, Mr. Guerra has gone after the contractors
involved in building private jails. County, state and federal lockups, and
now the huge pods of the 2,000-bed immigration detention center, make a bleak
campus on the former farmland. Mr. Guerra's investigation into a bribery
scheme involving federal prison contracts led to guilty pleas by three former
Willacy and Webb county commissioners. Mr. Guerra now says he wants to know more
about Mr. Lucio's consulting contract for the prison company that built the
$60 million federal complex of tent-like domes. Mr. Lucio said Mr. Guerra was
upset about legislation he passed that left the county with only one state
district judge – Migdalia Lopez, one of the officials Mr. Guerra wanted out
of office. Mr. Lucio would not disclose his consulting fees for the prison
deal but said they were "modest" and legal. He said the prison had
been a win for the county. "We've brought more than a thousand jobs to
that county, and Johnny Guerra has not brought one," he said. Mr. Guerra
says another company was prepared to build the facility for $35 million.
"In six weeks they spent $60 million," he said. "There's no
way that thing cost $60 million." Two weeks ago, Mr. Guerra skipped
court to go to Austin and look for a sympathetic ear. When he came back, a
special prosecutor appointed by Judge Lopez had taken Mr. Guerra's computers
and many of his files. Mr. Guerra now maintains he can't do his work. According
to Judge Lopez's order appointing the special prosecutor, a grand jury
complained that Mr. Guerra was pressuring them for an indictment in a sexual
harassment case. The special prosecutor is Gustavo Garza, Mr. Guerra's
four-time political opponent. Mr. Garza recently charged Mr. Guerra with
three counts of felony theft by a public servant and one misdemeanor
obstruction charge for trying to prevent officers from searching his office,
but a judge Friday dropped the charges. Mr. Guerra has threatened to dismiss
hundreds of cases in retaliation, but so far only four have been dropped.
Townspeople don't know what to make of it. "It's a mess," said Polo
Gracida, who came to watch court on Tuesday.
"I don't know whether he's a hero or not. We're definitely due for a
change."
November 22, 2006 Express-News
The last of three county commissioners who pleaded guilty to a $39,000
bribery scandal involving contracts for a new federal detention facility in
the Rio Grande Valley has been sentenced. Former Webb County Commissioner
David Cortez, 72, of Laredo was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in
Brownsville to three months in prison for funneling the bribes in 2002 to
former Willacy County Commissioners Jose Jimenez of Sebastian and Israel Tamez, 60, of Raymondville in exchange for favorable
votes in the selection of contracts for the 500-bed federal detention center
here. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen also ordered Cortez to a two-year term
of supervised release, including six months of house arrest. He was fined $25,000.
Jimenez died before sentencing. Tamez, 60, was
sentenced to six months in prison, three years of supervised release and a
$25,000 fine. All three had faced 20 years in prison. Sheriff Larry Spence
said the case had "drug out for so long." "I was surprised of
the sentencing, but at the same time I am glad that they are getting
finalized," he said. But it's still unclear if the case is over because
authorities haven't made public where the money originated. Authorities have
requested anyone else involved to come forward like the commissioners did,
but no additional arrests have been made. A spokeswoman for the U.S.
attorney's office in Houston declined to comment. Officials have said the
companies hired to either design, build or manage the facility, which opened
in 2003, were the Dallas-area firms CorPlan
Corrections LTD and Aguirre Inc., along with Management Training Corp. of
Centerville, Utah, and Hale-Mills Construction of Houston. Municipal Capital
Markets Group Inc, of Dallas, underwrote the bonds. "It seems like all
the people that have investigated this thing, if there was somebody else in
there that they would have been found," said Mike Harling, executive
vice president of the investment firm. He said public records showed Cortez was
hired by CorPlan, but he suspected he could have
made the bribe on his own will. No company employees have been charged.
"Just because you hire somebody, and hire in the liberal sense, doesn't
mean that you are responsible," Harling said. "If you haven't asked
them to go out and bribe somebody, if they choose to do that and choose not
to tell you, what can you say?" Cortez resigned from the Webb commission
at the time of his guilty plea in 2005. Webb County Judge Louis Bruni said
the case is a sad example of a bad decision.
November 13, 2006 Killeen Daily
Herald
A Willacy County official has a word of caution for the Coryell County
Commissioners' Court as it considers a private prison vendor as a remedy for
its overcrowded jail facility. "Have your sheriff talk to our sheriff.
He will let you know what kind of problems he is having," said Juan
Guerra, who pulls double duty as both county and district attorney in Willacy
County. Guerra said his county has struggled through criminal investigations
that saw two of its county commissioners convicted, and it is also is in
danger of defaulting on a bond payment because it hasn't received enough
federal prisoners to generate the needed revenue to sustain the facility.
Coryell County Commissioners are expected to open a proposal from Innovative
Government Strategies to construct and operate a jail facility when they meet
in regular session at 10 a.m. Monday in the Coryell County Courthouse.
According to the documents turned in by Innovative Government Strategies, the
proposed project team includes James Parkey, with Corplan Corrections Inc., for developer, Hale-Mills for
construction company, Municipal Capital Markets Group for financing, Deborah
L. Williams for architecture and engineering and CiviGenics-Texas
Inc. for management and operations. Coryell County Attorney Brandon Belt
previously expressed concern about the proposed operator, saying that CiviGenics had been at the center of controversy
recently. However, it is not just CiviGenics that
has a troubled past. The commissioners' consideration of the group comes just
days after a federal judge sentenced former Willacy County Commissioner
Israel Tamez to six months in jail for his role in
a bribery scandal connected to a $14.5 million prison project to construct a
U.S. Marshals Service jail. On Nov. 9, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen
handed down the sentence and also gave Tamez three
years' probation and imposed a $25,000 fine. Tamez
and former Commissioner Jose Jimenez, who died of cancer before being
sentenced, pleaded guilty in January 2005 to taking more than $10,000 in
kickbacks, Guerra said. Former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez also was
involved in the scandal and was convicted in March 2005 of funneling the
bribes to the Willacy County commissioners in exchange for their votes to
hire a consultant in the prison project, Guerra said. Cortez is scheduled to
be sentenced Nov. 20. "My understanding was, as far as implicating the
company, it has not been implicated, but the commissioners have been
convicted," Guerra said. "Our records indicate that when (Cortez)
came before the commissioners when this happened four years ago, he represented
himself as a private consultant for Corplan."
In May 2005, Willacy County, on Guerra's instructions, filed a civil suit
against Corplan and Hale-Mills alleging that the
two companies were parties to the bribery. The suit later was dismissed,
Guerra said. Guerra said he could not say whether a federal investigation was
still pending, and U.S. District Court offices were closed Friday for the
federal holiday. Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence could not be reached
either. Guerra said the lack of competitive bids when Willacy was building
its third federal facility – against his advice and despite the criminal
implications – was not only suspect, but something that possibly lost Willacy
County millions. "No one is checking to see if you are getting your
money's worth," he said. "Because we don't know if that facility
cost $50 million to construct." In fact, Guerra said according to
information he received from experts, the project, which was for a facility
to house Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, could have been done
for between $30 and $35 million. "The information that I got, from
experts that reviewed the expenses, says they could not justify the $50
million. They padded the construction costs by an extra $20 to $15
million," Guerra said. "What is funny you get commissioners that
are indicted for taking $10,000. I am just wondering who are
the real crooks?"
November 9, 2006 AP
A former Willacy County commissioner was sentenced to six months in federal
prison Thursday for taking bribes in return for votes on a federal prison
contract. Israel Tamez, 60, of Raymondville, also
must pay a $25,000 fine and serve three years probation
after his release. Tamez and former Willacy County
Commissioner Jose Jimenez of Sebastian pleaded guilty in January 2005 to conspiracy
to commit bribery. Tamez admitted receiving cash
payments totaling $10,000 for voting to select particular companies to
design, build, maintain and manage the prison. Charges against Jimenez were
dismissed earlier this year after he died.
August 23, 2006 Valley Star
Willacy County officials will have to pay as much as $600,000 to bail out the
new $7.5 million jail that has run short of money to pay investors who could
foreclose, County Judge Simon Salinas said. The financially strapped county
will have to set aside about $600,000 as officials work on a proposed $3.5
million budget that's unlikely to include $300,000 to reinstate employee
health insurance. "It's a hard pill to swallow," Salinas said. The
decision came after a Friday meeting in which Salinas and Sheriff Larry
Spence agreed to a study that will help determine whether the county will run
the jail or turn over operations to a management company. Management and
Training Corp. (MTC), the Utah-based company that operates a 525-bed, county-owned
prison and the county's new $60 million immigration detention center, will
conduct the study at no charge, Salinas said. "It's kind of a
feasibility study that looks at different options," Spence said. Friday,
officials met with J.C. Conner, MTC's vice president, and Michael Harling of
Municipal Capital Markets Group of Dallas, which handled the sale of bonds to
fund construction of the county's jail, prison and the immigration detention
center. After the meeting, Salinas said the county will have to budget about
$600,000 to help the jail make its second payment in November. Like some
commissioners, Salinas had said the county couldn't afford to bail out the
jail. When county officials made plans to build the jail, they counted on
housing federal prisoners to pay off project costs. Under the county's plan,
federal prisoners - many of whom would be female inmates - would take up 48
of the jail's 96 beds. But the Marshals Service has failed to come through
with a steady flow of prisoners, officials said. Spence has said the county's
federal inmate count has steadily climbed to about 35. After a sex scandal,
the Marshals Service hasn't housed female prisoners in the jail. In April,
the Marshals Service removed 19 female prisoners from the jail amid the scandal.
After an internal investigation, sheriff's officials fired two female guards
after female prisoners accused them of offering favors to female inmates. A
Texas Rangers investigation later led authorities to arrest a male guard
accused of having sex with a female prisoner.
August 1, 2006 Valley Star
Willacy county commissioners won't bail out the new $7.5 million county
jail if it can't afford to pay investors, County Judge Simon Salinas said
Monday. Instead, commissioners may hire a private management company to
operate the jail, Commissioner Aurelio Guerra said. But Sheriff Larry Spence
warned that the county would pay as much $70 a day to house its prisoners in
a privately operated jail. Monday, the jail held 49 county prisoners, he
said. As commissioners work on their proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal
year, they won't set aside $566,000 to make the jail's second payment,
Salinas said. "I will not bail (it) out with local money," Salinas
said. "I will not do it again." In late April, commissioners agreed
to pay investors more than $137,000 after the jail ran short of money to make
its first payment. The Willacy County Public Facilities Corp., a non-profit
organization that oversees the jail that opened in October 2004, must make
its second payment in November. Under the county's plan, federal prisoners -
many of whom would be female inmates - would take up 48 of the jail's 96
beds. "We were told that was the need," Sheriff Larry Spence said
of the plan to house female prisoners. "If we could build a facility to
house females, (the Marshal's Service) would more than likely keep it
full." But the Marshals Service has failed to come through with a steady
flow of prisoners, officials said. Monday, the jail held 35 federal
prisoners, Spence said. Since an April sex scandal, the Marshals Service
hasn't housed female prisoners in the jail. "That definitely caused a
problem," Spence said. In April, the sex scandal led the Marshals
Service to remove 19 female prisoners from the jail.
July 23, 2006 Express News
The Willacy County attorney is speaking out against his county's new
contract for a massive detention center because he said it involves companies
still under a cloud from the 2004 bribery convictions of three elected
officials. Juan Angel Guerra also accuses veteran Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.,
D-Brownsville, of going back on his word by continuing to represent the same
firms. Former Willacy County Commissioners Israel Tamez
and the late Jose Jimenez were convicted in 2004 of accepting bribes in
exchange for favorable votes regarding a 600-bed prison that opened in
Raymondville, the county seat, in 2003. The third convicted official, Webb
County Commissioner David Cortez, was an associate of CorPlan
Corrections, a consulting company at the time of the prison project. Cortez
was accused of funneling the bribe money for favorable votes on contracts. No
company employees, however, have been charged. Federal prosecutors wouldn't
comment on the case, but observers believe the investigation is ongoing
because the commissioners' sentencing dates have been pushed back several
times. Meanwhile, the same firms are building a 2,000-bed detention facility
near the same prison. Willacy commissioners voted 3-2 on Monday to approve
$60.6 million in bonds for the new facility, which is on a fast-track
construction schedule to house mostly non-Mexican undocumented immigrants in
a series of tentlike structures for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
or ICE. Utah-based Management Training Corp., or MTC, will operate the facility;
Houston-based Hale-Mills Construction Inc. is building it; and Argyle-based CorPlan is consulting on the project, said Guerra, who is
the county and district attorney. A May 27, 2005, letter from commissioners
to the county's nonprofit corporation set up to oversee the federal prison
project asked it to "terminate its contractual relationship with CorPlan," because a Willacy County lawsuit against
the firm alleged it was involved with the bribes. "Now they are asking
me to sign a contract that includes CorPlan,"
Guerra said. "I told the commissioners you can't have it both ways.
First you pass the resolution saying you don't want to deal with CorPlan. Now you do a contract that I know for a fact
includes CorPlan. So we are back to square
one." The lawsuit was dropped in April. County Judge Simon Salinas said
he wasn't aware of the letter and resolution that prompted it. It's probably
too late anyway, he added. "The contract is already signed, the work is
already begun," he said. Regardless, Salinas said, the county can't
proceed under the assumption that leaders of the companies are criminals.
"In this country we are innocent until proven guilty," he said.
"And nobody out there pressed charges against the companies. ... Just
because these (commissioners) plead guilty doesn't mean everybody in the
world is guilty." Guerra favored Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation
of America, or CCA, which offered to finance the detention facility on its
own rather than through the county. He said the commissioners initially
favored CCA, but later picked MTC. Commissioner Noe Loya
said Guerra "is trying to find every excuse to hire CCA, and change our
minds, but it's over." Guerra said he met with Lucio two weeks ago and
the veteran lawmaker pushed MTC. "I asked him, 'Are you talking to me as
my senator or as an employee of one of these companies?'" Guerra said.
"He told me he was talking to me as a consultant." Lucio said he
met with Guerra because it "appeared that he had quite a bit of
influence on the Commissioners Court." Lucio said he told Guerra he
favored MTC because it treats its employees well. Lucio said he thought CorPlan had been cleared because the lawsuit filed on
behalf of Willacy County against James Parkey,
president of CorPlan, was dropped and there have been
no other arrests. Parkey did not return a call
seeking comment. "My main focus on talking with Johnny (Guerra) was
trying to sell him on the fact that MTC was a very reputable company,"
Lucio said. "I feel very comfortably speaking
on their behalf and asking them to consider us and that was my main
focus." According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Lucio reported in 2005
that MTC and CorPlan paid him a total of at least
$50,000 through his Brownsville company, Rio Shelters Inc. In the wake of the
bribery scandal, Lucio said he had stopped representing the firms and
wouldn't again until the matter was cleared up. "I know there has been a
case, a problem, a situation there where somebody associated with (Parkey) out of Laredo was indicted and convicted,"
Lucio said, referring to Cortez. "But when the lawsuit against him was
dropped, I felt that he was exonerated." Told that the bribery
investigation may still be open, he said: "If it is, I am not aware of
it." Asked if he was being paid by MTC or CorPlan
for encouraging the detention center contract, he said: "It's up to them
if they feel I did a good job." Lucio said it was "very hard to
draw a fine line" between his job as a lawmaker and his private work,
but added: "I can tell you this: I do my best." "I get paid
$600 a month to be a state senator, and I do it just about on a full-time
basis," he said. Damon Hiniger, a vice
president of CCA in Tennessee, said he was surprised by the county's decision
because CCA was going to invest its own money, pay about $1.8 million in
property taxes, and shoulder the risk. Judge Salinas said he was influenced
by the bottom line, nothing more. "I have nothing against CCA, they are
a good reputable company, but they are in the business to make their own
bucks," he said. The detention facility is to open Aug. 1 with 500 beds,
and then have 1,500 more available Oct. 1. It is part of President Bush's
Secure Border Initiative.
May 25, 2005 Valley Star
Willacy County commissioners will request that the Willacy County Public
Facilities Corp. break its contract with a company that is a defendant in a
county lawsuit. But rankled members of the Public Facilities Corp. (PFC) said
they would stand by their vote to hire Corplan
Corrections, a prison consultant in Irving. If PFC members refuse the
request, commissioners could remove them, County Attorney Juan Angel Guerra
said Tuesday, following commissioners’ request on Monday that the PFC
terminate its contract with Corplan Corrections. On
May 12, the PFC voted to hire Corplan to begin work
on a 500-bed addition to a $14.5 million federal prison. The project’s cost
had not been estimated, officials said. On May 13, Willacy County filed a
lawsuit against Corplan and Hale Mills Inc., the
contractor in the prison project. Willacy County formed the PFC as a
nonprofit organization charged with the development of the prison project. In
the lawsuit filed by attorney Ramon Garcia, the Hidalgo County judge, Willacy
County claims illegal action voided the contract that led to the prison’s
construction. The prison project has been the focus of an ongoing federal
bribery investigation that has led to the convictions of two former Willacy
County commissioners and a former Webb County commissioner.
May 21, 2005 Valley Star
The Willacy County Public Facilities Corp.’s decision to hire a company
that is a defendant in a Willacy County lawsuit could jeopardize the case,
District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said Friday. On May 12, the Public
Facilities Corp. hired Corplan Corrections to
expand the $14.5 million federal prison, a project that sparked a bribery
scandal that led to the convictions of two former Willacy County
commissioners and a former Webb County commissioner. The move would lead to
the construction of a 500-bed addition to the prison, which opened with 500
beds in late 2003. The project’s cost had not been estimated, officials said.
A day later, on May 13, Willacy County filed a lawsuit against Corplan, an Irving consulting firm, and Hale Mills Inc.,
a Houston contractor, claiming illegal action voided the contract that led to
the prison’s construction. "It’s premature to enter into further
contracts with those companies, especially with a pending lawsuit,"
Guerra said. Willacy County formed the Public Facilities Corp. as a nonprofit
organization charged with development of the prison project. The Public
Facilities Corp. owns the prison. Attorney Ramon Garcia, the Hidalgo County
judge who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Willacy County, declined to comment
on whether the Public Facilities Corp.’s action jeopardized the lawsuit.
"I’ve been hired to represent parties regarding the facility that’s
already been constructed," said Garcia, who Guerra said was working on a
contingent fee that would pay him 40 percent of any damages awarded. "These
are separate and distinct transactions." In the lawsuit, Willacy County
claims former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez worked as a consultant to
the two companies when he funneled about $39,000 to "several"
Willacy County commissioners. In turn, former Willacy County Commissioners
Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez agreed to vote to
select the companies for the project, the lawsuit claims. In March, U.S.
District Judge Andrew Hanen convicted Cortez of funneling about $39,000 in
bribes to "several" Willacy County commissioners in exchange for
their votes to hire a consultant in the prison project. In January, Hanen
convicted Tamez and Jimenez after they pleaded
guilty to taking more than $10,000 in bribes in the project. An ongoing federal
and state investigation is expected to lead to charges against at least one
other Willacy County elected official, authorities have said.
May 18, 2005 AP
Willacy County has filed a lawsuit against two companies involved in a
$14.5 million federal prison project that became entwined in a bribery
scheme. The civil lawsuit was filed last week in state district court against
Corplan Corrections of Argyle and Hale Mills Inc.
of Houston. The suit claims the companies conspired to bribe county
commissioners to select them for the construction project. Although the
lawsuit does not specify damages, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said
the financially troubled county could get title to the prison. "The
contract would be null and void, so technically the prison would end up
belonging to the county free of charge," Guerra said in Thursday
editions of the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen.
March 25, 2005 San Antonio
Express-News
A third former South Texas county commissioner charged in connection with a
bribery scandal surrounding a detention facility in the Rio Grande Valley was
convicted Thursday in Brownsville. Authorities said others could be charged.
David Cortez, 70, of Laredo, a former Webb County commissioner, was charged,
pleaded guilty and was convicted Thursday of conspiring to "obstruct,
delay and affect commerce" for his role in helping secure a contract for
the Willacy County Adult Correctional Center in Raymondville. He waived his
right to have a grand jury investigate. The charge accused him of funneling
at least $39,000 to help a consulting firm get part of the job. Cortez is
cooperating with the FBI in an ongoing investigation, authorities said. He
was released on a personal recognizance bond and is scheduled to be sentenced
June 28. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. The name
of the consulting company he secured the bids for was not released. Two
former Willacy County commissioners, Jose Jimenez of Sebastian and Israel Tamez of Raymondville, pleaded guilty Jan. 4 to accepting
bribes of $10,000 or more for their votes awarding contracts to build the
500-bed detention facility used for federal inmates. Willacy County Sheriff
Larry Spence said the Dallas-area firms CorPlan
Corrections LTD and Aguirre Inc., along with Management & Training Corp.
of Centerville, Utah, and Hale-Mills Construction of Houston, were the
companies hired to either design, build or manage the Raymondville facility,
which opened in 2003. "Most of these guys have worked together on
several projects," Spence said. Asked to confirm that Cortez had worked
for CorPlan, the firm's director, James Parkey, said by phone, "I have no comment on that.
Obviously that's a tickly subject and I could refer you to my attorney."
According to a charging document, "several Willacy County commissioners
did solicit and receive things of value" from Cortez "in exchange
for providing advantages not available to others interested in and competing
for the selection of a consultant" for the facility. "It was
further part of the conspiracy that several Willacy County commissioners did
agree to tacitly and implicitly to provide (Cortez) and other corporate
representatives with assurances in their capacity" as commissioners,
that Cortez and the company he represented "would receive favorable
consideration" in exchange for money, the document states. The
commissioners agreed to accept the money in June 2000 and were paid around
October 2002, according to court records.
February 26, 2005 Houston Chronicle
When traditional jobs in agriculture and the oil patch began to shrink,
Willacy County saw salvation in prisons and jails. A 540-bed jail opened for
federal prisoners in 2003 and a 96-bed county jail is now nearing completion,
both located next to an existing state jail at the main crossroads of this
rural county in the deep Rio Grande Valley. In addition to the jobs provided
at the facilities, county officials envisioned ringing cash registers as
inmates' families made visits, spending money at local hotels, gas stations
and restaurants. But today, the optimism has been overshadowed by scandal. A
pair of county commissioners await sentencing in April after admitting taking
bribes from corporate executives in exchange for voting on jail contracts.
The executives haven't been identified in federal charges. Compounding all that
is a dramatic drop in the number of inmates being housed in the federal
facility. Since November, the U.S. Marshals Service has removed more than 200
prisoners to jails in neighboring Cameron County, where jail costs are nearly
half what Willacy jailers are paid under the existing federal contract. Willacy's 2005 budget
counted on a projected $300,000 payment from Management Training Corp. of
Centerville, Utah, the private management firm that operates the jail.
Willacy County receives a $2 share of the $70-plus daily payment received for
each federal inmate. Today, there are about 300 inmates in the 540-bed jail,
and the private management company acknowledges it is losing money.
Executives with the companies that built and manage the federal jail strongly
deny any involvement with the bribery scandal. Hale-Mills Construction Inc.,
a Houston firm that built both the federal jail and the nearly completed
county jail, which cost $7.5 million in financing and construction, did not
return repeated calls for comment. But the firm issued a statement denying
any knowledge of the bribes. Edmundo Ramirez, a McAllen attorney representing
Corplan Corrections of Argyle, the project manager,
said, ''We have no involvement with that (bribery) at all." District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said the first
sign of any criminal wrongdoing surfaced when the county's public facilities
corporation — created in 1999 to build the federal jail — received a $45,700
bill for a credit card account. Authorities soon learned ex-county auditor
Armando Rubalcaba, who was hired after Garcia left in late 1996, had opened
the account without telling other county officials, Guerra said. Rubalcaba
also chaired the jail facilities' board of directors. The bill included
thousands of cash withdrawals the auditor made from a convenience store he
owns, as well as charges for trips to Las Vegas resorts, airline travel and
expensive meals. Rubalcaba, fired for incompetence in October 2003, pleaded
no contest to theft charges last year and agreed to tell investigators all he
knew about corruption in the county. He accepted a plea bargain that allows
him to be free on probation for 10 years, and he must make restitution to the
county. After that, the investigation moved quickly, and on Jan. 4, two
commissioners — Jose Jimenez, 67, and Israel Tamez,
58, — pleaded guilty to accepting more than $10,000 ''from particular
corporate representatives who were selected for design, construction,
maintenance and management of the jail." So far, Justice Department officials
have refused to say who made the payoffs.
February 10, 2005 Valley Star
Willacy County officials are "disappointed" in the U.S. Marshals
Service’s placement of inmates in the federal prison that they built to
bolster the county budget, County Judge Simon Salinas said Wednesday. This
week, the inmate count stood at about 313 in the 500-bed prison, up from an
average of about 260 from October to December, Sheriff Larry Spence said. But
county officials had based their $3.8 million general fund budget on
near-capacity inmate counts projected to generate $300,000. "They’re
hitting us in the pocketbook," Salinas said. As part of an agreement,
Management & Training Corp., the private firm that runs the prison, pays
the county $2 a day for each federal inmate housed in the county-owned
prison. County officials expected the inmate count to jump after last month’s
meeting with U.S. Marshal Ben Reyna. Jan. 4, Spence and State Sen. Eddie
Lucio, D-Brownsville, traveled to Reyna’s office in Washington, D.C., to discuss
the drop in inmates. Lucio participated as a consultant to Management &
Training Corp., the company that manages the prison. A year-end money
crunch led the Marshals Service to transfer inmates to jails with lower
housing costs, Spence said. In 2000, county
commissioners entered into a contract to build the $14.5 million prison after
the Marshals Service solicited the construction of a South Texas prison to
hold its inmates. The prison opened in October 2003. Last month, a U.S.
district judge convicted former County Commissioners Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez after they pleaded guilty to
taking more than $10,000 in kickbacks in the prison project.
February 7, 2005 San Antonio
Express-News
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, made the right decision by
suspending his business ties, even if only temporarily, with three
contractors connected to a federal detention facility at the center of a
criminal investigation in the Rio Grande Valley. He should make it permanent.
In announcing his decision, the South Texas legislator said he did not want
any misperceptions about his business dealings. Lucio, president and CEO of
Rio Shelters Inc. a marketing and advertising agency, has been on the payroll
of the three companies involved in that public construction project for
several years. His primary job was to introduce company officials to power
brokers in the Rio Grande Valley. In interviews with the Brownsville Herald,
Lucio said he has worked with CorPlan Corrections
of Argyle, Aguirre Inc. of Dallas and the Management and Training Corp. of
Centerville, Utah, since 1999 earning about $100,000 a year. If that is so,
why didn't his employment with the three companies appear on his financial
disclosure statements filed with the state until 2004? Lucio is correct when
he says it is all about perception for a politician, and omitting vital
information about his employers on his state officeholder reports raises
serious questions.
January 20, 2005 Brownsville Herald
State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. on Tuesday temporarily suspended his
consulting work for three companies involved with constructing and managing a
Willacy County federal detention center — the focus of a federal bribery
investigation. Lucio, D-Brownsville, told The Brownsville Herald on Wednesday
that he has taken a “leave of absence” from representing James Parkey’s CorPlan Corrections of
Argyle, Pedro Aguirre’s Aguirre Corp. of Dallas, and J.C. Conner’s Management
and Training Corp. (MTC) of Georgetown, until the federal inquiry in Willacy
County concludes. Lucio said he would reassess the relationship with the
firms that pay him about $100,000 a year combined. The federal investigation
already has resulted in the Jan. 4 convictions of Willacy County
commissioners Jose Jimenez of Sebastian and Israel Tamez
of Raymondville for accepting at least $10,000 in bribes in exchange for
their votes in awarding contracts for the center’s construction. U.S.
Attorney Michael Shelby has not charged the corporate representatives who
allegedly bribed Jimenez and Tamez. Companies
involved in the project also have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Lucio
said Wednesday that he has been on CorPlan’s
payroll since 1999 and that the other two firms soon contracted him. He
wouldn’t say when or how much each specifically has paid him for marketing
the firms and introducing them to public officials. The Herald found,
however, that it was not until 2004 that Lucio reported the companies in his
financial statements. Asked if he believed that the companies would pay him
more than $100,000 a year were he not a senator, Lucio said that “it might
seem like a lot of money, and it is in our area of the state, but there are
senators and representatives that are making much more money on one case than
I do in one year. So, I am not ashamed of what I make. I worked for that.”
January 13, 2005 Valley Morning Star
State Sen. Eddie Lucio on Wednesday stood behind his work as a consultant
for a company involved in a $14.5 million federal prison project in Willacy
County. Last week, Lucio was working as a consultant for Corplan
Corrections and Management & Training Corp. (MTC) when he went to
Washington D.C., to discuss a recent drop in the federal prison’s inmate
count with U.S. Marshals Service Director Ben Reyna. The prison project has
become the subject of an investigation that led to the conviction of two
Willacy County officials of taking bribes from at least one of the companies
involved in the design and construction of the prison, according to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. No company has been named as the source of the bribes. The
prison has been struggling to maintain the number of federal inmates it
houses. A decline in the number has hurt Willacy County financially. The
county for months has been struggling to keep from plunging into debt. MTC
requested the meeting with Reyna, Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said,
since the Marshals Service sends federal inmates to the prison. "I think
it helped. It kind of opened the door," said Spence, who traveled to
Washington, D.C. with Lucio and County Commissioner Noe Loya.
Lucio’s connection to the prison goes back for several years. In 1999, Lucio
"introduced" Corplan Corrections to
Willacy County commissioners as they began to plan for a federal prison here,
Lucio said of the Argyle consulting firm that worked to develop the project.
Among Lucio’s clients is Aguirre Construction, the Dallas firm that designed
the federal prison. Lucio also works as a consultant for MTC, the Utah firm
that manages the prison. Last week, U.S. district Judge Andrew Hanen
convicted former Willacy County Commissioners Israel Tamez
and Jose Jimenez of taking more than $10,000 in kickbacks in the federal
prison project. Federal prosecutors charged Tamez
and Jimenez received kickbacks "from particular corporate representatives
who were selected in the competition" for the prison project. The
500-bed prison’s inmate count dropped from near-capacity in early October to
about 240 in December, Spence said, noting MTC pays the county $2 for every
prisoner. The financially embattled county projected $300,000 in federal
prison money to boost its $3.8 million general fund budget. A year-end money
crunch led the Marshal’s Service to transfer inmates to prisons with lower
housing costs, Spence said.
January 13, 2005 Brownsville Herald
Three companies with ties to state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville,
worked on the construction of the federal detention center in Willacy County,
which is now the subject of an federal investigation into bribes. Inquiries
already netted the Jan. 4 convictions of Willacy County commissioners Jose
Jimenez, 67, of Sebastian, and Israel Tamez, 58, of
Raymondville. They each pleaded guilty to accepting $10,000 or more in bribes
from corporate representatives involved in the design, construction,
financing, maintenance and management of the detention center, according to
U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby. According to public records, the primary
companies involved in the project include jail consultant Corplan
Corrections of Argyle, design-builder Hale-Mills Construction of Houston,
Aguirre Corp. of Dallas, and the Management and Training Corp. (MTC) of Utah,
which manages the detention center. Federal Election Commission records also
identify Corplan’s James M. Parkey
as an architect with Aguirre Corp. Lucio has been on Corplan’s,
Aguirre’s and MTC’s payroll for about four years for marketing, public
relations and consulting work. He remains on the payrolls of at least Corplan and MTC, The Brownsville Herald found Wednesday. Asked if he was involved in wrongdoing, Lucio
answered without hesitation. “Of course not,” he said. “You don’t even have
to ask that.” In a prepared statement, Shelby said the two commissioners
admitted to accepting a series of bribes from June 2000 through March 2003 in
exchange for their votes awarding contracts for the construction of the
detention center. In June 2000, The Brownsville Herald reported that Lucio
authored legislation in 1999 clarifying that counties can enter into a
contract with a private vendor for the design, management or construction of
jails. Lucio was a consultant for MTC in 2000, which had been vying for the
Cameron County detention center project. Lucio told The Brownsville Herald in
2002 and 2004 that Corplan, Aguirre, MTC and other
firms contracted him for marketing, public relations and consulting work. He
said this included introducing and setting up meetings with local
governmental officials. Lucio’s 2003 financial statement filed in 2004 with
the Texas Ethics Commission reflects that Aguirre paid him $10,000 to $24,999;
TEDSI $25,000 or more; Corplan $25,000 or more; and
MTC $25,000 or more. Lucio declined to tell The Brownsville Herald on
Wednesday the specific amount of money Corplan and
MTC paid him. He confirmed that he continues on their payroll, however.
January 8, 2005 Valley Morning Star
Willacy County commissioners will consider hiring attorney Ramon Garcia,
Hidalgo County’s judge, to investigate whether there are grounds to sue
companies involved in a federal prison project that paid kickbacks to two
former commissioners. Friday, an
attorney representing a company involved in the prison project vehemently
denied Corplan Corrections was involved in any
wrongdoing. Monday, commissioners will consider hiring Garcia to investigate
whether there are grounds to file a civil lawsuit against companies involved
in the $14.5 million federal prison and the current development of a $7.5
million county jail. "We’re not going to tolerate companies coming in to
take advantage of small counties and offering kickbacks and going on like
it’s business as usual," District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said.
"Whoever offers kickbacks is just as guilty as those taking
kickbacks." Tuesday, U.S. district Judge Andrew Hanen convicted former
commissioners Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez of
taking more than $10,000 in kickbacks in the federal prison project. Under
the law, contracts that involve illegal activity are void, Guerra said.
"Someone gave them that money," County Judge Simon Salinas said.
"Whoever made these guys get dirty, they’re going to go down, too. I
want them to pay for it. Someone’s going to take them on in the
courtroom." The county could win "millions" of dollars in
damages because a financial firm involved in the project has sold about $25
million in bonds — about $10 million more than the prison’s $14.5 million
cost, Guerra said. But that bond money was used to pay interest, said
Edmundo Ramirez, a McAllen attorney representing Corplan
Corrections, a consultant in the federal prison project.
Willacy County Federal Detention Center
Raymondville, TX
Corplan, Management & Training
Corporation
Jul
19, 2017 justice.gov
Former
Correctional Officer Sentenced to Prison for Accepting Bribes
BROWNSVILLE,
Texas – A former correctional officer will now be on the other side of prison
bars following his conviction of accepting bribes in his capacity as a public
official, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez. Stephen Salinas, 23,
of Edcouch, pleaded guilty Jan. 3, 2017. Today, U.S. District Judge Andrew S.
Hanen handed Salinas an 18-month sentence to be immediately followed by three
years of supervised release. The term includes upward adjustments in his
calculated sentencing guideline range because he received more than one
bribe, was in a high level or sensitive position and used his position as a
public official to facilitate the introduction of the contraband into a
prison facility. Salinas was a correctional officer formerly employed at the
Management and Training Corporation (MTC) Willacy County Regional Detention
Center. At the time of his plea, Salinas admitted that between October 2015
and January 2016, he accepted bribes in exchange for providing cell phones
and gallon jugs of alcohol to inmates at the MTC Detention Center. He
admitted he used his position as a correctional officer to smuggle the items
into the facility. Was paid a total of approximately $3,000 for allowing the
contraband into the facility. Salinas was permitted to remain on bond and
voluntarily surrender to the U.S. Marshals Service at a later date.
Department of Justice - Office of Inspector General, U.S. Marshals Service
and Department of Homeland Security conducted the investigation. Assistant
U.S. Attorney Angel Castro prosecuted the case.
Dec 13, 2016 sacurrent.com
South Texas Prison Riot Blamed On For-Profit Prison Company's
"Abysmal Mismanagement"
Frustration over flooded toilets,
rodents, serious overcrowding and a lack of basic inmate services led to the
all-out riot at the Willacy County Correctional Center nearly two years ago,
according to a federal lawsuit that blames the South Texas prison's closure
on "abysmal mismanagement" from the for-profit company tapped to
run the facility. On February 20, 2015, prisoners blamed inadequate medical
care and other problems when they refused to comply with orders at the South
Texas lockup, a privately-run facility that had contracted with the federal
Bureau of Prisons to house low-risk non-U.S. citizen inmates (a so-called
"Criminal Alien Requirement" prison). At first, they just refused
to do their routine chores or eat breakfast, but eventually some inmates set
fire to at least three of the prison's tent-like dome housing units. Three
weeks after the riot, the feds terminated their contract with MTC and Willacy
County and shuttered the prison. In a lawsuit filed last week, officials with
Willacy County, which made as much as $2.7 million a year off the prison
under its arrangement with the feds and private prison contractor Management
and Training Corp, claims that MTC failed to properly "oversee, manage,
and repair" the prison and "turned a blind eye to the enormous
problems that plagued the Prison from its inception." Indeed the
problems at Willacy go back several years. Before it became a so-called CAR
facility, the Texas tent prison was an immigrant detention center that
activists took to calling "Ritmo" (a
portmanteau of Raymondville, where it's located, and Gitmo) because of
allegations that sexual assault, physical abuse, and medical neglect plagued
the facility. In 2011, months after immigration officials ended their
contract with MTC, federal prison officials decided to swoop in and ink yet
another contract to send immigrants convicted of crimes (mostly for criminal
re-entry) to Willacy.
Dec 9, 2016 foxrio2.com
Willacy County Files Suit Against Private Prison
Willacy County (KFXV) — A lawsuit is filed against a private prison
company where Local Government Corporation alleges the Willacy County Prison
was forced to close because of its failure to meet its most basic
obligations, according to the contract. The lawsuit filed Wednesday, claims
the private prison company failed to oversee and repair problems– which
eventually led to the closure of the prison. Willacy County Local Government
Corporation filing the lawsuit alleging that private prison company,
‘Management & Training Corporation’– also known as MTC– whom they
partnered with, did not follow contract procedures. According to Willacy
County’s management contract with MTC, it was responsible for proper
management of the prison. The lawsuit specifically points out that MTC was to provide necessary
services to inmates for an efficient operation of the entity. But MTC failed
to oversee and repair problems, including flooding toilets, rodents and a
lack of basic inmate services, which in turn caused a prison riot on February
20, 2015. In the end, the Willacy County Prison was forced to close by the
Bureau of Prisons, which deemed the facility ‘uninhabitable’–letting go of
400 employees. Local Government Corporation, stating that had MTC done its
job correctly, the prison would still be in business. In response to the
lawsuit, MTC sent a statement to Fox News, saying they have always addressed
structural, maintenance and other issues in a timely manner, and also making
sure that the facility met all Federal Bureau of Prison standards. “While we
can’t discuss specific allegations, we can say that mtc
has always addressed any structural, maintenance and other issues in a timely
manner. The bureau of prisons (bop) Monitored mtc’s
operation on a daily basis and did frequent comprehensive audits to make sure
the facility was safe and clean and that it met all federal bop standards.
The facility was also accredited by the american
correctional association and the joint commission, which accredits healthcare
organizations throughout the country.” Willacy County is requesting ‘MTC’ pay
for actual damages, punitive damages and attorney fees.
Nov 6, 2016 valleycentral.com
U.S. Marshals Service: 2 former guards at Willacy County prison charged
with bribery
The Gulf Coast Violent Offenders and Fugitive Task Force arrested former
two guards at the Willacy County Regional Detention Center on Friday. The
task force arrested 22-year-old Stephan Salinas and 29-year-old Harry
Cordero, who worked at the Willacy County Regional Detention Center -- a
private prison in Raymondville operated by Utah-based Management and Training
Corp. -- according to a news release from the U.S. Marshals Service. Cordero
accepted bribes to allow alcohol and a cell phone to enter the prison during
December 2015, according to the indictment against him. Management and
Training Corp. fired Cordero and Salinas in January, according to a statement
released by the company. "As soon as we concluded our internal
investigation of these two individuals, we immediately notified the U.S.
Marshals Service and worked cooperatively with them," according to the
statement. Management and Training Corp. monitors everyone who enters and
exits the detention center and conducts random searches, according to the
statement. "All employees go through a scanner upon entry to the
facility, random pat searches are conducted, personal bags go through an
x-ray scanner and are physically searched, and all containers brought into
the facility must be transparent," according to the statement. A
three-count indictment unsealed on Friday charges Cordero with two counts of
bribery and one count of providing contraband in prison. Bribery is
punishable by a maximum 10 years in prison, according to federal court
records. Providing contraband in prison is punishable by a maximum one year
in prison. Details about the charges against Salinas weren’t immediately
available. Both men remain in federal custody and couldn’t be reached for
comment Saturday.
Jan 26, 2016 valleymorningstar.com
City stunned
RAYMONDVILLE — When April Torres has her baby, she and her boyfriend
won’t have their jobs at Walmart. On Friday, Walmart will close its
Raymondville store, laying off Torres, her boyfriend Efrain Coronado and
about 110 other employees. “Everyone is devastated,” Torres, 19, who’s seven
months pregnant, said as she had lunch at Las Mañanitas
restaurant in Raymondville. For more than a year, she’s been making $9 an
hour as a cashier, working nearly 40 hours a week to pay her rent and make
her car payment. Walmart officials asked her if she’s willing to transfer to
another Rio Grande Valley store. But a job might not open, said Torres, who
said the company will pay her wages for two months after the store closes.
Across Willacy County, residents remain stunned Walmart is closing the
Supercenter about 10 months after the Willacy County Correctional Center shut
down, laying off 400 employees. “Now where am I going to work?” Torres asked.
A few tables away, Clarence Tidwell said the laid-off workers will have
trouble finding jobs in the area struggling with a 13-percent unemployment
rate. “It’s kind of devastating,” said Tidwell, a plumbing company owner.
“It’s quite a few people who lost jobs and they’re hard to get anyway.” At
Walmart, Lawrence Green sat in his pickup truck, gazing at the store that
opened in 2005. “It’s very catastrophic between this and the prison,” said
Green, a retired firefighter. “I don’t know how much longer the area can take
it. “They lost 500 to 600 jobs in an area this size. It’s got to put the hurt
on. I think a lot of people are depressed. People bought new cars expecting
jobs to be here — and they’re gone.” In the parking lot, Homer and Janie Vela
wondered about the area’s future. “It’s a big impact county-wide,” Homer
Vela, a former county correctional officer, said of the store’s closing after
the prison shut down. “A lot are in disbelief. We’re hoping it will advance
and catch up with other cities but we’re going down.” Janie Vela blamed local
leaders. “I don’t think the officials have done enough to bring in jobs,”
said Janie Vela, a home health provider. “We need the city to progress. We
need business to develop so people can have jobs. I don’t see a future for
Raymondville.” In Walmart, clearance sales drew customers who walked past
rows of empty shelves. “It’s weird,” said Frances Chapa, a secretary at the
Lyford school district. “We still can’t believe it. It’s been here for so
many years.” Like many residents, Chapa knows some of the store’s employees —
like her sister-in-law. “It’s sadness. I feel sorry for the employees,” Chapa
said. “Everything’s going down. I don’t know what’s going to happen to
Raymondville — the community. There are not going to be any jobs here.” Like
many longtime customers, Irene Johnson will drive 30 miles to Harlingen
stores after Walmart closes. “It makes me sick,” said Johnson, a
businesswoman and retired schoolteacher. “It’s sad to lose all those jobs. I
feel terrible. I stop here to get my medicines. People cash their checks
here. Now I’ll be going to Harlingen and they’re going to get my taxes.
Willacy County is in bad shape with the prison closing and Walmart closing.
Our tax base will go down.” On Jan. 15, Walmart announced it would close
Raymondville’s store Jan. 29, laying off about 110 employees. Mayor Gilbert
Gonzales said about 55 employees work full-time. The world’s largest retailer
announced the closing of 269 of its least profitable stores in the United
States and Latin America, including a Brownsville store on Padre Island
Highway. News of the Raymondville store’s closing came 10 months after the
Willacy County Correctional Center shut down, laying off 400 employees. The
prison’s closure plunged Willacy County into a financial crisis, slashing a
third of the county’s $8.1 million general fund budget. As county
commissioners tried to offset a monthly $220,000 shortfall, budget cuts
eliminated about 25 jobs, forcing 16 layoffs.
Jun
23, 2015 thenation.com
The True Story of a Texas Prison Riot And how our rush to lock up
immigrants has overwhelmed the federal prison system.
The
Willacy County Correctional Center in Raymondville, Texas, is now empty. As
of late May, a single security guard sat in a small car in the entrance to
the parking lot. It has been like this since prisoners so ransacked the
facilities in a February riot, cutting and burning holes in the Kevlar domes
that held them, that the Federal Bureau of Prisons declared it
“uninhabitable.” The agency moved the inmates to other prisons and declined
to renew its contract with the private corrections company that ran the
facility. Nearly all of the 400 employees were terminated. Willacy’s
operating company, Management & Training Corp., says the riot was plotted
by inmates and was unavoidable; the SWAT team it deployed to control inmates,
a measured response to prisoner unrest. This version of the story, which has
circulated in the press since the days after the riot, is at best a partial
truth, and one that obscures the company’s own aggression. A fuller account
of the events at Willacy points to deep problems with the federal
government’s management of a soaring population of immigrants it incarcerates
for border crimes. Until it was closed, Willacy was one of 13 low-security
facilities in the federal system that held noncitizens serving the final
months or years of their criminal sentences. The more than 25,000 men held in
these facilities, called Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons, are later
transferred to immigration authorities and deported.
ADVERTISING
The
facilities are not immigration detention centers; they are criminal prisons.
But they differ from other BOP facilities in key ways. They are all privately
operated. They offer fewer programs, less permanent housing, and often have a
smaller—and lower-paid—staff. The BOP has said that immigrants are an
“appropriate group for housing in privately operated institutions where there
are somewhat fewer programs,” because the inmates aren’t being reintegrated
into US society. Rights groups disagree. “They are segregated federal prisons
where people are sent based on their national origin,” said Carl Takei, an American
Civil Liberties Union attorney who co-wrote a report last year detailing
subpar conditions and lack of government oversight in five CAR prisons in
Texas. “They’re not just separate, but they’re also unequal.” One measure of
that inequity is that riots keep breaking out. Willacy’s riot was the fourth
at a CAR prison since 2008. The BOP’s other low-security prisons, by
contrast, almost never experience such eruptions. The Justice Department
Inspector General released a report in April that found that a CAR prison
operated by the GEO Group in Pecos, Texas, where prisoners rioted in 2009,
had for years had understaffed medical and correctional units and failed to
address known inadequacies in security and healthcare. MTC has said that a
small group of prisoners at Willacy used medical-care complaints as a pretext
to orchestrate the February riot. According to this version of events, the
inmates feared for their safety at the border crossing through which they
were to be deported. MTC says the inmates rioted so that they would be moved
to a different prison and thus would be returned to Mexico through safer
crossings. In May, I interviewed 15 former staff members at Willacy, many of
whom were on the front lines the morning of the riot, as well as three inmates
who were incarcerated there at the time. All the witnesses I interviewed
challenge MTCs claims. They say the prison leadership, not the prisoners,
sparked the riot; what had been a peaceful protest over prison conditions
turned violent only after officers used tear gas, as well as rubber bullets
and exploding BB-filled grenades against a group of prisoners. A member of a
law-enforcement agency that was present after the riot said this account is
consistent” with the one that the agency pieced together.
A
Peaceful Protest
The
conflict in Willacy began around 8 pm on Thursday, February 19, when the
inmates initiated a work strike. “We made the agreement that we would not
leave the units, and that nobody would do anything,” an inmate told me.
Ricardo Garza Jr. had worked as a correctional officer at Willacy since the
prison opened, in 2006, as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention
center. In 2011 ICE ended its contract with MTC, but a month later MTC
received another $532 million 10-year contract to transform the facility into
a CAR prison. Garza was hired back. I talked with Garza in May, at his small
Raymondville home. Garza, like most of the former officers I spoke with, was
still unemployed, and hoped the prison would reopen. Correctional officers
there earned nearly $15, a high hourly wage in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. In
each of the 200-inmate housing pods at Willacy, a single correctional officer
was posted for the duration of each eight-hour shift, watching over the lines
of bunk beds. Garza says officers working the bunks on February 19 were
briefed by ranking prison officials before work. “The lieutenants and the
major that night before it happened told us that they had come to an
agreement that [the inmates] were only going to do a strike, that it would be
a peaceful demonstration, they weren’t going to cause problems, they weren’t
going to try to hurt us whatsoever. They told us not to get them riled up or
disrespect them in any way, using force on them or anything. Just do our jobs
and go home.” As the sun rose at 7 am, officers who were stationed inside the
pods on the next shift recall, the atmosphere was still unusually quiet. They
too were told the inmates were conducting a “sit-in.” “All of them were
peaceful, they weren’t messing with the guards,” said one officer who was in
a pod that morning. All the officers quoted, except Garza, asked not to be
identified, because they hope to be hired back if the prison opens again.
Because the ratio of correctional officers to inmates was low—a common
complaint among the staff—officers say that they relied heavily on the
inmates’ own organizational hierarchy to secure the facility. The Paisas—short for paisanos, or “fellow countrymen” in
Spanish—is a hierarchical group that operates in many federal prisons.
Federal officials call it a gang; at Willacy, it was practically an
administrative partner. “If I really had a problem and I needed it fixed,” an
officer who worked in the dorms told me, “I would just tell the [Paisa]
representative of the dorm.… ‘Hey this is not working, I don’t want to give
you a hard time, just respect me and I respect you.’ And it would be fixed.”
In typical federal prisons, with more racially diverse populations, the Paisas do actually function like any other prison
gang—primarily, providing protection against other groups. But Willacy was
not an ordinary prison. As of late 2014, 85 percent of Willacy’s 2,658
inmates were Mexican nationals. Some were convicted of crimes like
transporting drugs or burglary. But, according to federal records, seven in
10 were incarcerated for immigration-related crimes, mainly “illegal
reentry”—meaning they had been caught crossing the border or in US territory
more than once, or caught returning after a previous deportation.
Two
decades ago, many of these men would not have been in prison.
In
1992 federal courts convicted just 690 people of illegal reentry, according
to figures from the Pew Research Center. Border crossing was treated only as
a civil offense, not a crime. Crossers were deported, but rarely prosecuted
and incarcerated. In the last 20 years, as Congress has tightened criminal
laws on the borders and federal prosecutors have shifted attention to the
southern border, this has changed. By 2012, the number of federal convictions
for illegal reentry had grown to 19,463. The average sentence is two years,
but the charge can carry sentences of up to a decade for people with previous
state or federal convictions. A Homeland Security Inspector General report in
May found no evidence the government’s reentry prosecution program deterred
border crossings. But the prosecutions have helped make Latinos the largest
ethnic or racial group in federal prison.
Medical
Complaints Build
With
a nearly homogeneous population, most men inside CAR prisons automatically
enter into the Paisa structure, often without really choosing to do so. That
structure includes four levels of elected leadership, former inmates say, who
respond to conflicts among inmates and bring complaints to prison
authorities. For better or worse, the system works to maintain order. “You
respect them, they respect you,” said Garza. According to two inmates, Paisa
leaders had been considering a major protest for nearly a year, since the
deaths of two prisoners in early 2014. Records obtained from the federal
government confirm one death in March and another in April 2014. Another
Willacy inmate had died in September 2013. All three men were finishing
sentences for illegal reentry. Prisoners told me that the deaths raised
anxieties about what they already perceived as indifference on the part of
the prison doctor and overall lags in medical care. Half a dozen officers and
former medical personnel defended the prison’s medical-care practices,
arguing that the medical care—which cost the inmates a few dollars out of
their commissary account for each visit—was better than anything the men
likely received outside the prison gates. But other officers said that the
prisoners regularly complained about long delays in the medical unit and
inadequate treatment of serious conditions. Three former officers described
an informal rule for prisoner medical complaints that, in one officer’s
words, held that “If they are not dead and they’re breathing, it can wait
till morning.” Several officers told stories about their struggles to
convince medical staff to pay attention to seriously ill patients in their
units. “For everything, they would give them Ibuprofen,” said another
officer. Following a year of growing anxiety about medical care, Paisa
leaders finally called for the work strike after one of the Paisa
representatives hurt his foot in the recreation yard and faced a typically
long wait for medical care, guards and inmates say.
An
Avoidable Escalation
MTC
spokesperson Issa Arnita acknowledged by e-mail that the inmates had launched
a work strike. He said that on Friday morning the warden “met with the
offenders to attempt to resolve their concerns.” The vast majority of the
inmates—2,000 of the 2,800 people held in Willacy that day—slept in 10
oval-shaped Kevlar tents, lined up on either side of a 600-foot-long lane
that prisoners and officers call “the bowling alley.” Each tent, Alpha
through Juliet, houses 200 men in bunk beds. Four dorms located inside a
hard-walled structure behind the tents hold at least another 200 men each.
There are about 300 solitary-confinement cells. When the prison is at or
above capacity, two prison employees told me, these solitary cells are often
completely filled—not with inmates having discipline problems but with people
who simply cannot fit in the open units. At the time of the riot, about 75
men were held in solitary, prison personnel said. Around 10 am, the officers
began ordering the inmates in each tent to “rack up” beside their beds so
that prison officials could account for each inmate. Inmates in the first
four tents, Alpha through Delta, quickly complied. But the men inside the
fifth tent, Echo, refused. “[Paisa leaders] told us not to do count,” said
Ricardo Quintana, 28, who was being held in Willacy for making a false
statement at a border checkpoint. He has since been deported to Mexico.
Quintana says Maj. Robert Salazar, who had recently been promoted to the rank
just below the wardens, “gave the order three or four times, but the people
didn’t pay attention.” Another former inmate from Echo told me in Spanish,
“We told [the officers] that our condition was to have the reps present”
before they conduct count. The man said he could not be named because he is
now incarcerated in a BOP-run facility. “That’s when Major Salazar warned us
that it was not a game. He threatened us that he was not playing with
children, that everything was going to proceed under his own conditions.”
Salazar assembled a “disturbance-control team” of six to eight officers,
dressed in riot gear and carrying tear gas canisters, plastic handcuffs, guns
loaded with rubber bullets, and BB-filled grenades called “hornets’ nests.”
Officers say it was an act of “intimidation.” “We just show them [the
disturbance team] to show them we mean business,” said an officer who watched
the events. The disturbance team had been called in numerous times in the
previous years, when inmates protested over prison conditions. They rarely
acted. At the front of the disturbance team that day was Daniel Leyva, the
head of Willacy’s Special Investigations Services unit, which was responsible
for keeping tabs on gangs and illicit activity by staff and inmates. Several
officers and inmates I interviewed told me Leyva was widely despised inside
of Willacy. Officers said that he could be aggressive and demeaning to staff.
One officer claimed that he made disparaging remarks to women about their
physical appearance. Another told a story about being summarily accused of
illicit behavior. The sight of the armed team and of Leyva did its job, at
first. Correctional officers and an inmate in Echo told me that a
high-ranking Paisa representative in a neighboring tent signaled through a
window to the men in Echo to comply with the orders. The inmates lined up on
their beds and performed the count. “We were frightened,” an inmate held in
Echo told me. “No one was going to fight or act against the guards.” Salazar
moved on to the next pod: Fox. Two disturbance-control teams waited in the
“bowling alley,” and the officers could see several inmates peering out the
window with their faces covered in towels. Several Willacy employees pointed
to this detail as proof that the riot was planned. But like many other prison
staff, an officer present at the time characterized the inmates as “prepared”
because they saw the team approach in riot gear and knew they would not
comply with the order to rack up. Salazar opened the door to the pod and,
according to two officers positioned outside, told the officer stationed
inside to leave. No more than a minute later, Salazar too left the tent. “I
can’t do nothing,” he said to Leyva, an officer recalls, and began walking
away. Through the open door to Fox, an officer remembers, Leyva yelled, “Hey!
Y’all need to rack up!” Less than two minutes later, according to an officer
watching, Leyva tossed a hornets’-nest grenade into the tent. The men in Fox
pod scattered as the bomb exploded, some lifting the mattresses off their
beds to protect themselves. Leyva signaled to one of the eight-member teams
positioned behind him to rush in. The disturbance-control officers, an
officer with a video camera, and several ranking officers burst into the pod,
throwing at least two more grenades, and at least one canister of tear gas.
Inside, the team began yelling at the inmates to “get down.” Many of the
prisoners dropped to the floor, some writhing in pain from the careening
pellets, while others began running toward the doors on the opposite side of
the pod. When the door would not open, they used small blades broken from prison-issue
shaving razors to cut gashes through the Kevlar walls. Officers told me that
these blades were often found tucked beneath inmates’ mattresses, and were
used to make crafts out of snack wrappers—or to cut holes in the Kevlar to
store contraband. When asked about accounts that officers acted violently
first, MTC spokesperson Arnita said that after the warden ordered a routine
count, “unruly inmates forced officers out of one of the housing units. The
disturbance-control team [DCT] then responded. Inmates continued to disobey
orders to line up for the count and began threatening the officers. That’s
when DCT used tear gas and rubber bullets to attempt to gain control of the
inmates.” But those present describe a nonviolent, if tense, standoff that
erupted into a riot only after Leyva’s escalation. As the prisoners ran
toward the doors inside and began cutting through the walls, officers shot
rubber bullets. Several inmates grabbed broom and mop sticks and threw them
at members of the team. One inmate who was lying on the floor yelled to the
officers to “let me out.” An officer responded by shooting him inside the pod
with a rubber bullet, according to another officer. In less than 5 minutes,
the officers say, most of the inmates had escaped into the gated area between
the Fox and Delta tents. Fewer than 20 inmates remained inside, all prostrate
on the floor.
A
Riot Erupts
As
the sounds of the bangs from the grenades and guns carried down the blowing
alley, inmates in other pods began to leave their beds, peering out the
windows. In a nearby pod, prisoners shouted at an officer to get away from
the door and let them out. The officer refused. They too began to cut through
the Kevlar walls. “I announced it on my radio,” the officer told me, “and
then right when that happened, I heard everyone else saying that [inmates]
were getting out of the tents. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes.” An order
to the officers in all of the tents sounded over the radios: “Get out if you
can.” Outside Fox, hundreds of inmates gathered. Some were screaming. Others
were throwing rocks and pipes, which they’d broken off of the fences, through
the tent’s open door and at the officers. Still more retreated to the
recreation yards behind the tents, wanting to be as far as possible from the
chaos. Several disturbance-control team members shot rubber bullets at the
inmates through the opening, as others cut a hole of their own that the team
slipped through to return to the bowling alley. As officers and other staff
retreated from the scene, they continued to shoot hornets’ nests over the
fences that separated the Kevlar pods from the bowling alley. Inmates soon
broke down the fences and the men in the more permanent housing smashed those
doors as well. They freed the men in solitary and smashed televisions and
refrigerators. From outside, onlookers could see plumes of smoke rising from
the dorms. Five inmates and two officers were treated inside the facility for
minor injuries after the riot, according to MTC spokesperson Issa Arnita. At least
one officer’s injury was caused by a rubber bullet shot by another guard,
according to former prison staff. The inmates I spoke with say that their
fellow prisoners were covered in welts. One officer saw an inmate whose front
teeth had been knocked out. Another says an inmate had a bleeding wound on
his leg from the hornets’ nest explosion. Prison officials did not reenter
the areas where inmates were held until all prisoners had been transferred a
week later. Video and photos that a former officer shot days after the riot,
and provided to me, show signs that order emerged in the facility once prison
staff were pushed out: trash stacked in piles and food organized in rows.
“Please keep clean. For the good of everyone,” an inmate wrote on a wall.
Graffiti scrawled on the side of one of the dorms sums up the inmates’
feelings about the violence: “Todo Por Tu Culpa Leiva”—All Your Fault, Leyva.
Whose
Problem Is This?
“We
were never supposed to escalate,” one of the members of the team who entered
the Fox pod told me, as we sat in the officer’s back yard nearly three months
after the riot. Another member of the team, who had remained in the concrete
yard outside Fox, spoke as if still in shock about the day. “I still don’t
know what happened,” the officer said. “It happened that quick.” None of the
prison staff I interviewed said that inmates had acted violently before being
provoked by Leyva’s grenade.“There
was intimidation by [the inmates], yes. They were wrapping up their faces,
showing us that they are not scared, that they don’t fear what we’ll do,”
said an officer who was on the team inside of Fox. “Could it have been
prevented? Yeah, it could have been prevented.” A veteran officer, who was
clearly angry about the decision to use force, said that the obvious
alternative would have been to “reason with the inmates. They always do it.
They did it from day one to the day before that happened.” The same officer
added that Leyva’s gang-intelligence unit shouldn’t have been part of the
response that day. “They’re not supposed to be dealing with problems about
the inmates not being happy about medical issues.” Several former Willacy
staff told me that they believed the decision to use such extreme force was a
simple power play on the part of Leyva and the new major, Salazar. Daniel
Leyva did not accept several invitations to speak with me about the riot, but
said by e-mail, “I ran my office with integrity and professionalism and
whatever was said I’m sure it was said by people that hold a grudge and did
not like the outcome of the results from my investigations into corruption.”
According to officers, Salazar still works for Management & Training
Corp. He did not reply to a Facebook message or answer repeated calls to a
listed number. By the afternoon of February 21, the FBI, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, and several state and local police agencies were on the
scene. Michelle Lee, spokesperson for the FBI’s San Antonio division, said
that FBI negotiators led talks to resolve the uprising. “It was clear to us
that inmates recognized that continuing on the path that they were on was not
in their best interest,” Lee said. “It was a situation that was ideal for
crisis negotiating.” Inmates, who’d been told that they would be moved to
other prisons, say that any complaints about medical care were made moot.
“Medical care wasn’t an issue anymore—we were leaving,” said Ricardo
Quintana, the former prisoner who has been deported. It took a week to move
the last of the men to other BOP facilities. Bureau of Prisons spokesperson
Ed Ross said that the agency has yet to complete an “after-action report.”
And he said the agency would not comment on the “cause of the incident, or
what may have precipitated any use of force undertaken by the contractor.”
Ross referred me to MTC instead—a stance consistent with the federal
government’s hands-off relationship to the growing number of noncitizens it
incarcerates. “It’s MTC’s facility. From our perspective, we just had a
contract with them,” Ross said.
May 6, 2015 krgv.com
Willacy County on Tuesday auctioned several properties
to collect delinquent taxes. County officials say they have seen an increase
in the number of property owners opt not to pay taxes. Abandoned properties
in the region are a testament of the county’s harsh economic reality. The
county took a big financial hit when a private prison closed in March.
Officials now are trying to recover some of the lost funds through tax sales.
The properties not sold Tuesday will go back on auction block. Deputy Isabel
Salinas collected more than $50,000 from the tax sale. That's the amount the
prison poured into Raymondville's coffers every month just in sewer and water
costs. Salinas says locals take pride in raising the economic standards of
their city. "I have businesses come in and tell me, 'I want to buy so
many lots because I want to start an apartment complex or a gas
station," Salinas said. Some of the bidders are people who have close
ties to the community and whose relatives still live in the city. They say their
goal is to make Raymondville a better place.
Apr
18, 2015 krgv.com
The warden is the last man standing at the Willacy County correctional
facility. Management and Training Corporation laid off nine staff members
Friday. The warden is the only MTC employee left. A riot there two months ago
left the facility uninhabitable. Officials said the cleanup is complete, and
there will be an effort to try and reopen the facility. A total of 363
employees at the prison were laid off. All 2,800 prisoners were moved to other
federal facilities.
Mar
28, 2015 valleymorningstar.com
Officials
cast blame for prison problems RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County officials
Thursday said the federal government was partly to blame for the tent-city
prison’s closure while state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. has failed to address the
loss of hundreds of jobs and a county shortfall of as much as $2.7 million a
year. A County Commission meeting heated up before commissioners ordered a
hiring freeze to help offset a monthly shortfall of about $220,000 that the
Willacy County Correc-tional Center pumped into the
$8.12 general fund budget and capital fund. State District Judge Migdalia
Lopez said officials could consider filing a lawsuit against the federal
government as a result of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ termination of a
contract to hold prisoners at the facility largely made up of 10
Kevlar-covered tent-like domes. The federal government was partly to blame
because it “created the problem” when it housed prisoners in the tent-city,
Lopez said. “We need help,” Lopez told commissioners. “You are part of the
problem,” Lopez said, referring to the federal government. Ed Ross, a Bureau
of Prisons’ spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the agency had no comment.
Justice of the Peace George Solis said Lucio played a role in introducing
Management & Training Corp., or MTC, the company that has operated the
prison since it opened in 2006, to county officials. “Where is Sen. Lucio who
presented MTC to us?” Solis asked commissioners. Questions have surrounded Lucio’s
involvement with MTC for more than 10 years. Lucio could not be reached for
comment because his brother Joseph Lucio died Thursday, office manager Helen
Soto Knaggs said from Austin. In 1999, Lucio “introduced” county officials to
Corplan Corrections, an Argyle consulting firm that
worked to develop the county’s $14.5 million prison that holds inmates for
the U.S. Marshals Service, Lucio said in an interview in January 2005. “I try
to bring people together who could offer solutions,” Lucio, who worked as a
consultant in the project, said in the interview. State ethics laws allow
state senators and representatives to operate pri-vate
consulting businesses, apart from their official duties. Lucio said his
consulting business complied with state law and there was no conflict of
interest. Among Lucio’s clients was Aguirre Construction, the Dallas firm
that de-signed the $14.5 million prison. Lucio said he also worked as a
consultant for MTC. “I have a great deal of respect for Corplan
and MTC,” Lucio said in the 2005 interview. “I have no problem with working
with them. I feel they offer a fair hand in their deal-ings.
They’ve always been fair and honest in the work they’re involved with.” In
January 2005, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen convicted former Willacy
County Commissioners Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez
of taking more than $10,000 in kickbacks in the $14.5 million prison project.
Federal prosecutors accused Tamez and Jimenez of
receiving kickbacks “from particular corporate representatives who were
selected in the competition” for the prison project. No companies were ever
charged in connection with the case. “I’m very interested to see who did
offer any bribes,” Lucio said in 2005. “I know nothing about that. I’m like
anyone else down there who wants to see who’s at fault.” In March 2005, Hanen
convicted former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez of funneling about
$39,000 in bribes to Tamez and Jimenez in exchange
for their votes to hire a consultant in the $14.5 million prison pro-ject. Cortez worked as a con-sultant
for Corplan. Cortez “admitted to for-warding a
series of payments totaling approximately $39,000 from a corporation involved
in soliciting a consulting contract” for the project’s development, the U.S.
Attorney’s Office said after the conviction. “The cash was paid to influence
the Willacy County commissioners to support the hiring of a consultant
concerning the construction” of the prison. Edmundo Ramirez, a McAllen lawyer
who was representing Corplan at the time, said the
company was not involved in any wrongdoing. “I don’t know what Mr. Cortez did
or did not do,” Ramirez said in 2005. “As far as we know, all our employees
conducted themselves within the law. We have nothing to hide.”
MAR
25, 2015 bondbuyer.com
Standard
& Poor’s downgraded the Willacy County Local Government Corp. to a
junk-bond rating of CCC-plus from an investment grade BBB after a $78 million
bond-funded detention center lost its operator in the wake of an inmate
revolt.
Mar
22, 2015 valleymorningstar.com
RAYMONDVILLE
— Willacy County officials plan to pull as much as $700,000 from cash
reserves to help avoid employee layoffs as they try to offset a shortfall
that stems from the closure of the tent-city prison, County Judge Aurelio
Guerra said. He called layoffs and health insurance cuts “a last resort” in
the county that employs about 130 workers. But Guerra said officials plan
budget cuts. “It’s just a matter of how aggressively we’re going to cut,”
Guerra said. Commissioners will review the county’s $8.18 million general
fund budget Wednesday at a meeting of the three boards that oversee the
county’s two prisons and county jail — the Willacy County Local Government
Corp., the Willacy County Public Facilities Corp. and the Willacy County Jail
Public Facility Corp.
Officials
will try to offset a loss of revenue that stems from last month’s closure of
the prison that pumped $2.7 million last year into the county’s general fund
budget and capital fund budget. Management & Training Corp., or MTC, the
Utah company that has operated the prison since it opened in 2006, announced
that the Federal Bureau of Prisons terminated its contract with the company.
The announcement came about three weeks after a Feb. 20 inmate uprising’s
damage left the prison “uninhabitable.” Guerra said officials plan to avoid
layoffs and health insurance cuts. “At this point we’re not considering that
but we can’t rule that out, either,” Guerra said. “If we can hold off and not
lay off anyone, that’s what we plan. We’re leaving that as a last resort.”
Guerra said officials plan to take $600,000 to $700,000 from the county’s
$5.3 million reserve fund to operate the county through the remainder of the
fiscal year that ends in September. “It looks like we can finish off this
year,” Guerra said. He said he did not “feel comfortable” taking more than
$600,000 to $700,000 from the county’s reserve fund, which is set aside to
fund operations in case of emergencies. “We’re not going to deplete the
revenues completely,” Guerra said, referring to the reserve fund.
Mar
17, 2015 krgv.com
Board Of Prison Drops Contract For Willacy County
Correction RAYMONDVILLE - Management and Training Corporation
representatives said the Federal Bureau of Prisons canceled their contract at
the Willacy County Correctional Center. The facility is empty following a
prison riot last month. Inmates are accused of causing extensive damage and
leaving the facility uninhabitable. They were transferred to other prisons.
MTC is still working on cleaning and repairing the prison; however, they've
already laid off 363 workers. "It's devastating to Willacy County, for
sure," says Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence, "especially those
people that, you know, young couples that just bought homes, bought vehicles,
and things of this nature." MTC representatives told CHANNEL 5 NEWS the
national inmate population is down and the Bureau of Prisons doesn't need the
additional beds. There is a 3-day hiring event planned to help workers who
were laid off. As for company itself, it isn't leaving Willacy County
entirely. MTC still runs the county's regional detention center.
Mar
15, 2015 aclu.org
WASHINGTON – According to media reports, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has
canceled its contract with the Management and Training Corporation for the
Willacy County Correctional Center in Raymondville City, Texas. This
cancellation comes after a major uprising on February 20th in which almost
2,000 people incarcerated at Willacy took control of the prison, apparently
in protest of inadequate medical services. “The Bureau of Prisons’ decision
to shut down the Willacy private prison is a welcome but long overdue move,”
said Carl Takei, an attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project. “We hope
the Bureau will sustain this momentum by ending the use of private prisons
entirely. Additionally, Congress must pass sentencing reform legislation and
take steps to address our country’s mass incarceration epidemic.” Nicknamed “Ritmo,” the Gitmo of Raymondville by local advocates, the
Willacy prison was first built in 2006 as an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement detention facility. After numerous complaints of abuse, ICE
cancelled its contract with Willacy in 2011, but the Bureau of Prisons
quickly converted Willacy into a “Criminal Alien Requirement” prison – one of
thirteen such private prisons around the country. The American Civil
Liberties Union profiled this network of private prisons in its June 2014
report, “Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private
Prison System.” The report found that people incarcerated in these private
prisons were subjected to shocking mistreatment and abusive conditions, with
inadequate oversight by the Bureau of Prisons. Following the recent uprising,
the ACLU called for an independent investigation into the causes and
circumstances of the protest.
Mar
3, 2015 expressnews.com
A group of inmates who apparently feared for their safety upon deportation to
Mexico may have orchestrated a prison uprising that destroyed much of the
Willacy County Correctional Center last month, according to preliminary
investigation by the prison company that ran the troubled facility.
Utah-based Management & Training Corp. said interviews with former
inmates point to a small group of influential prisoners who allegedly planned
the Feb. 20 riot to force their transfer to other facilities and ultimately
influence the location of their deportation. Those prisoners set out to cause
significant damage to the living area of the prison and instructed others to
blame their actions on poor medical treatment, the company said. As many as
2,000 inmates refused to work and set fires to bedding and some of the Kevlar
tent structures where they were housed. MTC defended its medical services
Monday, stating it provided care that was accredited by the American
Correctional Association and The Joint Commission, and that surveys found
inmates were satisfied with the medical care they received. Last June, the
advocacy group the American Civil Liberties Union published a damaging report
titled, “Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private
Prison System,” in which prisoners in Willacy complained of raw sewage
overflowing from toilets, biting insects and inadequate medical attention.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons did not respond to requests for comment on the MTC
report. A week after the prisoner riot left the Willacy prison uninhabitable,
MTC began laying off dozens of employees as the 2,834 inmates were
transferred to undisclosed prison locations. A full investigation and
accounting of the damage inside the housing units are underway, the company
said. MTC said it will permanently lay off most employees. It started with 98
people last week and 243 more will be let go next week, while about 50 people
will remain employed. On Monday, the Texas Workforce Commission reported that
MTC and MTC Medical had laid off 80 employees last Friday, and 35 more were
let go Saturday. It said 242 other employees will be laid off by March 9.
Though not unexpected, the news of layoffs comes as a blow to Willacy County,
which received more than a quarter of its $8 million yearly budget from the
2,800-bed facility. The Bureau of Prisons contracted with MTC to run the
Willacy facility — a four-year base period and three, two-year option
periods. If all options were exercised, the contract would expire in August
2021. The current annual operating price is for nearly $47.8 million.
Feb
24, 2015 valleycentral.com
When inmates rioted at the Willacy County Correctional Center last week, the
world paid attention.
Footage
from Action 4 News — showing some of the 2,000 inmates who took over the
prison — aired on national news, appeared on popular websites and even showed
up on Russia Today. Problems at the privately owned prison, though, weren’t
anything new. In June, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a 104-page
report that highlighted problems with private prisons that hold immigrants
without legal permission to stay in the United States. Called “Warehoused and
Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System” the report
included excerpts from interviews with immigrants, including a 38-year-old
Mexican man named Dante who spent time at the tent prison in Raymondville.
“At Willacy County Correctional Center, most ‘dormitories’ are Kevlar tents
that each house about 200 men in bunk beds that are reportedly spaced only a
few feet apart,” according to the report. “Dante, a 38-year-old Mexican
immigrant convicted of reentry, said the tents are dirty and crawling with
insects and that the toilets often overflow and always smell foul.”
“‘Sometimes I feel suffocated and trapped,’” he said, according to the
report. “‘A lot of people get very upset and angry. Sometimes they become so
frustrated that they even speak of burning down the tents. But what’s the
point? They’d build them back up.’” That’s exactly what happened Friday, when
an unknown number of inmates refused to join work details and others didn’t
show up for breakfast. Jailers dropped off food and asked why they were
upset, according to a news release from Utah-based Management and Training
Corp., which runs the prison. Inmates said they were upset about poor medical
care. Jailers placed the prison on lockdown, but the immigrants apparently
escaped from the tents and swarmed the prison recreation yard. Approximately
2,000 inmates took part in the incident, according to the news release. They
lit three small fires, which scorched the tents. The uprising prompted a massive
law enforcement response. Local, state and federal law enforcement surrounded
the prison and fired tear gas. Negotiators resolved the situation Saturday
night. Management and Training Corp. deemed the prison “uninhabitable” and
started transferring immigrants to other prisons on Sunday. Prisons in Pecos,
Eden, Big Spring and Post also hold people charged with immigration crimes.
“Uprisings like this are a predictable consequences of the (Bureau of
Prisons) turning a blind eye to what happens in these private, for-profit CAR
prisons,” said Adriana Piñon, a staff attorney for ACLU Texas. It’s unclear
how long it will take the Management and Training Corp. to repair the damage
and start accepting new inmates.
Feb
23, 2015 fusion.net
Prison-reform advocates say they’re not at all surprised by an uprising at a
Texas prison that has forced the relocation of some 2,800 detained
immigrants. Inmates at the Willacy County Correctional Center, about 200
miles south of San Antonio, started fires and had “kitchen knives and
sharpened mops and brooms to be used as weapons,” Willacy County Sheriff
Larry Spence told local news station KGBT. The prison is “now uninhabitable
due to damage caused by the inmate population,” read a statement released by
the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). It took two days for county and federal police
agencies to control the protests, with authorities even resorting to tear
gas. The inmates were reportedly protesting medical care at the facility,
which is part of a little-known network of 13 prisons designated for
immigrants, many of whom reentered the United States after being deported.
All are run by private companies, a fact advocates for immigration and prison
reform say results in a second-class system with insufficient oversight.
“It’s a predictable consequence of the Bureau of Prisons turning a blind eye
to the abuse at Criminal Alien Requirement prisons,” said Carl Takei, a staff
attorney at the ACLU who visited the facility in 2013. The Bureau of Prisons
did not respond to a request for comment for this story. “Willacy is aptly a
symbol of everything that is wrong with the criminalization of immigration
and BOP’s use of privatization,” Takei told Fusion. And inmates have
reportedly talked about attacking the facility for years. “Sometimes [prisoners]
become so frustrated that they even speak of burning down the tents,” an
inmate named Dante told the ACLU more than a year ago. Takei said when he
visited Willacy inmates described “vermin and insects” crawling in and out of
the tents, overflowing toilets, along with severe overcrowding. Issa Arnita,
a spokesperson for the company that runs the prison, Management and Training
Corporation (MTC), said that they “believe offenders receive timely, quality
health care,” noting that their health services have been accredited by two
independent associations. Referred to as “Tent City” by locals—most
“dormitories” are Kevlar tents that house about 200 men in bunk beds that are
reportedly spaced only a few feet apart—the facility is one of 13 prisons
known as 13 Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons. This is the third time
inmates at Willacy protest in recent years. During the summer in 2013, 30
inmates at the facility refused to leave the recreation yard after “officials
ignored their complaints of toilets overflowing with raw sewage,” according
to a damning ACLU report on CAR facilities. In February 2014, it took 30
local sheriff’s officers to control an uprising that left multiple prisoners
injured. Tent City, along with the 12 other CAR prisons, is part of a
lucrative business which has funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into the
private prison industry in recent years. A Fusion investigation published
earlier this month found that without a single vote in Congress, officials
across three administrations: created a new classification of federal prisons
only for immigrants; decided that private companies would run the facilities;
and filled them by changing immigration enforcement practices. The Willacy
County Correctional Center, like other Criminal Alien Requirement prisons,
have been built in the past 10 years and transformed remote rural landscapes
in the United States. “[Our families] don’t know that we suffer, that we’re
not treated with respect, or that we sometimes lack food or blankets,” a former
inmate named Vicente told the ACLU in a 2013 interview. Read Fusion’s full
investigation into the second-class prison system for immigrants at
Fusion.net/shadow-prisons
Feb
22, 2015 nytimes.com
A federal prison in South Texas over the next week will transfer up to 2,800
inmates to other institutions in the area, after a riot on Friday rendered
the facility uninhabitable, an official said. Inmates at the Willacy County
Correctional Center, who took control of the prison using pipes as weapons,
were compliant on Saturday evening as negotiations with the authorities
continued. Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said in a
phone call that about 2,800 low-security offenders and illegal immigrants
will be transferred to other facilities. “Staff are continuing to communicate
with the inmate population in an effort to regain complete control of the
facility, which is now uninhabitable due to damage caused by the inmate
population,” the bureau said in a statement. The Valley Morning Star newspaper
reported fires were set inside three of the prison’s 10 housing units. It was
not immediately clear what caused the riot. Administrators on Saturday met
with inmates, who broke out of their housing units and entered the recreation
yard, Issa Arnita, a spokesman for Management and Training Corporation, the
operator of the prison, said in a statement. Inmates did not breach the two
surrounding security fences, he said. “Correctional officers used nonlethal
force, tear gas, to attempt to control the unruly offenders,” Mr. Arnita said
in the statement. Staff members and contract employees at the prison did not
suffer any injuries, The Associated Press reported. Federal Bureau of
Investigation personnel were at the correctional center Saturday and were to
remain throughout the night. “The inmates are cooperating, and it appears
they are interested in resolving the matter as well,” Michelle Lee, a
spokeswoman with the FBI in San Antonio, said in a statement. The private
prison, about 200 miles south of San Antonio, once operated as a “tent city,”
or immigration detention facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In
2011, it removed all of its detainees after reports of abuse, and a month
later it reopened as a Criminal Alien Requirement prison. In a report last
year by the American Civil Liberties Union, inmates at the prison said they
faced “severely crowded and squalid living conditions.”
Feb
21, 2015 breitbart.com
MCALLEN,
Texas — Approximately 2,000 inmates at a federal detention center near the
border that primarily houses immigration detainees rioted and set off fires,
requiring a massive mobilization of law enforcement to secure the perimeter
and restore order. The uprising began Friday morning at the MTC Detention
Center in Raymondville when a group of prisoners began getting agitated about
the medical services in the private prison facility, KGBT reported. The
inmates broke out of the housing area and made their way into the
recreational yard, prompting a lockdown of the prison. KGBT reported that the
inmates set off fires in three separate units of the facility. They also tore
down some of the tents used for their housing and shook the perimeter fence
as they chanted their grievances. Tear gas was used in an attempt to break up
the rioting. Federal, state and local law enforcement swarmed to the
facility, setting up a perimeter around the prison as authorities worked to
regain order inside. The facility is run by MTC, a private company that is
under contract with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The BOP lists
the number of detainees at 2,881, with the population being made up primarily
of immigration detainees. The detention center is located in Raymondville,
about 40 miles north of the border city of Brownsville, and is near two other
detention facilities, as well as being right across the street from the
Willacy Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff’s deputies were seen guarding the perimeter
of the facility. As a precautionary measure, school officials in Willacy
County placed three of their schools in a soft lockdown as the situation
unfolded. As of press time, authorities still had not released any
information regarding possible casualties, among either the inmates or law
enforcement. Near the Texas border, private prisons are used to house federal
inmates who are in detention awaiting trial for offenses ranging from
immigration violations to drug trafficking and human smuggling.
May
10, 2014 valleymorningstar.com
RAYMONDVILLE
— Willacy County commissioners this week took no action after they met in closed
session to discuss a lawsuit filed against a construction company that built
the county jail, a county-owned prison that holds federal prisoners and the
$111.5 million so-called tent-city prison. After the meeting, Commissioner Eliberto Guerra said the county will take Houston-based
Hale Mills Construction to mediation to try to resolve the lawsuit that
accuses the company of poor workmanship in the facilities’ construction. The
lawsuit also names Management and Training Corporation, or MTC, a Utah company
that operates the $14.5 million prison that holds prisoners for the U.S.
Marshals Service. The county filed the lawsuit in 197th state District Court
in March, arguing the prison’s poor workmanship led to roof leaks that cost
$620,000 to repair, County Judge John F. Gonzales Jr. said. Traci Koenig,
Hale-Mills’ director of business development, has said the company was
“anticipating a peaceful resolution” to the lawsuit. MTC declined comment,
the company’s spokesman said. Gonzales said the prison’s leaking roof led the
Marshals Service, which pays the county a daily rate of $45 a head to hold
inmates, to threaten to remove its prisoners in 2011. Hale-Mills began to
repair the roof in 2012 but did not finish the job by November 2012, leading
the county to hire another company to complete repairs that a cost of
$620,000, Gonzales said. At the time, Gonzales said a warranty covered roof
repairs.
August
28, 2013 THE BOND BUYER
DALLAS
– Bonds issued for Willacy County, Texas’s $7 million jail in the town of Raymondville
are among several being audited by the Internal Revenue Service to determine
whether its bonds should lose their tax exemption, according to County Judge
John F. Gonzales. Gonzales disclosed the audit at a meeting of the Willacy
County Commissioners Court earlier this month, according to the Valley
Morning Star of Harlingen. The south Texas county, which has invested heavily
in the prison industry, has a large stake in the tax-exempt status of the
prisons. The county seat of Raymondville has earned the nickname “Prisonville” because of its heavy concentration of
private lockups, most housing federal inmates on immigration violations.
Refinancing the $3 million of outstanding bonds as taxable would cost the
county about $200,000, Gonzales said. The jail was built using 2004 bonds
bearing 7.5% coupons on maturities of 2029 with yields of 7.75%, according to
the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s Emma Web site. The original $7.65
million of unrated bonds were issued in the name of the County Jail Public
Facility Corp. of Willacy County. Underwriters were Herbert J. Sims & Co.
and Municipal Capital Markets Group. The law firm of Jenkins & Gilchrest
served as bond counsel. According to the official statement for the 2004
deal, interest rates would rise to 140% of the original issue rate if the
deal were found to be taxable, or the issuer could redeem the tax-exempt
bonds at a price equal to 105% of principal, plus accrued interest. Bonds
become taxable if more than 10% of the proceeds are for private use, such as
a corporate prison company, and more than 10% of the payments for debt
service are from private parties. The county built the jail with plans to use
excess capacity for holding inmates for the U.S. Marshal’s Service to provide
additional income. Earlier this month, the 96-bed jail held 75 prisoners,
including 64 held by the Sheriff’s Department and 11 by federal agencies. In
addition to the conduit issuer for the county jail, county commissioners
created the Willacy County Local Government Corp. and the Willacy County
Public Facility Corp. to issue bonds for privately operated prisons for
federal inmates. Standard & Poor’s on Aug. 15 affirmed its triple-B
rating and stable outlook on the Local Government Corp.’s $75 million of
taxable revenue bonds issued in 2011. With interest, the debt will
amount to $189.6 million at payoff, according to Willacy County District
Attorney Bernard Ammerman. The debt was issued for what is known as “Tent
City,” a prison for low-risk inmates. In February, the Public Facility Corp.
refunded as taxable $20 million of revenue bonds for another prison. Those
bonds were rated BBB-plus by S&P with a stable outlook, despite what
analysts called “the correction industry’s inherent volatility.”
July 9, 2012 Valley Morning Star
Willacy County’s debt for privately operated prisons has swelled to the point
where the county may never be able to pay it back, District Attorney Bernard
Ammerman says. Comparing the debt to the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic,
Ammerman says a private prison deal is on a collision course with an iceberg
of debt that will sink the county financially. But County Judge John F.
Gonzales Jr. and others say the district attorney is wrong, countering that
Ammerman does not understand the types of bonds used to refinance the
prisons. Attorneys who advise the Willacy County Local Government Corp. say
the county and its taxpayers are not responsible for the debt connected to the
so-called “tent city” detention center near Raymondville. The debt has grown
as a result of construction and renovation costs at the “tent city,” Ammerman
said. The detention center, originally built to house illegal immigrants, was
refinanced last year and converted to house low-risk federal inmates from the
U.S. Bureau of Prisons in the last year of their sentences, Gonzales said. A
new agreement with the federal government assures the county there will be a
steady stream of income from the contract to house prisoners, the county
judge said. The Bureau of Prisons has contracted for 90 percent of the beds
in the “tent city” or “dome structures,” and must pay whether they are used
or not, he said. The facility is operated by Management and Training Corp., which
also ran the illegal immigrant detention center, he said. Ammerman’s comments
were prompted by a June 29 presentation of the annual county audit by Quentin
Anderson of the Harlingen accounting firm Long, Chilton LLP. But Ammerman
specializes in criminal law and apparently knows nothing about how the bonds
were structured, said Gonzales and attorneys Ramon Vela of Weslaco and Dan
Rios of McAllen. Even if the tent city fails financially, the Series 2007
bonds will never have to be repaid by the county, state of Texas or any city,
Vela said. The tent city is operated by one of three public facilities
corporations, Gonzales said. The other two PFCs handle financing for the U.S.
Marshals detention center and the county jail, he said. The Willacy County
State Jail, although located near the other facilities, is operated and
financed by the state of Texas, the judge said. Each PFC has a board made up
of the county judge and commissioners, Gonzales and bond attorneys said. The
other two handle finances for the U.S. Marshals’ center and the county jail.
Ammerman claims the arrangement would not protect the county if the tent city
fails financially. If bondholders, who loaned money to build and renovate the
tent city, are trying to collect their money after a default, they will also
sue the county, he said. The PFC’s debt load was expanded last year to
$189,586,801 to refinance old debt and convert the tent city to hold U.S.
Bureau of Prisons inmates.
December 12, 2011 Valley Morning
Star
U.S. Department of Labor officials have reached an agreement with Willacy
County and Management and Training Corp. to issue checks for back wages owed
to current and former MTC employees who worked as guards at the former
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Willacy County Processing Center. The
eligible workers could receive their checks by the end of the month, Willacy
County Judge John F. Gonzales Jr. said Monday. Workers will be notified this
week, and MTC will begin dispersing the back wages, Gonzales said, adding,
"We are pleased employees will receive their back wages in the coming
weeks." A total 1,716 MTC employees at the "tent city" were
underpaid because ICE instructed MTC to pay them about $8.50 an hour, instead
of the federal wage scale of about $12 an hour, Gonzales said. With benefits,
the wages are now around $17 an hour, he said. The workers will receive
varying amounts, depending on how long they worked and in what positions,
with the total reaching about $21 million, Gonzales said. Payments were due
to those who worked from July 21, 2006, to July 21, 2008, Gonzales said.
During the past few months, the camp has been converted by MTC to house
short-term Bureau of Prisoners inmates who are serving the last year of their
sentences. MTC operated the illegal immigrant detention facility and now
operates the facility to hold Bureau of Prisons inmates. The Centerville,
Utah–based company also operates a nearby U.S. Marshals holding facility. The
two facilities are owned by Willacy County but are operated by MTC under
contracts with the federal agencies. Both are located on the east side of
Raymondville near the Willacy County jail. "In 2008, ICE, in
consultation with the DOL, determined that the Service Contract Act was
applicable to operations at the WCPC," the county judge said in a
statement. Last week, Gonzales and county commissioners called on Sens. John
Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, for help when the Department of
Labor tried to slow down the payment process, Gonzales said. Some of the
former guards lost their jobs, the judge said, when the Labor Department
ruled federal wages must be paid because the guards were required to pass
federal background checks and meet physical requirements. Some of the guards
were disqualified for past driving while intoxicated arrests or a bankruptcy
on their records, he said.
December 8, 2011 KRGV
The backpay that is supposed to go to some current and former prison
employees in Willacy County comes to $23 million, but there is a major
problem. The Willacy County judge says the feds are dragging their feet.
About 1,700 current and former prison employees have waited as much as five
years for that money owed by ICE. Many of them will continue to wait. Willacy
County Judge John Gonzales says the money was handed over on time. The checks
are ready to go. The Department of Labor brokered the backpay deal. It
required MTC, the company that manages ICE's detention center, to re-enter
all former employees into its database. That's how the taxes were calculated.
That part is done. Employees still working for MTC will get their check this
month as part of payroll. The holdup comes by way of the next step. The feds
are requiring the money owed to former employees be sent directly to the
Department of Labor by Dec. 13. Even though the checks are ready to go, the
feds have not announced when they will dish out the dough. Willacy County's
judge says that's not good enough. Gonzalez attended a meeting with U.S.
Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn as well as U.S. Congressman Blake
Farenthold. They say they will pressure the Department of Labor on Friday to
offer up a date. If one doesn't come by Monday morning, the group will jump
on a plane and head to Washington, D.C., where they will demand a deadline.
November 10, 2011 KRGV
People who work or worked for the ICE detention center in Willacy County are
finally getting money owed to them. Current and former employees will be paid
$23 million. Willacy County settled with the feds and Management Training
Corp., the operator of the private prison. The original contract didn't
mention employee wage information. The contract was amended in 2007 to
include that information. As a result, Willacy County fought to get back
wages for employees. Checks will start going out in early December.
October 20, 2011 Chicago Homeland
Security Examiner
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) posed difficult questions and concerns to the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet Napolitano, at
this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Of particular concern for
Durbin, was the state of immigration detention facilities, especially the
Willacy Detention facility in Texas. According to documents obtained by the
ACLU more than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration
detention centers since 2007, nearly a third of which came from Texas.
According to the Huffington Post, “other states had far lower reports of
detainee sexual abuse, with the next highest reports coming from California
(17), Arizona (16) and Florida (12). (10/21/2011). Senator Durbin sought
further information and assurances from Secretary Napolitano regarding this
issue. Senator Durbin, the second highest ranking member in the Senate
Democratic leadership, remarked that detainee centers have become a huge
industry in which DHS spends more than $1.7 billion dollars yearly. Yet, the
issue of sexual abuse at the immigration centers has barely reached public
attention. Much of Senator Durbin’s framing of the issue stemmed from a
recent “Frontline” television expose. Durbin noted at the Senate Judiciary
hearing, that “there was an aspect of this program that was particularly
troubling. Maria Hinojosa in part of that program described a woman who was a
victim at this Willacy facility. She had been raped and her identity was
hidden from the camera. She told her story about how it was virtually
impossible for her to even seek justice in this circumstance because she was
totally at the mercy of the guards in this privatized facility.” (Transcript
of Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, October 20, 2011) According to the
Huffington Post, the ACLU obtained information under the Freedom of
Information Act documenting that “detention officers broke a rule that
detainees must not be transported without a same-sex officer present.
Detention officers are also instructed to call supervisors with their
departure and arrival times when transporting detainees, according to a
2007Immigration and Customs Enforcement document.” Senator Durbin underscored
his concern by noting that some 85 to 90 percent of those who were detained
under civil charges, not criminal charges, but people with civil charges do
not have benefits of counsel. Durbin further noted, “That the due process
requirements are very limited on their behalf, and that many times they’re in
facilities that are privatized… As a group immigration detainees are
especially vulnerable to sexual abuse, and its effect on the detainees due to
social, cultural, language isolation, poor understanding of U.S. culture and
the subculture of U.S. prisons and the often traumatic experiences they’re
endured in their culture of origin. The commission (i.e., The National Rape
Elimination Commission) issued proposed standards. The Department of Justice
is now finalizing its national standards to prevent, detect, and respond to
prison rape. In April of this year I wrote a letter to Attorney General
Holder emphasizing the importance of strong standards.” In addition Senator
Durbin mentioned the bipartisan support he received from Senator Sessions
(R-Alabama) and others in passion the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003
which aimed at eliminating sexual abuse while in custody in the U.S. We want
zero tolerance on this.” (Transcript of Senate Judiciary Committee,
10/20/2011) At this point in the hearing Senator Durbin asked DHS Secretary
Napolitano “What is the Department of Homeland Security doing to ensure that
immigration detainees are safe from sexual abuse, whether they’re ICE
facilities or contract facilities? Secretary Napolitano’s response was not
reassuring for immigrants or Senator Durbin. She replied, “When I took over
as Secretary, we found that there were little or no standards being applied
uniformly across all the many detention facilities that we use in –in the ICE
context…Others are privatized, companies like Correction Corporations of
America. We have to have beds, and in particular given our priorities and how
we are managing the system, we need beds that are near the southern border…As
part of the process I brought in someone to actually look at the standards
and we redid our contracts with some of the private providers.” (Transcript,
Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, 10/20/2011) Secretary Napolitano tried to
explain the process she instituted since coming to DHS. She said, “We do have
a process by which we are regularly auditing and overseeing what is happening
there. But that is not to say there aren’t cases that are particularly
horrific.” She further mentioned that she was not familiar with the
“Frontline” documentary focusing on sexual abuses at immigrant detention
centers but would review it and get back to the Senator Durbin. Earlier this
year the ACLU sued the Department of Homeland Security regarding sexual
abuses at immigration detention centers. The ACLU of Texas has filed a suit
in behalf of three women who say they were assaulted by detention guards and
officers. The victims say they were abused on the way to the airport after
posting bond to be released from detention facilities. According to theHuffington Post, “The three women were held for a time
in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor ,Texas.
The 512 bed facility, is privately run on a government contract by private
prison giant Corrections Corporations of America.”
October 10, 2011 Valley Morning Star
A total of 200 Bureau of Prisons minimum security prisoners have arrived at
the “tent city” here, Willacy County Judge John F. Gonzales Jr. said. He was
updated on the facility’s progress this past during a visit he personally
made to the complex, the judge said. Before Sept. 10, the tent city, or “dome
structures” housed illegal immigrants and, under an agreement with Management
and Training Corp. of Utah, the income the county had hoped to gain from the
facility fell far short of expectations, Gonzales said. The county built the
facility, but it is operated by MTC under a contract with the county,
Gonzales said. But a new agreement with MTC to hold U.S. Bureau of Prisons
minimum-security inmates, rather than illegal immigrants, includes guarantees
for the county that will provide much-needed income to supplement the county
budget, Gonzales said. Under the new agreement, the federal government pays
$49 a day for housing a prisoner, Gonzales said. Payments on bonds that
financed construction of the facility come from that fee first, then the
county will receive $2.50 a day for each prisoner to bolster county finances.
The balance then goes to MTC, he said. The previous agreement to hold
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees depended on the number of
inmates held at the facility to provide the county with income, Gonzales
said. “It never reached 50 percent capacity,” he said. If 1,380 prisoners or
fewer are housed, the county will get a guaranteed payment of $1,259,250 a
year, Gonzales said. That would be considered 50 percent capacity, he said.
“If the number of prisoners reaches 1,381 at this facility, we get $2,266,650
a year, which would be considered 90 percent full,” the county judge said.
“Even if it drops down to less than that, we still get paid $2,266,650 a
year,” he said. The maximum capacity of the tent city is 3,117 beds filled,
Gonzales said. The county would get an additional $577,612 a year, for a
total of $2,844,262 maximum possible payment to the county, he said.
June 23, 2011 Valley Central
A former jailer is behind bars after being accused of having sex with a
female inmate at a private detention center in Willacy County. Federal
authorities arrested 31-year-old Edwin Rodriguez on a sexual abuse of a ward
charge. The former jailer is accused of having sex with a female inmate at
the Willacy County Regional Detention Facility in Raymondville back in
October 2008. A federal grand jury in Brownsville indicted Rodriguez in the
case on Tuesday but the case had remained sealed until Thursday morning.
Rodriguez appeared before U.S. Magistrate Court Judge Felix Recio on Thursday morning. Judge Recio
denied bond for Rodriguez until a Monday afternoon hearing. Officials with
the Management & Training Corporation (MTC), which owns the detention
center, issued the following statement about the case: “MTC can’t comment
about the specifics of this indictment as it is an open legal proceeding. MTC
has a zero tolerance policy for this type of activity. The company has an
absolute expectation for the professional behavior of all employees. We have
and will cooperate fully with authorities in their investigation of the
alleged sexual abuse.”
June 1, 2011 Valley Morning Star
Layoffs of 120 Management and Training Corp. employees Friday at the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camp will hurt Willacy County’s
struggling economy, but a proposal in the works could result in an additional
privately operated prison with more jobs and more revenue for the county. The
employees at the ICE detention center for illegal immigrants resulted from a
lower population of detainees than was originally planned, local government
officials said. Utah-based MTC operates the facility that houses ICE
detainees, who are being detained for immigration law violations, but not for
committing other crimes. “ICE informed us last week they have reduced their
expectation of how they are going to use the facility,” MTC spokeswoman
Celeste McDonald said. “As a result, it became necessary last week to
implement a reduction in force.” Former MTC employee Johnny Falcon said
Tuesday that workers were notified Friday they will be losing their jobs.
“That’s a lot of people,” Falcon said. “It’s a small town, that’s a heavy
blow.” McDonald said no more layoffs are planned. The ICE dome structure, or
tent facility, was designed to house up to 3,000 immigration detainees, but
has never held more than 1,800, Raymondville City Manager Eleazar “Yogi”
Garcia said. Garcia and Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said a proposal
is being prepared by a private company to build a new, smaller, ICE facility
and then convert the former ICE detention center to house federal Bureau of
Prisons criminal inmates. If BOP approves the plan, some of the laid-off
guards from the ICE center could be re-hired as guards at the smaller ICE
center or the BOP facility, Spence said. But Willacy County Judge John F.
Gonzales Jr. said the plan hasn’t been presented to the federal government
yet. “The reason for the ICE layoffs is that the ICE unit is set up for 3,000
beds and that has never happened,” the judge said. “They’ve been averaging
about 1,200 beds, so half the facility is empty all the time,” Gonzales said.
“MTC has renegotiated their contract with ICE and it has nothing to do with
the county, we’re not in control of that,” he said. “Their original contract
was that they had to be set up as if they had 1,850 beds filled all the time.
Well, they’re averaging about 1,200, so they’re losing money, I would think.”
ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruñeda issued a statement
confirming the reduction in employment. “U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO,
is aware of the matter regarding the employment issues going on between
Willacy County and MTC Corp. This issue is not affecting ICE ERO employees,
she said. “ICE is absolutely committed to ensuring that all detainees in our
custody are held and treated in a safe, secure and humane manner. We make
that commitment in the interest of the detainees themselves and in the
interest of the public at large. Again, our principal concern is the safety
and security of the detainees and the public outside the facility.” Falcon
said he and others who were employed by ICE at the detention center from 2006
to 2010 were dismissed when they were subjected to a stricter type of
security clearance they were not originally required to pass. During that
period, MTC did not pay wages ICE required of $14.50 an hour, Falcon said. He
and other guards were at first paid $8 an hour, then $9 an hour, he said.
Federal officials later determined they were required to be paid $14.50 and
must pay back pay, Falcon said. But MTC has been dragging its feet about
paying the back pay amounts and also owes the former employees for the pay
difference, as well as amounts due from 401k plans and other funds, Falcon said.
McDonald issued a response to Falcon’s allegations late Tuesday: “ICE
requires rigorous background checks at all of its facilities including the
Willacy County Processing Center, she said. “In compliance with this
requirement, every MTC employee must be cleared by ICE in order to be
employed at Willacy County Processing Center.” MTC’s payment of back wages
depends on a federal decision, she said. “We are awaiting a decision by the
U.S. Department of Labor regarding payment of back wages to Willacy County
Processing Center current and previous employees related to Service Contract
Act wages.”
May 31, 2011 Valley Morning Star
Layoffs of 120 employees of Management and Training Corp. Friday at the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camp will hurt Willacy County’s
struggling economy, but a proposal in the works could result in an additional
privately operated prison with more jobs and more revenue for the county. The
layoffs at the ICE detention center for undocumented immigrants resulted from
a lower population of detainees than was predicted, local government
officials said. Utah-based MTC operates the facility that houses individuals
detained for immigration law violations but not for committing other crimes.
“ICE informed us last week they have reduced their expectation of how they
are going to use the facility,” MTC spokeswoman Celeste McDonald said. “As a
result, it became necessary last week to implement a reduction in force.” She
said no more layoffs are planned. The ICE dome structure, or tent facility,
was designed to house up to 3,000 people but has never held more than 1,800,
Raymondville City Manager Eleazar “Yogi” Garcia said. Garcia and Willacy
County Sheriff Larry Spence said a proposal is being prepared by a private
company to build a new, smaller, ICE facility and then convert the current
detention center to house federal Bureau of Prisons criminal inmates. If the
Bureau of Prisons approves the plan, some of the laid-off guards from the ICE
center could be rehired as guards at the smaller ICE center or the BOP
facility, Spence said. But Willacy County Judge John F. Gonzales Jr. said the
plan hasn’t been presented to the federal government yet. “The reason for the
ICE layoffs is that the ICE unit is set up for 3,000 beds and that has never
happened,” the judge said.
November 15, 2010 Valley Morning
News
A Willacy County Regional Detention Center guard went before a federal judge
in Brownsville Monday on charges that he planned to smuggle more than 4
pounds of cocaine into the facility he guarded, the U.S. Attorney's Office
said Monday. A federal indictment shows that Christopher George Gonzalez, 29
of Harlingen, was arrested Nov. 10 following an undercover sting in
Harlingen. Prior to his arrest, Gonzalez had been under investigation by the
Texas Department of Public Safety, the Houston High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area task force and U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Attorney's Office
stated. Records state that Gonzalez met an undercover Houston police officer
at the Harlingen Lowe's parking lot who had offered to pay Gonzalez $2,000 to
smuggle drugs into the detention center. Gonzalez took the money and two
wrapped bundles of what appeared to be cocaine and then left the parking lot,
court records state. According to his indictment, Gonzalez had agreed to
smuggle two ounces of cocaine at a time into the detention center. Gonzalez
was later stopped by a DPS trooper, arrested and taken into federal custody,
records show. He was released after his hearing Monday on a $50,000 bond, the
U.S. Attorney's Office stated. The Willacy County Regional Detention Center
in Raymondville is a privately-run facility contracted by the U.S. Marshals
Services to Management & Training Corporation, a contractor that manages
private prisons throughout the country. The facility houses inmates with
pending federal charges.
May 21, 2010 Valley Morning
Star
Ten former security guards at Willacy County Regional Detention Facility have
filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Management & Training Corp.
of Centerville, Utah, and two company officials claiming they were fired for
refusing to make false statements. Peter Zavaletta,
the attorney for 10 of the 11 guards who were fired, said his clients lost
their jobs for refusing to sign statements saying other guards were gambling
while on duty. "None of my clients were gambling and when they refused
to sign statements accusing each other of gambling, they were
terminated," he said. Zavaletta said he doesn’t
know who the 11th guard is or who his attorney is, but was told by MTC there
is an 11th guard who was fired. None of the guards had ever been disciplined
and several had been promoted to supervisory positions at the privately owned
and operated prison, the lawsuit states. One of the plaintiffs, Santos Talavares, graduated from the University of Texas- Pan
American in Edinburg in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice,
the lawsuit states. Another plaintiff, Robert Villarreal Jr., had been promoted
to sergeant and then to shift lieutenant, Nicholas Catache
had been promoted to sergeant, Alberto Najera had been promoted to lieutenant
and earlier this year was named ‘Supervisor of the Year,’ Rene Fonseca Jr. is
a decorated veteran who had served in Iraq before his honorable discharge
from the U.S. Army in 2006, the lawsuit states. "We don’t comment on
ongoing litigation," Carl Stuart, spokesman for Management &
Training Corp., said on Friday. The lawsuit seeks back pay, future pay and
compensation for mental anguish, and punitive damages for what the lawsuit
alleges was "intentional, unlawful employment practices."
November 17, 2009 Texas Tribune
The detained immigrant told officials at the South Texas Detention
Complex he’d been sexually assaulted and tortured in his home country and
asked for medical care. Six weeks later, when he still hadn’t seen a doctor,
the facility medical director offered this explanation: The complex didn’t
have a local urologist on contract. That wasn’t the only health care
shortfall Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators cited in a
2008 report, one that didn’t name the detainee or his ethnicity. Sixteen of
the facility’s 40 “critical” health care positions were vacant, leaving one
staff doctor and two dozen nurses to care for nearly 1,400 detainees. The
complex had no psychiatrist and no dentist, and was short 11 nurses. As a
result, investigators said, chronic care management was “haphazard at best.”
Monitoring of prescription drugs was lax. And not all intake screenings were
performed on time. “Poor medical care was the most problematic issue facing
the facility,” investigators wrote. ICE officials say the agency “is
committed to providing all detainees in our care with timely, safe, humane
and appropriate treatment.” “Significant reforms are being made to the
immigration detention system and health care management,” said agency
spokesman Carl Rusnok. But many federal authorities
say they’re battling the same staffing shortages facing hospitals, nursing homes
and prison systems nationwide. Though they are aggressively recruiting,
they’re competing for candidates with the higher-paying private sector.
Immigrant rights groups say the remote locations of many Texas detention
centers only contribute to high employee turnover and vacancy rates. That
leads to overmedication, poorly kept medical records, and “sporadic and
inconsistent care,” said Ann Baddour, a policy
analyst with Texas Appleseed, a non-profit that uses volunteer lawyers to
help solve social problems. Some get no care at all, she said. A 2007 review
of medical care at the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville found medical
staffing was “barely adequate,” and that the facility’s clinic was too small
to care for its 1,800 detainees. Twenty of the facility’s 46 health care
positions were vacant. The detention center had no clinical director,
dentist, pharmacist or psychiatrist. Half of Willacy’s licensed vocational
nurses hadn’t even completed new employee orientation. In facility
inspections in 2007 and 2008, investigators cited medical staffing shortages
at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center, the El Paso Processing Center
and the Laredo Contract Detention Facility. In El Paso, five of the
facility’s 34 health care positions were vacant – including the staff
psychiatrist. At the Port Isabel facility, inspectors found a third of
detainees’ medical requests weren’t handled in a “timely” manner. And in
Laredo, inspectors found detainees with doctor-ordered dietary requirements
weren’t getting the right food, and that patients had little privacy in the
facility clinic. Kathleen Baldoni, a former nurse at the Willacy Detention
Center, said these problems are common across Texas' facilities. She said
inmates suffering from health problems are "lucky to be seen within a
week,” and that many illnesses occur because detainees don’t get enough water
or nutritional food. Medical staff never even get around to simple quality of
life fixes, she said, like cleaning out detainees’ hearing aids or replacing broken
eye glasses. “We didn’t delve into anything that wasn’t absolutely
necessary,” said Baldoni, who has testified before Congress on health care in
immigration detention. “After a while, you stop thinking about the people.
You force yourself not to care as much. Because how else do you get the job
done?”
October 21, 2009 Valley Central
Former Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra has filed a federal
lawsuit against Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. and 28 others. The
former district attorney alleges that Lucio and the others used their
positions to derail an investigation into private prisons in Willacy County.
Guerra claims in his 35-page lawsuit that he secured three corruption
convictions against three Willacy County officials in state and federal
courts. The former district attorney claims he was investigating the April
2001 death of inmate Gregorio de la Rosa when he began to uncover a massive
kickback and corruption scheme between the private prison companies and
public officials. Guerra claims then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
ordered then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Don DeGabrielle to halt a public integrity investigation. The
former district attorney claims that several public officials with
connections to the prisons dragged his name through the mud and raised false
criminal charges that ultimately cost him a bid for re-election and
obstructed the investigation. The lawsuit names the following defendants: •
Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio • Willacy County • City of Raymondville •
Former Willacy County Judge Simon Salinas • Raymondville Police Chief Uvaldo Zamora • Special prosecutor Mervyn Mosbacker • Special prosecutor Gustavo Garza •
Raymondville Police Detective Daniel Cavazos, Jr. • State District Judge
Migdalia Lopez • State District Judge Janet Leal • Willacy County Sheriff’s
Department Deputy David Martinez • Willacy County District Clerk Gilbert
Lozano • Corporation Wackenhut Correction Inc. • Hale Mills Construction Inc.
• Hale Mills Construction Ltd. • James Parkey, Corplan Correction, Inc. • Corplan
Correction Inc. • Michael Harling, Municipal Capitol Market, Inc. • Municipal
Capitol Market Inc. • Ramon Vela • Phil Parker, Hale Mission Construction •
J. C. Conner, Management and raining Corporation, Inc • Management and
Training Corporation, Inc • Bill Bryan • R Scott Marquardt, Management and
raining Corporation, Inc • Texas Rangers Captain Clete
Buckaloo • Former U.S. Attorney for Southern
District of Texas Donald DeGarbrielle • U.S.
Attorney for Southern District of Texas Tim Johnson • Former U.S. Attorney
Alberto Gonzales Among the accusations are engaging in organized criminal
activity, accepting of an honorarium, abuse of official capacity, official
oppression, murder and manslaughter. The former district attorney had secured
a criminal indictment involving similar accusations against former Vice
President Dick Cheney and several others named in this new lawsuit back in
November 2008. The case was thrown out but Guerra continues to fight against
abuses in private prisons in Texas and other states.
October 7, 2009 San Antonio
Express-News
In a move that could affect the revenues of private prison firms and county
jails, the Obama administration said Tuesday it will review, renegotiate and
possibly terminate some of its more than 300 contracts for detaining
unauthorized immigrants. The announcement by Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano is part of an overhaul aimed at ending the
reliance on penal institutions for detainees with noncriminal immigration
violations or valid asylum claims. The overhaul, first announced in August,
followed scathing reports and lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union
and other groups alleging inhumane conditions, denial of medical care, and
isolation in remote areas with limited access to pro-bono legal aid.
Napolitano, in a news conference with Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Assistant Secretary John Morton, said she inherited a scattered “nonsystem” of government and privately run facilities
that needed to be monitored. “It's a huge range of detainees,” she said,
“from those who have criminal records who need to be in a very prisonlike
setting to those who have no record at all and indeed have come seeking
asylum.” The system has ballooned from 5,000 beds in 1994 to more than 32,000
beds in 2008, used by about 380,000 detainees that year. Napolitano said the
capacity to detain people would remain, but the standards of “health and
safety, law, and indeed human decency” needed to be enforced. Plans include
centralizing operations, doubling the personnel involved in detention center
oversight, building new facilities in urban locations near immigration
service providers, and housing detainees in converted hotels, nursing homes,
or other residential facilities. Detainees would be classified by risk, with
nonviolent, noncriminal populations such as recently arrived asylum seekers
sent to less prisonlike environments. Detainees with criminal convictions
would remain in jails. There are also plans for an online system to locate
detainees, something family members and even attorneys are not always able to
do. The practice of detaining families at the T. Don Hutto Family Residence
Center in Taylor, which drew criticism because of its cells and barbed wire,
has already ended. The facility is now being used to house female detainees.
It was unclear what effect the changes will have on private firms or
communities that draw revenue from jailing detainees, but Willacy County
Sheriff Larry Spence said the reduced population at the Willacy Detention
Center in Raymondville — at 3,000 beds the nation's largest — has been
apparent and may cause problems for a county that counts on jobs, taxes, and
revenue from it. “I know the numbers are down from what they used to be,” he
said. “It means the county hasn't had the same amount of money coming in.”
The county subcontracts with Utah-based Management & Training Corp., a
private prison management firm. Kathleen Walker, past president of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she expected quite a few
disappointed contractors. “I would imagine that in the state of Texas, where
we have so many different county facilities and independent facilities run by
contractors, that they are not going to like seeing a potential dip in
revenues to retirement centers or abandoned hotels,” she said. “But to put
people in on civil violations with people that have felony exposure is really
just not acceptable.”
June 28, 2009 Brownsville Herald
It took about five years, but state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. seems to have
phased out his paid consulting jobs for construction and engineering firms.
Last year, however, he still received at least $25,000 in consulting fees
from the Houston-based TEDSI Infrastructure Group, according to his personal
financial statement on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. "I was
fulfilling a prior obligation on a contract that I had with TEDSI which
expired in 2008," Lucio wrote in a statement to The Brownsville Herald
Wednesday. Lucio, D-Brownsville, did not say what he did for the firm, but in
2002 said that he would set up meetings and introduce the firm to officials
in Brownsville. In 2004 amid mounting criticism of possible conflicts of
interest, Lucio told the Herald that he would phase out consulting for firms
that do business in the Rio Grande Valley and the state. Besides consulting
for TEDSI, Lucio also was retained by CorPlan
Corrections of Dallas, Management & Training Corp. of Utah, Aguirre Inc.
of Dallas, and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. of
Houston. At the start of 2005, Lucio severed ties with CorPlan,
Aguirre, and MTC amid federal inquiries into the federal detention center in
Willacy County. A Webb County commissioner and two former Willacy County
commissioners were convicted of bribery. Companies involved in the project
were not accused of any wrongdoing. Lucio also stopped consulting for Dannenbaum, which he said he introduced to the
Brownsville Navigation District. The BND paid Dannenbaum
$15.4 million of $21.4 million spent toward developing a still non-existent
international bridge at the Port of Brownsville. But, he continued consulting
for TEDSI until last year. Lucio's prior financial statements show that in
2007 TEDSI paid him from $10,000 to $24,999 and $25,000 or more in prior years.
Lucio had been on CorPlan's payroll since 1999.
Aguirre, MTC and Dannenbaum then contracted him,
but in interviews prior to 2004 he wouldn't specifically say when or how much
each paid him. It was not until 2004 that Lucio started specifically listing
the companies that retained him in his financial statements and these,
coupled with prior interviews with the senator, reflect that the five firms
paid him at least $340,000. Embattled former Willacy County District Attorney
Juan Angel Guerra obtained an indictment against Lucio last year, charging
him with profiting from the elected office. Administrative Judge Manuel Bañales Jr. dismissed the indictment following arguments
from Lucio's attorney, Michael R. Cowen, that the indictment was defective
and that Guerra was seeking revenge against those who he perceived to be his
political enemies.
February 4, 2009 Brownsville Herald
A federal investigation into contraband and narcotics trafficking in the
Willacy County Detention Center in Raymondville netted the arrest of a guard
in early January, court records show. This was not placed in the public
record in the U.S. Southern District of Texas until Tuesday, however. A
special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of
Inspector General arrested Thomas Najera, of Raymondville, on Jan. 8 for
possession of approximately 28 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute it,
according to a criminal complaint against the guard. During the course of an
investigation, a special agent received information from an informant that
Najera was smuggling narcotics into the facility for several inmates, the
complaint says. The facility houses inmates under contract with the federal
government. The complaint notes that Najera would charge a fee based on the
type of material he was asked to smuggle. The special agent received further
information that on Jan. 8 Najera was going to accept cocaine for delivery to
a detainee in the center. The special agent conducted surveillance and at
8:45 p.m. on that date spotted Najera meeting a woman at the Wal-Mart parking
lot in Raymondville. The woman gave Najera a small object, according to the
complaint. The special agent and other agents approached Najera, searched a
vehicle he was occupying and found the cocaine. Najera was arrested and U.S.
Magistrate Judge Felix Recio set a $50,000 bond,
requiring a $2,000 deposit. Najera was released from federal custody in
mid-January when the deposit was paid with instructions not to travel into
Mexico, refrain from drug use, possession of drugs, or excessive alcohol
consumption, and obtain a telephone line. Najera also could be subjected to
random urine analysis. A private firm, Management & Training Corporation,
operates and manages the detention center for Willacy County.
October 29, 2008 Raymondville
Chronicle News
Willacy County's commissioners voted to give Sheriff Larry Spence
$202,000 so he can make his construction bond payment of $439,000 for the
county jail, which is due Nov. 1st. Commissioners also acted to pay down $3
million on the jail's principal debt of about $7.5 million, so the sheriff
will be in a better position to make future bond payments. In past years the
county has had to bail the sheriff out, so he could make bond payments, and
not put the county in default. The $3 million would come from a $6 million
revenue fee account from the 3,000 bed ICE Unit. Commissioners also voted
unanimously to send a resolution to state and federal legislators expressing
concern over recent firings of MTC workers at the 3,000 bed ICE Unit, due to
a change in federal employment policies. Of concern to Judge Protem Emilio "Junior" Vera and Commissioner
Eddie Chapa are dozens of MTC employee being fired, because their personal
credit scores are below a certain level. "We've got a lot of good
employees being fired," Vera said. "I spoke with an ICE official in
San Antonio and said the county is concerned." The county's unemployment
rate was 21 percent before the ICE Unit was built, and had dropped to eight
percent just before the policy change, according to the resolution. The
resolution states in part. "Willacy County ..... is deeply concerned
regarding policy changes ... that will negatively impact the retention of
local workforce." Employees at the ICE Unit sent a petition to U.S.
Cong. Solomon Ortiz (D-Corpus Christi) several months asking for his help and
intervention. Ortiz told the Chronicle/News is a prior interview that he was
concerned as well.
September 19, 2008 Valley Morning
Star
Willacy County residents make up more than half of employees at a
county-owned prison and a detention center that holds illegal immigrants,
said the company that runs the operations. Criminal background checks screen
out about 2 percent of people who apply for jobs at the 525-bed prison and
the 3,000-bed detention center, said Carl Stuart, a spokesman for Management
and Training Corp. in Centerville, Utah. But three years after the detention
center opened, the local job pool is "tapped out," Stuart said in
an e-mail. Now the company recruits more employees from outside the county,
he said. County residents make up about 73 percent of employees at the
detention center that the company operates for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Stuart said. The country's largest illegal immigrant detention
center employs about 700 workers, said Jackie Roberson, Raymondville's
economic development manager. The detention center pays starting wages of
about $9.36 an hour, Stuart said. Locals make up about 53 percent of
employees at the county-owned prison that holds prisoners for the U.S.
Marshals Service, Stuart said. The prison pays starting salaries of about $17
per hour. The prison employs about 200 workers, Roberson said.
May 11, 2008 Washington Post
Neil Sampson, who ran the DIHS as interim director most of last year, left
that job with serious questions about the government's commitment. Sampson
said in an interview that ICE treated detainee health care "as an
afterthought," reflecting what he called a failure of leadership and
management at the Homeland Security Department. "They do not have a
clear idea or philosophy of their approach to health care [for
detainees]," he said. "It's a system failure, not a failure of
individuals." A new director for health services arrived six months ago,
following a stretch when the agency was run first by Sampson and then by a
second interim director. The new boss is LaMont W.
Flanagan, who brought with him the credential of having been fired in 2003 by
the state of Maryland for bad management and spending practices supervising detention
and pretrial services. An audit found that Flanagan had signed off on
payments of $145,000 for employee entertainment and other ill-advised
expenditures. His reputation was such that the District of Columbia would not
hire him for a juvenile-justice position. "Another death that needs to
be added to the roster," Diane Aker, the DIHS chief health
administrator, tapped out in an e-mail to a records clerk at headquarters on
Aug. 14, 2007. Juan Guevara-Lorano, 21, was dead.
Guevara, an unemployed legal U.S. resident with a young son, was arrested in
El Paso for driving illegal border-crossers farther into the city. He was
paid $50. An entry-level emergency medical technician, with barely any
training, had done Guevara's intake screening and physical assessment at the
Otero County immigration compound in New Mexico. Under DIHS rules, those
tasks are supposed to be done by a nurse. After two difficult months in
detention, Guevara had decided not to appeal his case. He would go back to
Mexico with his family. But on Aug. 4, he came down with a splitting
headache, what he called a nine on a pain scale of 10, his medical records
show. The rookie medical technician prescribed Tylenol and referred Guevara
to the compound's physician "due to severity of headache ... and
dizziness," according to medical records. But Guevara never saw a
doctor. Eight days after the first incident, he vomited in his cell. The same
junior technician came to help but was unable to insert a nasal airway tube.
Guevara was taken to a hospital, where doctors determined an aneurism in his
brain had burst. His wife, pregnant at the time with their second child,
recalled that she rushed to the hospital but ICE guards would not let her
inside, until the Mexican Consulate interceded. Guevara's mother waited five
hours before they let her in. By then he was brain-dead. "My son is not
coming back," sobbed Ana Celia Lozano months later, sitting in Guevara's
small mobile home as her grandson played on the floor. "I want to know
how he lived and died, nothing more." What appears to be the most
incriminating document in Guevara's case has been partially blacked out.
Still, what is left shows that he did not receive adequate care. "The
detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN, midlevel or physician. . . . At
the time of the incident on 8/12/2007, the detainee was seen and examined by
EMTs." Each immigration facility is allotted a different number of
positions, and a shortage of doctors and nurses is not unusual at centers
across the country. Records from February show that about 30 percent of all
DIHS positions in the field were unfilled. ICE officials said last week that
the current vacancy rate is 21 percent. Concern about the vacancies is voiced
repeatedly at clinical directors' meetings. "How do we state our
concerns so that we can be heard? . . . this is a CRITICAL condition. . . . We have bitten off more than we can chew," a
physician wrote in the minutes of one meeting last summer. In some prisons,
the staffing shortages are acute. The Willacy County detention center in
South Texas -- the largest compound, with 2,018 detainees -- has no clinical
director, no pharmacist and only a part-time psychiatrist. Nearly 50 percent
of the nursing positions were unfilled at the 1,500-detainee Eloy, Ariz., prison
in February. At the newly opened 744-bed Jena., La., compound, nurses run the
place. It has no clinical director, no staff physician, no psychiatrist and
no professional dental staff. Last August, Sampson, who was then DIHS interim
director, warned his superiors at ICE that critical personnel shortages were
making it impossible to staff the Jena facility adequately. In a vociferous
e-mail to Gary Mead, the ICE deputy director in charge of detention centers,
he wrote: "With the Jena request we have been re-examining our
capabilities to meet health care needs at a new site when we are facing
critical staffing shortages at most every other DIHS site. While we
developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment efforts
we have been unable to meet the demand." The slow ICE security-clearance
process forced many job applicants to go elsewhere, Sampson wrote. Of the 312
people who applied for new positions over the past year, 200 withdrew, he
wrote, because they found other jobs during the 250 days it took ICE, on
average, to conduct the required background investigations. Last week, ICE
officials said the average wait had decreased recently to 37 days. These
shortages have burdened the remaining staff. In July 2007, a year after
Osman's death in Otay Mesa, medical director Hui
strongly complained to headquarters about workload stress. "The level of
burnout . . . is high and rising," she wrote in an e-mail. "I know
that I have been averaging approximately 2-6 hrs of
overtime daily for the past 2 months. I will no longer be able to sustain
this pace and will be decreasing the number of hours that I work overtime.
This being said, more will be left undone because we simply do NOT have the
staff." The overcrowding has created a petri dish for the spread of
diseases. One mission of the Public Health Service is to detect infectious
diseases and contain them before they spread, but last summer, the gigantic
Willacy center was hit by a chicken pox outbreak. The illness spread because
the facility did not have enough available isolation rooms and its large pods
share recycled air, but also because security officers "lack education
about the disease and keep moving around detainees from different units
without taking into consideration if the unit has been isolated due to heavy
exposure," noted the DIHS's top specialist on infectious diseases,
Carlos Duchesne. The staff was forced to vaccinate the entire population in
mid-July. In one 2007 death, memos and confidential notes show how medical
staff missed an infectious disease, meningitis, in their midst. Victor
Alfonso Arellano, 23, a transgender Mexican detainee with AIDS, died in
custody at the San Pedro center. The first three pages of Duchesne's internal
review of the death leave the impression that Arellano's care was proper. But
the last page, under the heading "Off the record observations and
recommendations," takes a decidedly critical tone: "The clinical
staff at all levels fails to recognize early signs and symptoms of
meningitis. . . . Pt was evaluated multiple times and an effort to rule out
those infections was not even mentioned." Arellano was given a
"completely useless" antibiotic, Duchesne wrote. Lab work that
should have been performed immediately took 22 days because San Pedro's clinical
director had ordered staff members to withhold lab work for new detainees
until they had been in detention there "for more than 30 days," a
violation of agency rules. "I am sure that there must be a reason why
this was mandated but that practice is particularly dangerous with chronic
care cases and specially is particularly dangerous with . . . HIV/AIDS
patients," Duchesne wrote. "Labs for AIDS patients . . . must be
performed ASAP to know their immune status and where you are standing in
reference to disease control and meds." Given the frequency with which
ICE moves people within the detention network, keeping track of detainees is
critical to stopping the spread of infectious illnesses. The purchase of an
electronic records system named CaseTrakker in 2004
was supposed to help. But according to internal documents and interviews, CaseTrakker is so riddled with problems that facilities
often revert to handwritten records. A study at one site found that it took
one-third more time to use CaseTrakker than to use
paper. Thousands of patient files are missing. Recorded data often cannot be
retrieved. Day-long outages are common. When detainees are transferred from
one facility to another, their records, if they follow them, are often
misleading. Some show medications with no medical diagnoses, or "lots of
diagnoses but no meds," according to Elizabeth Fleming, a former
clinical director at one compound in Arizona. After Yusif
Osman's death and the discovery of the problem with his computerized records,
the DIHS ordered a review of all charts at the Otay
Mesa center. During the review, auditors also found that 260 physical exams
were never completed as required. The nurse responsible for the error in
Osman's case was reprimanded, but the computer problem was not fixed. The CaseTrakker system "has failed and must be
replaced," Sampson, the DIHS interim director, wrote to his ICE
supervisors in August. In January 2008, medical director Shack told
colleagues that CaseTrakker "is more of a
liability than the use of paper medical record system," according to the
minutes of a meeting. It "puts patients at risk." ICE officials
said last week that they are not satisfied with CaseTrakker
and are working to replace it. Along with being at the mercy of computer
glitches, detainees suffer from human errors that deny or delay their care.
And with few advocates on the outside, they are left alone to plead their
cases in the most desperate ways, in hand-scribbled notes to doctors they
rarely see. "I need medicine for pain. All my bones hurt. Thank
you," wrote Mexico native Roberto Ledesma Guerrero, 72, three weeks
before he died inside the Otay Mesa compound.
Delays persist throughout the system. In January, the detention center in
Pearsall, Tex., an hour from San Antonio, had a backlog of 2,097
appointments. Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old
Cuban, had filled out many sick call requests before he died on March 14.
Detained at the Rolling Plains Detention Facility in the West Texas town of
Haskell, he wrote on New Year's Day: "need to see doctor for Heart
medication; and having chest pains for the past three days. Can't stand
pain." Ten days later he went to the clinic and became upset when he
wasn't seen. He slugged the window, yelled, pointed at his wristwatch. He was
escorted back to his cell. Another of his sick call requests said: "Need
to see a doctor. I have a lot of symptoms of sickness ... as soon as
possible!" The next was more urgent: "I have a emergency to see the doctor about my heart
problems ... for the last couple days and I been getting dizzy a lot."
The next day, Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died. His
medical records do not show that he ever saw a doctor for his chest pains.
April 9, 2008 KRGV 5
The owners of the Willacy County detention center say they're
investigating allegations an employee stole from a detainee. Representatives
of the M & T Corporation say they can't comment because it's an ongoing
investigation. But NEWSCHANNEL 5 learned a guard is accused of stealing
property and money from a detainee. We spoke to J.C. Conner, the company's
regional vice president on the phone. He confirms the investigation. He adds,
"By policy, we carefully maintain every detainee's property. If any of
it is missing, it is promptly replaced in its entirety." The company is
contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE officials aren't
commenting much at this time. They did release a similar statement. It read,
"When ICE or MTC receives information that could affect the safety and
security of those housed in the center, we conduct a thorough internal
investigation. The details of such investigations, including the existence of
an investigation, are not a matter of public record. If evidence of criminal
law violation is encountered, it is immediately reported to the appropriate
law enforcement agency." This is the second time within a year employees
at the facility are being investigated. Last year, four guards were arrested
after they allegedly used a company van to cross illegals past the Sarita
checkpoint.
November 16, 2007 Valley Morning
Star
A federal judge has set cash bonds of $150,000 on two detention center
officers accused in what authorities say was an illegal immigrant smuggling
ring operating out of the Willacy County Detention Center. Juan Treviño Jr., 27, and Alberto Vasquez, 37, both of
Harlingen, appeared Friday before U.S. Magistrate Felix Recio.
Recio originally set Treviño’s
bond at $50,000, which would have allowed him to post $5,000 cash. But the
judge raised the amount to match the bond for Vasquez after hearing testimony
from a federal agent that Treviño is believed to be
the ringleader of what he called a smuggling operation. Recio
said he had made a mistake by setting a lower bond for Treviño
and raised it. The agent said in court that the ring had smuggled illegal immigrants
on more than one occasion, and Vasquez was a driver of a van that transported
them. Federal investigators have charged the men with operating a smuggling
operation in which illegal immigrants who were picked up at locations around
Harlingen were transported in a van owned by the company that provides
security at the detention center in Raymondville. They are charged with
conspiring to transport illegal immigrants between Sept. 1 and Nov. 8. Treviño and Vasquez will be moved as soon as possible to
Corpus Christi, where co-defendants Carlos Miguel Garcia, 36, and Benjamin
Lopez Sanchez, 36, of Raymondville, are being held on charges that they were
involved in the smuggling ring. Treviño and Vasquez
were sergeants at the detention center in Raymondville while Garcia and
Sanchez were detention officers there, officials said. The four worked for
Utah-based Management Training Corp., which provides security services for
the detention center, authorities said.
November 13, 2007 Valley Morning
Star
Two more Willacy County immigration detention center officers, both from
Harlingen, are facing charges in connection with transporting undocumented
immigrants, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday. Two others from
Raymondville were arrested last week. Detention center sergeants Juan Treviño Jr., 27, and Albert Vasquez, 37, both of
Harlingen, were arrested Sunday at their homes and are charged with
conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants between Sept. 1 and Nov. 8,
according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle’s
office. Detention center officers Carlos Miguel Garcia, 36, and Benjamin
Lopez Sanchez, 36, both of Raymondville, are accused of attempting to drive
28 undocumented immigrants past the Sarita checkpoint Thursday, the news
release states. The two were taken into custody early Friday. Treviño and Sanchez are charged separately in a criminal
complaint filed Sunday. Their arrests were the result of an investigation by
special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The four men
worked as detention officers for the Utah-based Management Training Corp.,
which provides security services for the Willacy County Detention Center in
Raymondville, according to the release. Officials allege that Treviño recruited Vasquez, Garcia and Sanchez to pick up
and transport immigrants who were smuggled into the country through locations
near Harlingen past the Sarita checkpoint using MTC company vehicles,
according to the news release. The 28 undocumented immigrants who were
transported Thursday were not being held at the Willacy County Detention
Center, Angela Dodge, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Attorney’s
Office, said. The undocumented immigrants had been picked up at various
locations, including a canal and a soccer field, the release states. Garcia
and Sanchez were wearing MTC uniforms and officials found a loaded .357
magnum pistol in the center console of the van when they attempted to drive
the MTC F-450 van past the checkpoint Thursday, according to the release.
Customs and Border Protection agents at the checkpoint became suspicious
because the van was overcrowded, some passengers were sitting on the vehicle
floor, none were shackled and many had luggage, the release states. Earlier
that day, an anonymous caller told CBP agents that a vehicle carrying
undocumented immigrants and driven by law enforcement officers was headed
toward the checkpoint from Harlingen, according to the release. Garcia and
Sanchez provided CBP agents with a transport log and said they were transporting
28 prisoners from the Willacy County Detention facility to San Antonio, the
release states. Through contact with detention center officials, CBP agents
determined there was no record that Garcia and Sanchez picked up 28 prisoners
from the detention facility, according to the release. Four of the 28 have
been designated as material witnesses and five others have been charged with
illegal re-entry into the United States after a previous deportation or
removal. The 28 were identified as nationals of Mexico, the Dominican
Republic, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to the release.
Calls to MTC officials Tuesday were not immediately returned.
November 9, 2007 San Antonio
News-Express
Two employees of the private company that manages the U.S. immigration
detention center in Raymondville have been arrested for allegedly attempting
to smuggle 28 undocumented immigrants through an inland Border Patrol
checkpoint, federal officials said Friday. U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped
the vans full of immigrants at the Sarita checkpoint at around midnight
Thursday. They took the employees into federal custody after determining they
did not have authority to bring detainees through the checkpoint. The U.S.
attorney's office is investigating, Immigration and Customs and Enforcement
spokeswoman Nina Pruneda said. As of late Friday
afternoon, charges still were pending. "We are working as we speak with
this case," she said. "As far as we're concerned, it's still part
of an ongoing investigation. The checkpoint, which is 45 miles north of
Raymondville and about 90 miles north of the Mexican border, marks the end of
the Border Patrol saturation zone for the eastern end of the Rio Grande
Valley. Once past, smugglers consider themselves "home free" and
the street value of narcotics rises dramatically. There are similar
checkpoints on U.S. 281 at Falfurrias and north of Laredo on Interstate 35.
The employees worked for the Centerville, Utah-based Management &
Training Corp. A spokesman for the company did not return a call made to his
cell phone late Friday. The 2,000-bed detention center opened after a rush of
construction in 2006, in the wake of President Bush's vow to end a
"catch and release" practice that was blamed on lack of detention
space. Under the practice, non-Mexican detainees were set free with a
"notice to appear" before an immigration judge. Few did.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts with Willacy County for the
facility, and the county contracts with MTC to run it. The county recently
has entered into an agreement to expand the facility by another 1,000 beds.
August 28, 2007 Valley Morning Star
Willacy County Commissioner Aurelio Guerra on Monday questioned a contract
that could pay more than $27 million to the company that runs an illegal immigrant
detention center here. Wednesday, members of the Willacy County Local
Government Corp., the non-profit organization that oversees the 2,000-bed
detention center, will travel to Dallas to close a deal that’s expected to
hire Management Training Corp. to run a 1,000-bed expansion. The $111.5
million contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would pay
Utah-based MTC a “fixed annual fee” of $27.4 million when the detention
center’s average monthly inmate count falls below 2,500, the contract states.
The government would pay MTC $27.4 million plus $4.42 a head for each illegal
immigrant when the detention center’s average monthly inmate count exceeds
the 2,500 mark, the contract states. “It can be one inmate and we’re
obligated to pay $27 million,” Guerra said. “In past agreements, there
weren’t fixed fees.” Under a current agreement, a federal contract pays MTC
$27.75 a head for each illegal immigrant held in the 2,000-bed detention
center that averages about 1,500 detainees a month. But the contract does not
bind the county to pay MTC $27.4 million a year, said Michael Harling of
Municipal Capital Markets Group in Dallas. The contract would not tap into
the revenue that the county needs to repay its debt, Harling said. First, the
government’s money will go to pay the county’s debt, Harling said. Then it
will go to pay the county, he said. “To the extent there is enough money,
they will pay MTC,” Harding said.
August 2, 2007 KGBT TV4
Allegations of spoiled food and air conditioning problems, and no, we're not
talking about Food 4 Thought. This story involving some detainees and
security guards at the Willacy County detention center who are speaking out
about life for two-thousand immigrants. We have obtained internal
documentation from the Willacy detention center where not only detainees
complain about the conditions inside, but also security guards have recorded
in their logbooks dozens of undocumented immigrants that have found maggots
in their food. The federal detention center located in Raymondville which
houses two-thousand undocumented immigrants has received criticism for
allegedly feeding detainees contaminated or rotten food. An action 4 News
investigation reveals that in one instance, over 30 detainees reported that
the quantity and quality of food are deplorable, an allegation confirmed by
at least two security guards. One of those anonymous guards says: "the
reason it gets contaminated it's because of the storage facility, they don't
have the storage facility. They were trying to blame the companies that
supposedly the food is coming in spoiled which is not true." Detainees
say they don't have toiletries to keep their most basic sanitary needs, that
they have problems communicating with the outside world, nevertheless finding
an attorney or any kind of legal assistance. Anthony Matulewicz
is an immigration attorney in south Texas and tells action 4 news he's seen
what those immigrants go through. "things in Willacy was so bad that I
actually saw first hand people eating with their hands"
Sais Matulewicz. Security guards have also recorded
that 50 detainees complained because they found maggots in their food, and
refused to eat. The situation was so bad for an immigrant that he attempted
to commit suicide. "He was being moved from one dorm to another because
we were having a lot of problems with him. The detainee was depressed, he was
hungry and he was not getting enough" said a Willacy detention center
security guard. "so he was stealing from the
other detainees on the commissary, you know Fritos, candy, whatever they get
with their own money". Another detainee reported he lost $99-dollars
when he was transferred from del Rio to Laredo,, he says his wife is eagerly
awaiting to hear from his my new not so fondly found 'prison' life". Security
guards say they can not believe what they see, they
make reports and advice superiors but the situation is the same. Detainees
are desperate and things may get out of hand. "My concern is that one of
these officers one of these days is going to get hurt or one of these
officers is going to hurt a detainee" emphasized the security guard.
Inside the windowless, dome-shaped tents, they have bunk beds and communal
showers. But immigration and customs enforcement officials tell Action 4
News, "we try to maintain the dignity and respect within each person, so
the only way we can do that is have a set guideline to follow". But
according to security guards two ladies fainted because of air conditioning
problems last week, a problem frequently experience during the summer and
winter time. Allegations range from giving rotten food to detainees, problems
with air conditioning and heating, and immigrants attempting suicide due to
what they call inhumane treatment Immigration and customs enforcement also
tells Action 4 News they will look into each allegation and get back with us.
Immigration officials insist those held at the facility are
"detainees" and not prisoners.
June 24, 2007 Valley Morning Star
Immigrant rights groups Sunday stood in front of a 2,000-bed federal
detention center here, calling on the government to “Shut down tent city.”
With cries like “No human is illegal,” about 75 demonstrators came from as
far as San Antonio and Del Rio to protest the largest detention center in the
United States. When it opened last year, federal officials touted the
futuristic compound as a centerpiece in the government’s crackdown on illegal
immigration. “Our main objective is to raise awareness of this tent city and
to the separation of families,” said Elizabeth Garcia, a Brownsville activist
who spearheaded the protest. “These are families who bought a house with
their savings. They bought a piece of land,” she said of detainees. The
demonstration marked the first protest of the $60 million detention center
since its tent-like domes sprung up last summer. “It’s important for us to
realize that we’re condoning this in our own backyard,” Garcia said. Over
loud speakers, protesters called for an end to deportations at the detention
center that holds illegal immigrants before they’re deported to their home
countries. “There’s a lot of people who have children who are American
citizens,” said Juan Torres, an activist from Weslaco. “How can you say a
child has committed a crime? Does that mean the father’s alleged crime transcends
to his children?” Jay Johnson Castro, who grabbed national headlines as he
walked the border in protest of the planned border fence, called the
detention center “a concentration camp.” “This is the battle front of America
right here,” he told reporters. “This is the largest concentration camp on
Planet Earth.” Others cited the detention center’s windowless design as
inhumane.
July 26, 2006 Valley Morning Star
The county may be spending more than necessary to build a new detention
center for illegal immigrants, Willacy County Attorney Juan Angel Guerra
charged Monday. Guerra said that the companies behind the $60.6 million
detention center over-billed the county by more than $15 million. Other
companies could have constructed the project's 10 Kevlar-covered domes for
$30 million to $35 million, Guerra said. "Nobody questioned it,"
Guerra said of county commissioners who voted 3-2 last week to borrow $60.6
million to build the 2,000-bed detention center. "The price is just
ridiculous. Nobody did a comparison," Guerra said. "They spend more
time when they buy a truck or a tractor, to call dealerships to see if they
can get a better deal." Last month, commissioners entered into a
two-year contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to build the
detention center that's part of a national crackdown on illegal immigration.
In a contract, companies behind the project put the cost of construction
materials at $20 million and the labor costs at $30 million, Guerra said.
Commissioners planned to issue about $50 million to fund the project. But
costs jumped to $60.6 million to include $3 million to buy equipment to
operate the detention center, $3 million to set up a reserve fund and $3
million in interest payments. Guerra pointed to four areas in which he said
the contractor "inflated" costs. While Kevlar material costs $3.3
million, the contractor billed the county for $4.6 million, Guerra said.
While the contractor billed the county for $3.6 million to prepare the
53-acre site for construction, other companies said they could have done the
job for $1.6 million, Guerra said. The contractor billed the county for $2.8
million for sewer work, but other companies said they could have done the job
for $800,000. And other companies said paving the asphalt parking lot would
cost $150,000, the contractor billed the county for $400,000, Guerra said.
"We cannot justify these costs," Guerra said.
July 23, 2006 Express News
The Willacy County attorney is speaking out against his county's new
contract for a massive detention center because he said it involves companies
still under a cloud from the 2004 bribery convictions of three elected
officials. Juan Angel Guerra also accuses veteran Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.,
D-Brownsville, of going back on his word by continuing to represent the same
firms. Former Willacy County Commissioners Israel Tamez
and the late Jose Jimenez were convicted in 2004 of accepting bribes in
exchange for favorable votes regarding a 600-bed prison that opened in
Raymondville, the county seat, in 2003. The third convicted official, Webb
County Commissioner David Cortez, was an associate of CorPlan
Corrections, a consulting company at the time of the prison project. Cortez
was accused of funneling the bribe money for favorable votes on contracts. No
company employees, however, have been charged. Federal prosecutors wouldn't
comment on the case, but observers believe the investigation is ongoing
because the commissioners' sentencing dates have been pushed back several
times. Meanwhile, the same firms are building a 2,000-bed detention facility
near the same prison. Willacy commissioners voted 3-2 on Monday to approve
$60.6 million in bonds for the new facility, which is on a fast-track
construction schedule to house mostly non-Mexican undocumented immigrants in
a series of tentlike structures for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
or ICE. Utah-based Management Training Corp., or MTC, will operate the
facility; Houston-based Hale-Mills Construction Inc. is building it; and
Argyle-based CorPlan is consulting on the project,
said Guerra, who is the county and district attorney. A May 27, 2005, letter
from commissioners to the county's nonprofit corporation set up to oversee
the federal prison project asked it to "terminate its contractual
relationship with CorPlan," because a Willacy
County lawsuit against the firm alleged it was involved with the bribes.
"Now they are asking me to sign a contract that includes CorPlan," Guerra said. "I told the
commissioners you can't have it both ways. First you pass the resolution
saying you don't want to deal with CorPlan. Now you
do a contract that I know for a fact includes CorPlan.
So we are back to square one." The lawsuit was dropped in April. County
Judge Simon Salinas said he wasn't aware of the letter and resolution that
prompted it. It's probably too late anyway, he added. "The contract is
already signed, the work is already begun," he said. Regardless, Salinas
said, the county can't proceed under the assumption that leaders of the
companies are criminals. "In this country we are innocent until proven
guilty," he said. "And nobody out there pressed charges against the
companies. ... Just because these (commissioners) plead guilty doesn't mean
everybody in the world is guilty." Guerra favored Tennessee-based
Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, which offered to finance the
detention facility on its own rather than through the county. He said the
commissioners initially favored CCA, but later picked MTC. Commissioner Noe Loya said Guerra "is trying to find every excuse to
hire CCA, and change our minds, but it's over." Guerra said he met with
Lucio two weeks ago and the veteran lawmaker pushed MTC. "I asked him,
'Are you talking to me as my senator or as an employee of one of these
companies?'" Guerra said. "He told me he was talking to me as a
consultant." Lucio said he met with Guerra because it "appeared
that he had quite a bit of influence on the Commissioners Court." Lucio
said he told Guerra he favored MTC because it treats its employees well.
Lucio said he thought CorPlan had been cleared
because the lawsuit filed on behalf of Willacy County against James Parkey, president of CorPlan,
was dropped and there have been no other arrests. Parkey
did not return a call seeking comment. "My main focus on talking with
Johnny (Guerra) was trying to sell him on the fact that MTC was a very
reputable company," Lucio said. "I feel very comfortably
speaking on their behalf and asking them to consider us and that was my main
focus." According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Lucio reported in 2005
that MTC and CorPlan paid him a total of at least
$50,000 through his Brownsville company, Rio Shelters Inc. In the wake of the
bribery scandal, Lucio said he had stopped representing the firms and
wouldn't again until the matter was cleared up. "I know there has been a
case, a problem, a situation there where somebody associated with (Parkey) out of Laredo was indicted and convicted,"
Lucio said, referring to Cortez. "But when the lawsuit against him was
dropped, I felt that he was exonerated." Told that the bribery
investigation may still be open, he said: "If it is, I am not aware of
it." Asked if he was being paid by MTC or CorPlan
for encouraging the detention center contract, he said: "It's up to them
if they feel I did a good job." Lucio said it was "very hard to
draw a fine line" between his job as a lawmaker and his private work,
but added: "I can tell you this: I do my best." "I get paid
$600 a month to be a state senator, and I do it just about on a full-time
basis," he said. Damon Hiniger, a vice
president of CCA in Tennessee, said he was surprised by the county's decision
because CCA was going to invest its own money, pay about $1.8 million in
property taxes, and shoulder the risk. Judge Salinas said he was influenced
by the bottom line, nothing more. "I have nothing against CCA, they are
a good reputable company, but they are in the business to make their own
bucks," he said. The detention facility is to open Aug. 1 with 500 beds,
and then have 1,500 more available Oct. 1. It is part of President Bush's
Secure Border Initiative.
July 20, 2006 Valley Morning Star
State Sen. Eddie Lucio resumed consulting work with a company that he
says offers Willacy County hundreds of jobs and a steady flow of revenue for
years to come. Last year, Lucio suspended business with Management Training
Corp. and two other companies involved in the development of a $14.5 million
prison project that was the focus of a federal bribery investigation. That
investigation led to the convictions of former Willacy County commissioners
Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez. In letters to the
companies, Lucio wrote he was taking "a leave of absence" from
consulting work "until this matter is resolved." At the time, Lucio
asked the Texas Attorney General's Office and the state Ethics Commission to
review his work as a consultant. "I can do business with companies that
do business with the federal government," Lucio said the agencies
determined. Lucio resumed work for MTC as the company sought a Willacy County
contract to operate a $60.6 million detention center to hold illegal
immigrants. Last week, commissioners voted 3-2 to give MTC a two-year
contract to operate the detention center. "They're an outstanding
operation," Lucio said of the Utah-based company that operates a 525-bed
county-owned prison here. Lucio declined to disclose his fee. Monday,
commissioners voted 3-2 to issue $60.6 million in bonds to build the
detention center that's part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
crackdown on illegal immigration. "I think Willacy County will come out
ahead," Lucio said. "I think it's a wonderful opportunity for
hundreds of jobs." Lucio said his work with MTC was limited to a meeting
with County Attorney Juan Angel Guerra. In the meeting, Lucio talked 30 to 45
minutes with Guerra, who recommended that commissioners hire Corrections
Corporation of America, which proposed working with investors to fund the
project's costs. "He had questions whether MTC was a reputable
company," said Lucio, who owns Rio Consulting in Brownsville. "He
was very, very out to get the commissioners to hire CCA. All we did was talk
about the qualifications of MTC and why it would be a better deal."
Under MTC's contract, the county will own the detention center, Lucio said. "It's
a ($60) million asset at the end," Lucio said, referring to county
payments that run through 2009. "This is going to be a ... facility for
the future. They can continue the same situation. I'm going to push MTC to
make sure they fulfill the wishes of Willacy County. What we need to do is
insure that inmates are brought to that facility." Lucio said he stood
behind company projections that show the federal government will fill the
detention center with more than 1,800 illegal immigrants. "The federal
government is in dire need," Lucio said of detention center beds. County
commissioners Aurelio Guerra and Abiel Cantu voted
against hiring MTC because they questioned whether the federal government
could fill the detention center with illegal immigrants for which the company
would pay at least $2.25 a head. But steps such as hiring more U.S. Border
Patrol agents and the placement of National Guard troops along the border
will increase arrests of illegal immigrants, Lucio said. "Even President
Bush is beefing up the border," he said. "(But) nothing is going to
stop people from (crossing the border) to seek the American dream. I think
more people are going to get caught." Cantu and Aurelio Guerra also
voted against the company's hiring because they argued that the federal government
would restrict the county from spending detention center revenues on county
expenditures. Lucio said he did not know the specifics of the contract.
"That's up to the Commissioners Court to look into the specifics of the
contract," he said. Lucio denied Juan Angel Guerra's claim that he was
working for Corplan Corrections, an Irving-based
prison consulting firm, in the detention center project. Juan Angel Guerra
said Lucio told him that he worked for James Parkey,
Corplan's president. Last year, Lucio said he
suspended ties with Corplan, MTC and Aguirre Corp.
of Dallas after Tamez and Jimenez pleaded guilty to
taking more than $10,000 in bribes in exchange for votes to hire a consultant
in the $14.5 million prison project that the companies helped to develop.
Lucio said he resumed work with Corplan after
McAllen attorney Ramon Garcia, Hidalgo County's judge, dropped a lawsuit
against Corplan and Houston-based Hale Mills
construction in April. "When they were exonerated ... it cleared the
path," Lucio said. "I work for them anytime I like to. I like Mr. Parkey. He's a good man. As far as I'm concerned, he's a
reputable person." However, Lucio said his work with Corplan
did not involve the detention center project. Last month, Willacy County
commissioners entered into a two-year contract with Homeland Security to
construct tent-like domes to hold 500 beds by Aug. 2. As part of the
contract, the detention center will expand to 2,000 beds within 90 days.
July 16, 2006 Valley Morning Star
Federal officials said last week that it's not their intention to fill up
a 2,000-bed detention center that would hold illegal immigrants before
deportation. But Willacy County commissioners are banking on a private prison
company that claims the federal government will pay the county nearly $12
million to house 2,000 prisoners there. "I can't guarantee those
numbers," Nina Pruneda, spokeswoman for the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement in
San Antonio, said of the inmate count. "It's not a question of filling
beds," she said. "It's making sure we have operational beds
ready." The $50 million detention center made up of 10 Kevlar-covered
domes is part of the federal government's national crackdown on illegal
immigration, officials said. Last month, county commissioners entered into a
two-year contract with Homeland Security in the construction of tent-like
domes to house 500 beds by Aug. 2. As part of the contract, the detention
center would expand to 2,000 beds within 90 days. This month, commissioners
picked Utah-based Management Training Corp. to operate the detention center.
But the Willacy County Local Government Corp., a nonprofit board organized to
oversee the project, failed to ratify the contract. Thursday, commissioners
held off on the issue of $50 million in bonds amid concerns that the federal
government may not fill up the detention center with prisoners for whom it
would pay a daily rate per detainee. In South Texas, the new detention center
would boost the number of beds open to illegal immigrants to 5,200, Pruneda said. The agency decided to build the Willacy
County detention center rather than expand its detention center in Port
Isabel, which houses 800 beds, Pruneda said.
"The decision to open a facility in Willacy was an operational
decision," she said. Wednesday, consultants warned that the federal
government would likely restrict the county to the expenditure of
"administrative" fees of as little as $2.25 a day per prisoner. The
"county's current approach may open the county to substantial liability
to the federal government," warned the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss
Hauer & Feld of Washington, D.C. The consultants noted the federal
contract specifies the county "shall not charge for costs which are not
directly related to the housing and detention of detainees." "It
specifically identifies costs for which the county may not charge, such as
certain salaries, indirect costs and services and facilities that are not
used by the federal detainees," the consultants wrote. The consultants
cited a case in which Homeland Security required Pennsylvania's York County
to return as much as $58.5 million after it allegedly spent detention center
revenue on unauthorized expenses.
July 12, 2006 Valley Morning Star
The new detention center for illegal immigrants may not be the financial
windfall that county officials imagine, the county attorney said. Willacy
County Attorney Juan Angel Guerra warned commissioners that the federal
government may restrict the spending of money generated by a new $50 million
detention center. A contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
restricts spending to the detention of illegal immigrants, Guerra told
commissioners. "It is very clear that you have to justify every single
amount of money and if you can't justify it, the money goes back" to
Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Guerra told
commissioners in a Monday meeting. Last month, the county entered into a
contract with Homeland Security to sell $50 million in bonds to develop a
2,000-bed detention center to house illegal immigrants. In the meeting,
Guerra warned that Homeland Security required Pennsylvania's York County to
return as much as $58.5 million allegedly spent on unauthorized expenses.
July 6, 2006 San Antonio Express-News
Willacy County officials haven't formally decided who will get to build
the state's largest immigration detention facility — but that hasn't stopped
a Houston company from beginning work on the massive project. Hale-Mills
Construction has had crews at the site of the planned $50 million jail for
the past two weeks, leveling land and pouring concrete for the foundation.
The company began working on the 2,000-bed facility after county officials
signed an agreement June 19 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to
house detainees. Without a county decision on how to pay for it or, more
importantly, who would be hired to build it, Hale-Mills began clearing a
cotton field in Raymondville the next day. County officials are working out
other details, such as how the county will pay for the facility's
construction and if Hale-Mills will build it, Vela said. County Judge Simon
Salinas said the company is working at its own risk and has no guarantees it
will be chosen to finish the job. The county formed the public facilities
corporation to issue $50 million in lease revenue bonds to investors to fund
construction. Although no bonds have been issued and the county hasn't
identified the corporation's governing board, that board is set to meet today
to pick officers, consider hiring Vela as its lawyer and consider approving a
contract with Hale-Mills. It will also consider hiring a private jail company
to operate the facility after it is completed.
Willacy County State Jail
Raymondville, Texas
Corrections Corporation of America
Aug 16, 2017 krgv.com
Jail Investigates Photo of Guard Sleeping While on Duty
HARLINGEN – A photo of a guard keeping watch over an inmate at a local
hospital has patients asking questions and the guard without a job. A viewer
captured a picture where it appears showing the guard sleeping with an inmate
in the background at Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. The incident
was brought to the attention of Willacy County state jail officials. Michael
Sizemore, a state jail warden, confirmed their correctional officer was
keeping watch over an inmate the night of Aug. 1. The Willacy County State
Jail Facility has as many as 1069 inmates ranging from low to medium
security. CoreCivic, the private company which runs
the prison, launched an investigation into the incident. In the following
statement, CoreCivic Manager of Public Affairs
Amanda Gilchrist confirmed it was their officer: “We can confirm that the
photograph is of a CoreCivic/Willacy County State
Jail correctional officer and this is certainly a behavior we do not condone.
Due to the serious nature of his behavior and numerous policy violations, the
employee has been terminated from his position with the company effective
immediately.” We showed the photo to Roseann Cantu. She was visiting her
mother in the hospital on Tuesday. ”He shouldn’t be asleep, I’m shocked right
now, seeing that, pretty shocked,” she said. “I’d be scared and let them know
right away he’s asleep on the job. I wouldn’t want to be in the same floor that’s
for sure.” Some unanswered questions remain about what happened. The state
jail facility is not releasing the name of the guard, so we are unable to
tell his side of the story. We asked CoreCivic
whether surveillance footage was reviewed. “The warden's decision was based
on the photo,” Gilchrist said. We also asked if another guard was supposed to
be there as well. “For security reasons, we can't discuss the specific
policies and/or practices. Like I mentioned yesterday, the former employee
featured in the photo was not adhering to policies,” Gilchrist said. A
spokesperson of the hospital said they had no idea about the incident but
wished the person who took the photo had reached out to a nurse immediately.
July 2, 2009 Valley Morning Star
An attorney claimed in a statement Wednesday that an inmate who died here in
June was denied the use of his asthma pump. Thomas Detric
Adderson, 32, an inmate at the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice Willacy Unit in Raymondville, died on June 10 because
"his asthma pump was not provided to him," according to a statement
released by attorney Juan Angel Guerra, who is representing Adderson's family. But TDCJ officials and an incident
summary released Thursday state that Adderson was
given an Albuterol inhalation treatment by nurses using a special breathing
machine and was also allowed to use his personal oral inhaler before he went
into shock and died about two hours later. Although the jail is a state
prison in the TDCJ system, it is operated by Corrections Corporation of
America, a private prison company. The TDCJ summary stated that Adderson's preliminary cause of death was "severe
asthma attack." Guerra's press release stated that Adderson
was asthmatic since childhood. According to the TDCJ summary, the incident began
about 4:20 p.m. on June 10 when a correctional officer sent Adderson to the jail infirmary for treatment of breathing
difficulty. Officials say Adderson arrived in the
infirmary at 4:30 p.m. and began an Albuterol treatment by machine but asked
for his own inhaler. "He managed to pump one treatment of his oral
inhaler before beginning to panic and going into shock," the TDCJ
release stated. Officials said he became unresponsive about 5:45 p.m. and was
taken by ambulance to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen about 6:15
p.m. Willacy jail administration was notified of Adderson's
death by an emergency physician about 7:09 p.m. But Guerra, the former
Willacy County district attorney and a critic of private jails, said it is
unlikely that Adderson could die of an asthma
attack if he had been given proper treatment. "I've talked to doctors
and they've said that nowadays it is very rare for people to die of an asthma
attack," Guerra said. "I've just been talking to (Adderson's) parents. I haven't started investigation
inside (the jail) but everything indicates that he died of an asthma
attack." Mae Fields, Adderson's mother, said
about eight empty inhalers were among her son's belongings, which were
returned to her after his death. "He would not throw them away,"
Guerra said. "I know people who have asthma and they don't throw away
the old pumps because ... if you're really having an attack you grab all the
pumps and see if it has just a little bit (of medication). "So that
means he was not being provided daily with (medication) because he kept all
the old pumps," he said. Guerra said he would "go after" CCA
since it was operating the jail under contract from TDCJ. He did not
elaborate on the action he could take. "We haven't got the autopsy but I
know that that's what it's going to show," Guerra said.
October 19, 2007 The Statesman
A privately run South Texas prison remained on lockdown Thursday after a
dispute between rival prison gangs over control of cellblock tables erupted
into a chain of violence that left 19 convicts hurt, according to state
prison officials. Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire,
D-Houston, who has demanded greater scrutiny of private prisons, called for a
full investigation into why the episode took hours to quell. Prison officials
said such an inquiry was under way. Officials with Corrections Corporation of
America, which runs the 1,069-bed Willacy County State Jail, did not
immediately return phone calls for comment. No serious injuries were
reported, and no staff members were injured.
Willacy County Unit
Raymondville, TX
GEO (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
January 7, 2010 Brownsville Herald
A settlement agreement has been reached in the Willacy County civil case
involving the prison firm Wackenhut Corrections Corp., known as the GEO
Group, and Warden David Forrest in the beating death of Gregorio de la Rosa
Jr. of Laredo. The de la Rosa’s case involves one of the largest wrongful
death judgments in the country. The judgment was in excess of $40 million.
The monetary settlement reached between the private prison group, former
warden, insurers and de la Rosa’s family is being kept confidential, however.
"I am pleased to have brought justice to the de la Rosa family and am
honored to have made a positive contribution to Texas law for the future
protection of our people," said Laredo attorney Ron Rodriguez, who
represented the de la Rosa family. Attorney David Oliveira of Roerig Oliveira & Fisher LLP, who represented the
prison firm and warden, was not immediately available for comment. The
agreement follows a scathing opinion that the Thirteenth Court of Appeals
issued in April. The appellate court rebuked the prison firm and warden, and
affirmed the 2006 civil judgment that a Willacy County jury returned in
excess of $40 million against the prison firm and Forrest for negligently
causing de la Rosa Jr.’s death. De la Rosa, according to the opinion, was
beaten to death while prison officials first watched and later tried to cover
up by losing and destroying evidence. "We find that Wackenhut’s conduct
was clearly reprehensible and, frankly, constituted a disgusting display of
disrespect for the welfare of others and for this state’s civil justice
system," the appellate court noted in its opinion. A few days before de
la Rosa’s expected release from the Raymondville facility, two inmates beat
the 33-year-old man to death on April 26, 2001. The inmates used a lock tied
to a sock while "Wackenhut’s officers stood by and watched and
Wackenhut’s wardens smirked and laughed," the opinion observed. The
appellate court reduced the 2006 judgment from $47.5 million to $42.5 million
because one of de la Rosa’s family members had passed away. The appellate
court noted that the case supported the award of punitive damages,
"given the horrific facts of this case, including Wackenhut’s malicious
and grossly negligent conduct, the gruesome manner in which Gregorio was
killed, and Wackenhut’s behavior in attempting to cover up its liability . .
." The court also noted that its sense of justice was offended by
Wackenhut’s conduct "in maliciously causing Gregorio’s death" and
destroying critical evidence. De la Rosa Jr., an honorably discharged former
national guardsman, had been serving a six-month sentence for possession of
less than one-fourth gram of cocaine. The settlement agreement reached early
this month concludes the litigation.
October 21, 2009 Valley Central
Former Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra has filed a federal
lawsuit against Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. and 28 others. The
former district attorney alleges that Lucio and the others used their
positions to derail an investigation into private prisons in Willacy County.
Guerra claims in his 35-page lawsuit that he secured three corruption
convictions against three Willacy County officials in state and federal
courts. The former district attorney claims he was investigating the April
2001 death of inmate Gregorio de la Rosa when he began to uncover a massive
kickback and corruption scheme between the private prison companies and
public officials. Guerra claims then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
ordered then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Don DeGabrielle to halt a public integrity investigation. The
former district attorney claims that several public officials with
connections to the prisons dragged his name through the mud and raised false
criminal charges that ultimately cost him a bid for re-election and
obstructed the investigation. The lawsuit names the following defendants: •
Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio • Willacy County • City of Raymondville •
Former Willacy County Judge Simon Salinas • Raymondville Police Chief Uvaldo Zamora • Special prosecutor Mervyn Mosbacker • Special prosecutor Gustavo Garza •
Raymondville Police Detective Daniel Cavazos, Jr. • State District Judge
Migdalia Lopez • State District Judge Janet Leal • Willacy County Sheriff’s
Department Deputy David Martinez • Willacy County District Clerk Gilbert
Lozano • Corporation Wackenhut Correction Inc. • Hale Mills Construction Inc.
• Hale Mills Construction Ltd. • James Parkey, Corplan Correction, Inc. • Corplan
Correction Inc. • Michael Harling, Municipal Capitol Market, Inc. • Municipal
Capitol Market Inc. • Ramon Vela • Phil Parker, Hale Mission Construction •
J. C. Conner, Management and raining Corporation, Inc • Management and
Training Corporation, Inc • Bill Bryan • R Scott Marquardt, Management and
raining Corporation, Inc • Texas Rangers Captain Clete
Buckaloo • Former U.S. Attorney for Southern
District of Texas Donald DeGarbrielle • U.S.
Attorney for Southern District of Texas Tim Johnson • Former U.S. Attorney
Alberto Gonzales Among the accusations are engaging in organized criminal
activity, accepting of an honorarium, abuse of official capacity, official
oppression, murder and manslaughter. The former district attorney had secured
a criminal indictment involving similar accusations against former Vice
President Dick Cheney and several others named in this new lawsuit back in
November 2008. The case was thrown out but Guerra continues to fight against
abuses in private prisons in Texas and other states.
July 6, 2009 Brownsville Herald
An appellate court is weighing claims against The GEO Group, formerly
known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., to determine if the private prison
business lied when it claimed to have been exonerated of any responsibility
in the beating death of an inmate and if it should be sanctioned. The family
of the late Gregorio de la Rosa Jr., killed by two inmates in 2001 in a jail
facility then-operated and managed by Wackenhut in Raymondville under
contract with the state, is seeking the sanctions from the Thirteenth Court
of Appeals. The family claims in court records that GEO "continues its
disgusting display of disrespect for Texas' civil justice system," by
lying to the government, investors and the business community in an April 30
report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). State
Rep. Rene O. Oliveira's firm, Roerig, Oliveira
& Fisher LLP of Brownsville and McAllen, represents The GEO Group. Asked
if the prison group lied and to comment about the claims, Oliveira,
D-Brownsville, said, "I'm not qualified to answer that question. I have
never done one minute of legal work for them." "I am not even
familiar with the case. It is being handled by my partner, David Oliveira;
nor am I familiar with the allegations. Other than what I read in your newspaper,
I don't know anything about it," the state representative said. David
Oliveira was not available for comment. De la Rosa had been serving a
six-month sentence for possession of less than one-fourth gram of cocaine
when two inmates beat him to death using a lock tied to a sock. This happened
while "Wackenhut's officers stood by and watched and Wackenhut's wardens
smirked and laughed," the appellate court found in April this year.
That's when the appellate court upheld in its near entirety a $42.5 million
civil judgment of a Willacy County jury for de la Rosa's family and against
Wackenhut and Warden David Forrest. The appellate court also noted in its
April opinion that Wackenhut was liable for de la Rosa's death. De la Rosa's
attorney, Ronald Rodriguez, now argues before the appellate court that The
GEO Group should be sanctioned for filing a "fraudulent" document
with the SEC. The document notes that "separate investigations conducted
internally by GEO and by the Texas Rangers and the Texas Office of the
Inspector General exonerated GEO and its employees of any culpability with
respect to the incident." Rodriguez counters in the court record that
neither agency ever exonerated Wackenhut, GEO or the warden for civil or
criminal liability. "There is nothing in the record supporting GEO's
patently untrue statements of material fact and omission of material fact, in
the documents filed with the SEC," court documents state. Rodriguez
maintains in court records that "GEO's deception is getting worse, not
better" and asks the court to sanction GEO's mockery of the legal system
and hold it accountable. Rodriguez said Friday that a ruling on the motion
for sanctions should be forthcoming.
April 22, 2009 Laredo Morning
Times
Television news legend Dan Rather said he's working on an investigation
into the private prison industry. Rather was in Laredo on Tuesday to gather
information about Laredoan Gregorio De La Rosa Jr.,
who was killed in a private prison facility in 2001. The investigation, for
his HDNet show, "Dan Rather Reports," will examine "what the
private prison business is, what it isn't and what's wrong with it," the
former CBS Evening News anchor said Tuesday. He spoke to local reporters
outside the office of Laredo attorney Ron Rodriguez, who represented De La
Rosa's family in a 2006 lawsuit against the GEO Group, a company that
operates prisons. Employees at a Willacy County facility run by GEO, then
known as Wackenhut, didn't follow procedures or intervene when two inmates
beat De La Rosa to death with a lock tied in a sock, according to court
documents. Rodriguez said the $47.5 million judgment handed down by the jury
in that case is the sixth largest in U.S. history. The jury ordered GEO to
pay 75 percent of the judgment and the facility's warden at the time to pay
the other 25 percent. An appeals court earlier this month upheld more than
$42 million of that judgment. Rodriguez said he was honored to be interviewed
by Rather, and said the two discussed the facts of the lawsuit over De La
Rosa's death and GEO's facility in Laredo. Rather said he expects the program
to air next month.
April 11, 2009 Brownsville Herald
A former corrections officer at the Willacy County state jail in Raymondville
testified that the fatal attack on an inmate in 2001 was a "hit"
and that Wackenhut Corrections Corp. employees allowed it to happen. The
testimony is gleaned from a recent opinion that the Thirteenth Court of
Appeals issued regarding the beating death of 33-year-old Gregorio de la Rosa
Jr. of Laredo. The allegations are among the testimony of two corrections
officers the appellate court referenced in its scathing opinion of prison
operations. The details of the death are among the "horrific facts"
of the case that the appellate court cited in a 114-page opinion this month
upholding a 2006 civil wrongful death judgment by a Willacy County jury in
excess of $40 million. The award is in favor of de la Rosa's family and
against the prison firm Wackenhut, known as The Geo Group Inc., and Warden
David Forrest. According to the opinion: l The facts
reflect that de la Rosa was beaten to death while prison officials either
turned their backs, watched, smirked or laughed. l Corrections officers
failed to pat search inmates as they entered the area where the fatal assault
took place. l Corrections officers and wardens tried to cover up liability by
losing or destroying videotapes of the beating and one of two locks believed
used in the assault. l Former corrections officers testified that they were
prevented by other officers from going to de la Rosa's aid. One former
officer was allegedly told that it was none of his business. l Former
corrections officers testified that the beating lasted 15- to 20 minutes
before officers halted the assault and that it took another hour and fifteen
minutes for medical personnel to arrive, even though they were present at the
facility. l A former corrections officer testified that on occasion, guards
would take payments from the inmates to allow a fight to happen and believed
that the guards did not intervene because they had been paid off. The
appellate court opinion points out that Forrest testified that the assault on
de la Rosa lasted about 30 seconds and that medical personnel were
immediately called to the scene. Forrest also said that an officer should not
intervene in an inmate-on-inmate fight until another support officer arrives
to assist. GEO and Forrest's attorneys have not responded to numerous
requests for comment. However, public documents, which the firm filed with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ending 2008, state
GEO's position that the Texas Rangers and the Texas Office of the Inspector
General "exonerated" the firm and its employees of any culpability
in de la Rosa's death. According to the appellate court's opinion,
representatives from the Texas Office of the Inspector General of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice arrived about six hours after the beating.
"Warden Forrest testified that he turned over all the evidence and
videotapes to these representatives," the opinion states. "Warden
Forrest admitted that six hours was plenty of time to destroy, remove, or
alter the videotapes, had he so desired," the opinion notes. The opinion
also points out that Texas Ranger Rudy Jaramillo assisted with the
investigation. "He (Jaramillo) stated that the only videotapes turned
over to the investigators were the ‘use of force videos,' " the opinion
states. These videos showed the officers restraining the two aggressors after
the fight and taking them to the medical department. One of the videotapes
had been partially erased. The opinion further states: "Ranger Jaramillo
admitted that he relied on Warden Forrest to hand over the videotapes and did
not conduct an independent investigation into whether any other tapes
existed." The Brownsville Herald on Thursday requested the reports of
the investigation into de la Rosa's death from the Texas Rangers and the
Texas Office of the Inspector General under the Texas Public Information Act.
April 8, 2009 Brownsville Herald
A Willacy County grand jury is moving forward with its review of allegations
that a previous grand jury leveled in November against public officials and a
prison firm. "It continues its work," Special Prosecutor Alfredo
Padilla said Wednesday of the grand jury that he has been working with since
late January. The public officials that the previous grand jury indicted in
November included former Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, The GEO Group, Inc., formerly called Wackenhut
Corrections Corp., and Warden David Forrest. That grand jury, under former
District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra, charged The GEO Group and Forrest with
murder and manslaughter in connection with the 2001 beating death of Gregorio
de la Rosa Jr. at the hands of two inmates in a state prison in Willacy
County that the group. Cheney and Gonzales were charged with profiting from
private prisons, neglecting conditions and stopping inquiries into assaults.
Padilla, formerly an assistant district attorney in Cameron County, began
work with the new grand jury after Judge J. Manuel Bañales
appointed him last year. Bañales removed Guerra
from the case and dismissed the indictments that the former grand jury
returned. Bañales ruled that the indictments were
not properly returned. Padilla wouldn't say Wednesday which cases the new
grand jury is looking at. "All I can say is that I have appeared twice
(with the grand jury)," Padilla said. "I can't discuss what
(specifically) they are reviewing or considering or what they want to do with
the investigation," Padilla added, pointing out that the information is
privileged. Padilla also would not comment on the opinion that the 13th Court
of Appeals returned Thursday against Wackenhut and Forrest, affirming a 2006
civil judgment against them in excess of $40 million in a wrongful death case
involving de la Rosa. "I have not see
the actual appeal," Padilla said. Guerra, on the other hand, said the
strong opinion that the appellate court returned vindicates him and the
former grand jury. "I am not surprised," Guerra said of the
appellate court's opinion. "How many other people have to come to the
same conclusion before something is done?" GEO Group's and Forrest's
attorney, David Oliveira, has not been available for comment, but the firm's
position is found in public documents that the firm filed with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission for the year ending 2008. "Separate
investigations conducted internally by us, the Texas Rangers and the Texas
Office of the Inspector General exonerated us and our employees of any
culpability with respect to the incident," the GEO document states.
"We believe that the verdict is contrary to law and unsubstantiated by
the evidence," the firm said. Guerra said neither the Texas Rangers nor
the Texas Office of the Inspector General can exonerate anyone. "Only a
jury can," Guerra said. The Texas Rangers and Inspector General's Office
could not be immediately reached for comment.
April 8, 2009 Express-News
In a searing opinion, the 13th Court of Appeals has upheld $42.5 million in
punitive damages against a private prison operator for the “horrific and
gruesome death” of inmate Gregorio De La Rosa Jr. in 2001. De La Rosa was
beaten to death by two other inmates at a 1,000-bed facility in Raymondville
while guards and supervisors looked on, according to trial testimony three
years ago. The trial judge concluded that prison officials, including
co-defendant David Forrest, the prison warden, had destroyed or lied about
critical evidence, including a videotape of the fatal beating. When De La
Rosa died, he had only four days left to serve on a six-month sentence for a
minor drug offense. In the appellate court's ruling late last week, it upheld
all but $5 million of the original $47.5 million jury award, noting, “We find
Wackenhut's conduct was clearly reprehensible and, frankly, constituted a
disgusting display of disrespect for the welfare of others and for this
state's civil justice system.” Wackenhut Corrections Corp. later became the
Geo Group, which operates about 50 private prisons in five countries,
including 19 in Texas. Lawyer Reagan Simpson, who represented Geo, did not
return a call seeking comment. Ronald Rodriguez of Laredo, who sued Wackenhut
on behalf of De La Rosa's family, said the appellate court sent “a clear
message to the Geo Group that it will not tolerate (its) intentional malice,
trickery and deceit, and attempted manipulation of the judicial system.”
December 13, 2008 Brownsville Herald
This year's Willacy County grand jury investigation into alleged criminal
activity surrounding for-profit prisons and high-profile public officials is
not the first, and District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said it is tied to an
earlier investigation. A federal inquiry resulting in convictions in 2005
stirred up a dust storm in Raymondville when it looked into a money-for-votes
and bribery scheme to favor firms involved in the Willacy County Adult
Correctional Center, a project that started in 2000. The firms, which did
business in Texas and were involved in the project, were CorPlan
Corrections, Aguirre Inc., Management & Training Corp., and Hale-Mills
Construction, according to Guerra and public records. That federal investigation
resulted in the bribery conviction of former Webb County commissioner David
Cortez - identified in federal court records as the representative of "a
company" - who gave $39,000 over three years from 2000 to 2003 to
several officials to secure their votes on the Commissioners Court for the
firm's participation in the jail project. However, that firm is never
mentioned by name in the court record. Federal officials would not discuss
the case, so the reason for the omission could not be learned. Among the
officials who received money in return for favoring a jail consultant - also
unnamed in the court record - and whom Cortez represented were Israel Tamez of Raymondville, at that time a Willacy County
commissioner, and the late Jose Jimenez of Sebastian, also a Willacy
commissioner. Cortez, Tamez and Jimenez all pleaded
guilty, the federal court record shows. U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen
sentenced Tamez to six months in jail, three years probation and a $25,000 fine. Cortez was sentenced
to three months in jail, followed by a period of six months of home
confinement, two-years probation and a $25,000
fine. Jimenez died in 2006, while Cortez and Tamez
were sentenced in late 2006 and directed to serve their sentences last year.
The unnamed companies were never charged. The dust storm never quite settled
after those convictions. Court records show that a series of continuances
delayed when the sentences would begin. Tamez did
not serve his sentence until last year. Jimenez was convicted but died before
sentencing. In reference to the Jimenez and Tamez
cases, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim McAlister told the court in the fall of
2005: "Both defendants are actively cooperating in helping the
government identify and prosecute other individuals involved in unlawful
activity. The investigation is ongoing and both defendants are expected to
continue their efforts in assisting the government. The government and the
defendants agree that sentencing Mr. Tamez and Mr.
Jimenez at this time could result in a miscarriage of justice."
McAlister's motions to continue Cortez's case are sealed. However, federal
court records show that Cortez gave money to yet a third elected official, so
that he would favor corporate interests involved in the design, construction,
financing, maintenance and management of the Willacy correctional center that
was to house federal inmates. During Cortez's sentencing in 2006, his lawyer,
Mike DeGeurin Sr., of Houston, told Hanen: "I
think, to convince people that he (Cortez) is still a person you can count on
to get things done, he (Cortez) makes some payments to Mr. (Israel) Tamez and a couple of others - two other commissioners
that, we'll leave their names unspoken." However, Jimenez was the only
other person charged, aside from Cortez. There were believed to be additional
conspirators, known and unknown, the federal record shows. Neither the third
commissioner to which DeGuerin referred, nor the other conspirators that
McAlister referred to in 2005, was never mentioned by name or location in court
documents and was not part of the court record. DeGeurin
did not respond to a recent request for comment. Tamez's
attorney, John David Franz, of McAllen, also could not be reached for
comment. Jimenez's lawyer, Nemecio E. Lopez Jr. of
Harlingen, declined to talk about the case. Enter Guerra and his
investigation into the management and operation of for-profit prisons in
Willacy County, which led to the recent indictments of, among others, U.S.
Vice President Richard B. Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville. The indictment
charges Cheney and Gonzales with profiteering from the jails and neglect of
conditions due to self-interest. The indictment against Lucio charged him
with influence peddling in receiving consulting fees from the firms for
services he would not have been requested to provide were it not for his
official position. Guerra now says the FBI and Texas Rangers told him in 2006
that "higher-ups" in both agencies directed their agents to halt
the federal inquiry into the original money-for-votes and bribery scheme.
Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas
declined to comment on Guerra's allegations, and Tela Mange of the Texas
Department of Public Safety said no one in the department knew anything about
Guerra's allegations, including the Texas Rangers. The FBI did not return a
request for comment. Guerra says that he reopened the investigation because
he wants to ensure justice is done before he leaves office at the end of this
month. "If I know that a crime has been committed, I have to make a
diligent effort to make sure that the crime is addressed in my tenure. My job
is to make sure that criminals don't get away. That is what a prosecutor does,"
he said. James M. Parkey, president and founder of CorPlan, on Monday verified for the Brownsville Herald
that Cortez had been one of the firm's consultants, but said he had not known
of any payments from Cortez to Tamez, Jimenez or
others. "Our position is that Mr. Cortez pleaded guilty," said CorPlan's lawyer, Edmundo O. Ramirez, of McAllen. There
is no other position, he said. Public records - yearly financial statements
that the Texas Ethics Commission requires of elected officials - show that
Lucio was one of CorPlan's consultants. The Nov. 17
indictment against Lucio alleges that because of his position he received
consulting fees from six firms, including CorPlan
Corrections, Aguirre Inc., Management & Training Corp.
, and Hale-Mills Construction. Guerra said the firms were tied to the
Willacy County 500-bed jail project, which county commissioners approved in
2000. Parkey said he was not at liberty to disclose
the services Lucio provided his firm without Lucio's consent. Lucio told The
Brownsville Herald in 2002 that he received consulting fees from the firms
for introducing them to public officials and setting up meetings. In 2002, Parkey said, "Public relations doesn't require a
product in terms of written material. He (Lucio) keeps our name in front of
people." Texas Ethics Commission records show that Lucio listed
receiving at least $135,000 or more from CorPlan
Corrections, Aguirre Inc. and Management & Training Corp. in 2003 and
2004. Hale-Mills is not on the list. Lucio also told The Brownsville Herald
in 2002 and again in 2005 that he had been consulting for CorPlan
since 1999 and that Aguirre and Management & Training Corp. soon
contracted with him for consulting, marketing and public relations. He would
not say at that time when or how much money each company paid him. It was not
until 2004 that Lucio reported the companies in his personal financial
statements to the Texas Ethics Commission, which requires that officials list
retainers and sources of income. Lucio's chief of staff, Paul Cowen (uncle of
Lucio's lawyer, Michael R. Cowen) said in 2002 that the fees had been
reported, but under the umbrella of Rio Shelters Inc., a firm owned by Lucio
that provides advertisements on bus shelters. Hale-Mills and Aguirre Inc. did
not return a request for comment Tuesday, and Carl Stuart, communications
director for Management & Training Corp., said, "We just don't make
comment on pending litigation." During the inquiries in 2005, Lucio
wrote to CorPlan Corrections, Aguirre Inc. and
Management & Training Corp. advising them he was taking a leave of
absence because news reports had named the three companies as those involved
in the building and management of the facilities in Willacy County. Lucio at
that time brought copies of his letters to the Brownsville Herald. Cowen,
Lucio's lawyer, on Monday said he has instructed his client not to comment
"as long as Mr. Guerra is in office." Contrary to his client's Nov.
17 indictment, which presiding District Judge J. Manuel Bañales
dismissed Dec. 1, Lucio did not do consulting work for Hale-Mills, Cowen
stressed. (Bañales also threw out the indictments
against Cheney and Gonzales on Dec. 1.) "In fact, we ask the public to
take all of Mr. Guerra's accusations with a grain of salt, and to consider
the misrepresentations he has already been caught making under oath in this
case," Cowen said in a written statement to The Brownsville Herald.
Cowen said he and the senator are disappointed that Guerra continues his
vendetta against Lucio, even after the court dismissed all charges against
the senator. Lucio has to do outside work to earn a
living, Cowen said, noting that the senator is paid only $600 a month by the
for his legislative services. Cowen said Lucio earns less than the minimum
wage, and cannot support his family on $7,200 a year. "However, he has
been very careful to ensure that any work he does is not only legal, but also
wholly ethical," Cowen said in a written statement. Lucio has gone to
great lengths to ensure that the consulting work complies with all legal and
ethical requirements, Cowen said, noting that he requested a formal attorney
general's opinion on whether a legislator can provide consulting, marketing
and public relation services to clients who have dealings with government
officials. Cowen said Lucio also consulted with two attorney generals, the
Texas Ethics Commission and hired a private attorney to ensure that his
business affairs followed the law. In a July 2003 opinion, Texas Attorney
General Greg Abbott told Lucio that laws do not categorically prohibit a
legislator from representing a client's interests before government officials
or entities. Still, Abbott said, legality depends on the specific facts of a
case. Abbott wrote that Lucio did not elaborate on the nature of his clients'
businesses nor on his dealings and communications on their behalf.
Furthermore, whether a public servant's outside employment creates a conflict
of interest frequently requires resolving fact questions, which is beyond the
purview of the opinion process, Abbott's opinion states. Abbott wrote that a
legislator should be aware of the provisions in Chapter 36 of the Texas Penal
Code. A legislator may not solicit or accept any benefit unless it falls
within one of the exceptions recognized by the code, the opinion states.
Abbott noted that the primary exception allows a legislator to accept fair
compensation for work performed in a capacity other than as a public servant.
"Should you have a specific concern, you may wish to consult with
private counsel," Abbott advised Lucio. Lucio told The Brownsville
Herald in 2002 that he did not consult with an attorney. Cowen on Monday said
that Lucio provided legitimate services to the firms that contracted him.
"Senator Lucio has nothing to hide, and is happy to have a competent, unbiased
prosecutor review all of the evidence in this matter. Unfortunately, Mr.
Guerra's words and actions show him to be neither unbiased nor
competent," Cowen said. Guerra vehemently denies that his charges
against Lucio are part of a vendetta against the senator. "The problem
with Eddie Lucio is that he has not explained what he does for these
companies," Guerra said. During a recent court hearing, Guerra said that
if a jury found companies hired Lucio because he is a senator and not because
of services he provided "then that's kickbacks and that's it." On
Thursday Guerra said, "He (Lucio) says that he has permission from the
attorney general, but the attorney general opinion did not give him
permission (to receive fees from the firms). And then he said he got
permission from the Texas Ethics Commission, and he has not produced one
document showing that. The accusation that I have a vendetta is a
smokescreen." Bañales on Dec. 1 dismissed all
charges against the high-profile defendants. And Wednesday, he removed Guerra
from bringing any further charges in the cases against Lucio and others in
which he has a "clear bias and prejudice." However, even though
Guerra appears hamstrung in his proclaimed quest for justice, the saga may be
nowhere near an end. DA Pro Tem Alfredo Padilla,
whom Bañales appointed to review the indictments,
said Thursday that he wants to present all of the evidence that Guerra
gathered to a new grand jury, which will be impaneled early next year.
December 10, 2008 AP
A judge has removed a South Texas prosecutor from any cases related to Vice
President Dick Cheney, a state senator and a private prison group, saying the
district attorney is biased. Presiding Judge Manuel Banales
ordered Juan Angel Guerra to stop any work on cases related to the already
dismissed indictments against Cheney, state Sen. Eddie Lucio and The GEO
Group, a private prison company. Guerra will not be able to speak to the
grand jury without the presence of the pro tem
district attorney and Guerra must immediately relinquish all related files to
that temporary prosecutor.
December 8, 2008 Valley Morning Star
District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said Monday that state Sen. Eddie Lucio's
elected position conflicts with his job as a consultant for companies that
work within his jurisdiction. Guerra said he believes that companies hire
Lucio because of his position as a state senator and that Lucio uses his
influence to obtain the consulting work. "These people are hiring him
because of his position and not because of his skills," Guerra said in
an interview. "There's no way to justify it." Lucio could not be
reached for comment Monday afternoon. Guerra said that Lucio could work as a
consultant but not within his state Senate District 27, that includes Cameron,
Kenedy, Kleberg, Willacy and part of Hidalgo
counties. Lucio was first elected in 1991. But Edmundo Ramirez, a McAllen
attorney who represents Ronald Holmes, an attorney for CorPlan
Corrections in Dallas, one of the companies for which Lucio is a consultant,
noted the Texas Ethics Commission has sanctioned Lucio's work as a
consultant. "The ethics commission has found nothing wrong with those
payments," said Ramirez said, referring the consulting fees Lucio is
paid. Lucio owns an advertising and public relations firm in Brownsville.
"Sen. Lucio gets hired because of what he brings to the table,"
Ramirez said. "He's a PR man. He's a good one. He brings value to the
table. "Regardless of what Mr. Guerra believes, (payments) are legal and
have been properly reported by Sen. Lucio. The law is the law." The
Texas Attorney General's Office sanctioned Lucio's work as a consultant in a
legal opinion issued in July 2003. Texas law states that "it must be the
services rendered and not the status of the public servant rendering the services
that is of value to the person for whom the services are performed," the
Attorney General's opinion noted. CorPlan, a prison
consulting company, requested on Monday that a judge quash Guerra's subpoena
that orders the company to appear in court Wednesday. Guerra said he wants CorPlan to appear in court to disclose the nature of the
services it pays Lucio to perform. Last month, Guerra pushed for grand jury
indictments against Lucio, Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales and several local elected officials. State District
Judge Manuel Bañales threw out those indictments.
But Michael Cowen, Lucio's attorney, believes Guerra will try to re-indict
Lucio before Guerra's fourth term expires Dec. 31. The grand jury is set to
meet Friday for its last scheduled session before its term expires Dec. 31,
District Clerk Gilbert Lozano said. Cowen will request that Bañales on Wednesday disqualify Guerra as prosecutor,
arguing Guerra's "personal animosity toward Lucio creates a conflict of
interest." Guerra filed subpoenas on Dec. 5 to order CorPlan,
Management and Training Corp., Aguirre Inc., Hale Mills Corp., TEDSI
Infrastructure Group Inc. and Dannenbaum
Engineering Corp. to appear in court. Lucio has worked as a consultant for
these companies. CorPlan, Management and Training
Corp., Aguirre and Hale Mills are companies that worked on a $14.5 million
prison project that was the focus of a bribery scandal that led to the
convictions of former Willacy County commissioners Israel Tamez
and Jose Jimenez and former Webb County Commissioner David Cortez.
December 6, 2008 Brownsville Herald
The dismissal last week of indictments against a host of elected
officials, including state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., in a Raymondville courtroom
did not signal the end of attorney Michael R. Cowen's trips to this city of
about 10,000 people. If Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra
sees himself as the biblical "David," as he has described himself,
Lucio's attorney, Cowen, would be his "Goliath" this week. Both
will square off Wednesday during a hearing before District Judge J. Manuel Bañales. Pundits predict that there will be plenty of
slings. Guerra said he aims to show at the hearing that consulting fees Lucio
received from six firms were illegal and not earned. Most of the firms did
work associated with private prisons in Willacy County. Instead, Guerra
maintains that the only reason the firms paid Lucio is because he has the
word "senator" before his name. Cowen has said previously that Guerra
is "vindictive" and his animosity against the senator rises to a
conflict, rendering the DA incapable of pursuing any charges leveled at the
senator. Guerra issued subpoenas Friday against the firms that purportedly
paid Lucio, D-Brownsville, consulting fees, including the firms
Management and Training Corp., CorPlan Corrections,
Aguirre Inc., Hale Mills Corp., TEDSI Infrastructure Group, Inc. and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. They were directed to attend
the Wednesday hearing and provide documentation, including contracts with
Lucio for his services. Public records from the Texas Ethics Commission show
that Lucio received at least $300,000 from five of the firms from 2003
through 2007. It could not be confirmed if Lucio received money from Hale
Mills Corp. as the grand jury indictment maintains. Lucio suspended his
services to CorPlan Corrections, Management and
Training Corp. and Aguirre Inc. in January 2005 amid the bribery convictions
of two Willacy County commissioners and subsequently a Webb County
commissioner, according to documents that Lucio provided to The Brownsville
Herald. The commissioners were convicted in a bribery and money-for-votes
scheme relating to construction and management of the Willacy Adult
Correctional Center. The companies were not charged. Cowen did not respond to
a request for comment for this story. A grand jury indicted Lucio Nov. 17 for
accepting fees from the firms from January 2005 through September 2008,
alleging that they paid him only because he is a senator. The indictment
charged that Lucio ". . . has, with this action, made a personal profit
as a result of his holding said office as a Texas senator for District
27." Bañales dismissed the indictment Dec. 1,
agreeing with Cowen's contentions, including that the six-count indictment
did not that Lucio had willingly, knowingly, or recklessly engaged in the
alleged conduct. Guerra's goal is also to show that the Nov. 17 grand jury
did not indict Lucio because of Guerra's vindictiveness or anger toward
Lucio, but because there is evidence to support the jury's indictment that
Lucio profited from his elective office contrary to law. Whether or not Bañales in the 10 a.m. hearing allows Guerra to present
evidence against Lucio or if representatives of the firms even show up is up
in the air.
December 1, 2008 Valley Morning Star
Outgoing Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra vowed on
Monday to keep fighting for the poor and oppressed after he leaves office.
During an impromptu news conference in his office during a break in court
proceedings, Guerra became emotional as he blasted alleged corruption at all
levels of government. The day's proceedings ended in dismissal of eight
felony indictments he had obtained against Vice President Cheney, former U.S.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., two district
judges, two special prosecutors, a private prison corporation and District
Clerk Gilbert Lozano. In response to Guerra's accusations of corruption
against the president, vice president and Lucio, the state senator said
Monday, "Mr. Guerra is a very bitter, bitter individual right now. He
lost a re-election bid." But Guerra vowed to fight on, saying he will
work for the powerless in America until his last day in office. Guerra accused
President Bush and Vice President Cheney of each having improper personal
investments in private prison companies, lining their pockets by rapidly
expanding the use of for-profit prisons, rather than increasing funding for
the federal prison system and federal detention centers for undocumented
immigrants. "A half a billion (dollars) they made," Guerra said of
GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp.)" Cheney's son-in-law,
Phillip Perry, was placed in charge of the federal prison system, Guerra
said, citing that as a blatant example of corruption at high levels. He again
blasted state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., charging that he profited from side jobs
he obtained from private prison companies, taking payment for being "an
expert on prisons" when he was elected to represent the people. Lucio is
also on the payroll of road construction companies who are building the I-69
project, Guerra said. Lucio said he has cleared all his employment with the
Texas Ethics Commission or the state attorney general's office, and has avoided
representing those companies in contract negotiations. If Guerra has
information about corruption by the vice president or the president, Lucio
said, he should inform the FBI since it is not the jurisdiction of a county
district attorney. News media are not doing their job, Guerra said. Reporters
should confront Lucio about taking paychecks from companies who benefit from
federal and state contracts, he said. "People are continuing to die in
there," Guerra said of a for-profit prison and the immigration detention
camp at Raymondville. The death of inmate Gregorio De La Rosa at the hands of
other inmates is a prime example, Guerra said. "People are continuing to
die in there," he said of the private prisons.
November 30, 2008 Brownsville Herald
Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra compares himself to
the biblical David and says angels dubbed Magdalena, Teresa, and Isaiah
surround him. Guerra is confident that his "Operation Goliath" will
prevail. Some people suggest Guerra is delusional. Others caution not to
underestimate him. For now, Guerra has identified his witnesses, along with
other people assisting him in the inquiries into public officials, as angels
and names them after messengers from God. Biblical references pepper his
comments. He is most interested in "cutting the head off the snake -
which is cutting off what Gonzales and Cheney are doing," Guerra told
The Brownsville Herald on Wednesday. The DA is referring to Vice-President
Richard B. Cheney's and former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales'
alleged neglect of inmates and failure to oversee operations of privately
managed and owned prisons that contract with governmental agencies to house
inmates. He claims that Cheney has investments worth more than $85 million in
the Vanguard Group, which in turn invests in for-profit prisons and profits
from Cheney's neglect. He alleges that Gonzales stopped investigations into
assaults at for-profit prisons in Willacy County. A Willacy County grand jury
indicted Cheney and Gonzales Nov. 17. "We the Grand Jury of Willacy
County Texas duly selected and empanelled, and with
great sadness, concerned and because we love our country have no choice but
to move to indict our sitting Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Alberto
Gonzales . . . ," the indictment states. The grand jury also indicted
the GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp., Warden David Forrest and
other high-profile officials for a stream of alleged offenses from organized
criminal activity, murder/manslaughter, accepting fees from private prison
firms by virtue of public office to official oppression. Has he really lost
it psychologically this time as some persons suggest? Guerra volunteered in
court a week ago Friday that some people think he's crazy. "That's what
Barnhart said and he was indicted and convicted," Guerra said, referring
to this year's conviction and 30-day sentence of Willacy County Judge Eliseo
Barnhart on aggravated perjury charges. Archives show that Guerra initially
pursued charges against Barnhart, but removed himself as a prosecutor citing
Barnhart's control over his budget. "Does it mean that 12 people lost it
also?" Guerra said of the grand jury that returned the Nov. 17
indictments. Some say that Guerra "could be off," but "like a
fox." Yet others, like Nueces County retired state District Judge
Michael J. Westergren, who has practiced law for nearly 40 years, think
Guerra is on to something. Westergren told The Brownsville Herald Wednesday
that Guerra is the only one who has had the "gumption" to investigate
privately owned and managed prisons and their lack of oversight. "I
certainly think it is a serious matter. It's not frivolous by any
means," Westergren said, referring to Guerra's case relating to private
prison firms. He said there is "substantial support" to the
allegations. Opining that investigations into activities within the private
prison system had been suppressed, Westergren said, "That's not
good." "It's a nationwide problem," said Westergren, adding
that the incidence of death in private prisons is estimated to be
substantially higher than at other facilities. "That's pretty bad,"
he said. Guerra said he invited Westergren to his office to view the
evidence. Westergren described himself as an "unpaid consultant."
The indictments against Cheney, Gonzales, GEO and Forrest revolve around the
2001 beating murder of Gregorio de la Rosa in the state jail in Willacy
County that Wackenhut managed, Guerra said. Finding negligence, a jury
ordered Wackenhut to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil
judgment in 2006, archives reflect. State Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.'s attorney
Michael R. Cowen said that Guerra has repeatedly claimed that Lucio, state
District Judge Migdalia Lopez, Willacy County District Clerk Gilbert Lozano
and Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence are part of some conspiracy against
him.
November 26, 2008 NewsChannel 5
District Attorney Juan Guerra says his investigation took him all the way
to the top, to the Vice President of the United States. He showed NEWSCHANNEL
5 records that he says could be used to prove Dick Cheney is guilty of
criminal activity. The charges against the Vice President stem from the
Willacy State Jail in Raymondville and from the inmate, Gregorio De La Rosa,
Jr., who was killed there by a fellow inmate in 2001. Guerra says that the
elected officials let the jail get away with murder so that they can keep
making money. "Greed will get you discovered and arrested every time,
and that's what happened to Cheney," Guerra said. Guerra says he went
through Cheney's financial records and the prison companies' financial
records and found the connection. The three top prison companies Guerra
researched were Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Cornell.
Those three have the Vanguard Group in common, which is an investment company
that puts money into all three prison companies. "We knew Vanguard was
the key," said Guerra. Guerra showed us the Vice President's financial
disclosure from last year and it shows he owned shares in the Vanguard Group.
Guerra estimates Cheney has $85 million invested in Vanguard and in turn,
into the prison companies. "The problem you have is he now has a direct
interest," said Guerra. And according to Guerra, it's a direct interest
in making sure the prison companies stay in business. In Cheney's indictment,
Guerra wrote that "no government officials made efforts to properly
investigate the death of Gregorio De La Rosa, Jr.," he says that was due
to the "money being made by...government officials." Guerra claims
Cheney put a stop to the De La Rosa investigation in 2006. He claims that
Cheney is simply looking the other way while inmates across the country are
dying in private prisons which is why Cheney is charged with engaging in
organized criminal activity.
November 26, 2008 Brownsville Herald
Raymondville Police Chief Uvaldo Zamora filed a
federal lawsuit on Monday against Willacy County, District Attorney Juan
Angel Guerra and district attorney investigator Roy Tamez,
charging retaliation and seeking unspecified monetary damages. Zamora alleges
that Guerra had him arrested last year on false charges of obstruction or
retaliation because he assisted in an investigation into Guerra. In February
of last year the police chief executed a search warrant at the district
attorney's office while one of his police officers arrested Guerra for
interfering with the execution of the search warrant. Zamora's attorney, John
Blaylock, said he filed the lawsuit in Brownsville. "He's back to his
old tricks," Blaylock said of Guerra, who on Nov. 17 secured eight state
indictments against high-profile public officials including Vice President
Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the GEO Group and
state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. among others. Blaylock indicated that if Guerra
had his way, nine indictments would have been returned that day. "I have
good information that (Guerra) tried to indict the chief, but the grand jury
declined," Blaylock said referring to Zamora. "He's (Guerra) got 40
days (in office) and another grand jury and the word is that he wants to
indict my client, the sheriff and others." Blaylock is also defending
Willacy County Clerk Gilberto Lozano in the criminal indictment returned Nov.
17. "We want to send the message that we are not going to sit back and
take it," Blaylock said. Zamora's lawsuit was initially filed March 14,
but U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen dismissed it Aug. 15 when Blaylock
failed to contact defense attorneys regarding a case management plan and did
not attend a pre-trial hearing, public records reflect. Last year, Guerra
filed a $20 million lawsuit that ended in federal court against state
district judges Migdalia Lopez of the 197th Judicial District, Zamora, former
Willacy special prosecutors Gus Garza., and others for malicious prosecution,
false arrest, abuse of office, perjury and other alleged crimes. He alleged
that he was falsely arrested on bogus charges and perjured testimony. Hanen
dismissed the lawsuit in May 2007 at Guerra's request. Guerra also could
refile the lawsuit. Garza also filed a lawsuit in federal court against
Willacy County, Guerra and Tamez in March, also
alleging that he was arrested for investigating Guerra. This case is pending
November 25, 2008 AP
A hearing was set to determine whether or not to disqualify the judge presiding
over the cases filed by a South Texas prosecutor against Vice President Dick
Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others. The state
Supreme Court's chief justice appointed District Judge Michael Peden of San Antonio to preside over a hearing Monday on
a motion to recuse and disqualify Judge J. Manuel Banales.
The prosecutor asked that Banales not hear the
case. District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra contends Banales
has worked closely with state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., one of the defendants in
the case. Half of the indictments are linked to privately run federal
detention centers in the sparsely populated southern Texas county and accuse
the public officials of culpability in the alleged abuse of prisoners. The
indictment against Cheney alleges that his personal investment in the
Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies, gives him
culpability in alleged prisoner abuse. Lucio is accused of illegally
profiting from prison consulting fees. The other half of the indictments target
judges, special prosecutors and the district clerk who played a role in an
earlier investigation of Guerra. It accuses them of abusing their powers in
investigating Guerra's office. Charges alleging Guerra extorted money from a
bail bond company and used his office for personal business were dismissed in
October, but he had already lost the March Democratic primary by then. Guerra
has accused Banales of allowing the 2007 indictment
against him to languish for more than a year to damage his re-election chances.
Banales appointed a temporary prosecutor to handle
the local officials indicted in the case because Guerra has sparred with them
for years and would be a witness in their cases.
November 21, 2008 AP
A county prosecutor who brought indictments against Vice President Dick
Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others pounded his fist
and shouted at the judge Friday about special treatment for high-profile
defendants as a routine motions hearing descended into chaos. Willacy County
District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra, who is accusing the public officials of
culpability in the alleged abuse of prisoners in a federal detention center,
asked Presiding Judge Manuel Banales to recuse
himself. Guerra has complained about Banales'
handling of the case. Attorneys for the vice president and other defendants
leapt to their feet in objection, as Guerra pounded the table and accused Banales of giving the defendants special treatment in
allowing motions to quash the indictments to be heard before the defendants
were arraigned. "Now all of a sudden there is urgency," Guerra
shouted. "Eighteen months you kept me indicted through the
election." The charges against Guerra were dropped last year. Guerra
lost re-election in the March Democratic primary. Banales
called a recess to contact the chief justice of the state Supreme Court for
suggestions on how to proceed, and ordered Guerra, who had slipped out once
before in the hearing, to remain in the courthouse. "I will not obey
that order," Guerra said. When Banales implied
he would take steps to keep Guerra in court, Guerra agreed to stay if the
judge asked him respectfully. Unlike the initial hearing Wednesday when
Guerra was absent and media and attorneys for the indicted appeared in equal
numbers, curious residents packed the well-worn pews of the Willacy County
Courthouse's only courtroom Friday. Half of the indictments returned Monday
are linked to privately run federal detention centers in the sparsely
populated southern Texas county. The other half target judges and special
prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra. Banales appointed a special prosecutor to handle the
local officials indicted along with Cheney, Gonzales and state Sen. Eddie
Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, because Guerra has sparred with them for years. The
vice president is the highest public official Guerra has pursued, but he made
a nearly 20-year-career of passing over routine crimes in favor of public
corruption before being defeated in the March Democratic primary election. It
was Guerra's interest in the contracts to build and run a federal detention
center that led to some of his biggest successes -- three guilty pleas on
bribery charges from former county commissioners in 2005. But he also
believes it was the motivation for his own legal battles. Guerra responded to
his theft arrest by camping outside the courthouse with farm animals in
protest. He continued working for more than a year while under indictment on
charges of extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for
personal business until Banales dismissed the
indictment last month. Guerra ran the current investigation into alleged
prisoner abuse with a siege mentality. He worked it from his home, dubbed it
"Operation Goliath" and kept it secret from his staff, he said. He
gave all the witnesses biblical pseudonyms -- his was "David" --
and sometimes gave false reasons for witnesses' appearances so as not to
raise suspicion in a courthouse he believed to be filled with political enemies.
A clerk and a judge who share the building were among those indicted Monday.
The grand jury also charged Lucio with illegally profiting from prison
consulting fees. The GEO Group Corp. was indicted on a murder charge for the
death of an inmate at a federal prison. "The indictment is the product
of prosecutorial vindictiveness and is void on its face," defense
attorney Tony Canales, who represents the private prison operator, wrote in a
motion. Canales is also the legal representative for Cheney and Gonzales.
Another indictment alleges that Cheney's personal investment in the Vanguard
Group, which invests in private prison companies, gives him culpability in
alleged prisoner abuse. Other indictments charge two district judges, two
special prosecutors and the Willacy County district clerk with abusing their
powers in investigating Guerra's office. The defendants did need to appear in
person Friday.
November 20, 2008 NewsChannel 5
For the first time since the indictments were handed down, Willacy County
District Attorney Juan Guerra spoke about the cases he built against top U.S.
officials. Juan Guerra says he's been investigating alleged corruption behind
private prisons since 2006, but only recently was able to bring his evidence
before a grand jury. He says that's why it took until now to bring about
indictments of the Vice President along with the former U.S. Attorney General
and Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. Guerra says the indictments center around private
prisons here in the Valley and around the country. He says those who make
money from the private prisons are turning a blind eye to substandard
conditions at the prisons; where he says inmates are dying at an alarming
rate. "The people like Senator Eddie Lucio who would be in a position to
stop the killings is embedded into the prison profit business. He is a
consultant for at least 3 businesses that are involved in private prisons and
each one is paying him over $50,000 as a consultant," Guerra said.
"Vice President Cheney who has stocks in all three of the biggest companies
that have prisons for profit...he knows he's making a lot of money from these
companies and he's in a position to stop the killings because he can direct
the Justice Department or he can direct ICE to say what's going on and say
why are so many people are dying in these prisons," he said. Guerra
continued and said "Alberto Gonzalez, where he comes in is that the
investigations into private prisons there in his term were stopped in its
tracks as soon as people like myself and the FBI started investigating the
private prison business, they were ordered just to stop. So there you have
the engaged in criminal activity." Guerra is set to appear in court
tomorrow morning.
November 19, 2008 NewsChannel 5
The GEO group, the prison corporation at the center of the indictments has a
long history filled with allegations of prisoner abuse. The abuse has
sometimes even turned deadly. A former corrections officer who did not want
to be identified says she was on-duty at the Willacy State Jail in 2001 when
Gregorio De La Rosa, Jr. was beaten to death by fellow inmates. She says he
was bloody and not very responsive after the incident. De La Rosa died just
four days before his release date. His family sued the prison owner at that
time, the GEO group known then as Wackenhut. The family won a $47 million
settlement. The former corrections officer says De La Rosa's incident was not
a result of an incompetent staff since the jail was fully staffed. She was
employed there for more than six years and says it was a good company to work
for. However, not everyone agrees. Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News,
a prison watchdog group, says that the GEO Group has a bad reputation for a
reason. "They gain their contracts through lobbying and cronyism and
political favoritism," Wright said. "They make their profits once
they have the contracts through short staffing their facilities and
underpaying their staff." Wright says the GEO runs prisons full of
problems. "Very high incidents of escapes, assaults, murders, sexual
assaults and riots as well," he said. However, the former corrections
officer of the jail says that there's always going to be riots and assaults
in a prison setting. She says those incidents don't make it to the news
because they are kept in-house. Lawmakers are calling for a review of all
GEO's contracts in Texas, though they claim it has nothing to do with the
Willacy County Indictments, which accuse the Vice President of the U.S., Dick
Cheney of wrong doing since he owns a stock in company connected to the GEO group.
November 19, 2008 Narco
Sphere
US Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted today for a prison
profiteering scheme and charged with abuse of prisoners. Cheney invested
millions in the Vanguard Group, an investment management company with
interests in the prison companies in charge of detention centers. Former
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also indicted in the prison
profiteering scheme, resulting in ongoing prisoner assaults and at least one
murder. Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering after
the private prison corporation GEO Group, began receiving enormous federal
contracts to build detention centers to imprison migrants, including ones in
Laredo, Texas and Jena, Louisiana. Human rights activists said the
fever-pitched racism mounted toward immigrants at the US/Mexico border was
induced for the purpose of prison profiteering by US officials reaping
enormous profits. The increased arrests of migrants resulted in profits and a
long list of new prison construction contracts for the GEO Group, formerly
Wackenhut, both with a long history of assaults and murders in prisons. A
Texas grand jury indicted Cheney today and accused him of at least
misdemeanor assaults of inmates by allowing inmates to assault fellow
inmates. Gonzales was charged with having used his position to stop
investigations into assaults committed in a prison for profit in Willacy
County, Texas. Both Cheney and Gonzales were charged with engaging in
organized criminal activity. Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted
the GEO Group, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his
release in 2001. The indictment alleged the GEO Group allowed other inmates
to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks.
The death happened at the Raymondville facility. A jury ordered the company
to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment in 2006. The
Cheney-Gonzales indictment refers to the de la Rosa case. Human rights
activists protested both Raymondville and Hutto prisons in southwestern Texas
in recent years. At Hutto, migrant women and children were abused. ICE
refused to allow a UN Rapporteur into Hutto. During the Bush-Cheney regime,
prisons of torture and prisons for migrants became synonymous with the name GEO,
from Guantanamo to migrant prisons in the south and along the southwest
border. Cheney said Guantanamo was vital in 2005 and detainees could expect
to be treated better here than "by virtually any other government on the
face of the earth." Geo was awarded a contract for the continued
management of the Migrant Operations Center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Nov.
2, 2006. Recently, GEO received a contract for a migrant prison in Jena, La.
GEO also received a contract for housing "criminal aliens" in the
US, as stated on the GEO website. GEO's migrant prisons were not restricted
to the US. GEO also assumed a management contract in the Campsfield
House Immigration Removal Center in England. GEO was not the only one
profiteering. The Wackenhut Corp. was also profiteering from transporting
migrants from the border after their arrests. The two companies split in
2003. All along the border, while GEO was building prisons, GEO's other half,
Wackenhut Corp., was profiteering from the arrest of migrants from the borders.
The United States Customs and Border Protection agency entered into the
contract with Wackenhut Corp., to transport arrested migrants from the
border. Wackenhut is now the domestic subsidiary of the U.K.-based security
giant Group 4 Securicor. While the US filled its prisons with migrants, with
a price on their heads, the number of Native American prisoners soared. The
US Department of Justice recently released a study showing that Native
American inmates in Indian country jails increased by 24 percent between 2004
and 2007. The figures for Native Americans in all facilities -- tribal,
federal and state -- increased 4.5 percent. Suicides, attempted suicides,
deaths and escapes were cited as the result of deteriorating prison
conditions. Human rights activists hope the indictments of Cheney and
Gonzales are the first of many indictments of the Bush-Cheney administration.
November 18, 2008 AP
Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South
Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles
under the outgoing prosecutor. The indictment returned Monday has not yet
been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.
The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one
naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and some targeting public officials
connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles.
Regarding the indictments targeting the public officials, Guerra said,
"the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me."
Guerra himself was under indictment for more than a year and half until a
judge dismissed the indictments last month. Guerra's tenure ends this year
after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic
primary in March. Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and
Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified
to the grand jury. Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal
activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group,
which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the
federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and
"at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to
the prison companies. Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to
comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a
copy of the indictment. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position
while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the
privately- run prisons. Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger III, said in a
written statement, "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any
good prosecutor can recognize." He said he hoped Texas authorities would
take steps to stop "this abuse of the criminal justice system."
Another indictment released Tuesday accuses Lucio of profiting from his
public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies. Guerra
announced his intention to investigate Lucio's prison consulting early last
year. Lucio's attorney, Michael Cowen, released a scathing statement accusing
Guerra of settling political scores in his final weeks in office.
"Senator Lucio is completely innocent and has done nothing wrong,"
Cowen said, adding that he would file a motion to quash the indictment this
week. Willacy County has become a prison hub with county, state and federal
lockups. Guerra has gone after the prison-politician nexus before, extracting
guilty pleas from three former Willacy and Webb county commissioners after
investigating bribery related to federal prison contacts. Last month, a
Willacy County grand jury indicted The GEO Group, a Florida private prison
company, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his
release. The three-count indictment alleged The GEO Group allowed other
inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into
socks. The death happened in 2001 at the Raymondville facility. In 2006, a
jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil
judgment. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment makes reference to the de la Rosa
case. None of the indictments released Tuesday had been signed by Presiding
Judge Manuel Banales of the Fifth Administrative
Judicial Region. Last month, Banales dismissed
indictments that charged Guerra with extorting money from a bail bond company
and using his office for personal business. An appeals court had earlier
ruled that a special prosecutor was improperly appointed to investigate
Guerra. After Guerra's office was raided as part of the investigation early
last year, he camped outside the courthouse in a borrowed camper with a
horse, three goats and a rooster. He threatened to dismiss hundreds of cases
because he believed local law enforcement had aided the investigation against
him.
October 28,
2008 Howard Stern.com
A lone District Attorney in a small county in South Texas has succeeded
in doing what no one else has accomplished, getting the infamous GEO Group to
crawl out of its hole. The company that runs dozens of private prisons across
America, including the one that held Kenneth Keith Kallenbach
until just before he died, is now scrambling to put a stop to an indictment
charging the GEO Group with murder and manslaughter charges in yet another
case of a dead inmate. Attorneys for the company showing up unannounced at
court in South Texas demanding the charges be dismissed. The GEO Group reportedly
telling the judge the murder charges are bad for business, bad PR, and bad
for shareholders. Howard 100 News reporter Steve Langford investigates.
October 27, 2008 Valley Morning Star
A Willacy County grand jury last week indicted a Florida private prison
company on a murder charge in the 2001 death of a prisoner days before his
release from a Raymondville prison, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra said
Monday. A three-count indictment accuses The GEO Group of allowing other
inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr., 33, of Laredo to death with padlocks
stuffed into socks, Guerra said. "To charge a company with murder, it's
got to be a very egregious situation," Guerra said. "By cutting
staff or guards not being trained well, people are getting killed."
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.
In 2001, prisoners Daniel Sanchez of Mathis and Pedro de Jesus Equia of Brownsville were indicted on murder charges in
De La Rosa's death. They were sentenced to 20-year prison sentences after
pleading guilty to lesser charges, Guerra said in an earlier interview.
October 24, 2008 Bloomberg
GEO Group Inc., the Florida-based prison operator, was charged with
murder in Texas for allowing prisoners to kill another inmate who was days
away from completing a six-month sentence, a nonprofit group said. Willacy
County District Attorney Juan Guerra in Texas filed a three-count indictment
against GEO Group for allegedly allowing inmates in 2001 to use padlocks in
socks to bludgeon to death Gregorio De La Rosa, who was serving time for a
drug offense, said Alex Friedmann, a spokesman for the Private Corrections
Institute watchdog group. "Most District Attorneys wouldn't pursue these
kinds of charges,'' Friedmann said today in a phone interview. The case is
likely the ``first time a prison company has ever faced criminal charges as a
result of a prisoner death in custody,'' he said. ``There might be another
one out there, but if so, we're not familiar with it.'' GEO Group employees
allowed ``beatings and fights between inmates for money, and a tradition of
payback, whereby prisoners were beaten just before their release,'' Guerra
said in a PCI statement, citing a civil lawsuit filed by De La Rosa's family.
In 2006, a Willacy County jury awarded $47.5 million in the wrongful-death
case filed against GEO Group, according to the statement. Guerra said
killings in private prisons are ``more than civil matters'' and that GEO
Group should be held "criminally responsible for the death of this
particular inmate,'' according to the statement. Friedmann said he didn't
know the status of the civil suit. Pablo Paez, a
spokesman for Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO Group, didn't immediately return
a call and e-mail seeking comment after business hours. Guerra and Terry
Flores, a clerk at Willacy County court, couldn't be reached for comment.
October 24, 2008 AP
A Florida private prison company has been indicted in South Texas on a
murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his release. A
three-count indictment alleges The GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat
Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death
happened in 2001 at the Raymondville facility, just four days before de la
Rosa's scheduled release, according to Thursday's indictment from Willacy
County. 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. In 2006, a jury ordered the company to pay de la
Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment.
September 21, 2006 San Antonio
Express-News
Gregorio De La Rosa was only four days from completing his sentence at a
private prison in Raymondville when he was beaten to death in the prison yard
on April 26, 2001. Late Friday, a Willacy County jury returned a $47.5
million verdict, the largest verdict in county history, in a negligence suit
filed by his family against the Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which ran the
prison, and the prison warden. "The evidence was disturbing. It showed a
failure to properly search, inadequate staffing and improper response," said
Ron Rodriguez, who represented the De La Rosa family. The verdict came after
eight hours of deliberation, following a two-week trial. When he died, De La
Rosa was serving a six-month sentence for a drug offense at the 1,000-bed
prison. Calls to defense lawyer Bruce Garcia in Austin were referred by his
office to the Geo Group, a Florida company that spun off from Wackenhut after
the incident and operates the facility. The Geo Group runs more than 50 jails
in the United States, as well as others in Australia, England, Canada and
South Africa. Company spokesman Pablo Paez did not
return calls for comment. There was no word if the company planned to appeal.
According to the lawsuit, De La Rosa was beaten to death by two inmates who
used padlocks stuffed into socks as weapons. The inmates, Daniel Sanchez and
Pedro de Jesus Equia, were later charged with
murder and pleaded guilty to lesser charges, receiving 20-year sentences,
according to newspaper accounts. According to the lawsuit, De La Rosa's death
was avoidable. "Inmates had used these very same padlocks as weapons to
beat other inmates before De La Rosa's beating death. It was conclusively
foreseeable that inmates would use these padlocks as weapons," the suit
claimed. The suit also asserted, "Defendants had a pattern and practice
of allowing beatings and fights between inmates for money, and a tradition of
payback, whereby prisoners were beaten just before their release."
September 20, 2006 Laredo Morning
Times
The family of a local man killed at a prison run by Wackenhut has been
awarded $47.5 million by a Willacy County jury. The jury found Friday that
warden David Forrest and Wackenhut, which changed its name to the GEO Group
in 2003, were negligent in the 2001 death of Laredoan
Gregorio De La Rosa Jr. “The evidence was indeed disturbing, and the verdict
speaks for itself,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Ronald Rodriguez. It happened
at Willacy State Jail in Raymondville, where De La Rosa, 33, was serving a
jail sentence. On April 26, 2001, two other inmates beat De La Rosa to death
using socks filled with padlocks. He suffered numerous injuries to the head,
neck and back. His family accused the prison of negligence, saying officials
failed to supervise De La Rosa’s assailants, weed out unqualified guards and
screen inmates for weapons. Rodriguez also alleged that the prison destroyed
a videotape of the beating. The administration was further accused of
tolerating bribery and special favors for inmates in the prison. A defense
attorney for Wackenhut referred inquiries to the GEO Group, which could not
be reached for comment Tuesday. The 404th District Court jury had the option
of dividing blame for the death between the prison corporation, the warden
and De La Rosa himself. It declared the prison 75 percent negligent and the
warden 25 percent negligent, and assigned no blame to De La Rosa. Part of the
$47.5 million verdict was awarded to six relatives of De La Rosa’s on the
basis of mental anguish and loss of companionship. The jury assessed $20
million in exemplary damages against the corporation and another $500,000
specifically against the warden. Rodriguez said he’s heard that the verdict
is the largest in the history of Willacy County.
September 1, 2006 Valley Star
Testimony continued Thursday in the civil trial of a private prison
company accused of negligence in the beating death of a Laredo prisoner. The
family of Gregorio De La Rosa alleges Wackenhut Corrections Corp. failed to
supervise two prisoners who used socks filled with padlocks to beat him on April
26, 2001. Thursday, attorney Ron Rodriguez tried to show the jury that the
company inadequately trained its prison guards. Testimony included the
company's videotaped dramatization that shows a prison guard telling a sexual
assault victim that if he didn't want to be raped, he shouldn't have gone to
prison. Testimony also included the company's videotaped interview of guards
during an internal investigation of De La Rosa's death. A videotape showed a
padlock attached to a white sock on the grassy prison yard where De La Rosa
was beaten to death. Wackenhut operated the state's 1,000-bed Willacy Unit
here. In the lawsuit, De La Rosa's family alleges Wackenhut "negligently
allowed two assailants to beat to death Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. with socks filled
with padlocks provided by Wackenhut." In the lawsuit, the family alleges
the company destroyed a videotape that showed two inmates beating De La Rosa,
33, who was serving a six-month sentence in the facility for drug possession.
May 7, 2001
Electronic sensors for the fence surrounding the Willacy County Unit were not
working the night George Hernandez escaped last November, the Valley Morning
Star has learned. The fence's electronic sensors have not worked since
the prison was built, Warden David Forrester told the Star. He
confirmed that "six to eight" of the security television monitors
in the prison were not operating the night of the escape. The warden
said he's aware of two incidents when several security cameras have failed to
operate. Forrester said that failure of the security fence sensors
aided Hernandez's escape. If the fence sensors were operating,
Hernandez would have been detected long before he could have made the
escape. "There were sensors originally when it was built, but
those sensors have not worked since the construction, " said Forrester.
"So, we improvise. We use additional manpower."
"This is a state-owned building. We (Wackenhut Corrections Corp.)
manage it and operate it and keep up the general maintenance. Larry
Todd, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said that in
addition to the faulty monitors and the inoperable fence monitors, an
important tool in preventing prison escapes was "asleep at the
wheel." "We discovered much later that one of the outer perimeter
patrol officers was sleeping in a car and not watching the fence," said
Todd, in written statement to the Valley Morning Star. (Valley Morning
Star)
November 17, 2000
A convicted robber escaped from a state jail before sunrise Friday by
climbing over a razor-wire fence. George Luis-Hernandez was missing during a
dawn head count and jailers discovered a trail of washcloths covering the
sharp wire fence.
Williamson County Jail
Williamson, Texas
GEO Group
June 11, 2003
Williamson County's new jail is expected to be finished this fall, but county
leaders aren't sure they'll be ready to open it for business. With
construction slated to end in October, county commissioners and Sheriff John Maspero are still looking for the money and new employees
they'll need to run the jail. So far, they've hit a few snags,
disagreeing on everything from budget to staffing. As a result, the jail
probably won't open until 2004. For the first time, they're also
thinking about having a private company run the jail, although it will become
home to county inmates now housed in a private jail in Taylor. The
trouble began in April, when Maspero told
commissioners he'd ideally like to hire 272 employees for the jail. Judge
John Doerfler said that number was way too
high. So Maspero whittled it down to 159 by,
among other things, eliminating a work release program and replacing senior
officers with lower-level staff members. He based that number on a
study by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which recommended that the
county hire 162 people. At last week's Commissioners Court meeting, Maspero had cut the estimate further, to 151.
Assistant Chief Deputy Jack Hall, who runs the county jail, is worried that
the county might be going too far, sacrificing safety to save money.
"We've cut it to the bare bones," he told the commissioners.
"I'm greatly concerned about the liability to the county if we
inadequately staff it." Whether the commissioners decide to
approve a high or low number, a money problem remains. It now costs
about $4 million to house 250 extra inmates at the private jail in Taylor. Maspero estimates it'll cost $5.7 million to staff the
new jail. At last week's Commissioners Court meeting, three
commissioners passed around a calculator, crunching the numbers and, at
times, appearing puzzled by the math. "The figures don't
jive," Doerfler said. "Didn't we go into
this process because it would be cheaper to run?" To make up the
difference, the county may have to raise taxes 4 percent., he said. Maspero said $5.7 million is reasonable, given that the
new jail is bigger and will house the county's entire inmate
population. To cut costs, the commissioners are considering accepting
bids from companies to privatize the jail. It's a controversial idea because for-profit
groups sometimes hire less experienced officers for low salaries, which can
put the county at risk of lawsuits. Maspero said he
would have to approve the company and would also have to have a say in how
the jail is managed. "It all gets down to what company would win the
bid," Hall said. "Some companies are better than others. Some will
hire the cheapest people they can." In 1999, the state had to take
back control of one of its privatized jails, the Travis County Community
Justice Center, after 13 guards and a caseworker were indicted on charges
that included sexual assault and misconduct. Wackenhut Corrections Corp. was
the private company under contract with the county to run the jail.
Whether or not the county decides to privatize, it might still
have problem: no officers ready to staff the jail when it's
finished this fall. It can take months to hire and train corrections
employees. Hall said he'll probably need to get 1,000 applications to fill
151 slots with qualified people. Officers will have to complete at least five
weeks of training and clerical workers three to four. Hall said he has
received a handful of applications from jailers now guarding Williamson
County inmates at the private jail in Taylor. But he said it's too early to tell
whether a significant number of those jailers would be willing and qualified
to come to work in the new jail. To open the jail this fall, Hall would
need permission from county commissioners to start hiring and training right
now. He wants to hire at least 15 officers soon, a $180,000 expense that Doerfler thinks could be squeezed into this year's tight
budget. But there's not enough money to hire the full staff, so it's unlikely
Hall would be able to hire the rest until the new budget year begins Oct.
1. So, the jail probably won't be opened until January or
February. "Actually being prepared to have prisoners in the new
jail will be better than getting them there as soon as possible," Maspero said. Even when the jail opens, the
county might still have staffing woes. The old jail has a linear design:
officers walk down long halls and keep an eye on inmates in the cells on each
side. The new jail will have "pods," or large cells, instead. One
guard will stand inside each pod and supervise 48 inmates. It's a
common design in contemporary jails, but it can sometimes be more dangerous
and difficult to manage. Sixty percent of officers who are hired to
work in such prisons quit, according to the National Institute of
Corrections. Hall is worried he may lose people, too, despite the county's
good salaries Jim Harrell, who ran the county jail before
resigning last year, said he warned Maspero back
then about many of the jail problems cropping up now. Harrell plans to
run against Maspero for sheriff next year "We're going to have a brand new jail we
can't use yet because the sheriff didn't do things in the appropriate
time," Harrell said. "It's been poor scheduling, poor management,
poor administration." Maspero
disagrees. "That's totally inaccurate," he said. "We're
going to staff the jail, it's going to work, and it's going to be in a timely
manner." (Austin American-Statesman
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