Corrections Department ponders acquiring additional prison space

The Board of Corrections on Thursday indicated it will study the possible acquisition of additional space to accommodate a growing number of offenders.

The panel gave Corrections Department Interim Director Joe M. Allbaugh permission to begin the process of obtaining additional space by a lease, lease purchase or purchase.

Two empty private facilities will be under consideration, Allbaugh said, among other options.

Oklahoma leases private prison beds at three facilities but does not use the remaining two, which are empty. It spends $92.2 million annually on the three private prisons, said Alex Gerszewski, a DOC spokesman.

The two empty facilities are the North Fork Correctional Center in Sayre, which has 2,400 beds, and the Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, which has a capacity of 2,160. Both are owned by Corrections Corporation of America.

“The director has been involved in some discussions with private prison operators in the state about the possibility of us leasing or buying or leasing to purchase one or more facilities,” said Kevin Gross, Board of Corrections chairman.

Gross said the Corrections Department would operate the new facility with its own people if something is leased as opposed to paying a per diem rate to a private prison.

“If you are looking at beds, obviously those two facilities are standing open and unoccupied right now,” Allbaugh said. “That is a place to start. But there are other facilities in the state that we don’t know about yet that may have beds. And that is the purpose of talking to as many people as we possibility can.”

Allbaugh said private prison operator GEO Group has commented many times that the company wanted to expand at its Lawton Correctional Facility.

The state has a contract for 2,548 medium-security beds and 78-maximum security beds at the Lawton facility, according to the Corrections Department website.

“I want to hear what GEO has to say,” Allbaugh said. “At the end of the day, if the numbers don’t work, regardless of who has the beds, then the numbers don’t work and we will have to do something else.”

Allbaugh said he was uncertain how the agency would pay for the additional beds.

He said he didn’t know if the agency would have to close existing facilities to pay for additional beds. “It is one of the unknowns,” he said. The Corrections Department needs to be proactive in efforts to solve the population problem, Allbaugh said. The agency is operating at about 120 percent of capacity.

Meanwhile, the agency has seen an offender growth of about 1,200 in the past year, which includes offenders backed up in county jails, said Laura Pitman, the Corrections Department’s division manager for field services.