A 500-bed federal detention center may have caused more problems than it solved for cash-strapped Willacy County, Texas. Three county commissioners have already been convicted of accepting kickbacks from companies involved with the prison, and a state senator's ties to three contractors has raised ethical questions. The detention center is now the focus of a federal bribery investigation and a lawsuit filed by the county.
Between June 2000 and March 2003, Willacy County commissioners Israel Tamez, 58, and Jose Jiminez, 67, accepted a series of bribes totaling more than $10,000 in exchange for their votes in awarding lucrative prison contracts. Both men pled guilty to bribery charges on January 4, 2004.
Also charged and convicted was David Cortez, 70, a former Webb County commissioner. Cortez plead guilty in May 2005 for conspiring to obstruct, delay and affect commerce" for helping secure a contract for the detention facility. He admitted funneling at least $39,000 to county commissioners to help an unnamed consulting firm get part of the prison contract.
Sentencing for Tamez and Jiminez was postponed until January 2006 pending the outcome of the continuing federal investigation; Cortez's sentencing also was postponed by the federal district court in a sealed order. ...

by John E. Dannenberg

A six percent increase in property tax collections due to soaring real estate prices will add an estimated $150 million to Los Angeles County coffers in the coming year. County supervisors have allotted $68.5 million of that to reverse the cutbacks in the County Sheriff's budget for jails in the past three years that have resulted in 200,000 prisoners being let out early, the vast majority after serving only 10% of their sentences.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca plans to hire 500 new deputies and add 4,474 new beds to the jail system, a 25% increase in capacity. High-risk offenders will be moved into the Twin Towers downtown jail in an effort to counter the pattern of five detainee murders in the past two years at the hands of under-supervised fellow prisoners. An additional 63 deputies will be hired to perform safety checks" on prisoners. This was in response to the infamous security breach wherein a high-risk prisoner was able to freely roam the Central Jail to seek out and murder the witness who planned to testify against him. [See: PLN, April, 2005]
Beginning in 2002, Sheriff Baca was forced by budget cutbacks to reduce ...

U.S. Corrections Corporation Stock Suit Settled for $13.2 Million

The former owners of U.S. Correctional Corporation (USCC) have agreed to settle a lawsuit over misuse of the employee stock-ownership plan for $13.2 million.

Prior to 1998, when it was purchased by Corrections Corporation of America for $225 million, USCC ran ...

By Silja Ja Talvi

Published: March 9, 2005

"Don't forget that Jesus himself was a prisoner."
--New Mexico Department of Corrections Secretary Joe Williams, at the
American Correctional Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, January 2005.

"Strongly guarded & is the separation between religion and government in
the Constitution of the United States."
--James Madison, author of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Betty Ramirez is a career correctional officer who actually loves her job.
She believes in the power of rehabilitation and redemption for the women
she is responsible for guarding and protecting. More than anything,
Ramirez believes they deserve a second chance.

Or a third, a fourth or a fifth, as the case may be. New Mexico's
recidivism rate is the nation's third highest and, by some estimates, up
to 85 percent of women who are incarcerated and released within this state
will end up back in prison.

Ramirez, nonetheless, believes in the potential for rehabilitation of even
the most hardened inmates. "Most of these women are sorry for what they
have done," she says, "But have run into bad luck and bad situations."

A petite woman with a powerful presence, Ramirez is one of the few
Corrections ...

Private Prison Firm Donates $53,000 To California's Governor Schwarzenegger

by Marvin Mentor

Newly-elected Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who boasted during his campaign that he "couldn't be bought," accepted $53,000 in November, 2003 from Wackenhut Corrections Corp., a Boca Raton, Florida-based private prison contractor. Wackenhut recently changed its name to Geo Corporation.

Geo, which operates four minimum-security facilities in California for the California Department of Corrections (CDC), was on the verge of having a 224 bed prison it operates at McFarland, California closed on December 31. Wackenhut President Wayne Calabrese told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview that they had also given $5,000 to Schwarzenegger's recall campaign against former Governor Gray Davis. Wackenhut's $58,000 was the largest amount they had given to any California politician.

Former Governor Davis was widely criticized for his acceptance of over $3.4 million in donations from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the prison guards' union. "We were frustrated with the previous administration," Calabrese said. "We thought we should support a candidate and governor who has articulated support for public-private relationships.... We want to do everything we can to preserve our business base in California."

Geo's own Florida lobbyist, David Ericks, is close to ...

Florida Juvenile Justice: Check Private "Employee's" Records? What a Concept

By David M. Reutter

Guards employed by private contractors that operate Florida juvenile
justice programs earn some of the lowest wages in the nation. The result
is high turnover, which causes untrained and unqualified persons to be
hired. The biggest problem, however, is that private contractors often
hire persons who have been terminated by other juvenile programs for
abusing the Beery children they are hired to mentor and protect

Hiring Abusers

A Palm Beach Post Review of Records from Florida's Department of Juvenile
Justice (DJJ) and 40 of his contractors uncovered at least 200 employees
hired at juvenile justice centers in recent years after they were fired
from similar jobs for violence, misconduct, or incompetence.

The DJJ downgraded this finding by saying of these 200 employees are a
small percentage of the thousands who work in the system. DJJ, of course,
is the same agency that wishes to hide the 661 documented cases of child
abuse within its programs over the last nine years. Two-thirds of those
cases occurred since 2001.

Regularly, those who are fired by one DJJ program are hired within days by
another program.

Jimmy Haynes was ...

The old maxim, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," could
have been tailored to Wackenhut these days. Although Wackenhut Corrections
has spun off from its parent company, Wackenhut Corporation, there's no
indication that the political involvement which brought it this far will
change anytime soon.

Wackenhut Corrections was born as a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation
in 1984 when George Zoley presented the idea of a separate prison
management company to Wackenhut founder George Wackenhut. Although
Wackenhut Corrections began trading its stock separately in 1994, it
remained a subsidiary of Wackenhut Corporation. In May 2002, the Danish
securities firm Group 4 Falck bought Wackenhut Corporation for its security
guard division. The sale included 57 percent of Wackenhut Corrections (43
percent was owned by investors). Group 4 immediately announced it would
sell the corrections division for $170 million [PLN, October 2002].
Since that time, Zoley, who is Wackenhut Corrections' Chairman and CEO',
has focused on buying Corrections back. He succeeded in July 2003,
purchasing Group 4's 57 percent stake (12 million shares) for $132 million.
The move boosted Corrections' bottom line by 70 cents per share.
However, even with the discounted buy back and the sale of ...

Private Prison Contractor Donates $10,000 to Governor's Fund; Gets $20
Million California Contract Two Months Later

With the appearance of a stunning return on investment, GEO Group, a
Florida-based private prison contractor, won a $20 million-sole-source
award from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR) less than two months after GEO deposited a $10,000 check into
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiative campaign committee's
account.

According to public records, GEO has donated $68,000 to various
Schwarzenegger committees in the past two years. CDCR officials insist
there is no connection between the donations and contract, as did Marty
Wilson, the governor's chief fundraiser. Wilson's comments came days after
Schwarzenegger announced he will return a $50,000 check from a partner in a
Native American tribal casino project, after public outcry that he
negotiates with tribes for casino permits. The GEO contract is at arm's
length, Wilson distinguished, because GEO negotiates with a state agency,
not the governor. However, Kathy Feng, executive director of California
Common Cause, a citizens' finance reform watchdog group, called the timing
particularly troubling.

Ted Slosek, CDCR spokesman, reported that GEO was the only bidder for the
200 man McFarland (Fresno area) minimum-security community correctional
facility. GEO had operated ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

There are new troubles at several prisons in Colorado. At a 250-bed GRW-run private prison in Brush, a tiny town 91 miles northwest of Denver, the newly-resigned ex-warden and two guards have been indicted in relation to felony sexual contact with eight female prisoners. A guard lieutenant at a state prison has been arrested for sexually assaulting a male prisoner. Another nine people have been charged with smuggling contraband into the Brush Correctional Facility (BCF). Background checks also revealed that five of the guards at BCF had felony convictions and three others had questionable criminal backgrounds. The U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) stated in federal court that a high-ranking employee of Dominion Correctional Services of Edmond, Oklahoma, forced a female subordinate to engage in sexual activities at Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF) when that company was running that prison. The female guard filed suit in federal court alleging outrageous sexual conduct by the superior, retaliation and gender discrimination. Dominion settled the suit for an undisclosed sum. Meanwhile, a guard at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility (AVCF) has been arrested for allegedly raping a male state prisoner.

GRW Doing Good and
Doing Well at Brush? ...

by Silja J.A. Talvi

[Ed. note: Prison Legal News goes undercover at the American Correctional Association's 2005 winter conference in Phoenix, Arizona. It's just business," as one prison medical administrator puts it. And what a surreal business it is.]

There is no doubt that good work is done at the penitentiary & It only remains to go unto perfection," unnamed speaker at the 1874 Congress of the National Prison Association, later renamed the American Correctional Association.

[We] linger at the gates of correctional Valhallawith an abiding pride in the sense of a job superbly done! We may be proud, we may be satisfied, we may be content," Harold V. Langlois, American Correctional Association (ACA) President, 1966.

We'll have a hard time holding onto what we have now," Gwendolnn C. Chunn, ACA President, Winter ACA Conference, 2005. (Referencing the unprecedented prison expansion boom of the 1990s.)

January 10, 2005It was the third day of the American Correctional Association's winter fair in sunny Phoenix, Arizona. The spectacular southwestern sunrise and balmy outside temperatures aside, the inside of the Phoenix Civic Plaza didn't feel like a particularly pleasant place to be.

That is, unless you happened to be in the business of profiting ...