RandomGuy
03-03-2015, 01:07 PM
Yet another private prison failure, wish I could say I was surprised.
It is beginning to get very expensive to "save" taxpayer money by outsourcing prisons. This riot was about the conditions at the tent facility.
RAYMONDVILLE — In the aftermath of last week’s prisoner uprising that left much of the Willacy County Correctional Center in ruins, local officials are on edge over the potential loss of hundreds of jobs and say they’re puzzled by the sudden outburst despite years of alleged abuses.
Federal officials have not determined the cause of the riot and are continuing to move inmates to other prisons while they assess the damage. The prison held as many as 2,800 immigrants charged with low-level crimes.
It is one of three prisons in the small South Texas county on the Gulf Coast, employing 400 people in an area that suffers an unemployment rate of over 9 percent, according to Labor Department statistics, much higher than the Texas jobless rate of about 5 percent. The county population is about 22,000.
“It’s tough for a small community to have something like this happen,” Raymondville City Manager Eleazar Garcia Jr. said. “Now people are scared they aren’t going to have jobs.”
The uprising began the morning of Feb. 20 when some prisoners refused to participate in routine work duties. By noon, it had erupted into a full-blown riot involving most of the inmates who smashed the structures with pipes and set fires.
A host of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the scene, while crisis negotiators defused the situation. Since then Management & Training Corp., the Utah-based company that runs the Willacy prison for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, has busily shuttled inmates to undisclosed prisons.
A series of accusations dating back several years suggested there were systemic problems at the prison, but the the company and residents of Raymondville maintain there was little evidence to suggest a rebellion was imminent.
“From what I gather these guys pretty much had it made,” Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said. “They had everything if not more than what they’d normally have in a facility like that.”
The Willacy prison is one of 13 Criminal Alien Requirement facilities in the country that hold immigrant prisoners, many of them offenders of Operation Streamline, a program that brings federal charges against immigrants who cross the border illegally.
Last June, the ACLU released a damning report, titled “Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System,” in which the CAR prisoners in Willacy complained of poor conditions, including raw sewage overflowing from toilets and biting insects.
One inmate made the prescient remark that sometimes they become so frustrated they even speak of burning down the tents.
In 2011, the PBS series Frontline cited sexual abuse by guards and other physical and racial abuse in the Willacy prison. And in two separate 2010 reports by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Texas Appleseed, immigrant detainees complained of a lack of medical care.
“The atmosphere in Willacy is one of overwhelming despair and frustration,” said Adriana Piñon, the senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “Uprisings like these are a predictable consequence of the Bureau of Prisons turning a blind eye to what is happening at these private for-profit CAR prisons.”
Management & Training Corp. denounced the ACLU report as one based on “anecdotal allegations,” adding that during its contract with ICE, detainees not only enjoyed life skills courses and educational programs, but monitors who ensured they were treated fairly.
It further disputed claims of inadequate care, saying the facility has a team of health-care professionals including a physician, nurses, a physiologist, dentists and mental health visits.
ICE “wanted to continue our contract in 2011 when the county and MTC decided to enter into a contract with the Bureau of Prisons,” MTC said in a statement. Until 2011, the prison housed immigrants caught crossing the border illegally. Under the latest contract, it detains immigrants charged with low-level crimes.
On the day of the riot last week, prisoners apparently upset with medical care burned bedding and set fire to some of the 200-foot-long Kevlar tents where they are housed, local officials said.
Spence said his deputies had been called on to surround the prison and flash their lights several months before the uprising when inmates threatened to disobey orders, but this time, they would not be so easily calmed.
“They started cutting open the tents,” Spence said, “pouring out like ants coming out of an ant hill.”
The Willacy County economy is deeply dependent on the prison industry, floating tens of millions of dollars in bonds through a “Public Facilities Corp.” to build the Correctional Center. The county also has a 500-bed detention center operated by MTC under a U.S. Marshals contract, and a 1,000-bed state jail, operated by Corrections Corp. of America.
Each of the more than 2,800 prisoners in the Willacy correctional facility puts $2.50 per day in county coffers, adding up to about a quarter of its yearly budget of $8.1 million. It’s unclear who will be ultimately responsible for repairs to the building or how soon prisoners will return, if at all, leading some officials to worry the county could soon be faced with a budget shortfall.
Discussion in local corner stores and restaurants quickly shift to impending layoffs — 150 of the Correctional Center workers are county residents — but the dramatic events of last week haven’t sparked much introspection.
“We really don’t know what the consequences are going to be,” said Aurelio Guerra, Jr., the Willacy County judge. “Until MTC is able to go in there and assess the damage, we won’t know big this elephant of a problem really is.”
http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Willacy-county-reeling-after-prison-riot-6106034.php#/0
It is beginning to get very expensive to "save" taxpayer money by outsourcing prisons. This riot was about the conditions at the tent facility.
RAYMONDVILLE — In the aftermath of last week’s prisoner uprising that left much of the Willacy County Correctional Center in ruins, local officials are on edge over the potential loss of hundreds of jobs and say they’re puzzled by the sudden outburst despite years of alleged abuses.
Federal officials have not determined the cause of the riot and are continuing to move inmates to other prisons while they assess the damage. The prison held as many as 2,800 immigrants charged with low-level crimes.
It is one of three prisons in the small South Texas county on the Gulf Coast, employing 400 people in an area that suffers an unemployment rate of over 9 percent, according to Labor Department statistics, much higher than the Texas jobless rate of about 5 percent. The county population is about 22,000.
“It’s tough for a small community to have something like this happen,” Raymondville City Manager Eleazar Garcia Jr. said. “Now people are scared they aren’t going to have jobs.”
The uprising began the morning of Feb. 20 when some prisoners refused to participate in routine work duties. By noon, it had erupted into a full-blown riot involving most of the inmates who smashed the structures with pipes and set fires.
A host of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the scene, while crisis negotiators defused the situation. Since then Management & Training Corp., the Utah-based company that runs the Willacy prison for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, has busily shuttled inmates to undisclosed prisons.
A series of accusations dating back several years suggested there were systemic problems at the prison, but the the company and residents of Raymondville maintain there was little evidence to suggest a rebellion was imminent.
“From what I gather these guys pretty much had it made,” Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said. “They had everything if not more than what they’d normally have in a facility like that.”
The Willacy prison is one of 13 Criminal Alien Requirement facilities in the country that hold immigrant prisoners, many of them offenders of Operation Streamline, a program that brings federal charges against immigrants who cross the border illegally.
Last June, the ACLU released a damning report, titled “Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System,” in which the CAR prisoners in Willacy complained of poor conditions, including raw sewage overflowing from toilets and biting insects.
One inmate made the prescient remark that sometimes they become so frustrated they even speak of burning down the tents.
In 2011, the PBS series Frontline cited sexual abuse by guards and other physical and racial abuse in the Willacy prison. And in two separate 2010 reports by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Texas Appleseed, immigrant detainees complained of a lack of medical care.
“The atmosphere in Willacy is one of overwhelming despair and frustration,” said Adriana Piñon, the senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas. “Uprisings like these are a predictable consequence of the Bureau of Prisons turning a blind eye to what is happening at these private for-profit CAR prisons.”
Management & Training Corp. denounced the ACLU report as one based on “anecdotal allegations,” adding that during its contract with ICE, detainees not only enjoyed life skills courses and educational programs, but monitors who ensured they were treated fairly.
It further disputed claims of inadequate care, saying the facility has a team of health-care professionals including a physician, nurses, a physiologist, dentists and mental health visits.
ICE “wanted to continue our contract in 2011 when the county and MTC decided to enter into a contract with the Bureau of Prisons,” MTC said in a statement. Until 2011, the prison housed immigrants caught crossing the border illegally. Under the latest contract, it detains immigrants charged with low-level crimes.
On the day of the riot last week, prisoners apparently upset with medical care burned bedding and set fire to some of the 200-foot-long Kevlar tents where they are housed, local officials said.
Spence said his deputies had been called on to surround the prison and flash their lights several months before the uprising when inmates threatened to disobey orders, but this time, they would not be so easily calmed.
“They started cutting open the tents,” Spence said, “pouring out like ants coming out of an ant hill.”
The Willacy County economy is deeply dependent on the prison industry, floating tens of millions of dollars in bonds through a “Public Facilities Corp.” to build the Correctional Center. The county also has a 500-bed detention center operated by MTC under a U.S. Marshals contract, and a 1,000-bed state jail, operated by Corrections Corp. of America.
Each of the more than 2,800 prisoners in the Willacy correctional facility puts $2.50 per day in county coffers, adding up to about a quarter of its yearly budget of $8.1 million. It’s unclear who will be ultimately responsible for repairs to the building or how soon prisoners will return, if at all, leading some officials to worry the county could soon be faced with a budget shortfall.
Discussion in local corner stores and restaurants quickly shift to impending layoffs — 150 of the Correctional Center workers are county residents — but the dramatic events of last week haven’t sparked much introspection.
“We really don’t know what the consequences are going to be,” said Aurelio Guerra, Jr., the Willacy County judge. “Until MTC is able to go in there and assess the damage, we won’t know big this elephant of a problem really is.”
http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Willacy-county-reeling-after-prison-riot-6106034.php#/0