After a decadeslong boom, private prisons are going bust across rural Texas.
After boom in private-owned lockups, fewer inmates mean failing facilities
EAGLE PASS — When prison promoters representing the Geo Group came to Maverick County nearly a decade ago, they touted the low-risk, publicprivate project as a longterm economic driver for this poor, border community
detention facility built for federal inmates would create local jobs, a steady cash flow for the county and, once the bonds were paid off, a county-owned prison. And by using a public facilities corporation to borrow the money, taxpayers would be shielded if anything went wrong.
It was an easy money pitch often heard in rural Texas during an era that made the state the private prison capital of the country as companies built more than 50 facilities with as many as 60,000 beds.
Three decades later, the boom is over. And as the public sector’s need for private prison beds has diminished, the tally of failing prisons in Texas is increasing, with some already vacant for years.
The bust is evident on a rural tour of the state, where more than a dozen once-profitable facilities have failed. At least seven of them, which together borrowed nearly $200 million, are in arrears on bond payments, figures from Municipal Market Analytics, a bond-research firm, show.
“Twenty years ago, everyone was bringing prisoners and everyone was making money. Then the state and federal governments figured out it cost too much to hold these guys, so they started looking at other means,” Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber said during a recent visit to the detention center there.
Back then, when the na- tion’s prison overcrowding problem was acute, private facilities and county jails in Texas were in high clover, renting beds for inmates from such distant locales as Hawaii, Montana and the District of Columbia, in addition to housing surplus federal, state and local prisoners.
But various factors — including shifts in federal immigration policy leading to fewer detentions, changes in criminal justice philosophy away from long sentences and incarceration for minor offenses, and a huge expansion in public prison systems — have dented the need for private beds.
South Texas has not been spared from the steady decline. Prison boom
For a while after it opened in 2009, the $42 million private prison in Maverick County was as good as advertised. Holding up to 900 immigration detainees, it supported 120 jobs and poured $400,000 annually into county coffers.
But in late 2013, a dispute between the county and Geo over the division of revenue ended the partnership.
“I felt the county should have more money coming in,” said County Judge David Saucedo, who pushed for better terms in the contract renewal.
Instead, Geo bolted. Unable to find another operator, the county took over the facility, but quickly saw declines in inmates and revenue, losing about $1.5 million in the past year and a half, Saucedo said.
For the prison employees, whose last day of work was Aug. 15, it has been a baffling failure.
“We would all like to know how things got to this point. There are a lot of unanswered questions,” said one longtime employee, who asked not to be named.
After the state’s first private facility opened in Houston in 1984 for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, prisons and the jobs they brought began sprouting in rural communities throughout Texas.
While no one keeps an exact count on the number of the private facilities, the six largest operators in Texas, the Geo Group, Corrections Corp. of America, LaSalle, Emerald, MTC and CEC operate more than 40 facilities containing about 50,000 beds, according to their websites.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state prison system, has about 150,000 beds. County jails have about 95,000 beds, many often empty.
Texas had some of the nation’s worst overcrowding 30 years ago. In the 1980s, the state prison system had fewer than 40,000 beds and was under a federal court order not to exceed 95 percent occupancy.
The result was a backlog of Huntsville-bound inmates in county jails.
In 1987, Bexar County Sheriff Harlon Copland captured the desperation and that will pay for the first 100,’ ” recalled Bill Bryan, a prison consultant and former jail administrator.
But, he said, a glance at statistics kept by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards shows the result is the significant overcapacity in county jails.
In June 1995, Texas jails had 64,000 beds, and were operating at 80 percent capacity, with 7,775 beds available. In June 2015, having added nearly 30,000 beds, they were operating at 70 percent capacity, and had 19,870 available beds.
The number of federal and contract prisoners in county jails has declined in recent years, due in part to changes in federal policy.
Where in 2000, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 1.67 million people, by 2014 the figure had dropped to fewer than 487,000, and has stayed low since. Detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement also recently have dipped after a longtime rise. Escapes, riots, lawsuits
The wild and wooly era of lightly supervised Texas private prison operators hawking beds to the highest bidder was not without troubles. These included escapes of out-of-state murderers and violent sexual offenders, the deaths in custody of out-of-state inmates, and complaints of prisoner abuse and inadequate care in Texas.
Allegations of mistreatment of Missouri prisoners in Texas led to a class-action federal lawsuit filed against the Bobby Ross Group, a private prison operator, and other defendants. The result was a $2.2 million settlement. More recently, prisoners rioted at the Reeves County Complex in Pecos in 2009 and this spring in Willacy County over alleged harsh conditions, including lack of medical care and contaminated food. Both uprisings caused extensive damage.
One of the few bright spots among the communities stuck with empty facilities is Littlefield, a city of 6,500 an hour northwest of Lubbock. There, a 300bed, city-owned prison that has been vacant for more than five years is about to reopen.
“We have not been in arrears. We have made payments twice a year since it opened in 2000. With utilities and other costs, it’s about $1 million a year, which is 13 percent of my budget,” said City Manager Mike Arismendez, who announced his resignation last week.
Originally built for the Texas Youth Commission, the prison later held inmates from Idaho and Wyoming before closing.
Recently, Arismendez said, after years of futile searching, the city landed a new tenant, although it is not one that would be welcome everywhere. The Texas inmates will be violent sex offenders who require additional treatment before being released.
“The public seems to be very happy that we’re going to reopen the facility and have jobs,” he said.