Idaho must be in one hell of a pickle if it’s asking Corrections Corporation of America — now rebranded as CoreCivic — for help.
When this private prison contractor operated in Idaho, people got hurt. Taxpayers got bilked. And the reputations of public officials got tarnished.
Yet, with 25 percent more inmates than beds, Idaho can’t be choosy.
Some of these inmates are crowded into county jails. Others are taking up space in a private Texas prison. It’s hardly better than human warehousing.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
In the last four years, Idaho has squandered its opportunities to keep the flow of inmates in check by reforming parole and criminal sentencing laws, ending mandatory minimum sentencing and offering inmates early release for good behavior. Nor has it been willing to spend money on a new state owned and operated prison.
With the numbers still growing, Correction Director Josh Tewalt solicited bids from private operators. He got a single response — CoreCivic.
“Out-of-state placement is not a plan,” he told lawmakers. “It’s a mechanism to buy time, and all of us should be judged on how we use that time. ... Nobody believes this is a long-term solution to an immediate crisis.”
More than 1,000 of these overflow prisoners could be headed to the now shuttered CoreCivic-owned Kit Carson Correctional Center at Burlington, Colo. Under the five-year contract, CoreCivic would get $75.50 per inmate each day.
It’s been less than seven years since Idaho canceled the $29 million a year contract that put CCA in charge of the Idaho Correctional Center outside of Boise.
Just consider a partial rendition of CCA’s greatest hits:
l About 10 years ago, inmates beat 26-year-old Hanni Elabed of Idaho Falls into a coma — while at least three prison guards looked on. The video-taped assault occurred after guards assigned Elabed to quarters shared with some of the prisoners he had accused of peddling contraband.
l The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against CCA, contending the outfit’s business model of maximizing occupancy while holding down staffing costs unleashed a wave of inmate on inmate violence so widespread that it had earned the moniker “gladiator school.”
l To settle that lawsuit, CCA agreed to meet prison staffing levels. When it failed to comply, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter held the prison contractor in contempt of court.
l Another inmate lawsuit accused CCA of putting gangs in charge of the Idaho prison, thereby alleviating its own staffing costs.
l Meanwhile, state corrections officials urged superiors to allow them to bid on the private prison contract; they believed the state could do the job better and possibly cheaper.
l When Rebecca Boone of the Associated Press reported that CCA was billing the state for thousands of staff hours not worked every year, the state offered a passive reponse. Rather than pursue a full accounting, the state Board of Correction looked at one year’s worth of records and settled for $1 million.
l Then- Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, whose campaign accepted CCA contributions, reluctantly parted ways with the company. And his political appointee at the Idaho State Police, Col. Ralph Powell, never pursued a criminal investigation that everyone — including the federal judge — believed was underway.
l That got the attention of U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson and the FBI. She found no violation of federal law, but it was far from an exoneration. “There were a number of other actions or matters that may be of concern to the state agencies or to the voters or whatever,” she said.
l As it departed, CCA left behind a state prison with a malfunctioning communications system, inadequate supplies of medicine and incomplete inmate medical records.
Here’s a new hitch: To accomplish their mutual goal, Idaho and CoreCivic must expand operations in Colorado, where the newly elected governor, Jared Polis, has pledged to drive private prison contractors out of his state: “I will end our investment in private prisons and reinvest those dollars into rehabilitation, diversion, alternative and restorative justice programs.”
About 3,800 of Colorado’s 19,700 inmates remain in private prisons, but there’s talk of slashing that number by 30 percent — and completing the job within five years.
How does reopening Kit Carson and filling it with as many as 1,448 inmates from Idaho and other states not contradict those plans?
Ask Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Dean Williams, who has to give his consent. But, as the Denver Post reported, Colorado law says the director’s approval should not be “unreasonably withheld.”
In other words, Idaho is hoping CoreCivic has changed more than its name and that Colorado’s leaders will cooperate in spite of their own antipathy toward the private prison industry.
What could possibly go wrong? — M.T.
