Source: Houston Chronicle
(http://www.chron.com/cgibin/auth/story/content/chronicle/
metropolitan/97/08/22/prisoners.20.html)
Contact: viewpoints@chron.com
Page 29A

Last Missouri prisoners gone Probe continues in Angleton

By STEVE OLAFSON, Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle

ANGLETON The last Missouri prisoners in the Brazoria County
Detention Center headed home Thursday, leaving behind an FBI
investigation into alleged brutality and questions about the
future of using outofstate prisoners as revenue sources.

The 215 inmates, the last of the 415 who were serving sentences
at the lockup when the Missouri penal director ordered them
brought home a week ago, departed in charter buses Thursday
morning.

Missouri prison investigators plan to begin interviewing the
inmates today to prepare a report for the Missouri Attorney
General's Office and the U.S. attorney in that state, said Tim
Kniest, a prison spokesman in Jefferson City, Mo.

Missouri officials are considering legal action over alleged
mistreatment of the inmates, which included a videotaped incident
last Sept. 18 in which prisoners were beaten, kicked, shocked
with stun guns and bitten by dogs. The inmates had been held here
as part of a threeyear, $6 million contract with Brazoria
County.

The county still has a lease agreement with Capital Correctional
Resources Inc., the private firm based in Groesbeck that rented
the portion of the county jail in which the Missouri inmates were
housed.

There now are questions about whether the county and CCRI will
consider housing inmates from other states if any are willing
to send prisoners here.

Brazoria County Commissioner Jack Patterson said Thursday he
favors scrapping the contract with CCRI. Among other concerns, he
said he wonders whether liability insurance that CCRI was
required to purchase to cover the county will be adequate for any
judgments that may be issued.

"There ain't enough insurance in the world to pay for this mess,"
grumbled Patterson, who opposed the contract last year when
Commissioners Court approved it by a 32 vote.

No one with the Sheriff's Department or CCRI would comment
Thursday on the probe into alleged mistreatment of prisoners or
the future of housing outofstate prisoners.

Also left unanswered are questions about why the Sheriff's
Department approved CCRI's hiring of two former highranking
officers in the Texas prison system. The two men lost their state
jobs after pleading guilty in 1987 to federal misdemeanor
brutality charges in the beating of a Texas inmate.

At least one of those officers, Wilton David Wallace, plays a
prominent role on a 32minute videotape that shows sheriff's
officers and CCRI jailers roughing up prisoners.

The other former prison official hired by CCRI, Daryl French,
apparently went to work after the Sept. 18 disturbance. State
records show he was certified as a jailer in December.

Despite unanswered questions, Wallace apparently was approved for
CCRI employment because Sheriff Joe King believed he deserved a
second chance, according to comments from Chief Deputy Charles
Wagner that were quoted in The Brazosport Facts newspaper.

Wagner said Thursday that he was quoted accurately, but he
declined further comment.

"I've been told to keep my mouth shut," he said.

Brazoria County will lose about $1.5 million in revenue from the
canceled contract with Missouri.

Patterson and commissioners David Head and Jack Harris said
raising the county's 35cent property tax rate is the last option
they favor to make up the lost revenue.

Instead, they said they favor cutting the budget and dipping into
the county's substantial reserve funds.

Last year, pay raises totaling about $400,000 were approved for
Sheriff's Department employees because of the extra revenue the
Missouri prisoners were going to provide.

Despite the problems, Head said he still favors bringing in out
ofstate prisoners. Harris said the county must first determine
whether it is bound to its contract with CCRI.

Commissioner Jim Clawson, who voted with Patterson last year in
opposing the Missouri contract, could not be reached for comment.

Brazoria County Judge John Willy said earlier this week he favors
bringing in prisoners from another state because of the revenue
it produces.

Meanwhile, the videotape that led to the jail fiasco was
discussed Thursday in of all places Geneva, Switzerland,
where the United Nations 149th Subcommission on Human Rights met
to discuss inmate mistreatment in Brazoria County and other
privately operated prisons across the country.

Still, opinion remains divided in Brazoria County, a mostly rural
area in which law enforcement officers have a high profile,
partly because it is home to six state prison units.

"There are a lot of people here who will support the law
enforcement officers simply because they're law enforcement
officers," said the Rev. Mike Gemignani, pastor of St. Paul's
Episcopal Church in Freeport.

"But if anybody saw the tape, I think they'd be very disturbed by
it."

Also Thursday, a Wisconsin lawmaker said a group of state
legislators next month will inspect some of the eight Texas jails
that house Wisconsin inmates. None of them is in Brazoria County,
officials said, but they did not say where the 538 prisoners are
being held.

The visit had been proposed several months ago but was "put back
onto the front burner" after word of the Brazoria County jail
incident spread recently, officials said.