Gangs ran for-profit prison in Miss.
Youth center ‘like a jungle’
In the four privately run prisons holding Mississippi inmates last year, the assault rate was three times higher on average than in state-run lockups. None was as violent as the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility.
The for-profit detention center, surrounded by razor wire and near the forests and farms of central Mississippi, had 27 assaults per 100 offenders last year, more than any other prison in the state, according to an April court filing. Staff shortages, mismanagement and lax oversight had long turned it into a cauldron of violence, where female employees had sex with inmates, pitted them against each other, gave them weapons and joined their gangs, according to court records, interviews and a U.S. Justice Department report.
“It was like a jungle,” said Craig Kincaid, 24, a former inmate. “It was an awful place to go when you’re trying to get your life together.”
More than 1 30,000 state and federal convicts throughout the United States — 8 percent of the total — now live in private prisons such as Walnut Grove, as public officials buy into claims that the
institutions can deliver profits while preparing inmates for life after release, saving tax dollars and creating jobs.
No national data tracks whether the facilities are run as well as public ones, and private-prison lobbyists for years have successfully fought efforts to bring them under federal open-records law. Yet regulatory, court and state records show that the industry has repeatedly experienced the kind of staffing shortages and worker turnover that helped produce years of chaos at Walnut Grove.
“There is a systematic failure to provide the level and competency of staffing necessary to run facilities that are safe not only for the people on the inside, but the public,” said Elaine Rizzo, a criminal-justice professor at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., who studied prison privatization for a state advisory board. “It comes back to saving money.”
In Texas and Florida, which hold about a third of all privately detained state inmates, employee turnover rates were 50 percent to more than 100 percent higher in private prisons than in public ones, according to data from the Texas Criminal Justice Department and the Florida Law Enforcement Department. In Mississippi, Tennessee and Idaho, company-run prisons have had higher assault rates than public ones, state data show.
Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc., the second-largest U. S. prison company, ran the Walnut Grove prison for about two years, from August 2010 until July 2012.
Pablo Paez, a spokesman for Geo, said focusing on troubled institutions such as Walnut Grove “yields an unfair, unbalanced, and inaccurate portrayal of the totality of our industry’s and our company’s long-standing record of quality operations and services, which have delivered significant savings for taxpayers.”
The Mississippi prison “faced significant operational challenges for several years” before Geo took over, and the company invested “significant resources, time, and effort” to improve conditions at the facility, Paez said.
The for-profit prison industry has encountered staffing issues in other states. Idaho Corrections Department officials voted last month not to renew a contract with Nashvillebased Corrections Corp.of America, the largest U.S. prison company, after it admitted billing for hours that weren’t worked.
State and federal officials have reported dangerous conditions at understaffed privately run prisons in Ohio, Colorado and in Mississippi. New Mexico fined Geo $2.4 million in 2012 for excessive staff vacancies at three prisons in 2011 and 2012, according to Jim Brewster, general counsel for the state corrections department.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year sought $ 104,000 in penalties against Geo, including $70,000 for worker shortages, faulty cells and inadequate training at a prison in Meridian, Miss., that the agency said put workers at risk of being attacked. Geo is contesting the matter.
In May, inmates at the prison, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the state in U.S. District Court in Jackson alleging “barbaric and horrific conditions” at the facility, now run by a different company.
The private corrections industry has delivered for investors. The number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U. S. rose 44 percent in the past decade. BlackRock Inc. and Renaissance Technologies are among dozens of money-management firms that have invested in the business.
As of March 31, BlackRock reported holding stakes worth more than $254 million in Geo and $236 million in Corrections Corp., while Renaissance disclosed owning about $39 million of Geo shares and about $36 million in Corrections Corp. stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Geo has more than doubled since December 2011, while Corrections Corp. has risen 87 percent, both outpacing a 33 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Representatives of BlackRock and Renaissance declined to comment.
Pay and staffing ratios are lower in private prisons than in public ones, state and federal data show.