PRIVATE PRISONS FIRM STIRS CONCERNS

Controversial CCA To Begin Service Here

The world's largest private prison operator, which has come under fire for
the way it runs some of its facilities, has chosen San Diego County to be
part of its burgeoning California empire. Corrections Corp. of America took
over the 200-bed former San Diego city jail on Otay Mesa in late May and
will likely accept its first prisoners, federal immigration detainees,
within a couple of weeks. The company also broke ground in June on a
1,000-bed medium-security jail next door -- without a contract for
prisoners to fill it -- and is bidding to house prisoners at the now-vacant
900-bed county jail in downtown San Diego.

CCA has had success in filling the 79 prisons it operates in the United
States, Australia, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. But it has come
under scrutiny lately, most notably for the way it runs the facility it
built in Youngstown, Ohio.

The 1,700-bed prison there has seen at least 13 stabbings, two homicides
and the escape of six inmates -- five of them murderers -since it opened 14
months ago. That compares with 12 assaults and no homicides for Ohio's
entire public prison system of 49,000 inmates in 1997. After the escapes,
Ohio Gov. George Voinovich immediately wanted to close the prison. He
backed off only after the state attorney general warned that would involve
a long, hard and perhaps unsuccessful court battle. The governor then asked
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to review the controversy, which has
become a focal point for the public vs. private prison debate going on
across the country.

Private prison operators such as CCA started emerging to help fill the
needs of government agencies nationwide about 15 years ago, but the debate
on whether they can operate more efficiently and more cheaply than public
prisons continues. Opponents say private operators are a bad alternative
and do not have the ability to safely house dangerous felons. The debate is
growing more heated as many state prison systems, including California's,
are running out of space and have no money set aside to build facilities.
Federal agencies also are turning to private contractors because they do
not have the time or money to build their own prisons.

When CCA entered into an agreement with San Diego County to take over the
200-bed jail on Otay Mesa from Wackenhut Corrections Corp. and to build the
1,000-bed jail next door, CCA had no contracts to fill these beds. The
company also is building a 2,304-bed prison in California City in Kern
County and plans to start building a 1,024-bed prison in Mendota outside
Fresno by the end of the year, again with no contracts in hand. This is the
typical mode of operation for CCA, whose executives often cite the motto
"Build it and they will come." "Clearly the need for INS and U.S. Marshals
Service beds is pretty prevalent up and down the state," said David Myers,
president of CCA's West Coast operation. He said state prisons are reaching
capacity as well. Kristine Marcy, a federal immigration official in
Washington, D.C., agreed. "I wouldn't worry about finding people to fill
those beds, not at all," she said. Marcy said there are "loads and loads"
of federal prisoners in lock-ups throughout the Western region, waiting for
trials, sentences or deportation. Immigration detainees range from low-to
high-security levels and prisons must be able to accommodate them, she
said. In addition to the pending contract with CCA for the 200-bed,
medium-security jail, the federal government also has announced a need for
800 to 1,000 beds in Southern California for INS and U.S. Marshals Service
prisoners. Any private prison operator may submit a bid, Marcy said. In
Youngstown, a city of 90,000 people, CCA's proposal to build a 1,700-inmate
prison was attractive because it would bring 300 construction and 500
prison jobs to town.

This all happened before George McKelvey became mayor. And if he could
reshape history, he said, things would be different. "I sure as hell
wouldn't build a private prison in my town, I'll tell you that," he said.
"It . . . doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out." The city
joined inmates in a lawsuit against CCA, and as a result the court has
ordered the company to move out more than 200 misclassified prisoners who
were too dangerous to be placed in a medium-security prison. Youngstown
officials also contend CCA did not promptly report the July escapes to
local police, even as guards were searching fields around the prison. In a
telephone interview last week, Myers of CCA said the prison was sent
misclassified prisoners by officials in Washington, D.C. "I'm not blaming
anyone, really," he said, adding that there is an 18-to 24-month
"shakedown" period that a start-up prison needs to get the kinks out. Myers
denied reports that local police were not notified in a timely manner. "It
was a situation where a lot of inmates were sent into an institution all at
one time," he said. "They have differences that they sometimes develop
while they're in the institution. . . . Corrections officials in public
prisons or private prisons don't always know about that, and then things
happen." Myers, who said he was a warden in four Texas prisons for 15
years before joining the private sector, contended that the Youngstown
facility's problems are no different from those found in public prisons.

"There is no escape-proof prison," he said. When Wackenhut ran the Otay
Mesa jail, it housed 200 city prisoners, who have since been moved to the
new county jail in downtown San Diego. Officials say the old county jail
will have to be refurbished before prisoners are placed there again. CCA
took over the Otay Mesa jail after winning the latest round of bidding. The
company hired the 74 former Wackenhut employees and put them to work
rehearsing how to run the jail as if it were full of inmates. Marcy of INS
said the contract between her agency and CCA to send federal prisoners to
the 200-bed jail will likely be signed within two weeks. After hearing
about CCA's plans in San Diego County, Youngstown's McKelvey had some
advice for officials here: "Beware. . . . If your local officials don't do
their homework on who is coming into that facility, you're going to face
the same challenges we faced," he said. Rich Robinson, the deputy chief
administrative officer for San Diego County in charge of the downtown jail
project, said he had heard reports about the Youngstown controversy. But he
said there are two sides to every story.

"There would be reason for concern in the event that there are high-risk
prisoners in that facility," Robinson said. "We'd want to have some say."
"They're (CCA) obviously going to have some questions to answer before we'd
enter into any agreement," he said. Marcy said that although she and other
INS officials are concerned about the Youngstown situation, she has had
good experiences with CCA facilities in Kansas, Tennessee and Arizona.

INS officials will draft their contracts carefully, she said, and then
closely monitor any facility managed by a private operator, whether it's
CCA or another company. "The Department of Justice wants to always be
careful when it privatizes," she said. "We don't just walk away and stop
paying attention." Ohio is not the only place CCA has run into trouble.
CCA has also been criticized for problems with escapes and misclassified
inmates at its facility in Houston. In 1996, two convicted sex offenders
escaped from that prison, which was intended to hold federal immigration
detainees, the same type of inmates headed for the Otay Mesa jail. Texas
officials didn't know that the prison held more than 200 sex offenders from
Oregon. Allan Polunsky, the head of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice,
said the problem was that no agency had oversight over the facility. "CCA
slipped 200 dangerous criminals into a facility that had been designed as a
minimum-security facility at best," Polunsky said. "Most people in the
criminal justice system were unaware of its existence until the escapes
took place."

To safeguard such similar problems, Polunsky suggested that contracts with
CCA be "very detailed and tight and specific to the scope of the mission of
the facility." Myers of CCA dismissed Polunsky's comments, saying he is a
citizen, not a corrections expert. Besides, he said, "Allan Polunsky is
against private prisons."

Copyright 1998 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.