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Alternative Youth Adventures
Montrose County, Colorado
Community Educational Centers
January 22, 2009 Rocky Mountain News
The mother of a Salt Lake City boy has filed a lawsuit against a Colorado wilderness camp where her son died of a staph infection. The mother, Dawn Boyd Woodson, alleges her son's 2007 death could have been prevented if the staff of Alternative Youth Adventures had heeded medical warning signs. A company attorney says operators of the former camp in Montrose had a stellar reputation until 15-year-old Caleb Jensen's death. Attorney Colleen Scissors says a staph infection is not something that would have been obvious. She is defending West Caldwell, N.J.-based Community Education Centers Inc., AYA's former corporate parent, against criminal charges filed by the Montrose County district attorney over Jensen's death. A trial is set for March.

July 15, 2008 Daily Planet
More than a year has passed since Caleb Jensen died in the mountains near Montrose, in a wilderness camp for troubled kids. Languishing from an untreated staph infection, the 15- year-old collapsed on his sleeping bag one day and never got up. That was May 2007. Yesterday, a Montrose County grand jury indicted the camp, its corporate parent, two camp staffers and a Utah doctor on charges stemming from the boy’s death. They’re charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and child abuse and face up to 12 years in prison. Jensen’s mother, Dawn Woodson, said she’d been waiting for this news in one form or another every since she got a phone call telling her that her son was dead. “I’m glad to hear of it, and that these people have been indicted,” she said in a telephone interview. “But I still have a huge void and nothings ever going to fill it.” The Utah boy spent the last month of his life at Alternative Youth Adventures, a now-defunct youth camp outside Montrose. He was sent there in late March 2007 after getting into trouble and landing in the Utah Division of Juvenile Justice Services. The camp sought to rehabilitate troubled kids with a menu of long hikes, tough physical exercise, counseling and education. It was an offshoot of Community Education Centers, a New Jersey company that runs programs nationwide for adult prisoners and at-risk kids. But Jensen’s experience became a doomed nightmare. He was prone to staphylococcus infections and developed one after arriving at the camp, investigators said. He complained, and other campers complained on his behalf, but Jensen’s mother said those pleas fell dead to the ground as her son’s skin went gray, his fever spiked and he started hallucinating. Jensen was even isolated for insisting that he felt sick, his mother said. “They were saying he was acting out and lying, and he was being punished the entire time he was sick,” Woodson said. “He was all by himself the whole time. He was dying and he was by himself. He couldn’t talk to anyone the whole time he was sick.” On May 2, 2007, a month after he entered the camp, Jensen died. After the state suspended its license, Community Education Centers shut down the camp permanently in July 2007, “without admission of wrongdoing of any sort,” according to a letter it wrote to the Colorado Attorney General’s office. The case went nearly silent until yesterday’s indictments were announced. Alternative Youth Adventures and Community Education Centers were charged with child abuse resulting in death and criminally negligent homicide, according to the Montrose County district attorney. James Omer, the camp’s program director, and Dr. Keith Hooker, a Utah emergency doctor and wilderness program expert, were also charged with child abuse and criminally negligent homicide. Ben Askins, another camp staffer, was charged with manslaughter and child abuse. The three men could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Utah hospital that employs Hooker said he remains in good standing on the medical staff, but she said the hospital would investigate the charges. Community Education Centers issued this statement: “CEC stands by its position that at all times the company acted appropriately and that the circumstances that lead to Caleb Jensen’s death, while tragic, were not reasonably foreseeable.” The indictments offered a rare moment of vindication for child-safety advocates. Isabelle Zehnder, who runs the Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, said that institutions and employees rarely face criminal charges after children die or suffer abuse in custody. The public agencies and private companies that provide care for troubled kids are often the last resort for parents, social services and judges. Their methods are often meant to be tough, and when things go wrong, agencies say they were simply acting in the name of treatment, Zehnder said. “You don’t know how many cases we have where everybody walks,” she said. “And then to have this — it’s amazing.” Jensen’s mother welcomed the indictments, but said the pain of her son’s death couldn’t be balmed by the justice system. Months pass, things get better, but then she’ll chance upon a children’s book Caleb once loved, and confront a wall of memories and hurt. “I still battle,” she said. “I don’t know how to tell myself, ‘You just have to understand that you’re not going to have Caleb back.’ I want him back so much, it hurts. It’s not easier or better. Somehow we find a way to get through every day.”

July 15, 2008 Montrose Daily Press
More than one year after Caleb Jensen died while under the care of Alternative Youth Adventures, the organization, its parent company and three people have been indicted. Jensen, 15, of Utah, had been placed into the outdoor wilderness therapy program for at-risk youths. He was on an outing in rural Montrose County last May when he developed a staph infection and died. The Colorado human services department said previously the infection produced observable symptoms, which the department accused AYA staff of neglecting. AYA’s parent company, Community Education Centers Inc., said Jensen’s death was tragic and the underlying cause was undetectable. On Tuesday, a Montrose grand jury handed down indictments alleging criminally negligent homicide, child abuse resulting in death, and manslaughter. According to a press release from the district attorney’s office, the indictments name AYA, CEC; Dr. Keith Hooker, and AYA employees James Omer and Ben Askins. The indictments have been sealed for now. “The grand jury was able to reach a decision they felt comfortable with,” District Attorney Myrl Serra said. “Those indictments have been sealed until the summons can go out and those charged have notice of what they’ve been charged with.” Community Education Centers Inc.; AYA; Hooker and Omer were all charged with the felony-3 offense of child abuse resulting in death and the felony-5 offense of criminally negligent homicide. Askins was charged with felony-3 child abuse resulting in death and manslaughter as a class-4 felony. Penalties upon conviction of the charges in the indictments range from one to 12 years in prison, with fines of up to $750,000. All indicted parties are due in court at 9 a.m. Aug. 25. “Community Education Centers stands by its position that at all times, the company acted appropriately and that the circumstances that led to Caleb Jensen’s death, while tragic, were not reasonably foreseeable,” Christopher Greeder, public relations manager for Community Education Centers, said in a written statement. Jensen’s family could not be reached for comment Tuesday. AYA and New Jersey-based Community Education Centers came under investigation by the Colorado Department of Health and Human Services, Colorado Attorney General’s office and the local Seventh Judicial District soon after Jensen’s death. The company consistently denied negligence. AYA’s licenses for residential and therapeutical childcare in Colorado were suspended within a week of Jensen’s death. Initially, Community Education Centers planned to contest suspension, but voluntarily surrendered its licenses last July, as a “business decision,” without admitting wrongdoing. The company at the time also said it’d decided before Jensen’s death to sell the Montrose facility.

May 11, 2007 Denver Post
State health authorities have shut down a wilderness youth camp in Montrose County after a 15-year-old Utah boy died there last week of an untreated staph infection. The Colorado Department of Health and Human Services suspended the license of Alternative Youth Adventures on Wednesday. The 26 at-risk youths in the program were moved from the remote camp in Montrose County to corrections or human service agencies in Grand Junction and Denver on Wednesday and Thursday. "We believe we have reasonable grounds to believe the camp presents a substantial danger to public health, safety and welfare," said Liz McDonough, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. McDonough said she did not know how Caleb Jensen contracted a methicillin- resistant staphylococcus aureus infection. She said he reported symptoms to the adult camp leaders. "We are at a loss to see how this was preventable. ... It was something the staff just could not tell was there," said Bill Palatucci, a spokesman for Community Education Centers Inc., the Roseland, N.J., company that operates the wilderness camp and five other rehabilitation-type programs in Colorado as well as programs in six other states. "From what we know, the staff acted appropriately, in line with their track record." The type of bacterial staph infection Jen- sen died from most commonly occurs in hospitals and usually affects the elderly and very ill or others with compromised immune systems. It most commonly develops in an open wound. In minor cases, the infection causes pimples or boils. In serious cases, the infection can lead to fever, pneumonia, toxic shock syndrome and death. Jensen died the afternoon of May 2 in a camp in a remote part of Montrose County just over the Mesa County line. Counselors reportedly tried to revive the boy, who had been at the camp for a month. He was placed in the program for two months by the Utah Division of Juvenile Services. A website for Community Education Centers describes the camp as incorporating "education, conservation practices, work projects in national forests, rigorous physical activity, substance abuse treatment and detailed aftercare planning." Dan Robinson, director of the Grand Mesa Youth Services program in Grand Junction, said his facility has used the camp for years and has not had problems with it. McDonough said her department had previous issues with youths who suffered frostbite at the camp. Last year, six youths walked away from Alternative Youth Adventure camps in Montrose and San Miguel counties. All were eventually located.

May 3, 2007 Rocky Mountain News
A 15-year-old Utah boy died during a backcountry outing with a youth program on the Uncompahgre Plateau of natural causes, authorities said today. The teenager, whose name was not immediately released, was part of Alternative Youth Adventures, a Montrose care facility that treats at- risk juveniles through education, counseling and work projects in national forests. Dr. Rob Kurtzman, chief deputy coroner in Mesa County, said he'll conduct further tests to determine the precise cause of death. "It's sudden and tragic," said Bill Palatucci, senior vice president of Community Education Centers, the parent company of Alternative Youth Adventures. "It may have been a previously undetected underlying medical condition." Palatucci said the boy had been referred to the AYA program by the Utah Division of Juvenile Justice Services. He declined to release the boy's name, citing federal privacy regulations. The boy died Wednesday afternoon. Authorities received a 911 call about 3 p.m. saying he was not breathing, but the boy was dead by the time rescue personnel reached the remote site southwest of Grand Junction near the Mesa-Montrose county line.

Antonito, Colorado
May 17, 2008 Pueblo Chieftain
State Rep. Rafael Gallegos' short political career may be over. In a surprise vote during Friday's local and state assemblies, the two-term Antonito Democrat came just four votes short of winning a place on the August primary ballot. Instead, his Democratic opponent, Rocky White came out on top as the sole person to win that honor. Now, the only way for him or a third Democratic contender, Ed Vigil, to get on the primary ballot in August is by petitioning. What Gallegos plans to do, however, is unknown. He left the Doubletree Hotel in Colorado Springs almost immediately after the vote, and could not be reached for comment. Of the 58 votes cast, White earned 32, Gallegos 14, and Vigil 12. Gallegos and Vigil needed more than 17 to get the minimum 30 percent to make the ballot. Under party rules, he and Vigil have until the end of the month to turn in as many as 1,000 signatures of registered voters in House District 62 to make the primary ballot. That district stretches from Conejos County to parts of Pueblo County. White said Gallegos lost because he was out of touch with what residents of the San Luis Valley district wanted. "They have not been happy with their representation at all," White said. "I think that an elected official needs to be out in the public constantly. You've got to be at public meetings. You have to return phone calls. You've got to return e-mails. You've got to return letters. This is what happens when that doesn't happen." White, who lives on a ranch west of Alamosa, said Gallegos wasn't doing any of that, nor had he gotten much accomplished for the district in his time in the Colorado Legislature.

November 10, 2007 Pueblo Chieftain
State Rep. Rafael Gallegos plans to continue his push for a correctional facility in the Antonito area, despite a recent Conejos County election that showed residents are against the idea. The Antonito Democrat, in keeping with his vow to bring economic development to the San Luis Valley, hopes to meet with Gov. Bill Ritter before the next legislative session and ask for his support in bringing a facility to the area. Earlier this week, Conejos County residents weighed in on whether the town of Antonito should continue its attempts to lure a private correctional facility to the area, with 941 votes against the idea and 437 in favor of it. The Antonito precinct also went against the measure with 94 voting against the idea and 69 for it. Gallegos, who served a stint as the mayor of Antonito before getting elected to the state House in 2004, thinks voters did not get the full picture. "There wasn't enough explanation given of the pros and cons to the folks," Gallegos said. Gallegos said a prison would give the area an economic boost. An 800-bed facility, for example, would bring 250 jobs with good benefits, he said. Opponents of the measure argued before the election that a prison would outstrip the area's services and would lower residential property values near the prison. They also argued that high turnover of staff at private prisons would make the industry unsustainable for the local community. Although supporters of the idea crisscrossed the valley this summer and fall, asking for communities to support a feasibility study for a correctional facility, Gallegos said the projected demand for prison beds - an increase between 6,500 to 8,000 beds by 2011 - is high enough that a study wouldn't be needed. "But if (the governor) wants to do a feasibility study that's fine with me," he said. Although Gallegos will push forward, the other half of the San Luis Valley's delegation at the state capitol, Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said she's not ready to follow suit. "I would not support him in this effort at this time until I have more information," she said. "It's too soon for me to align myself to that concept." She also cited the Conejos County vote totals as a reason to hold off. "I've heard through this vote this is not what the community wants," she said. "It's not my position to stand in the way of what the community wants." Schwartz, instead, pointed to the start of an economic development assessment for Conejos County that could lay out more options for the area.

November 7, 2007 Alamosa News
Conejos County voted against the formation of a weed control district, against pursuing a private prison in Antonito and against the formation of a county recreation district. The county did vote to “de-Bruce” the Conejos Water Conservancy District to allow for an increase in grant revenue of up to $5 million. If the grant money is received it would go to construction, maintenance and improvement of water facilities, to acquire water rights and other interests in water supplies. Ballot Referendum A would have increased the county mill levy by 2 percent in unincorporated areas of Conejos County to fund a weed control district. The referendum was defeated by a vote of 427 against to 399 in favor. Referendum B, to “de-Bruce” the water conservancy district passed by a vote of 638 in favor to 356 against. Referendum C passed with 122 votes in favor to 81 votes against. However, the results were made moot because the question would only be considered if Referendum A passed. Ref. C would have dissolved the existing Conejos County pest control district. Ballot question A, asking if county voters supported efforts by the town of Antonito to bring a private prison to Conejos County brought a total of 941 votes against the plan to 437 votes in favor. The vote has no force of law as it was taken to measure county opinion on the matter.

Ault Correctional Facility
Ault, Colorado
GEO Group
May 9, 2007 Greeley Tribune
Plans for a private prison in Ault came to a halt recently when Colorado Department of Corrections rescinded its offer to GEO Group. Ault Mayor Brad Bayne said board members haven't discussed the prison for months. "Until there was some sort of guarantee, we'd just rather not talk about it," he said. "There is probably some disappointment from me and a few board members who believe we still could have made it work for the town." Talk of the 1,500-bed medium-security prison proposed last spring has bought some uproar in the town of fewer than 1,500 residents. Some said a prison coming to town would boost the town's economy, but others said it would be too dangerous because of its proximity to the town. The plan was to build on 40 acres in the southeast part of town. Last spring, the GEO Group entered into a tentative agreement with the town -- which approved the prison in concept only -- so it could secure state approval to build there. Months later, the town board passed an ordinance requiring resident approval before any prison could be built. Town officials haven't heard from a GEO Group representative since September, when GEO hosted a public forum answering questions from residents, he said. But DOC Executive Director Ari Zavaras put a stop to all discussions with the private prison contractor. He sent a letter April 24 to representatives of GEO Group, stating they would no longer discuss the plans for the Ault prison or GEO's request for a guaranteed bed count. "We had continued to have a very open and productive conversations with GEO," said Allison Morgan, spokesperson for the DOC. "But we did not agree with a bed guarantee." GEO requested a guarantee on the number of beds that would be filled by prisoners at any given time, since the state pays private prison contractors a daily rate per inmate. Phillip Tidwell, a member of the Citizens Against Ault Prison, said the decision to rescind the DOC offer to GEO Group made him happy. "We're definitely feeling this is a responsible act from both parties," Tidwell said. "The contract should have never been fulfilled by the state because of GEO making the specifications with the state for a guaranteed bed count." In the letter to rescind, Zavaras stated that in June 2006, the DOC offered a contract with GEO Group with the exception to GEO's request for a bed guarantee. On July 7, the DOC asked for GEO group to sign and complete the proposed implementation agreement. After a few meetings, GEO Group still requested a bed guarantee, which the DOC could not grant. The two entities have gone back and forth on the bed guarantee issue since August. According to the letter, Zavaras gave GEO a new deadline of April 2 to sign the Implementation Agreement or provide a reason for not signing in writing to the DOC no later than that date. "It was apparent the Department and GEO could not come to an agreement," Morgan said.

April 18, 2007 Colorado For Ethics
The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) responded to a March 5, 2007, open records request by Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government (CCEG) that sought documents relating to a private prison contract awarded by CDOC to The GEO Group, Inc. The documents obtained by CCEG confirm that former Director of Prisons Nolin Renfrow began working for The GEO Group while still on state payroll, a blatant conflict of interest. In an email to Brian Burnett, the deputy executive director of CDOC, Dave Schouweiler, DOC Manager of Purchasing, stated that Renfrow was on state payroll until January 31, 2006 and acknowledged the “impropriety of Mr. Renfrow’s involvement with the originating procurement.” The CORA request and responsive documents are available on CCEG’s website at www.coloradoforethics.org. CCEG is posting these records as part of its commitment to holding the government responsible for its actions.

March 6, 2007 Greeley Tribune
Saying GEO Group Inc. can't be trusted, a Pueblo lawmaker asked state officials Monday to rescind a contract with the company to build a private prison in Ault. Plans for the prison, which would house 1,500 inmates and would be built east of the railroad tracks along U.S. 85, has stalled on two fronts. Ault leaders decided they would not approve the facility until the public voted on it, and GEO wants to change its contract to ensure payment for its beds. Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, a vocal critic of private prisons, said Monday that the proposed change and other issues regarding GEO's integrity should negate the Ault contract. “Anybody living in Ault should be concerned that a company that would bid this way on a contract might have a business in their town," she said. Philip Tidwell, spokesman for the town group Coalition Against Ault Prison, said residents hope no one else bids on the Ault prison if GEO's contract is rescinded. "We just do not want any private prison, whether it be GEO or Cornell or anyone else," he said. A spokesman for GEO did not return calls seeking comment. McFadyen said the company is attempting to do the same things in Ault that derailed plans for a GEO facility in Pueblo. In 2003, GEO won a contract for a 1,100-bed, pre-parole and parole revocation facility in Pueblo, and after almost four years of delays, the state pulled the contract last fall. The company never broke ground on the facility. "The state of Colorado was held hostage for four years waiting for those beds," McFadyen said. The delays included zoning issues in Pueblo and GEO's attempt to obtain guaranteed payments on 90 percent of its beds, regardless of whether the beds were occupied. That is something state leaders have opposed and which may even be impossible because of state laws, McFadyen said. Now, GEO is trying for guaranteed bed payments in Ault, she said. "You have to question the integrity of the 2006 bid," she said. "If past performance is an indicator, I suspect we will be in the same place we were in 2003 in Pueblo." McFadyen said Ari Zavaras, the new director of the Department of Corrections, told her he is opposed to bed guarantees. Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan told the Associated Press that Zavaras will review McFadyen's request and decide how to respond. The story of Ault's possible prison goes back to late 2005, when Nolin Renfrow, former director of prisons for the Department of Corrections, started working with GEO on a bid for a private prison. Renfrow is under investigation for using state sick leave to obtain the Ault contract on behalf of GEO. On Monday, Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government, a watchdog group, filed an open records request about the Ault bid. "We do not feel that the public's interest was put forth in the procurement of this contract," said Chantelle Taylor, spokeswoman for the watchdog group. A state audit found Renfrow's business activities "arguably present a conflict of interest and result in a breach of ... the public trust." That breach, coupled with GEO's attempt to change its Pueblo contract by adding the bed-payment guarantee, should have prevented the company from getting the Ault bid in the first place, McFadyen said. Tidwell agreed. "One thing the state should recognize is (GEO) did not operate fairly," he said. "They hired an insider knowing he worked for the state. In my mind, GEO has shown itself to be not a company that operates fairly in the state of Colorado.

March 5, 2007 Rocky Mountain News
Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, and two reform groups today formally requested the director of the Department of Corrections and the governor rescind Geo Group’s bid to build a private prison in Ault. The reasons cited included the company’s performance on a 2003 bid to build a private prison in Pueblo. McFadyen said GEO Group lost its contract to build the Pueblo facility because it delayed the start of construction, then tried to renegotiate its contract to get a guarantee that it would be paid for 90 percent occupancy, even if beds were not filled. "Basically, the state of Colorado was held hostage for four years. They didn’t even break ground," McFadyen said. In her letter to Ari Zavaras, executive director of DOC, she said, "It would appear that the state’s best interests were not served by allowing GEO group to bid any contract with the state because of its lack of performance on tis 2003 award." Officials with Geo Group could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. Alison Morgan, spokeswoman for the DOC, said Zavaras was aware of the letter being sent by McFadyen, but had not seen it Monday. "Since he was not with the department during the RFP (request for proposals) process, it is an issue that he is still studying and is being briefed on," said Morgan. "Once he has all the information, including McFadyen’s letter, he would welcome an opportunity to sit down and talk to her."

January 31, 2007 Rocky Mountain News
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is taking over the probe of a retired state prison official who stands to be paid $1 million for helping a private prison company win a state bid. Nolin Renfrow, former state prisons director, openly became a consultant to the Geo Group and helped it win a $14 million- per-year deal to house 1,500 inmates in a private prison proposed in Ault. A state audit said Renfrow began the work for Geo while still on the state payroll. It also said that he is to collect a $1 million fee if the prison is built. State employees are prohibited from providing paid assistance to anyone to win state contracts or economic benefits. State law also prohibits activities that constitute a conflict of interest. Ari Zavaras, who became prisons chief with the new administration several weeks ago, said he asked the CBI to take over the investigation to "overcome the perception that it won't be a thorough investigation." Renfrow said Tuesday, "I understand why he would do that, and I just hope it comes to quick resolution." The Department of Corrections had been investigating. Its report was to have been given to prosecutors if warranted. Zavaras said he is letting the CBI decide whether the probe will become a criminal investigation.

December 26, 2006 Greeley Tribune
After the state Department of Corrections pulled its contract with the GEO Group to build a prison in Pueblo, Ault residents wonder about GEO's proposed prison plans in their backyard. While some speculate that the department's decision to pull the contract will halt the company's plans for Ault, others say it has changed nothing. For Phillip Tidwell, a member of the Citizens Against Ault Prison, the Department of Correction's decision in Pueblo was good news for his own fight. "We are elated ... finally someone will investigate them," he said. "The board is not calling off anything, but to me, like the DOC, why hasn't Ault pulled out on our contract with them? They're not truthful, not honest from the beginning ... Now, we don't feel alone. We will continue our own fight, it just feels like we're being assisted by the DOC." The contract was canceled for the Pueblo prison after concern about Geo's lack of progress on the project. The corrections department said that after four years, the company failed to respond to inquiries from them and failed to break ground on the Pueblo facility. In Ault, the state awarded the GEO Group the right to build a 1,500-bed medium security men's prison on 40 acres in the southeast part of town. Despite the initial discussions, there still are no final decisions on the Ault proposal. Ault Mayor Brad Bayne said the department's decision about the Pueblo facility won't change what's happening in Ault. "The town hasn't changed its views on this," he said. He said for the prison to be built in the town, there has to be a guarantee from the state, a negotiation between the town and the GEO Group that makes sense and a vote of residents to approve the plans. Town officials haven't heard from a GEO Group representative since September when GEO hosted a public forum answering questions from residents, he said. "... We're in a holding pattern until the state guarantees the matter," he added. The plan first came to light at the end of May when the GEO Group gave a proposal to the Ault Town Board. According to meeting minutes, representatives from GEO said the project would be funded through a local government bond, where the state pays the local government, which then pays GEO. They said the facility would house 1,500 beds, but the request for proposal on the project would allow up to 2,250 beds. To fight the project, Citizens Against Ault Prison demanded an injunction on the town's code which will require a vote of residents to decide the fate of the prison. The injunction, which was signed by 297 voters, was approved by board members in November.

December 16, 2006 The Gazette
State prison officials have canceled a contract for a new private prison in Pueblo, a move that casts doubt on how much Colorado will be able to rely on private prisons while it copes with a crowding crisis. The GEO Group, which was awarded a contract in 2003 to build the Pueblo pre-release prison, has also been contracted to build and operate a prison in Ault, in northeastern Colorado. But the same issue that doomed the Pueblo project — the company’s insistence it be guaranteed nearly full occupancy — could derail the latter prison, because GEO is making a similar demand. “If GEO’s going to demand a bed guarantee, they need to leave the state,” said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat and leading critic of private prisons. “It is not the job of the Colorado taxpayers to ensure profits for this corporation.” The Pueblo prison was delayed repeatedly: by zoning issues, by a legal challenge from a prison-reform group and by several revisions to the plan by GEO. But the final impasse began this summer, when the company asked for a 90 percent minimum occupancy guarantee for the prison, which wasn’t a condition of the original proposal and was opposed by Department of Corrections officials. Private prisons are paid a daily rate per inmate by the state, currently $52. Last month, the DOC denied a contract-extension request, and on Thursday informed the company that it was canceling the contract. “Ground has not broken, and GEO has given no indication when, or even if, it plans to commence construction,” DOC executive director Joe Ortiz wrote. “Our patience cannot be infinite.” The department is facing an acute crowding problem. Years of canceled prison-construction projects and steady growth in court caseloads have created a shortage of prison beds. The DOC this week began shipping 720 inmates out of state, a temporary solution until new beds become available. With only one state prison under construction, Colorado State Penitentiary II in Cañon City, the DOC this year awarded contracts to three companies to build prisons for 3,776 inmates. The GEO Group’s proposed 1,500-bed prison in Ault is a major part of the plan. Alison Morgan, head of private-prison monitoring for the DOC, said the department still expects GEO to follow through on its proposal in Ault. “We are treating the Pueblo facility and the Ault facility separately. We have from Day 1, and we will continue to do so,” Morgan said Friday. However, GEO is making the same demand for guaranteed occupancy for the Ault prison. Asked whether the DOC is still opposed to a guarantee, she said, “It is a policy decision to be addressed by the new administration (of Gov.-elect Bill Ritter) and the General Assembly.” The local community isn’t even sure it wants a prison. Ault’s town board last month passed an ordinance requiring voter approval for the prison. No election date has been set. McFadyen said she doesn’t believe GEO ever intended to complete the Pueblo prison, and she doubts the company’s ability and will to follow through in Ault. “We’ve been set back three years in our planning,” McFadyen said. “I think that kind of delay is unacceptable, and we’ll learn from this experience and not allow another contract to drag on for three years.” A call to a spokesman in the company’s Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters was not returned Friday afternoon. An audit requested by Mc-Fadyen regarding the bidding process for the Ault prison was released this week. It showed that a top DOC official set up a consulting business to help GEO win the bid while he was employed by the state. Because the DOC is based in Colorado Springs, the office of 4th Judicial District Attorney John Newsome will receive the results of the investigation and determine whether any law was broken. Morgan said the DOC will issue a new request for proposals for a pre-release prison.

December 14, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
A three-year effort to build a private prison facility at the Pueblo Memorial Airport Industrial Park appears to be dead after the Colorado Department of Corrections and the prison company reached an impasse over guaranteed occupancies. On Tuesday, reports said that the DOC was working with the attorney general's office to draft a letter to the GEO Group that essentially kills the company's plans to build a 1,000-bed pre-parole and parole revocation facility on 36 acres east of the city. GEO officials said Wednesday they had not received any letter from the DOC, but also didn't express much confidence a deal could be struck for the facility. "We have been in negotiations with the Department of Corrections, but we don't have any contract signed and at this time it does not appear there will be one," said Pablo Paez, director of communications for the Florida-based company. Paez confirmed reports from November that the company was asking for a minimum occupancy guarantee for the facility and also confirmed that the company was planning to go to the city of Pueblo for help to build the prison. ± PLEASE SEE PRISON, 2APRISON / continued from page 1A ± "We needed the guarantee to secure the lowest capital cost through tax-exempt bonds," Paez said Thursday. "We would get those through the local municipality." State Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who has been a vocal critic of the private prison industry, and state Rep. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, wrote a letter to the city in May warning against using public funds to build the facility. "I think it's very positive that the city of Pueblo is not going to risk its credit rating on this project," McFadyen said Wednesday. Officials from the DOC were not available Wednesday to comment on whether the letter had to do with the occupancy guarantees, or the result of an audit suggesting former Director of Prisons Nolin Renfrow may have broken the law by helping GEO secure DOC approval to build a 1,500-bed facility in Weld County, prior to his retirement in January. Paez said GEO had no contact with Renfrow before March. Last month, DOC spokeswoman Kathy Church told The Pueblo Chieftain that talks between the company and the DOC over Pueblo's facility had stalled over the minimum occupancy guarantees and had reached a critical point. "They need to either understand our position and accept it or back out completely," Church said last month. Church told The Chieftain that the DOC couldn't make any guarantees without knowing how much money it had to spend. That money depends on what the joint budget committee decides. McFadyen wondered Wednesday why those guarantees weren't part of the original agreement when DOC solicited bids for the Pueblo project. "If the DOC negotiated additional terms with GEO, they would be the only private prison company to receive such treatment and that's wrong," McFadyen said Wednesday. "I think this goes to the point of how committed they were to coming to Pueblo in the first place." The plans to build the facility started in 2003 when GEO, then Wakenhut Corrections Company, proposed building the prison on the West Side. Those plans eventually shifted to the airport and the city approved a controversial agreement with GEO to build a 500- to 1,000-bed facility. A year ago, GEO bought the property at the airport from the city for $296,800. GEO's original plan was to build a 750-bed facility at the airport, but got Planning and Zoning Approval in May to expand the facility to 1,000 beds.

December 14, 2006 Denver Post
Results of an investigation into former Colorado prisons director Nolin Renfrow's conduct in office will be turned over to a district attorney early next year, the Department of Corrections' inspector general said Wednesday. Michael Rulo, who has been the agency's inspector general for seven years, said his office has been cooperating with state auditors on the probe. On Tuesday, the auditors announced that a "former senior- level official" of the Department of Corrections launched a prison-consulting business in August 2005, five months before he retired from the department Jan. 31, and helped a private company land a state prison contract. State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who requested the audit, identified the official as Renfrow. The auditors found that while still employed by DOC, Renfrow began working to assist prospective bidders in developing proposals to his department for a private prison. With his assistance, a company identified as the GEO Group was awarded the contract for a 1,500-bed private prison at Ault. Auditors noted that state employees are barred by law from outside employment that creates a conflict of interest, and from helping people to win a contract with their agency for a fee. Renfrow couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday. Rulo said the results of his office's investigation will be turned over to El Paso County District Attorney John Newsome, probably in January. The Department of Corrections is based in that county. Rulo said a decision on whether to file charges will be a "collaborative process" with prosecutors. Kristen Holtzman, spokeswoman for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, said that Renfrow never contacted the attorney general's office to ask whether his consulting business while still a DOC employee constituted a conflict of interest.

December 13, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
A former top official for the Colorado Department of Corrections may have broken the law when he helped a private prison company win a state contract earlier this year, an audit revealed Tuesday. Though the report conducted by the state auditor doesn't name him, the audit centered on Nolin Renfrow, former director of prisons for DOC. It even calls on the department's inspector general to further investigate the matter and, if warranted, refer it for possible prosecution. The audit, which was requested by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, showed that before Renfrow retired in January, he had been working with a Florida-based private prison company, GEO Group, to land a DOC contract to build a 1,500-bed prison in Weld County. That project is expected to cost an estimated $100 million, for which Renfrow was to get a 1 percent fee - or $1 million - for helping Weld County get the contract, the audit said. In 2003, GEO, which is based in Baca Raton, Fla., was awarded a contract to build a 500-bed, prerelease prison near Pueblo Memorial Airport, which still hasn't been built. Renfrow's replacement, Gary Golder, says the department currently is working with the Attorney General's Office on a letter to GEO that effectively would revoke the 2003 bid and end the Pueblo project. Though the audit did not find any evidence that Renfrow disclosed confidential information to GEO to help it win the Weld County bid, he may have violated state laws, personnel rules and department regulations regarding outside employment, the audit said. Neither Renfrow nor GEO officials were available for comment. The audit found that prior to Renfrow's retirement on Jan. 31, he filed articles of incorporation for a private prison consulting firm, Patriot Business Solutions, in August 2005. "Public records and interviews indicate that the former employee began actively working on behalf of his prison consulting business as of November 2005," the audit said. "Neither the department nor the former employee provided documentation showing that the employee requested or the department approved the former employee's outside employment." The contract was awarded to GEO in June, along with a separate contract to Corrections Corporation of America to expand two of its existing private prisons - in Bent and Kit Carson counties - by 720 beds. DOC time sheets also showed that Renfrow "used a combination of annual, sick and holiday leave" to remain on extended paid leave from November 2005 until his retirement date, the audit said. "Neither the department nor the former employee provided evidence that (Renfrow) received the express consent of his attending physician or appointing authority to engage in outside work activities," the audit said. "As a result, we question the former employee's use of about 240 hours of paid sick leave benefits valued at about $14,000." McFadyen began to question Renfrow's involvement immediately after GEO won the contract. The Pueblo West lawmaker, a longtime critic of private prisons, questioned why such a company would be awarded a new bid before it had made any progress on the Pueblo prison. McFadyen also questioned why the department was even considering a GEO request, which was made after winning the bid, to give it a written guarantee that the new beds would be filled, something the state has never provided to any of the five other existing private prisons in the state. "I am still questioning the Colorado Department of Corrections as to why GEO was allowed to bid another (project) when they have not performed on the original 2003 project," McFadyen said. "GEO Corporation is demanding that the state issue a mandatory guarantee of filling beds. It is not the responsibility of Colorado taxpayers to ensure the profits of this corporation. "There's no question that we're being held hostage by GEO Group when other (private prison) vendors probably would like to come in and bid those contracts," she added.

November 15, 2006 Greeley Tribune
The Ault Town Board eased many residents' minds Tuesday night and gave them a stronger voice in the prison debate. Town residents have voiced strong opinions against the proposed GEO correctional facility in Ault after initial discussions last spring. Tuesday night, the town board voted 5-1 to accept an ordinance that requires a town election about the location of any prison or similar incarceration facility. An election date has not been set, but one will be necessary when the GEO Group Inc. returns to the town to begin negotiating a contract. GEO has proposed building a 1,500-bed medium security prison on about 40 acres in southeast Ault. The prison population would double the town's population. Most recently, the GEO group sought assurances from the state Department of Corrections for a guaranteed number of prisoners to house at the prison, but DOC representatives said the state typically didn't provide such guarantees. Residents recently signed a petition requesting an election about a site before the town approved permits for such a building. Petitioners needed a minimum of 40 valid signatures to take the request to the board. They submitted 297. Mary Schlack, 37, of Ault said she was part of the petition effort after she went door-to-door and learned more people were opposed to the prison. She said she expected more than 40 signatures because of her previous questions to residents.

September 29, 2006 Greeley Tribune
Al Nickel was one of a few passionate people who attended a question-and-answer session Thursday about a proposed private prison in his town. He was more concerned about the possible safety risks of having a prison nearby than the potential for increased revenue. "What are they going to do for the town?" asked Nickel, a 21-year resident of the town 11 miles north of Greeley on U.S. 85. "It's not like they can go downtown and buy 100 gallons of milk or toilet paper. Their business has to go elsewhere." Representatives from The GEO Group, Place Properties and Patriot Business Solutions met with about 20 residents Thursday afternoon at the Ault VFW post to discuss the plans of bringing a prison to town. The group held a separate meeting Thursday night, drawing about 40 people. Many people were curious about what the prison would look like and had concerns about Ault being considered a prison town. Ken Fortier, a spokesman for GEO Group, said he hoped to ease some concerns at the sessions. "There's a lot of emotions when it comes to a project like this and the perception of a correctional facility," he said. "We're not here to debate, but to answer questions."

September 10, 2006 Greeley Tribune
Two months ago, the state awarded the Geo Group the right to build a 1,500-bed medium security men's prison in Ault, but so far, progress has been slight. A town meeting in July lured about 300 in protest. Opponents worry about prison breaks, the caliber of employees and the potential for a prison to attract criminals. Proponents of the prison say their dying town needs development, and a prison is a clean industry that would bring commerce and jobs. The prison would be located on roughly 40 acres in the southeast part of town, east of the railroad tracks parallel to U.S. 85. Since the initial discussions, however, there are still no decisions. The Geo Group has not presented the town with a potential contract, and the town board has yet to decide if a contract with the private prison would have to be approved by the board or the residents. Those involved, however, insist there is progress but won't elaborate.

July 22, 2006 Greeley Tribune
It may be a month or more before residents know if the town of Ault will be home to a 1,500-bed private prison. Ault Mayor James Fladung said the town board has not decided if it will sign a binding contract with Geo Group Inc. or if it will allow Ault residents to vote on the proposed medium-security prison for men. Colorado's Department of Corrections recently granted Geo the rights to build a prison in Ault in the next two years. But Geo cannot actually build the facility until it gets approval from the town. The board is negotiating with Geo over prices and fees on issues such as water and sewer. A final contract for the prison still needs to be written. "There is quite a bit of distance to cover yet," said Sharon Sullivan, Ault town clerk and treasurer. "It will continue to be ongoing, but there is a long way to go." Fladung said it could possibly be a month before any decision is made. The town board has the authority to approve a contract without a vote from Ault residents because the land where the prison would be located is zoned industrial, Fladung said. But the mayor said that because of public sentiment the board will consider conducting a poll or even allow a public vote on the issue. Nearly 300 people attended a public hearing last Tuesday. The majority of those people opposed the prison. Fladung said he thought it would be good to hold more public hearings before any contract is signed. "We must listen to the people. They were the ones who elected us," Fladung said. In late June the town board unanimously passed a resolution approving the concept of a private prison in Ault. Sullivan said that resolution confused many people and led them to believe that the town board already signed a contract with Geo. The logistics and time frame of a contract still aren't clear, but Fladung said he can guarantee that the contract will not raise any taxes or utility fees for Ault residents. "I'm standing pretty solid about the people in Ault not paying them a penny more for them to come in," Fladung said.

July 19, 2006 Greeley Tribune
Debate over whether to allow a men's medium security prison to be built in Ault has divided the normally quiet community. Almost 300 Ault residents overwhelmed Tuesday night's town board meeting to discuss the pros and cons of allowing the Florida-based company Geo Group Inc. to build a 1,500 bed private prison in Ault. So many people showed up that the meeting had to be delayed half an hour to move the meeting to the larger VFW building. The issue pitted neighbor against neighbor with strong opinions and statements made by nearly 50 people on both sides of the issue. "Geo is like Wal-Mart. They could care less about this town," said John Jablonski of Ault. "They want to use us to make money." The majority of the crowd was strongly against the prison but faced opposition from a vocal minority of Ault's business owners. They believe the prison will be the economic boost Ault's dwindling economy needs to survive. Sheila Kelsey, owner of the House of Bargains, has lived in Ault for 34 years and said that during all that time little economic growth has occurred. "The prison would be in my front yard, but we desperately need the business," Kelsey said. "If we do not get this business, this town will die. It will be a ghost town." Many of those against the prison did not like its close proximity to town and called it a safety hazard, a drain on resources such as water and an overall detriment to the well-being of Ault. Amber Kauffman, who has lived in the town for five years, said she is all for growth but not at the expense of having to live near a prison. "We came here to live in a small town and a small community," Kauffman said. "A prison would change the dynamics of this town." Her husband, Ty Kauffman, said that if the prison does go in, the company wants to run water and sewer lines across his fields which would hurt his annual hay crop. Ty Kauffman said that if the prison does come to Ault, he will be out of town in two weeks. "You do so much to your home to loose it all," he said. "It's a nightmare." Ken Fortier, a representative from Geo, said the prison would bring jobs and purchasing power to Ault. He said that Geo is the largest private corrections facility company in the world and operates high and medium security prisons on many continents including the world's largest private prison in South Africa and a facility that is part of the Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba. "Step away from the emotions to the notion of what economically 300 jobs mean to the town of Ault," Fortier said. There was still a lot of questions left in the air on Tuesday. Board members did not tell the crowd when, or if, they would sign a contract with the company.

July 18, 2006 Greeley Tribune
Controversy is brewing in Ault about the proposed men's prison expected to be built southeast of town by the Florida-based Geo Group Inc. The Coalition Against the Ault Prison, comprised of 10 residents, will attend tonight's Ault town board meeting to oppose the 1,500-bed prison. The residents have passed out fliers and petitions against Colorado's Department of Corrections late June decision to grant Geo the rights to construct the prison there in the next two years. If the town board signs a contract with the Geo Group, the number of prisoners would more than double this town of roughly 1,400 people. Tasha Greene, 35, an environmental health and safety officer in Ault began the opposition group about a week ago and said the members extensively researched the economic and social impacts a prison might have on a small town. Greene said she collected 117 signatures of registered Ault voters who are opposed to the prison. "There are a few people we talked to that want this prison 100 percent, but the fast majority are dead set against it," Greene said. Though Ault residents have an hour to present comments at tonight's meeting, Greene said she is unsure if the board will take her group's concerns to heart. "We get a sense that they will do what they want to do," Greene said. "Who cares about public opinion?" The board in May passed a resolution agreeing with the prison in concept. The resolution states that prior to the board executing a contract or any financing agreements with the Geo Group, "the final forms of such documents and/or agreement shall be submitted for approval to the town, and if satisfactory to the town, their execution shall be authorized by resolution or ordinance ..." If the board ignores their concerns, Greene said she plans to pursue formal legal action against the prison's construction. Larry Hosier, another member of the coalition, said he thinks the town board is completely out of touch with the people of Ault and not smart enough to properly negotiate with Geo's high-powered executives. "They don't even know the right questions to ask," Hosier said. The group is concerned the prison will make the town unsafe, overtax the already low water supply in the area, create light and air pollution, lower property values, create a higher unemployment rate, bankrupt small businesses and ruin the character and aesthetics of Ault. "Ault will no longer be 'A Unique Little Town," one of the coalition's flyer's proclaims. "Once a prison town always a prison town." Some residents are so concerned about the negative effects they claim they will actually move out of Ault. "I had one guy sign the petition. The next day his home went up for sale," Hosier said, adding that and his wife may consider doing the same after living in town for more than 30 years. Greene is equally convinced that Ault isn't big enough for both her and the prison, and said she would find a new home for her nine horses. She said she is most concerned about safety and the possibility that escaped convicts could put the community in danger. "I'd feel I'll need to put up really tall fences and buy really big dogs and make myself a private arsenal," Greene said.

Bent County Correctional Facility
Bent County, Colorado
CCA
November 14, 2009 Pueblo Chieftain
A state inmate being held at Bent Correctional Facility reportedly committed suicide Nov. 1. According to Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti, the inmate was identified as Geoffrey A. Scheid, 58. Cause of death was listed as asphyxiation by suffocation, according to Warden Brigham Sloan. Scheid was serving a 19-year sentence on second-degree assault and sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust convictions out of Adams County, Sanguinetti said. The Bent prison is a private medium-security prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

September 17, 2009 Pueblo Chieftain
Officials in three Southern Colorado counties said Wednesday that Gov. Bill Ritter's decision to release more than 6,000 inmates from state Department of Corrections custody will be devastating to small communities that house private prisons. Commissioners in Bent, Crowley and Huerfano counties all have private prisons owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. Ritter announced the Accelerated Transition Pilot program in August. By June 30, an estimated 2,720 inmates out of 3,400 eligible for parole will be on the streets, saving the state $19 million in prison housing costs. The next year, another 3,000-plus inmates could be released. But Bent County Commissioner Bill Long said that the lion's share of the proposed reduction would come from the private prisons in Crowley, Bent and Huerfano counties. Long said the proposed releases will impact the private facilities which were built at the request of the state. "If they do what they have been talking about in the last few days, which is 5,000 to 6,000 inmates possibly being up for parole, that will empty virtually every private prison in Colorado that has Colorado inmates," Long said. "I guarantee that this will be an absolute disaster for Bent County and Crowley County. No question about it." The Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs and the Bent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas are key parts of their local economies with more than 200 employees at each facility, Long said. "We receive property tax, telephone revenue and other benefits from the facilities," Long said. Long explained that the Huerfano County Correctional Facility in Walsenburg and the Kit Carson Correctional Facility in Burlington also will be hurt if the reduction occurs. Currently the Huerfano facility is full of inmates from Arizona, but Long said that when Arizona gets its inmate situation straightened out, the inmates will be taken back to that state. "That would be another facility that was built primarily for Colorado inmates that would also be emptied," Long said.

May 15, 2009 Lamar Ledger
An escaped male convict, from Bent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas, led authorities on a high speed chase through Bent County early Wednesday afternoon. The convict, who is being identified as a 52 year-old white male, appears to have escaped while working at a recycling center said Las Animas Police Chief Don Trujillo. The convict appears to have secured regular street clothing after escaping from supervision. At approximately 12:55 p.m. he is believed to have attempted to car jack a vehicle from in front of the Family Dollar store. The escapee is believed to have fled southbound down Bent Avenue. The Police chief said the victim was able to thwart the attack. “Within five to ten minutes of that incident, we had a report of a stolen vehicle from the car wash,” said Trujillo. The car wash is located in the 300 block of Second Street. A 1996 Chysler Concorde appears to have been stolen while the vehicle’s owner was washing the floor mats said Trujillo. The suspect is believed to have then fled eastbound on Highway 50 out of town. The police chief said when officers were unable to locate the suspect in the area around the vehicle theft, they moved the search east until the vehicle was spotted. The ensuing chase along Highway 50 reached speeds of over 100 miles per hour said Trujillo. The chase drew to an end near County Road 34 when two of the tires on the stolen vehicle went flat. The suspect was then apprehended by a Las Animas police officer said Trujillo. Assisting in the pursuit and apprehension of the suspect were the Colorado State Patrol, the Bent County Sheriff’s Office and the State Parks Department. Following the arrest, the suspect was treated by EMTs on scene. Police Chief Trujillo said charges are currently pending for the suspect. Trujillo said the notice of an escaped convict was not given to the department until after the suspect was in custody and the officers were attempting to ascertain the suspect’s identity. The Bent County Correctional Facility is a privately owned, all male, medium security, 1,466 bed facility located on the eastern edge of the town of Las Animas. The facility is operated by Corrections Corporation of America, a Tennessee based company. Phone calls to the warden of the facility were not returned Wednesday. Officials at both the Las Animas School District administration and the Las Animas High School said they were not notified of the escaped inmate by the facility until after the suspect’s apprehension. None of the schools in the district were placed on lock down.

August 18, 2004
A former prison inmate in Las Animas alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday the prison staff transported him on the floor of a van and did not give him prescribed pain medication and proper care after surgery for a hernia. Cornelius Jackson sued Corrections Corporation of America, the operator of the state prison, in U.S. District Court for allegedly causing him severe pain and bleeding. Five staff members of the private prison, the Bent County Correctional Facility, also are defendants. Jackson said he was operated on at a Denver hospital on Oct. 8. He claims the staff, contrary to his doctor's instructions, did not give him prescribed pain medication for 13 hours after he was released from the hospital. The lawsuit alleges that the staff disobeyed the doctor's instructions to take Jackson to a Colorado Department of Corrections institution that had appropriate medical facilities for post-operative care. The lawsuit claims "cost-cutting in the medical department has recently been a central focus and a major concern for CCA." (Pueblo Chieftain)

August 1, 1999
A 24-year-old inmate escaped from the private prison. Officials believe he may have stowed away on a trash truck. He is still at large. Earlier in the month, another inmate who was working at the regional recycling center escaped after hot-wiring a prison van. (Denver Post)

Boulder County Jail
Boulder Colorado
January 13, 2006 Daily Camera
The Boulder County Jail continues to grapple with a nursing shortage, but it won't hire an outside agency to provide medical care for inmates, the Sheriff's Office announced Thursday. After struggling to retain and recruit nurses for the past three years, jail officials proposed spending about $1.6 million for an independent agency to take over health-care operations there. But that might result in job losses, pay reductions or reduced retirement benefits for the jail's 10 nurses, said Sheriff Joe Pelle, who announced Thursday that he'd rather focus on improving the existing program. "We have good employees there. Some of them have been there more than 20 years. They were extremely concerned about this and losing their retirement," Pelle said. "So the human aspect played a huge part in this decision." Jail Capt. Larry Hank said Boulder is one of only two Front Range counties that doesn't contract with a private health care company for its jail. But he said he would prefer the county continue providing its own services as long as it can improve operations and attract more nurses. "If they're our employees, they answer to us, they listen to us and they're committed to us," he said. "An outside contractor is trying to make a profit." Hiring an outside agency to provide health care wouldn't have solved all of Boulder County's problems, said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. Many private agencies don't provide high-quality care, and many struggle to attract nurses, she said. "They don't have a magic wand. There's a nursing crisis, and these companies don't come with their own convoy of nurses," she said. "If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is."

Brighton Jail
Brighton, Colorado
Transcor
August 5, 2004
Police are searching for a man they say was being held on burglary charges who escaped from a transport van in Brighton late Wednesday night.  They say Floyd W. Stolin Jr., 31, jumped out of a van at about 10:22 p.m. as the van stopped on the off-ramp of Interstate 76 and Bromley Lane.  The van, operated by private prisoner transport service TransCor America, was bringing Stolin to the Brighton jail.  (Denver Post)

Brush Correctional Facility
Brush, Colorado
GRW
January 8, 2008 Honolulu Advertiser
A lawsuit filed on behalf of two Hawai'i female prison inmates who claimed they were sexually assaulted by a corrections officer in a privately run prison in Colorado has been settled for an undisclosed amount of money. Honolulu lawyer Myles Breiner, who sued on behalf of the inmates, said the settlement was for a "significant amount of money," but said he cannot be more specific. "This a private settlement among private parties, and I'm obliged not to disclose the dollar amount," Breiner said. "The parties are satisfied with the agreed upon settlement, and the plaintiffs have been sufficiently compensated. ... It was the right thing to do to take responsibility and acknowledge the injuries of these two jail inmates." Out-of court settlements where the state is required to make payment become public record because public money is involved, but that won't happen in this case. Breiner said the state won't have to pay any share of the settlement because Hawai'i was indemnified against inmate lawsuits under its contract with GRW Corp. to hold the women inmates at the Brush Correctional Facility in Colorado. The inmates, 38 and 26, reported they were assaulted in the Brush Correctional Facility law library the evening of Jan. 8, 2005. The inmates claimed corrections officer Russell E. Rollison pushed one of them against a wall and threatened to write up both inmates for misconduct if they did not perform a sex act for him. One of the inmates saved semen from the encounter that was later turned over to investigators with the Colorado Department of Corrections. Rollison resigned and was charged with two counts of felony sexual contact with an inmate in a penal institution, but pleaded guilty in 2006 to a reduced charge of menacing with a real or simulated weapon, which is also a felony. He was sentenced to two years' probation and 60 hours of community service, according to Colorado court records. Gil Walker, chief executive officer of Tennessee-based GRW, did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the settlement. Brush prison officials have said the sex was consensual and that the inmates planned the encounter as a way to get transferred back to Hawai'i, and as the basis for a lawsuit. The allegations of the two Hawai'i inmates became public when Colorado authorities launched an investigation into charges of sexual misconduct involving prison staff and a total of eight inmates from Colorado, Wyoming and Hawai'i. Another former Brush guard, Fredrick Woller, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment of a Wyoming inmate and was fined $200; and former Brush Warden Rick Soares resigned and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor false-reporting charge in connection with Woller's case. All Hawai'i inmates at Brush were moved to the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky., which is operated by Corrections Corp. of America. The two female inmates are now serving sentences at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, Breiner said. Hawai'i now pays more than $50 million a year to house more than 2,000 men and women inmates on the Mainland because there is no room for them in prisons in Hawai'i.

September 26, 2006 Fort Morgan Times
Continuation of the public hearing for CentraCore’s special exception use permit (SEUP) took the main stage Monday at the Brush City Council meeting as concerned citizens, representatives of CentraCore, Cornell and GRW Corporation spoke to the council about CentraCore’s SEUP application. Following comments from council members, officials and citizens, Brush Assistant City Administrator Karen Schminke and staff requested a few minor revisions to the SEUP, and Councilman Harry Rieger moved that the public hearing be closed, and the council review the revised SEUP during the next council meeting at 7 p.m. Oct. 9. Recommended revisions include documentation of 1,800 beds as the original SEUP application was for 2,250 combined beds at the two potential facilities, and CentraCore — in light of water availability — revised its application for 450 fewer beds, bringing the total down to 1,800. Schminke stressed the difference between the operator and the applicant for the SEUP in order to ensure both parties adhere to the rules and regulations. Staff is also requiring rewording of the 24-month sunset clause for both possible facilities. The application by CentraCore and Cornell is to build and operate two prisons in the Brush Industrial Park, directly behind the Brush Correctional Facility (BCF) which is owned and operated by GRW Corp. Before beginning the public hearing, Councilman Phillip Northcutt disclosed his employment at the BCF, and council member Chuck Schonberger, disclosed his wife, Pat Schonberger’s, part-time employment at BCF. The council granted both council members permission to continue in the hearing.

July 14, 2006 Honolulu Advertiser
Two Hawai'i women convicts who allege they were sexually assaulted in a private women's prison in Colorado last year have sued Hawai'i prison officials, the company that runs the prison and a former corrections officer. The suit filed by Honolulu lawyer Myles Breiner in federal District Court in Denver alleges the state of Hawai'i should have known conditions were unsafe for the Hawai'i women inmates at Brush Correctional Facility, and was negligent for failing to prevent the assaults. Inmates Jacqueline Overturf, 36, and Christina Riley, 25, reported they were assaulted in the Brush Correctional Facility law library on the evening of Jan. 8, 2005. The inmates claim guard Russell E. Rollison, an employee of prison operator GRW Corp., pushed one of the women against a wall and threatened to write up both inmates for misconduct if they did not perform a sex act for him. Breiner said one of the inmates saved semen from the encounter that was later turned over to investigators with the Colorado Department of Corrections. Rollison resigned and was charged with two counts of felony sexual contact with an inmate in a penal institution, but pleaded guilty earlier this year to a reduced charge of menacing with a real or simulated weapon, which is also a felony. He was sentenced last month to two years' probation and 60 hours of community service, according to Colorado court records. Deputy Attorney General Diane Taira declined comment because lawyers for the state have not yet seen the lawsuit. Gil Walker, chief executive officer of the Tennessee-based GRW, also declined comment on the lawsuit yesterday because he had not seen it. GRW operates prisons in Colorado, Missouri and Kansas. Brush prison officials have said the sex was consensual and that the inmates were using the incident to get transferred back to Hawai'i and as the basis for a lawsuit. Walker said yesterday the prison's inquiry into the case revealed that Rollison was "a willing participant, but we know that (the inmates) perpetrated it, that it was planned." Breiner denied the inmates were involved in any "enticement" of the corrections officer. "This was a deliberate criminal conduct by a senior correctional officer against my clients. They were raped, and it makes no difference whether they were inmates or not, they were raped and abused," he said. The suit also alleges women who complained they had been sexually assaulted at the prison were punished, including Overturf and Riley. The two Hawai'i inmates were locked in solitary confinement for 37 days, according to the suit. The allegations of the two Hawai'i inmates became public when Colorado authorities launched an investigation into charges of sexual misconduct involving prison staff and a total of eight inmates from Colorado, Wyoming and Hawai'i. Another former Brush guard, Fredrick Woller, pleaded guilty in February to misdemeanor harassment of a Wyoming inmate and was fined $200; and former Brush Warden Rick Soares resigned and pleaded guilty in August to a misdemeanor false reporting charge in connection with Woller's case. The Hawai'i inmates were moved last year from the Colorado prison to the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky., which is operated by Corrections Corp. of America. Overturf was returned to Hawai'i, where she is serving a sentence at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua for drug offenses. Riley has been released on parole after serving prison time for theft, forgery, burglary and fraudulent use of a credit card. Both are undergoing counseling for the assault, Breiner said. The lawsuit does not specify how much in monetary damages the women are seeking, but does say the amount sought is larger than $150,000.

May 12, 2006 Journal-Advocate
Some communities may quiver at the notion a state prison will be built in their area. Some would think a prison would bring nothing but trouble and crime would increase in their towns. From 1999 to the present, the city of Sterling and Logan County have not seen a significant increase in crime, despite a state-run correctional facility opening here in 1999, according to law enforcement officials. The District Attorney's Office also stated the prison has not impacted its caseload in a way that would require major adjustments on its part. "In general, I can't say that the prison has made that much of an impact on my office. Obviously, if we prosecute any prison case it would constitute an increase on our normal caseload, but it is still a relatively small percentage, and some of our higher-visibility cases have involved inmates," 13th Judicial District Attorney Bob Watson said. Watson said private prisons - particularly the Brush facility - had a more significant impact on his office for which they are not receiving any reimbursement for the cases they prosecute. "We were receiving no such reimbursement but that is supposed to be rectified now by changed contracts between private facilities and the state of Colorado," Watson said.

November 3, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
Hawai'i prison officials signed a new contract with a private prison operator this week that for the first time allows the state to financially penalize the company if the prison operator fails to deliver on promised drug treatment or other programs for inmates held on the Mainland. Frank Lopez, acting director of the state Department of Public Safety, said the financial sanctions included in the new contract with Corrections Corp. of America were prompted by problems the state had in Oklahoma, when required drug treatment services for Hawai'i women inmates abruptly ended after the prison was sold in 2003. Inmate programs were interrupted again for more than four months this year at another privately operated women's prison in Brush, Colo., after allegations of sexual misconduct by the staff surfaced, triggering staff resignations, firings and an investigation by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Lopez said that interruption in programs at Brush might have triggered financial penalties if the new contract provisions had been in place at the time. "Our problem before was that we weren't able to address the (contractors') failure to deliver certain services in the past," Lopez said. "It wasn't specific enough. Our contract wasn't tight enough." Neither the Oklahoma nor the Colorado women's prison was operated by CCA, but state monitors have complained in the past that CCA also failed to provide inmate programs that were required by contract. The state prison system on Tuesday transferred another 53 women inmates from the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua to CCA's Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky., bringing the number of women inmates on the Mainland to 120, said Shari Kimoto, the department's Mainland branch administrator. In all, Hawai'i houses about 1,850 men and women inmates in private prisons in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Kentucky because there is no room for them in state-run prisons in Hawai'i. About half of the state's prison population is housed on the Mainland. The new contract covers only the 120 women inmates at Otter Creek, but Lopez said he sees it as a model for new contracts the state will negotiate with CCA next year covering male inmates held out of state.

October 13, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
The former warden of a Colorado prison whose staff was accused of sexual misconduct involving Hawai'i women inmates has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal charge in connection with one of the misconduct cases. Rick Soares resigned as warden of the privately run Brush Correctional Facility in February shortly before Colorado authorities announced they were investigating allegations of sexual misconduct by staff involving eight women inmates from Hawai'i, Colorado and Wyoming. Two corrections officers were later charged with felony sexual conduct in a penal institution in connection with those investigations. Colorado authorities said they could find no evidence the inmates were coerced for sex, but even consensual sexual contact between an inmate and a prison staff member is a felony in Colorado. Soares was later charged as an accessory in one of the two cases for allegedly rendering assistance to Corrections Officer Fredrick Woller "with intent to hinder, delay or prevent" the prosecution of Woller, according to the charge filed against Soares in Colorado's Morgan County District Court. Woller's case, which involves alleged sexual misconduct with an inmate from Wyoming, has been scheduled for trial on Feb. 5, Watson said. A second former corrections officer, Russell Rollison, is scheduled to go to trial Jan. 5 on two similar counts. Rollison is accused of sexual misconduct involving two women inmates from Hawai'i. Both of the Hawai'i inmates were returned to the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua. The rest of the Hawai'i women serving sentences at Brush have been moved to the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky.

October 13, 2005 Pueblo Chieftain
The Colorado Department of Corrections has dramatically improved its oversight of private prisons in the state, prisons officials told lawmakers last week. In giving the Legislative Audit Committee an update on changes it has made in how it manages the state's five private prisons, DOC director of prison operations Nolin Renfrow told lawmakers that all is well. That audit he was referring to was a scathing report released in June that criticized the department for being lax in its oversight of private prisons and ignoring problems with them for years. Prompted by a riot at the Crowley County Correction Facility in Olney Springs last year, the audit said DOC knew or should have known about numerous problems concerning the operations of the prisons but did little to nothing to correct them. The state audit said the department diverted DOC workers whose job was to monitor private prisons to other duties, and failed to enforce operations rules and regulations. And in those instances when the department's private prison monitoring units did discover problems, the department failed to follow up to ensure that corrections were made, the audit said. Four of those facilities are operated by the same Nashville-based company, Corrections Corporation of American. In additional to the Crowley County facility, CCA also operates private prisons in Bent, Huerfano and Kit Carson counties. A fifth private facility that houses female inmates is located in Brush. It is owned by the Brentwood, Tenn.-based GRW Corporation.

October 7, 2005 The Gazette
Private prisons in Colorado could face cash penalties for failing to meet minimum safety standards under new contracts negotiated by the Department of Corrections in the wake of a stinging audit. In June, an audit of Colorado's private prisons, which house about 2,800 of Colorado's 18,000 prisoners, found numerous problems, including inadequate staffing levels, unlicensed medical clinics, employees with criminal backgrounds and poor food services. Thursday, corrections officials gave state lawmakers an update on their response to the audit. For instance, private prisons will be fined if staffing levels do not meet minimum standards or if the meals they feed prisoners are not up to par. "I'm not sure the liquidated damages have enough hammer to them," said Rep. Fran Coleman, D-Denver. Corrections officials said they need time to see if the new penalty system works.

September 29, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
About 80 Hawai'i women prison inmates boarded an airplane in Colorado yesterday for a trip to the small rural town of Wheelwright, Ky., where they will be housed in a prison run by Corrections Corporation of America. The women had been held for the past 14 months in the Brush Correctional Facility in Brush, Colo., a private prison run by GRW Corp. that was plagued by problems including allegations of sexual misconduct between staff at the prison and eight inmates from three states, including Hawai'i. The inmates are among 1,828 Hawai'i convicts who are housed at privately run prisons on the Mainland because there is no room for them in Hawai'i prisons. Colorado Department of Corrections officials launched investigations into Brush Correctional Facility earlier this year that resulted in a number of criminal charges against staff and inmates in Colorado. Two prison employees were indicted on charges of alleged sexual misconduct with inmates, and two more prison workers were charged along with five inmates in connection with an alleged cigarette-smuggling ring. Brush Warden Rick Soares resigned in February, and was later indicted as an alleged accomplice in one of the sexual misconduct cases. In March the Colorado Department of Corrections revealed that five convicted felons were allowed to work at the prison because background checks on some staff members had never been completed. Colorado authorities later released an audit that was highly critical of the prison, and contract monitors from Hawai'i reported the prison failed to comply with its contract with the state in a number of areas.

July 28, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
They're out of sight, but must not be out of mind. Hawai'i's overflow inmate population, housed at private prisons on the Mainland, remain our responsibility. And making sure they are treated humanely while serving their time must be our concern. That's why state officials are right to demand an investigation into the sudden opening of cell doors in the predawn hours of July 17 at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility that resulted in a riot. More than 700 Hawai'i inmates have been housed since last year at the Mississippi prison, owned by Corrections Corp. of America. Two inmates were injured in the fight. Kane'ohe resident Sandra Cooper, the mother of one inmate, has her doubts that an internal probe will be enough to bring out the truth about how the cell doors opened. She called on the FBI to do a thorough inquiry, and that indeed would be the ideal way to proceed here. There's precedent for the FBI to take jurisdiction in a case where inmates are brought across state lines. At the very least, an independent authority should drive the investigation, rather than the prison's private owners. And state officials here must continue to ride herd to see that the investigation proceeds to a satisfactory conclusion. In a separate prison issue, it's a relief to see that the state has decided to pull the plug on its contract with the troubled Brush Correctional Facility, a northeastern Colorado prison housing 80 women inmates from Hawai'i. Because of ongoing investigations into alleged sexual misconduct between staff and prisoners, it's imperative that the move be made as soon as possible, while allowing for careful scrutiny of the prisoners' next destination. The end-of-September target date for the move seems reasonable, assuming that the state maintain its careful monitoring of Brush in the meantime. These painful episodes clearly illustrate that housing inmates on the Mainland is merely a short-term response to our critical prison shortage here, and creates its own additional problems. Hawai'i must continue to: work toward expanded prison capacity in the Islands, where we can retain better control of conditions; strengthen the probation system to keep some first-time offenders out of prison; and work on preventive strategies aimed at stemming the tide in drug abuse, which fuels so much of the state's crime problem. Sending inmates to the Mainland is just a stopgap solution.

July 27, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
Hawai'i plans to move 80 women inmates out of a troubled private prison in Colorado by the end of September but is unsure where they will go, prison officials said.  Hawai'i prison spokesman Michael Gaede confirmed the state is requesting bids from facilities to house the Hawai'i inmates and that the request in effect requires they be moved out of the Brush Correctional Facility, a 250-bed prison in northeastern Colorado.  The Brush prison has been under close scrutiny since Colorado authorities disclosed in February they were investigating allegations of sexual misconduct between staff at the prison and eight inmates from three states, including Hawai'i.  Brush Warden Rick Soares resigned in February, and was later indicted as an alleged accomplice in one of the sexual misconduct cases.  Two other prison employees also were indicted on charges of alleged sexual misconduct with inmates, and two more prison workers were indicted along with five inmates in connection with an alleged cigarette smuggling ring.  Those disclosures were followed by reports in March that five convicted felons were allowed to work at the prison because background checks on some staff members had never been completed. Since then Hawai'i monitors have filed reports noting that the prison failed to comply with its contract with the state in a number of areas, and Colorado authorities released an audit that was highly critical of the prison.  Contract monitors and other reports this year cited a litany of concerns about the prison, including:   GRW for many months used inmates to teach required rehabilitation classes to other inmates. Colorado corrections officials repeatedly complained about the practice, and Hawai'i contract monitors in February warned the practice was a "serious concern" for Hawai'i as well.  After the sexual misconduct allegations were made public at Brush, virtually all inmate rehabilitative and educational programming was shut down from January to early June, prison officials acknowledged. That violates the state's contract requirement that those services be offered to inmates.  Inmates and state monitors have repeatedly complained the Brush prison was providing inadequate dental and medical care.  Brush prison officials reported in May that the facility was visited by a doctor only once a month, and a Hawai'i contract monitor's report in May called that staffing inadequate.  Hawai'i contract monitors also warned the facility in February that it was obliged by contract to give inmates better access to dental care, and monitors again cited the same problem in a follow-up inspection in May.  Hawai'i monitors complained last year the Brush prison was not conducting drug testing of inmates that is required by contract, and once again criticized the prison in May for not doing the required testing.  A Colorado audit released in June found the Brush prison clinic was not licensed as required under Colorado law, a lapse that also violated the prison's contract with Hawai'i.

June 21, 2005 Rocky Mountain News
Three states could pull their inmates from Colorado's private prisons by the end of the summer, spooked by a recent sexual misconduct scandal and squeezed by Colorado's own rising prisoner population. The state's five private facilities house about 2,700 Colorado inmates. They also contract with three other states - Hawaii, Washington and Wyoming - to hold prisoners those states can't, due to overcrowding. The private prisons have lost or stand to lose nearly 400 out-of-state inmates, which would be an approximately $20,000 per-day hit spread between two Tennessee firms who run them. State officials say they can fill the gap with 400 Colorado inmates waiting for prison beds - contradicting warnings the private firms sounded earlier this year - and suggest that facilities filled only with Colorado prisoners could prove easier to control. Corrections officials say it's easier to manage prisoners from one state, because they are all used to the same rules. Some states, for example allow cigarette smoking or conjugal visits, which Colorado does not. "It is always easier to manage a single jurisdiction population," said Alison Morgan, a corrections department spokeswoman. Later, she said the loss of out-of-state inmates "is not a bad thing."  Officials also have said out-of- state inmates may have fueled or contributed to two riots in the past decade, including one at the Crowley County Correctional Facility last July. Washington once sent more than 200 prisoners to Colorado. The state has moved all but a few to other states, a Washington corrections official said Monday. Wyoming will move its 54 male inmates - already down from a high of 300 - from Colorado by summer's end, a corrections spokeswoman there said. Wyoming has already moved 38 female inmates from a private prison in Brush, in part because of alleged sexual misconduct between prison guards and inmates that surfaced in February. Hawaiian officials are rebidding their contract to house 80 women who are in Brush. Twenty- one state lawmakers urged their governor in April to move those inmates "immediately," the Honolulu Advertiser reported.

April 17, 2005 AP
Lawmakers are petitioning Gov. Linda Lingle to move dozens of female Hawaii inmates out of a Colorado prison where staffers were allegedly involved in sexual misconduct with prisoners. Twenty-one members of the Women's Legislative Caucus want Lingle to increase state monitoring of the Brush Correctional Facility in Colorado and ultimately move the 80 Hawaii inmates to another facility. House Judiciary Chairwoman Sylvia Luke, D-Pacific Heights-Punchbowl, said she is concerned about reports that prison staff may be retaliating against Hawaii inmates following allegations that guards were involved in sexual misconduct earlier this year with inmates from Hawaii, Colorado and Wyoming. Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, said Hawaii inmates have faced unfair administrative punishments and had legal records confiscated. The inmates believe these are examples of retaliatory acts, Brady said. GRW chief executive officer Gil Walker has said he expects Colorado to increase its number of inmates in Brush, so the company won't take a financial hit when Wyoming removes it's inmates. "I don't think it will hurt us at all," Walker said.

April 14, 2005 Honolulu Advertiser
Wyoming will remove its women inmates from a privately run Mainland prison that also houses Hawai'i women inmates, the same prison where staff members were accused of sexual misconduct involving Hawai'i, Wyoming and Colorado inmates. Melinda Brazzale, spokeswoman for the Wyoming Department of Corrections, cited a recent series of problems at the prison in the decision to remove the Wyoming inmates from the Brush Correctional Facility in Colorado. Those problems included criminal charges filed against staff members and the former warden in connection with the sexual misconduct allegations, and revelations that the prison allowed five convicted felons to work there because their background checks had not been completed. Investigations by Colorado state prison officials concluded prison staff had been involved in alleged sexual misconduct with two Hawai'i inmates, two Colorado inmates and four Wyoming inmates. Two other members of the prison staff were charged in an alleged cigarette smuggling ring.

March 24, 2005 AP
Colorado prison officials are reviewing background checks for employees at five private prisons run by Tennessee companies after discovering that some employees at one of them had criminal records. State Corrections Department spokeswoman Alison Morgan said Thursday that five convicted criminals and three people whose backgrounds "merited further investigation" had been hired at the Brush Correctional Facility, a privately run women's prison where several guards face charges of having consensual sex with inmates and smuggling tobacco into the facility. Morgan said a former warden for GRW Corp., a Brentwood, Tenn.-based company that has held a state contract to run the prison for 18 months, failed to complete background checks for some employees. The failure was first reported by KCNC-TV of Denver. She said it appears that fingerprints for the guards that were sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation were smudged or otherwise unreadable. The prints were sent back to the prison, which did not follow up, Morgan said. Morgan said the Corrections Department's Private Prisons Monitoring Unit does not have the staff or funding to regularly conduct its own background checks of private-prison employees.

March 23, 2005 Rocky Mountain News
People with criminal records were hired to work at a Brush prison where several employees are facing charges for allegedly having sex with inmates, according to a CBS 4 News investigation. The Brush Correctional Facility is a medium-security prison that holds 250 women. GRW Corp., a private company headquartered in Tennessee, runs the prison and hired several employees with criminal records to watch over the inmates, according to CBS 4 News. The company has fired six employees with criminal histories so far. Four guards have resigned from the prison, and one has been put on administrative leave. The warden, Rick Soares, resigned Feb. 18, a month after the Department of Corrections first received reports of sexual misconduct. Three prison guards are facing criminal charges for allegedly having sex with seven inmates. Two other guards and an inmate are accused of smuggling contraband cigarettes into the facility. The list of the prison employees with questionable backgrounds includes 28-year-old Angela Gallegos, CBS 4 News said. A prison guard, she was arrested on a felony charge three years ago and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment. Heather Henry, 24, was also hired as a guard. Her record includes arrests for harassment, domestic violence-assault, violating protective orders and child abuse. Richard Fairchild, 42, was convicted of domestic violence and violating a restraining order. Gil Walker, president of GRW, said these are the last people who should be working in a prison and should have never been hired. "We don't hire questionable people, and that's the embarrassing part," Walker told CBS 4 News. Walker said the company never finished its background checks on potential employees and didn't know their full histories.

March 10, 2005 Fort Morgan Times
Morgan County District Attorney Bob Watson filed additional charges Wednesday in connection with the prison sexual misconduct scandal in Brush. The new indictments include a charge of unlawful sexual conduct in a penal institution lodged against a second guard, charges of being an accessory to a crime against the former warden and charges against another nine current or former prison employees related to introducing contraband cigarettes into the prison and conspiracy to commit introduction of contraband. According to Watson, the new charges are not necessarily all that will result from his office's ongoing investigation of the GRW-owned private prison. According to case filings made Wednesday in Morgan County District Court, corrections officer Fredrick Henry Woller, 32, of Brush is charged with unlawful sexual conduct in a penal institution, a class five felony. Specifically, Woller is alleged to have engaged in sexual conduct with prisoner Cristie Maez. Also charged Wednesday was former Warden Richard "Rick" Soares Jr., 57, of Sterling, who was allegedly an accessory to the crime of unlawful sexual conduct in a penal institution, also a class five felony. He is accused of hindering the investigation. The pair joins corrections officer Russell Rollison, 31, of Brush, who was charged last week with unlawful sexual conduct in a penal institution. Other charges resulting from the criminal probe to date regard prison food service and other prison employees allegedly conspiring with inmates to bring cigarettes into the prison. Cigarettes have been banned from Colorado penal institutions since 1999. Those charged with introducing contraband in the second degree, a class six felony, and conspiracy to commit introduction of contraband, also a class six felony, are: Pania Akopian, 31, Pisa Tuvale, 35, Annette Cummings, 38, Janice Crockett, 47, and Jeannette Dillon, 38, all of whom have the Brush Correctional Facility listed as their address; Gail Guerrero, no age listed, and Maria Ramirez, 46, both of Brush; Charmayne Kalama, 28, of Kapolei, Hawaii, and Stannie T. Muramoto, 46, of Honolulu, Hawaii. According to Gil Walker, CEO of Tennessee-based GRW, which owns the 250-bed private prison, an internal investigation uncovered only consensual sex between the guards and prisoners. Alison Morgan, a state corrections department spokeswoman, said the DOC investigation revealed at least some of the sex as having been initiated by inmates. She said inmates from both Hawaii and Wyoming admitted to initiating the encounters either so they could be returned home or in an effort to sue the prison. However, a Hawaii attorney representing two of the inmates has alleged his clients were raped. The case was referred to DA Watson's office by the state corrections department's inspector general's office. The Brush prison, which became the first private prison for women in Colorado, opened in August, 2003. It houses 80 inmates from Hawaii, 73 from Colorado and 45 from Wyoming. Colorado pays $50 a day to GRW to house its prisoners.

March 10, 2005 The Denver Channel
The former warden and 10 other people at the privately run Brush Correctional Facility for Women face felony charges for conduct ranging from having sex with inmates to smuggling tobacco into the prison. Filings released by District Attorney Robert Watson show 32-year-old Fredrick Henry Woller faces a felony charge for allegedly having sex with an inmate. Former warden Rick Soares, 57, faces charges of being an accessory for allegedly hindering the discovery of Woller's conduct. Earlier this month, two correctional officers and seven female inmates were charged with several offenses, including introducing contraband in the form of tobacco. Watson said other investigations are pending. Soares last month resigned from Tennessee-based GRW, which owns the 250-bed prison in Morgan County, after a month-long investigation implicated several officers. The department's inspector general's staff reported to Watson last month that three officers had sex with four inmates from Wyoming, two from Colorado and two from Hawaii. Some of the women alleged they were raped, but investigators concluded the sex was consensual. Having sex with an inmate is a felony for guards. The facility became the first private prison for women in Colorado in August 2003.

March 4, 2005 Star Bulletin
Female inmates from Hawaii will remain at a privately run women's prison in Colorado where five officers face sexual misconduct and contraband charges, Hawaii officials said yesterday. A visit to the prison by state monitors last month shows Hawaii does not need to transfer its inmates to an alternate facility, said Richard Bissen, interim director of Hawaii's Department of Public Safety. "Incidents like this happen at facilities," Bissen said. "But that place is being more closely monitored than ever, and the women themselves say they are safe." Three prison officers had sex with a total of four Hawaii inmates, two Colorado inmates and one Wyoming inmate, according to Alison Morgan, a spokesperson for the Colorado corrections department. Two of the officers have resigned, and a third is on administrative leave. Investigations show the sex was consensual, said Gil Walker, founder and chief executive of Tennessee-based GRW, which owns the Brush Correctional Facility for Women, located in Colorado. One case involved two Hawaii inmates and a guard, who admitted to engaging in sexual activity in January in the prison library. Some civil rights advocates argue that there is no such thing as consensual sex between an inmate and an authority figure. "We have a law that says it's a felony. It's not consensual when someone is in custody," said Kat Brady, an advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii. Myles Breiner, a Honolulu lawyer who is representing the Hawaii inmates, has said the women were forced to perform a sex act for Rollison. Morgan said some Hawaii and Wyoming inmates admitted they believed having sex with the guards would help them get transferred to their home states, where they would be closer to relatives.

February 25, 2005 Denver Post
The warden resigned and five correctional officers at the privately run Brush Correctional Facility for women face sexual misconduct and contraband charges in the wake of a criminal probe. Warden Rick Soares resigned from Tennessee-based GRW, which owns the 250-bed prison in Brush, on Feb. 18 after a month-long investigation implicated the five officers, said Alison Morgan, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman. The warden was not implicated in the wrongdoing. The department's inspector general's office referred contraband allegations involving two staff members and one inmate and sexual misconduct allegations involving three staff members to District Attorney Robert Watson on Thursday. Three officers who were not named had sex with four Hawaiian inmates, two Colorado inmates and one Wyoming inmate, Morgan said. Two of the officers resigned, and a third is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the criminal case. Some of the women alleged they were raped, but investigators concluded the sex was consensual, sometimes initiated by inmates, Morgan said. It's still a felony offense for correctional officers, she said. She said some Hawaiian and Wyoming inmates acknowledged they had sex with correctional officers because they believed they would be returned home, where they would be closer to relatives. Others hoped to file lawsuits against the prison. Two officers and an inmate were caught sneaking tobacco into the prison, Morgan said.

Centennial Community Transition Center
Arapahoe County, Colorado
Correctional Management Inc
November 22, 2008 CBS 4 Denver
An Arapahoe County halfway house has been placed on probation until next June after residents were found to be drinking, others were leaving the secure facility in the middle of the night without authorization and still other clients said staff members were accepting bribes for looking the other way. "It's unfortunate staff members violated the trust we have given them," said Mike Koob, Operations Vice President for Correctional Management Inc., the company that operates the halfway house. In late July, an offender at Centennial Community Transition Center, located at 14485 East Fremont Ave., told a staff member about numerous security lapses. That led supervisors to conduct a surprise 1:30 a.m. inspection on July 26. They found four clients were missing from the facility without authorization. All four had stuffed their beds with clothes to suggest they were still there and sleeping. One was serving a four year sentence for felony vehicular eluding. Another was serving a one year sentence for felony menacing. All four offenders tested positive for alcohol when they returned after being gone for several hours. One later wrote a statement saying he paid a corrections technician $100 to allow him to leave the facility at about 11:45 pm. "This has been going on for a couple of weeks," the man wrote. Breathalyzer tests given to other clients showed ten were positive for alcohol. Three days after the surprise inspection, another offender told a manager that a staff member was taking $100 bribes in exchange for allowing clients to provide clean urine samples for each other. All that prompted the Arapahoe County Community Corrections Board to call a special emergency meeting Aug. 4 demanding answers from CMI, the operator of the halfway house. Board member John Jordan said his biggest concern was 'community safety'. Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers made a motion to remove all violent offenders from CCTC and only allow the facility to take property offenders. But the board voted 12-1 against that motion. Correctional Management subsequently fired three staff members involved in the halfway house shenanigans. Eight offenders involved in the July incidents were sent back to jail to complete their sentences. On Oct. 16, the Arapahoe County Community Corrections Board placed CCTC on probation until June 30, 2009. Arapahoe County Community Resources Director Don Klemme said it was the first time the community corrections board had placed a halfway house on probation. In an Oct. 20 letter to the corrections board, CMI Vice President Mike Koob wrote that "CMI took the situation at CCTC seriously and responded immediately and decisively." In another letter from CMI to the community corrections board, the company said it "hired staff that chose not to live up to the responsibility and trust placed upon them in their positions...CMI believes this is a very serious and unfortunate incident." The company said since the July discoveries, it has made several changes including random, unannounced facility visits.

Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Community Education Centers
January 11, 2010 Westworld
Sherman Schuett followed the rules at CMRC -- and ended up in the hole for his own protection. If you're Sherman Schuett, the answer to the question posed by the headline above, at least for lawsuit-filing purposes, is in excess of $100,000. The 61-year-old state inmate and his Evergreen attorney, Ron Beeks, are suing the operators of a controversial private prison in Colorado Springs that's supposed to help prepare prisoners for the difficult journey back to society. The Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center encourages its clients to take responsibility for their actions and confront misbehavior by others. That's what Schuett thought he was doing in 2008 when he reported another resident for punching holes in the wal l-- an act that might be considered snitching in a more traditional correctional facility. An employee left Schuett's report where the other prisoner could see it, and Schuett was attacked in a unit that he claims lacked any supervision. He suffered various facial injuries, including a contact smashed in one eye, and spent three months in segregation after the attack for his own protection. Schuett's saga is one of several complaints about beatings, inappropriate relationships between staff and prisoners, smuggling, and other problems at CMRC that were explored in our 2008 feature "Con School." Now working in Denver and awaiting his next parole hearing, Schuett says one of his goals in filing suit was to prod the prison's operator, Community Education Centers, into improving its management of the facility.

Colorado Department of Corrections
September 17, 2009 Pueblo Chieftain
Officials in three Southern Colorado counties said Wednesday that Gov. Bill Ritter's decision to release more than 6,000 inmates from state Department of Corrections custody will be devastating to small communities that house private prisons. Commissioners in Bent, Crowley and Huerfano counties all have private prisons owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. Ritter announced the Accelerated Transition Pilot program in August. By June 30, an estimated 2,720 inmates out of 3,400 eligible for parole will be on the streets, saving the state $19 million in prison housing costs. The next year, another 3,000-plus inmates could be released. But Bent County Commissioner Bill Long said that the lion's share of the proposed reduction would come from the private prisons in Crowley, Bent and Huerfano counties. Long said the proposed releases will impact the private facilities which were built at the request of the state. "If they do what they have been talking about in the last few days, which is 5,000 to 6,000 inmates possibly being up for parole, that will empty virtually every private prison in Colorado that has Colorado inmates," Long said. "I guarantee that this will be an absolute disaster for Bent County and Crowley County. No question about it." The Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs and the Bent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas are key parts of their local economies with more than 200 employees at each facility, Long said. "We receive property tax, telephone revenue and other benefits from the facilities," Long said. Long explained that the Huerfano County Correctional Facility in Walsenburg and the Kit Carson Correctional Facility in Burlington also will be hurt if the reduction occurs. Currently the Huerfano facility is full of inmates from Arizona, but Long said that when Arizona gets its inmate situation straightened out, the inmates will be taken back to that state. "That would be another facility that was built primarily for Colorado inmates that would also be emptied," Long said.

September 1, 2009 AP
Colorado officials plan the early release of 15 percent of inmates in state prisons to help slash $320 million from the state budget. The cuts that took effect Tuesday call for the release of 3,500 of the 23,000 inmates over two years, saving the state about $45 million, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said. An additional 2,600 parolees, or 21 percent of those currently on parole, will be released from intense supervision. Prisoners eligible for early release are those within six months of their mandatory release date. Those eligible for early parole release must have served at least half of their supervised term. Sex offenders do not qualify. Other offenders, including those who committed violent crimes, will undergo more rigorous reviews. No staff members are being cut. Money will be saved by reducing the number of inmates sent to private prisons, Sanguinetti said.

August 21, 2009 Denver Post
Gov. Bill Ritter's plan to cut the state budget through inmate releases could reduce Colorado's prison population by 1,000 in a year and immediately save $19 million. It will also almost certainly accelerate the commission of new crimes, and could force layoffs from a privately run prison, experts said. Ritter's plan calls for trimming parole supervision for some inmates already out of prison, and releasing some non-sex-offender inmates early and placing them on parole. A total of 5,700 inmates or parolees could see their status change as a result of Ritter's cut. A Metropolitan State College of Denver professor says it's unavoidable that a large number of those prisoners or parolees will commit new crimes. "The recidivism rate in Colorado is between 40 and 60 percent within five years, depending on types of crimes," Metro State criminal justice professor Joseph Sandoval said. "I do think that the risk of release is that some will go on a crime spree and there may be a smaller amount that commit crimes that are heinous." Each of the inmates who will be released early is someone who was within six months of getting out anyway. So, if the inmates follow historical patterns, the early release is more likely to accelerate the commission of new crimes rather than actually increase the crime rate over time, Sandoval said. Still, Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman said the mass release of prisoners across the state is of "great concern." Private prisons wary -- There is also concern about the plan's impact on privately run prisons. Colorado's prison system is a mixture of state-run and privately run facilities. The private prisons make a profit largely based on efficiency, and they need full beds to get fully paid. The largest of those companies working in Colorado, Corrections Corporation of America, is already fretting that reducing the prison population too far would be bad for the company's bottom line. "We're hoping it doesn't put us in a position where our operations are not viable," said Steve Owen, spokesman for Tennessee-based CCA, which runs Crowley County Correctional Facility, Bent County Correctional Facility and Kit Carson Correctional Facility. Katherine Sanguinetti, spokes woman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the early prison releases will save $61 million over three years. Although there will be population decreases at all Colorado's prisons, the private prisons will be hit hardest because empty beds at state-run prisons will be filled by prisoners transferred from the private prisons. She said safety is DOC's top priority.

March 24, 2009 The Denver Channel
A private prison is planning to transfer its Colorado inmates to other facilities to make room for 752 inmates from Arizona. The Colorado inmates will be moved from the Huerfano County Correctional Center to other facilities in Colorado run by Corrections Corporation of America(CCA), according to the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper. No Colorado statute keeps the state from accepting inmates from other states. CCA has four private prisons in Colorado. The CCA prison in Walsenburg opened in November 1997. State Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, is not happy about the plan. She told the newspaper, "Coloradans should be concerned because earlier this year we heard that there was a question of whether or not they wanted to dump the Guantanamo Bay detainees in Colorado and now we are hearing they want to dump Arizona's inmates here. Why would we want Arizona's criminals in Colorado?"

December 21, 2008 Daily Sentinel
Colorado lawmakers eager to avoid another series of ultimatums from the state’s dominant private prison contractor could find some relief after a Texas-based prison firm finishes a 1,250-bed prison near Hudson, northeast of Denver. Charles Seigel, Cornell Companies’ vice president of public policy, said his company hopes the Colorado Department of Corrections will choose to do business with his company, particularly in light of past budget tussles. “It certainly is in the state’s interest to have more than one vendor providing this service,” Seigel said. A contract between Cornell Companies and the state could cut into Corrections Corporation of America’s hold over the majority of Colorado’s privately held prisoners. According to Colorado Department of Corrections statistics, Corrections Corporation of America houses 4,436, or 82 percent, of the state’s privately held prisoners. The firm’s corner on private prison contracts contributed to a budget fight last session, when lawmakers said they felt they were being extorted when the prison firm asked for a higher per prisoner, per day reimbursement rate.

October 15, 2007 Daily Sentinel
It has been months since Roger Peck has seen his son. A year ago, Peck and his wife, Millicent, twice a month were driving more than 400 miles from Grand Junction to see their son, 47-year-old Stephen Dallas Peck, at the Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs. But when Peck and 479 other inmates were relocated in December and January to the privately owned North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., those visits ended. “It’s almost impossible for us to get to Oklahoma, and I’m sure we’re more capable than a lot of people that have loved ones in prison,” Roger Peck said. The retired couple said their contact with their son, who was sentenced in early 2004 to 18 years in prison for felony theft and methamphetamine possession, has become relegated to brief collect calls twice a month. The Colorado Department of Correction’s decision to ship its healthiest and best behaved inmates more than 300 miles southeast of Colorado’s closest prison in Trinidad, the Pecks said, is “completely opposite” the state’s goal of promoting prisoner wellness and reducing recidivism. “They skimmed the cream to start with. They took inmates who were in relatively good health and have no violent history and were not in there for violent crime,” Roger Peck said. “So they took the cream of the crop, so to speak, and sent them to this facility whose sole purpose in life is making money.” Without their support, the Pecks said, they fear how well their son will cope with his methamphetamine addiction, which also landed him in prison in 1997. Rep. Steve King, R-Grand Junction, said in an attempt to address some of the Peck family’s concerns, he and Colorado Department of Corrections Director Ari Zavaras are going to visit the North Fork Correctional Facility at the end of this month. King said after he met the Peck family earlier this year, he began to wonder if Colorado was abandoning its oversight responsibilities by shipping felons out of state. “I had some real concerns about us giving up our ability, in some ways, to have oversight of these people that are Colorado citizens,” King said. “Granted they’re felons, but they’re our felons, and we have a responsibility to make sure they’re doing their time in a safe environment.” King said “outsourcing our felons” removes them from the support network of friends and family they need to transition from their criminal lifestyles and addictions back to living normal lives. Zavaras said from a purely financial standpoint, private prisons — the six in Colorado and the North Fork Correctional Facility — are a cost-effective way to deal with Colorado’s exploding corrections population. According to Department of Corrections statistics, Colorado’s inmate population has nearly doubled over the past decade, from 13,242 inmates in 2006 to 22,424 inmates this year. Nearly 5,000 of Colorado’s inmates reside in private prisons. Zavaras said sending prisoners outside Colorado is neither ideal nor fair to the inmates, but it is necessary. “Managing prisoners out of state, quite frankly, is very, very difficult for us,” Zavaras said. “If we would have had in-state beds, we wouldn’t be out of state. We’re only there as a last resort.” He said there are plans to expand two existing private, in-state prisons. As soon as those expansions are completed, he said, “We will bring them back.” Zavaras said he plans to scrutinize the Sayre, Okla., prison during his and King’s Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 visits. He said during that time he will not only speak with Colorado inmates but look into the concerns of inmates’ families. Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, said that ideally Colorado would pull out of private prisons, whose missions are directly contrary to reducing recidivism. McFadyen, who has 12 state and federal prisons in her southern Colorado House district, said private facilities have no reason to attempt to reintegrate felons back into society. She said private facilities see felons as possible repeat customers, so they have no incentive to decrease recidivism. Removing inmates from Colorado, she said, is an even better way for private prisons to maintain demand for their beds. “Sending an inmate out of state is almost guaranteeing they’ll come back in the system because of the lack of support,” McFadyen said. “I don’t know how an inmate succeeds when they have no support from home.”

June 2007 Reason OnLine
After a crackdown on illegal immigration, farmers in the rural area outside Pueblo, Colorado, found they lacked the labor to help them plant and harvest crops. When the farmers pressed their case with state Rep. Dorothy Butcher (D-Pueblo), she offered a proposal: Why not use prison inmates? In May a private company, Colorado Correctional Industries, will launch a pilot project putting one or two groups, totaling eight to 10 prisoners apiece, to work in Colorado fields. It will be the latest of more than 30 work programs authorized by the state’s corrections department, but the first to fill a need created by an exodus of Mexican migrant workers. For $10 per inmate per hour, convicts will till fields, plant seeds, and eventually pick crops. Not that the prisoners will be raking in the lucre. According to Alison Morgan, the state’s private prisons director, inmates will get 63 cents an hour for their labor, 20 percent of which will be taken to pay for “restitution and child support.” The rest, she says, they can use “to buy phone time, or other services, or they can use it when they go home.”

April 18, 2007 Colorado For Ethics
The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) responded to a March 5, 2007, open records request by Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government (CCEG) that sought documents relating to a private prison contract awarded by CDOC to The GEO Group, Inc. The documents obtained by CCEG confirm that former Director of Prisons Nolin Renfrow began working for The GEO Group while still on state payroll, a blatant conflict of interest. In an email to Brian Burnett, the deputy executive director of CDOC, Dave Schouweiler, DOC Manager of Purchasing, stated that Renfrow was on state payroll until January 31, 2006 and acknowledged the “impropriety of Mr. Renfrow’s involvement with the originating procurement.” The CORA request and responsive documents are available on CCEG’s website at www.coloradoforethics.org. CCEG is posting these records as part of its commitment to holding the government responsible for its actions.

April 1, 2007 Denver Post
If Joe Nacchio ends up in the slammer, he'd better hope it's not one run by Corrections Corporation of America, though Qwest retirees just might feel particular glee at the thought of his working most of a day to pay for a roll of toilet paper. About 480 inmates from Colorado have been transferred to CCA's North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., since December, and they're finding that hard time is a lot harder in a prison run for profit. The inmates, all culled from state prisons based on their release dates, records for compliance and nonviolent prison histories, have been rewarded for their good behavior with lousy food, fewer visits from family members, limited access to phones, delays in mail service, a lack of access to Colorado law books and prices in the prison canteen that have been jacked up in some cases to three times those in Colorado institutions. "It seems like minor stuff to people outside of prison, but it's created a real powder keg," said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. Parents of inmates housed at Sayre have reported that a boycott of the commissary was organized as a prison protest, and when a guard was perceived to be harassing an inmate at lunch recently, the entire room stood in solidarity. They worry that tensions could erupt into a riot similar to what happened at the CCA prison in Crowley County in 2004. "The guys are really upset," said Tracy Masuga, whose son was transferred to Sayre in December. Among the recent price hikes at the canteen were: peanut butter that sold for $1.48 in January now going for $2.34, AIM toothpaste jumping from $1.45 to $2.23, raisin bran going from $2.99 to $4.75, and a 25-watt light bulb going from $1.20 to $3.69. In Colorado state prisons, peanut butter is $1.80, AIM toothpaste 95 cents, and banana nut granola (the closest thing to raisin bran on the commissary list) is $2.11. Toilet paper sells for 70 cents a roll in Sayre compared with 44 cents at state-run prisons. "This might not seem like much, but we're talking about people who make literally a dollar a day," said Ann Aber, an attorney with the Colorado Public Defender's office. "It's arbitrary and inexplicable exercises of power like this that can create a really incendiary situation." Alison Morgan, chief of private prisons for the Department of Corrections, said a team from Colorado visited the Sayre facility this month and talked to about 200 inmates. Complaints about the price hikes were rampant, she said, but she insisted that the prisoners' concerns were being addressed. "The warden is looking at the commissary list and has reduced prices for about 40 items, including the price of light bulbs," she said. Steve Owen, spokesman for CCA, said that after a brief drop in purchases from the canteen around March 9, sales have returned to normal. Gary Golder, director of prisons for the DOC, said CDs of Colorado statutes are on order for use in the Sayre prison library, but delivery by the vendor has been delayed. Problems with phones, mail service and other issues will be resolved, Morgan said. As for the food, which was described as inedible by inmates two months ago and resulted in many of them reporting significant weight loss, Morgan describes it now as "fabulous." "The previous food-service manager was fired." State Rep. Buffie McFadyen said she has heard some of the complaints, and while she is concerned, focusing on things like commissary prices and phone service ignores the larger issue. "They shouldn't be there at all," said the Democrat from Pueblo West. "Sending inmates out of state is almost guaranteeing a 100 percent recidivism rate," said McFadyen, who has eight state prisons in her district. "We're taking the inmates with the best track records within our system and punishing them by sending them out of state away from their families. When inmates don't have that support system in place to help them re-enter society, it almost guarantees failure." McFadyen said this is all part of the private-prison system's business plan. "High recidivism rates ensure profits for their stockholders," she said. "There's no incentive to do what's best for inmates. They profit by having them come back into the system." Owen called such criticism "completely false." "We invest a great deal in innovative programs to rehabilitate inmates," he said. "We consider ourselves professionals." CCA receives $54 per day per Colorado inmate. The cost to keep comparable inmates in state institutions is $77 per day, Morgan said. Even at 30 percent less per inmate, CCA has delivered impressive profits to shareholders. The company racked up $105.2 million in net income in 2006. How do they do it? "The private-prison industry makes its money out of bodies and souls," McFadyen said.

March 6, 2007 Greeley Tribune
Saying GEO Group Inc. can't be trusted, a Pueblo lawmaker asked state officials Monday to rescind a contract with the company to build a private prison in Ault. Plans for the prison, which would house 1,500 inmates and would be built east of the railroad tracks along U.S. 85, has stalled on two fronts. Ault leaders decided they would not approve the facility until the public voted on it, and GEO wants to change its contract to ensure payment for its beds. Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, a vocal critic of private prisons, said Monday that the proposed change and other issues regarding GEO's integrity should negate the Ault contract. “Anybody living in Ault should be concerned that a company that would bid this way on a contract might have a business in their town," she said. Philip Tidwell, spokesman for the town group Coalition Against Ault Prison, said residents hope no one else bids on the Ault prison if GEO's contract is rescinded. "We just do not want any private prison, whether it be GEO or Cornell or anyone else," he said. A spokesman for GEO did not return calls seeking comment. McFadyen said the company is attempting to do the same things in Ault that derailed plans for a GEO facility in Pueblo. In 2003, GEO won a contract for a 1,100-bed, pre-parole and parole revocation facility in Pueblo, and after almost four years of delays, the state pulled the contract last fall. The company never broke ground on the facility. "The state of Colorado was held hostage for four years waiting for those beds," McFadyen said. The delays included zoning issues in Pueblo and GEO's attempt to obtain guaranteed payments on 90 percent of its beds, regardless of whether the beds were occupied. That is something state leaders have opposed and which may even be impossible because of state laws, McFadyen said. Now, GEO is trying for guaranteed bed payments in Ault, she said. "You have to question the integrity of the 2006 bid," she said. "If past performance is an indicator, I suspect we will be in the same place we were in 2003 in Pueblo." McFadyen said Ari Zavaras, the new director of the Department of Corrections, told her he is opposed to bed guarantees. Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan told the Associated Press that Zavaras will review McFadyen's request and decide how to respond. The story of Ault's possible prison goes back to late 2005, when Nolin Renfrow, former director of prisons for the Department of Corrections, started working with GEO on a bid for a private prison. Renfrow is under investigation for using state sick leave to obtain the Ault contract on behalf of GEO. On Monday, Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government, a watchdog group, filed an open records request about the Ault bid. "We do not feel that the public's interest was put forth in the procurement of this contract," said Chantelle Taylor, spokeswoman for the watchdog group. A state audit found Renfrow's business activities "arguably present a conflict of interest and result in a breach of ... the public trust." That breach, coupled with GEO's attempt to change its Pueblo contract by adding the bed-payment guarantee, should have prevented the company from getting the Ault bid in the first place, McFadyen said. Tidwell agreed. "One thing the state should recognize is (GEO) did not operate fairly," he said. "They hired an insider knowing he worked for the state. In my mind, GEO has shown itself to be not a company that operates fairly in the state of Colorado.

March 5, 2007 Rocky Mountain News
Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, and two reform groups today formally requested the director of the Department of Corrections and the governor rescind Geo Group’s bid to build a private prison in Ault. The reasons cited included the company’s performance on a 2003 bid to build a private prison in Pueblo. McFadyen said GEO Group lost its contract to build the Pueblo facility because it delayed the start of construction, then tried to renegotiate its contract to get a guarantee that it would be paid for 90 percent occupancy, even if beds were not filled. "Basically, the state of Colorado was held hostage for four years. They didn’t even break ground," McFadyen said. In her letter to Ari Zavaras, executive director of DOC, she said, "It would appear that the state’s best interests were not served by allowing GEO group to bid any contract with the state because of its lack of performance on tis 2003 award." Officials with Geo Group could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. Alison Morgan, spokeswoman for the DOC, said Zavaras was aware of the letter being sent by McFadyen, but had not seen it Monday. "Since he was not with the department during the RFP (request for proposals) process, it is an issue that he is still studying and is being briefed on," said Morgan. "Once he has all the information, including McFadyen’s letter, he would welcome an opportunity to sit down and talk to her."

January 31, 2007 Rocky Mountain News
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is taking over the probe of a retired state prison official who stands to be paid $1 million for helping a private prison company win a state bid. Nolin Renfrow, former state prisons director, openly became a consultant to the Geo Group and helped it win a $14 million- per-year deal to house 1,500 inmates in a private prison proposed in Ault. A state audit said Renfrow began the work for Geo while still on the state payroll. It also said that he is to collect a $1 million fee if the prison is built. State employees are prohibited from providing paid assistance to anyone to win state contracts or economic benefits. State law also prohibits activities that constitute a conflict of interest. Ari Zavaras, who became prisons chief with the new administration several weeks ago, said he asked the CBI to take over the investigation to "overcome the perception that it won't be a thorough investigation." Renfrow said Tuesday, "I understand why he would do that, and I just hope it comes to quick resolution." The Department of Corrections had been investigating. Its report was to have been given to prosecutors if warranted. Zavaras said he is letting the CBI decide whether the probe will become a criminal investigation.

December 16, 2006 The Gazette
State prison officials have canceled a contract for a new private prison in Pueblo, a move that casts doubt on how much Colorado will be able to rely on private prisons while it copes with a crowding crisis. The GEO Group, which was awarded a contract in 2003 to build the Pueblo pre-release prison, has also been contracted to build and operate a prison in Ault, in northeastern Colorado. But the same issue that doomed the Pueblo project — the company’s insistence it be guaranteed nearly full occupancy — could derail the latter prison, because GEO is making a similar demand. “If GEO’s going to demand a bed guarantee, they need to leave the state,” said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat and leading critic of private prisons. “It is not the job of the Colorado taxpayers to ensure profits for this corporation.” The Pueblo prison was delayed repeatedly: by zoning issues, by a legal challenge from a prison-reform group and by several revisions to the plan by GEO. But the final impasse began this summer, when the company asked for a 90 percent minimum occupancy guarantee for the prison, which wasn’t a condition of the original proposal and was opposed by Department of Corrections officials. Private prisons are paid a daily rate per inmate by the state, currently $52. Last month, the DOC denied a contract-extension request, and on Thursday informed the company that it was canceling the contract. “Ground has not broken, and GEO has given no indication when, or even if, it plans to commence construction,” DOC executive director Joe Ortiz wrote. “Our patience cannot be infinite.” The department is facing an acute crowding problem. Years of canceled prison-construction projects and steady growth in court caseloads have created a shortage of prison beds. The DOC this week began shipping 720 inmates out of state, a temporary solution until new beds become available. With only one state prison under construction, Colorado State Penitentiary II in Cañon City, the DOC this year awarded contracts to three companies to build prisons for 3,776 inmates. The GEO Group’s proposed 1,500-bed prison in Ault is a major part of the plan. Alison Morgan, head of private-prison monitoring for the DOC, said the department still expects GEO to follow through on its proposal in Ault. “We are treating the Pueblo facility and the Ault facility separately. We have from Day 1, and we will continue to do so,” Morgan said Friday. However, GEO is making the same demand for guaranteed occupancy for the Ault prison. Asked whether the DOC is still opposed to a guarantee, she said, “It is a policy decision to be addressed by the new administration (of Gov.-elect Bill Ritter) and the General Assembly.” The local community isn’t even sure it wants a prison. Ault’s town board last month passed an ordinance requiring voter approval for the prison. No election date has been set. McFadyen said she doesn’t believe GEO ever intended to complete the Pueblo prison, and she doubts the company’s ability and will to follow through in Ault. “We’ve been set back three years in our planning,” McFadyen said. “I think that kind of delay is unacceptable, and we’ll learn from this experience and not allow another contract to drag on for three years.” A call to a spokesman in the company’s Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters was not returned Friday afternoon. An audit requested by Mc-Fadyen regarding the bidding process for the Ault prison was released this week. It showed that a top DOC official set up a consulting business to help GEO win the bid while he was employed by the state. Because the DOC is based in Colorado Springs, the office of 4th Judicial District Attorney John Newsome will receive the results of the investigation and determine whether any law was broken. Morgan said the DOC will issue a new request for proposals for a pre-release prison.

December 16, 2006 ABC 7 News
The state has cut off negotiations and rescinded a contract with developers planning to build a private prison in Pueblo. Colorado Department of Corrections executive director Joe Ortiz sent a letter Friday to the GEO Group, ending six months of negotiations. The letter cites numerous delays and unresolved issues and says the department has run out of patience with the developers. The Florida-based GEO Group had been working for about four years to build the 1,000-bed prison near the Pueblo Memorial Airport industrial park. Construction never got under way. The prison would have been for pre-parole prisoners and prisoners who had seen their parole status revoked. GEO bought about 36 acres for the facility last year, but negotiations with the state broke down over the company's demand that the DOC guarantee 90 percent occupancy and grant a 30-year contract. GEO operates private detention centers in 15 states and one Canadian province as well as in South Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Pueblo facility is one of two the company was planning in Colorado. The company's Web site also indicates GEO in 2003 was awarded a contract to develop a 1,000-bed immigration detention facility in the Denver suburb of Aurora. A DOC spokeswoman says the department will put the Pueblo proposal back up for bid, with no promise the facility will still be built in Pueblo.

December 14, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
A three-year effort to build a private prison facility at the Pueblo Memorial Airport Industrial Park appears to be dead after the Colorado Department of Corrections and the prison company reached an impasse over guaranteed occupancies. On Tuesday, reports said that the DOC was working with the attorney general's office to draft a letter to the GEO Group that essentially kills the company's plans to build a 1,000-bed pre-parole and parole revocation facility on 36 acres east of the city. GEO officials said Wednesday they had not received any letter from the DOC, but also didn't express much confidence a deal could be struck for the facility. "We have been in negotiations with the Department of Corrections, but we don't have any contract signed and at this time it does not appear there will be one," said Pablo Paez, director of communications for the Florida-based company. Paez confirmed reports from November that the company was asking for a minimum occupancy guarantee for the facility and also confirmed that the company was planning to go to the city of Pueblo for help to build the prison. ± PLEASE SEE PRISON, 2APRISON / continued from page 1A ± "We needed the guarantee to secure the lowest capital cost through tax-exempt bonds," Paez said Thursday. "We would get those through the local municipality." State Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who has been a vocal critic of the private prison industry, and state Rep. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, wrote a letter to the city in May warning against using public funds to build the facility. "I think it's very positive that the city of Pueblo is not going to risk its credit rating on this project," McFadyen said Wednesday. Officials from the DOC were not available Wednesday to comment on whether the letter had to do with the occupancy guarantees, or the result of an audit suggesting former Director of Prisons Nolin Renfrow may have broken the law by helping GEO secure DOC approval to build a 1,500-bed facility in Weld County, prior to his retirement in January. Paez said GEO had no contact with Renfrow before March. Last month, DOC spokeswoman Kathy Church told The Pueblo Chieftain that talks between the company and the DOC over Pueblo's facility had stalled over the minimum occupancy guarantees and had reached a critical point. "They need to either understand our position and accept it or back out completely," Church said last month. Church told The Chieftain that the DOC couldn't make any guarantees without knowing how much money it had to spend. That money depends on what the joint budget committee decides. McFadyen wondered Wednesday why those guarantees weren't part of the original agreement when DOC solicited bids for the Pueblo project. "If the DOC negotiated additional terms with GEO, they would be the only private prison company to receive such treatment and that's wrong," McFadyen said Wednesday. "I think this goes to the point of how committed they were to coming to Pueblo in the first place." The plans to build the facility started in 2003 when GEO, then Wakenhut Corrections Company, proposed building the prison on the West Side. Those plans eventually shifted to the airport and the city approved a controversial agreement with GEO to build a 500- to 1,000-bed facility. A year ago, GEO bought the property at the airport from the city for $296,800. GEO's original plan was to build a 750-bed facility at the airport, but got Planning and Zoning Approval in May to expand the facility to 1,000 beds.

December 14, 2006 Denver Post
Results of an investigation into former Colorado prisons director Nolin Renfrow's conduct in office will be turned over to a district attorney early next year, the Department of Corrections' inspector general said Wednesday. Michael Rulo, who has been the agency's inspector general for seven years, said his office has been cooperating with state auditors on the probe. On Tuesday, the auditors announced that a "former senior- level official" of the Department of Corrections launched a prison-consulting business in August 2005, five months before he retired from the department Jan. 31, and helped a private company land a state prison contract. State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who requested the audit, identified the official as Renfrow. The auditors found that while still employed by DOC, Renfrow began working to assist prospective bidders in developing proposals to his department for a private prison. With his assistance, a company identified as the GEO Group was awarded the contract for a 1,500-bed private prison at Ault. Auditors noted that state employees are barred by law from outside employment that creates a conflict of interest, and from helping people to win a contract with their agency for a fee. Renfrow couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday. Rulo said the results of his office's investigation will be turned over to El Paso County District Attorney John Newsome, probably in January. The Department of Corrections is based in that county. Rulo said a decision on whether to file charges will be a "collaborative process" with prosecutors. Kristen Holtzman, spokeswoman for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, said that Renfrow never contacted the attorney general's office to ask whether his consulting business while still a DOC employee constituted a conflict of interest.

December 13, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
A former top official for the Colorado Department of Corrections may have broken the law when he helped a private prison company win a state contract earlier this year, an audit revealed Tuesday. Though the report conducted by the state auditor doesn't name him, the audit centered on Nolin Renfrow, former director of prisons for DOC. It even calls on the department's inspector general to further investigate the matter and, if warranted, refer it for possible prosecution. The audit, which was requested by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, showed that before Renfrow retired in January, he had been working with a Florida-based private prison company, GEO Group, to land a DOC contract to build a 1,500-bed prison in Weld County. That project is expected to cost an estimated $100 million, for which Renfrow was to get a 1 percent fee - or $1 million - for helping Weld County get the contract, the audit said. In 2003, GEO, which is based in Baca Raton, Fla., was awarded a contract to build a 500-bed, prerelease prison near Pueblo Memorial Airport, which still hasn't been built. Renfrow's replacement, Gary Golder, says the department currently is working with the Attorney General's Office on a letter to GEO that effectively would revoke the 2003 bid and end the Pueblo project. Though the audit did not find any evidence that Renfrow disclosed confidential information to GEO to help it win the Weld County bid, he may have violated state laws, personnel rules and department regulations regarding outside employment, the audit said. Neither Renfrow nor GEO officials were available for comment. The audit found that prior to Renfrow's retirement on Jan. 31, he filed articles of incorporation for a private prison consulting firm, Patriot Business Solutions, in August 2005. "Public records and interviews indicate that the former employee began actively working on behalf of his prison consulting business as of November 2005," the audit said. "Neither the department nor the former employee provided documentation showing that the employee requested or the department approved the former employee's outside employment." The contract was awarded to GEO in June, along with a separate contract to Corrections Corporation of America to expand two of its existing private prisons - in Bent and Kit Carson counties - by 720 beds. DOC time sheets also showed that Renfrow "used a combination of annual, sick and holiday leave" to remain on extended paid leave from November 2005 until his retirement date, the audit said. "Neither the department nor the former employee provided evidence that (Renfrow) received the express consent of his attending physician or appointing authority to engage in outside work activities," the audit said. "As a result, we question the former employee's use of about 240 hours of paid sick leave benefits valued at about $14,000." McFadyen began to question Renfrow's involvement immediately after GEO won the contract. The Pueblo West lawmaker, a longtime critic of private prisons, questioned why such a company would be awarded a new bid before it had made any progress on the Pueblo prison. McFadyen also questioned why the department was even considering a GEO request, which was made after winning the bid, to give it a written guarantee that the new beds would be filled, something the state has never provided to any of the five other existing private prisons in the state. "I am still questioning the Colorado Department of Corrections as to why GEO was allowed to bid another (project) when they have not performed on the original 2003 project," McFadyen said. "GEO Corporation is demanding that the state issue a mandatory guarantee of filling beds. It is not the responsibility of Colorado taxpayers to ensure the profits of this corporation. "There's no question that we're being held hostage by GEO Group when other (private prison) vendors probably would like to come in and bid those contracts," she added.

December 13, 2006 Rocky Mountain News
A retired state prison official stands to be paid $1 million - and possibly face criminal charges - for helping a private prison company win a state bid while he was still working for the state. A state audit released Tuesday cited a possible conflict of interest. The audit does not name the official, but the audit was aimed at Nolin Renfrow, former state prisons director. And the document describes work he openly undertook for the Geo Group. Renfrow helped Geo win a $14 million-per-year deal to house 1,500 inmates in a private prison it proposed building in Ault. Renfrow helped Geo write its bid and spoke with Ault officials on Geo's behalf, said officials and Renfrow last spring. On Tuesday, Renfrow did not return a call for comment. The audit said the official may have violated two state laws. One prohibits state employees from providing paid assistance to anyone to win state contracts or economic benefits. The other prohibits activities that constitute a conflict of interest with their duties as state employees. The audit cleared the official of using insider knowledge to help Geo win the bid. But it said that if the prison is built, Geo will pay the official a $1 million fee. The official started working as a consultant on the deal before he retired this year, the audit said. During his final three months on the job, the official used six weeks of sick leave, valued at $14,000, without any proof that he was sick. The Department of Corrections has launched an investigation as a result of the audit. If warranted, the department will refer its findings to local prosecutors, said Gary Golder, Renfrow's replacement as state director of prisons. Golder said the laws cited by the auditor do not carry specific penalties. He speculated that if charges are filed, they might be for malfeasance or official misconduct. When the audit began in June, Renfrow told a reporter he had run operations for existing prisons and that he had no role in writing the state's bid request that he later helped Geo win. He also said then that the state attorney general's office had ruled that his work on the deal was not a conflict of interest. However, the audit found no evidence that he requested or received the required state approval for his outside work.

October 13, 2006 Summit Daily News
Six private prisons in the state were fined about $131,000 for failing to staff mandatory positions, the Colorado Department of Corrections said. It was the second time such penalties were levied since a riot broke out in 2004 at the Crowley County Correctional Facility and an audit exposed staffing problems at the prisons. The department released documents this week showing the six prisons had 1,071 vacant positions from February to May. The Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington received the largest fine of $83,103 for having 567 positions open. It was docked in $103,743 previously after it left 701 jobs vacant from November to January. The center is operated by Corrections Corporation of America, which also runs the Crowley County Correctional Facility. Alison Morgan, the department's head of private prison monitoring, said some places have difficulty finding and retaining workers, especially in remote areas.

October 6, 2006 Rocky Mountain News
The Joint Budget Committee on Thursday approved a $153,887 emergency supplemental request from the Colorado Department of Corrections to contract for out-of-state prison beds. The contract with Corrections Corp. of America would provide up to 720 beds at a private prison in Oklahoma, at a cost of $54 per inmate per day. The rate is higher than the $51.91 per inmate per day that Colorado pays for housing inmates at in-state private prisons, three of which are also run by CCA. Last month, officials with the DOC said they would likely start sending 200 to 300 Colorado inmates to Oklahoma this month, since all the available beds in the state will be filled. The announcement was news to the JBC, which had been assured by the department earlier this year that it would increase the number of in-state prison beds by double-bunking inmates. Thursday, committee members had concerns about the cost of monitoring and transporting prisoners out of state, as well as the apparent lack of planning on the part of the DOC. However, all but one of the committee members decided to grant the request since the state would need additional beds next year, and there were fears that the cost of contracting would go up if other states, such as California, are bidding on the same beds. In granting the request Thursday, the JBC also said it plans to send a letter to the DOC stating the committee wants to revisit the department's bed plan. Another letter would also be sent suggesting that the DOC should refrain from spending $3.5 million that had been appropriated for the double-bunking plan.

September 21, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
State Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, rallied support in Pueblo on Wednesday for a strong future fiscal plan for the Colorado Department of Corrections. Coloradoans, she added, also need to know how the DOC is going to protect its employees and the communities surrounding their facilities. McFadyen was flanked by DOC guards, Teamsters, State Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff and other Democrats during a press conference held on the steps of the Pueblo County Courthouse. She told the small crowd that the DOC has no future plans for corrections. "They testified in (legislative) session that their only plan is to house inmates," she said. "They don't set goals and objectives. McFadyen warned of the cost and repercussions of moving and accepting out-of-state inmates. She cited the July 2004 riot at the privately-owned, Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs. That riot was fueled by inmates from Washington and Wyoming. And on the same day, a prison riot broke out in Mississippi, caused by inmates shipped from Colorado. "You can't put those types of populations together because, right away, the inmates from out-of-state start banding together," McFadyen said. A critic of private prisons, McFadyen said the state needs to look at the role of private prisons. "Are we saving money with private prisons? I think not."

September 16, 2006 The Gazette
The Colorado Department of Corrections is preparing to send as many as 1,000 inmates out of state — probably to two private lockups in Oklahoma — to alleviate crowding in state prisons. Alison Morgan, head of the DOC’s private-prison monitoring unit, would not discuss the department’s timetable for moving the inmates. Last month, she visited two Oklahoma prisons, the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton and the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, and she is in negotiations with the companies that run them. “Going out of state is inevitable,” she said Friday. The DOC has been warning lawmakers for months that it will soon run out of space, the result of longer sentences, a growing population and a multiyear budget crisis that canceled building projects. New private prisons to hold 3,776 inmates have been approved, and officials this year expressed optimism to the General Assembly that they could handle the state’s caseload by double-bunking inmates and finding unused space until the new prisons are built. It will be the first time since the mid-1990s that Colorado has sent a large number of inmates out of state. In 2004, 121 high-security inmates with gang affiliations were sent to a prison in Mississippi, but officials brought them back a year later after they were involved in a riot there.

July 31, 2006 The Gazette
Colorado prison officials, faced with unparalleled crowding, are poised to embark on the state’s largest private-prison expansion in years. By the time three companies build medium-security prisons for 3,776 inmates by the middle of 2008, one in three Colorado inmates will be housed in forprofit facilities. Despite the state’s growing reliance on private prisons, Department of Corrections officials still have deep concerns about the projects, and numerous issues remain that could derail them — including two companies’ insistence their cells be filled before those in state-run prisons. “I don’t believe they’re cheaper in general,” said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat and opponent of private prisons. “As long as you have stockholders wanting more bodies and cells, there’s no incentive for that company to reduce the number of people in prison.” “They (private-prison firms) kind of know they’ve got us over the barrel,” said Dave Schouweiler, purchasing manager for the DOC. “If we don’t use them, we’ve got to ship people out of state.” Corrections Corporation of America was awarded contracts for 720-bed expansions at its prisons in Las Animas and Burlington. At the Kit Carson Correctional Facility, the company’s original proposal called for employing just 59 guards, later revised to 64, for an expanded inmate population of 1,562, a ratio of 1 to 24. Similarly, at the Bent County Correctional Facility, the company proposed to have 61 guards — later increased to 66 — for an expanded population of 1,457, a ratio of 1 to 22. The officer-to-inmate ratio in the state prison system is 1 to 4.6, according to the DOC. It isn’t the first time staffing at a CCA prison in Colorado has been a concern. In 2004, a riot broke out at the company’s Crowley County Correctional Facility, and an audit put much of the blame on low staffing levels. CCA signed new contracts with the DOC, allowing officials to issue fines for staffing deficiencies. CCA was recently fined $103,743 for leaving 701 mandatory shifts vacant from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10 at the Kit Carson prison, Morgan said. The company was fined $23,000 for 157 unfilled shifts at the Crowley County prison and $2,651 for 18 vacancies at the Bent County prison. Private prisons pay less than state prisons, and critics say most have high turnover. Another point of contention: CCA and GEO demand to have first claim to every person sentenced to state prison. It’s a condition Schouweiler said DOC officials are not comfortable granting. But the fact the companies made it a condition of their proposals — at least so far — shows how the climate has changed since the 1990s. “To a large extent, we can’t dictate to them like we did in the ’90s,” he said. “They would like to see us in crisis when they open their doors.”

June 28, 2006 Denver Post
A Democratic state lawmaker raised safety and competitive concerns about two companies selected by the state Tuesday to build additional prison space to house more than 2,200 male prisoners. Rep. Buffie McFadyen of Pueblo West said The GEO Group Inc. has not built the 500-bed Pueblo facility it promised three years ago. She also questioned whether GEO had an unfair bidding advantage on the new 1,504-bed facility it was selected to build in Ault. The company hired Nolin Renfrow, the former state director of prisons, to help it bid on the project after Renfrow left the department, she said. Renfrow worked for corrections when the request for bids was made public. Neither Renfrow nor a representative of GEO could be reached Tuesday evening for comment. Katherine Sanguinetti, a spokeswoman for the department, said she didn't know the factors that went into selecting GEO. And, she said, "I personally know that the DOC staff that were rating those bids have had no contact with (Renfrow) to keep it objective." Earlier this month, McFadyen asked lawmakers to audit the bidding process. She also questioned why the Corrections Corporation of America was selected to expand the Bent County Correctional Facility near Las Animas by 720 beds. CCA owns and operates the Crowley County Correctional Facility where a riot broke out in 2004. McFadyen said she was concerned that the company has still not replaced the porcelain fixtures in its facilities after broken porcelain was used as a weapon during the riot.

June 28, 2006 Greeley Tribune
The state Department of Corrections on Tuesday made a decision that could alter the face of the small Weld County town of Ault. By granting Florida-based Geo Group Inc. the right to build a 1,500-bed medium security men's prison southeast of town in the next two years, the state paved the way for prisoners to outnumber residents. Negotiations between the town and Geo will begin next week on infrastructure costs and impact fees. If residents of Ault need development and economic vitality, the last place they should look at is a prison, warns a long-time private prison opponent. Frank Smith, 67, co-founder of the Private Corrections Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to monitoring private prisons, cites study after study and incident after incident pointing to the ills of private prisons. Several studies have been conducted to test markets where private prisons locate, and most conclude that prisons do not stimulate an economy any more than the regular cycles of growth that would come without the parade of orange jumpsuits. "They don't pay for themselves, they chase away safer and better industry," said Smith, who began fighting the private prison movement in Alaska in 2000 and now fights them nationwide from his home in Bluff City, Kan. "You foreclose your possibility of getting a really remunerative industry that would actually compensate people so they can make a living." While pointing out the numerous riots that have occurred in private prisons for years -- the problems that come with corporate, for-profit prison building -- Smith cites one insidious problem that has a domino effect on economic activity: Pay. Geo Group noted in discussions with Ault officials that prison employees would start at $25,000, about $3,000 less than Ault police officers. The pay is no accident, Smith said. "The biggest problems are that they cut corners and pay people so poorly they can't get trainable staff, and they wind up with a bunch of fast-food workers," Smith said. "They move to where they can pay the least." The private prison movement has sprawled across rural America in the past decade, according to Terry Besser and Margaret Hanson in a 2003 study entitled, "The Development of Last Resort: The Impact of New State Prisons on Small Town Economies." The pair studied 10 years of prisons in rural America, a time when 69 percent of the 274 new state prisons were opened in towns of 10,000 or less in population in 1990. In that time, they found the unemployment rate differed very little in small towns with prisons, versus their non-prison counterparts, but poverty levels in prison towns did decrease. "In all other economic indicators, however, the new prison towns fared worse than the non-prison towns," the study found. "The rate of increase in the number of new businesses, non-agricultural employment, average household wages, retail sales, median value of owner occupied housing and total number of housing units is substantially less in new prison vs. non-prison towns." The study showed that turnover rate in private prisons was three times higher than public prisons due to low wages and a lower level of employee training, creating employee safety concerns. The study also found that rural towns, lured by the potential development opportunities, will frequently give tax abatements and breaks, which are not commensurate with the supposed vitality a prison would bring to a community. In Ault, for example, a state contract for the men's prison could be a $28 million annual contract for Geo, which has promised just $250,000 a year to the town as an impact fee. Ault Police Chief Tracey McCoy, who sought the prison, said that's a number that will have to increase. Ault resident Ed Lesh worries about the reputation being a prison town could mean in the long run. "I don't think we've gleaned the good and bad about the facility," Lesh said. "There are some points I think should be considered. ... I don't think having the handle of being a prison town is a plus. If I were going to start a business, I don't know that I would go to Cañon City." Ault resident John Dudley believes growth will come as a result of a prison, but said the town would not see fit to make sure growth pays its own way, his chief concern when it comes to any growth that might increase town coffers in the short term. "It would be nice and wonderful if everyone could assure me it's going to be controlled growth," said Dudley, a local school board member who was on the town board when a prison in the area was proposed, then shot down in the mid 1980s. "It's not just going to soak the city, it will soak everyone in Colorado," Dudley continued. "It's going to end up where you're going to have impacts on highways and we'll have to find more money to pay for highways, and all the sudden, it will impact state patrol, and we'll have to find more people (to hire)." "I feel pity for our board because they have this tough decision to make," he said. "Do we give away things to get this, or do we just kiss more opportunity goodbye? It's a tough choice."

June 25, 2006 Rocky Mountain News
The state has levied fines of $126,000 for short-staffing at two private prisons run by Corrections Corp. of America, which just won a contract to incarcerate 720 more Colorado prisoners. The new inmates will go to a different CCA prison in Las Animas, which had only minor staffing violations during inspections last winter. The fines are the first in Colorado. The penalties were recommended by a searing state auditor's report on the private prisons last year. The audit was prompted by a riot at the CCA prison in Crowley County in 2004. An inquiry found that CCA's staff-to-inmate ratio was one-seventh of a state prison's at the time. Only 33 uniformed officers were guarding 1,122 inmates. Staffing has improved since the fines were levied, said Alison Morgan, the state's supervisor of private prisons. CCA's Kit Carson County prison in Burlington, near the Colorado- Kansas state line, was fined $103,743 for leaving 701 required shifts empty in a 10-week period from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10, records show. That's about 10 people short per day over three shifts. The missing staff members were largely guards in various locations. On five shifts, the supervisor was missing, and on 44 shifts, there was no assistant supervisor. The fines could have been much higher. The state waived nearly $46,000 of penalties for October 2005 at the Kit Carson prison, saying it was unfair to enforce the contract only a few days after it was signed in September. Documents say state officials complained that in November, there were 435 cases in which employees did not sign out, making it impossible for state inspectors to know if the short-staffing had been even worse. CCA's Crowley County prison in Olney Springs was fined nearly $23,000 for leaving 157 shifts open in the same period. It, too, was given a reprieve for October's fines, which would have been $18,000.

March 6, 2006 Rocky Mountain News
Eighteen months ago, inmates rioted at a private prison in Crowley County, setting fires, smashing everything in two cell houses and seriously damaging another three. More than 100 officers were needed to stop the violence, which injured 13. A state investigation blamed the riot on mismanagement by Corrections Corp. of America, the prison's owner. The company had 33 guards overseeing 1,122 inmates when the riot began. The state Department of Corrections tightened its contract with CCA to require more and better trained staff. Now, the company has a major advantage in bidding for 2,250 new private prison beds that Colorado urgently needs for its soaring number of convicts. Although several companies have expressed interest in the work, CCA already has the land and the necessary zoning. That could make it the only bidder capable of meeting the state's demand that the first 750 beds open in less than two years. Meanwhile, the Department of Corrections is unclear on whether it can consider the riot in evaluating bids. At first, department spokesman Walt Ahrens said it cannot. "Procurement rules do not allow the department to negatively evaluate a new proposal from CCA because of a past riot at a CCA facility," he said in an e-mail. Later, the department pointed to the bid document, which says that evaluators will consider information about the bidder's past performance, but only if the bidder brings it up in its proposal. Still later, the department said it can request further information on such incidents "as long as the bidders are treated essentially the same." Finally, it said, "We are not going to speculate on what may happen. The process has just begun." But awarding the contract to CCA would make Colorado even more reliant on the company, a critic says. CCA "has a track record at Crowley that would make anybody question whether they are competent to run a prison," said Christie Donner, of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which opposes all private prisons. In Colorado, a state investigation issued a blistering report after the riot at CCA's 1,800-bed Crowley County Correctional Center in Olney Springs in 2004. The report said that CCA's staff-to-inmate ratio was one-seventh of a state prison's and that management ignored signs of trouble. A new contract between Colorado and CCA requires more staff, better training, increased medical care and better food. A state audit also found fault with the state Department of Corrections, citing insufficient inspections and a practice of keeping dangerous inmates at a medium-security private prison, in violation of state law. Dave Schouweiler of the Corrections Department said it would be convenient to have a private lockup adjacent to a state prison. But state prisons pay about 50 percent better and it would be difficult for a private prison to compete for staff, he said. Though CCA has an advantage of speed and cost efficiencies of existing facilities, it's not the only potential bidder. George Killinger of Cornell Cos., which houses 18,000 inmates nationwide, noted that the state's proposal calls for 750 beds each opening in February 2008, August 2008 and August 2009. He said that allows the possibility of building one large prison with a cost-effective central administration, instead of several smaller ones. Other prospective bidders include Emerald Correctional Management, of Shreveport, La.; the Geo Group Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla., which is ready to start construction on a 500-bed, specialized preparole prison in Pueblo; GRW Corp., which runs a private women's prison in Brush; Larry Small and Associates, of Hattiesburg, Miss., which is pushing a patented design that allows guards to see all prisoners at all times; and Management and Training Corp.

February 28, 2006 Pueblo Chieftain
A private prison company is looking at Fremont County as the possible home for two private prisons that could grow to a 4,250-inmate population. So with nearly 8,000 inmates already living here, can the county take on more than half that number in new inmates? Management Training Corp., based in Centerville, Utah, is hoping so. The corporation runs private prisons throughout the U.S. including Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and now is checking out Fremont County for two potential private prisons. Consultant Nolin Renfrow, who retired from the Colorado Department of Corrections after a 28-year career, is taking on the developer role in an attempt to bring all the players together to make it happen."I was intrigued by MTC - a private business, a refreshing group with solid credentials. They are heavy into programs and working with the inmates and I am just pro-corrections. . . . I believe there are certain people who need to be locked up. "I hate the thought of turning some inmates loose if there are not enough beds. So, here I am, hoping to oversee the programming, designing and construction, then I'll turn the keys over to MTC," Renfrow said. MTC has decided to submit a proposal for both the two new private prisons and hired Renfrow to come up with a plan.

February 24, 2006 AP
A former state corrections official says financial considerations are forcing lawmakers in Colorado and many other states to let private companies operate their prisons. Nolan Renfro directed a handful of private prisons and numerous state facilities before leaving the Colorado Department of Corrections. He's now working with a Utah-based company that wants to build a 4,250 bed prison near Canon City.

January 5, 2006 Denver Post
Colorado's Front Range is the preferred site for the state's largest private prison, which planners hope will help handle a population boom of inmates over the next five years. The state is asking private groups for proposals to build a 2,250-bed medium-security facility for men somewhere along the Interstate 25 corridor from the north Denver metro area, south to Pueblo and west to Cañon City. "We are dealing with a logjam," said Alison Morgan, the Colorado Department of Prison's chief of private-prison monitoring. Colorado has six private prisons, and all are at or near capacity, including the Crowley County building, which is the largest at 1,037 prisoners, she said. Private prisons in Colorado collected $53 million to house 2,800 inmates in 2004, and supporters say they provide needed jobs in small communities and help boost local economies. But critics claim that the state is relying too much on private companies to house dangerous criminals. A state auditor's report last spring said lax oversight is a problem in private facilities and helped lead to a riot at the Crowley prison in 2004. The audit also found that of the nine inmates who died between January 2001 and September 2004, two of the deaths may have been caused by physicians who changed medications without physically examining the inmates. "I have real concerns about who works in these facilities," said state Rep. Liane "Buffie" McFayden, D-Pueblo West, a critic of private prisons.

January 4, 2006 Rocky Mountain News
Colorado has already run out of prison space for its most dangerous inmates and will run out of room for any new prisoners later this year. That dire warning came in a briefing about the Department of Corrections to the Joint Budget Committee by its staff Tuesday. "The inmate population is continuing to grow, and we don't have a place to put them," JBC analyst Karl Spiecker said. Already, the DOC is violating state law by housing 70 of its highest-security prisoners in private prisons, Spiecker said. Private prisons have 25 percent fewer guards than state prisons, he added. Colorado also could ship inmates to private prisons out of state, but it has pulled back all of its prisoners from such facilities due to serious problems. Most recently, Colorado brought 121 of its most dangerous prisoners home from Mississippi after they were involved in two riots in an under-staffed private facility there. A 2005 state audit found that Colorado had sent leaders of prison gangs involved in six disturbances in Colorado facilities to the Mississippi lock-up. Guards there sparked a riot by opening the cell doors for all the Colorado inmates at once. Rival gangs immediately attacked each other.

November 12, 2005 Rocky Mountain News
The nation's largest private prison operator has agreed to state-mandated reforms at its four Colorado prisons 14 months after a riot tore through its Crowley County Correctional Facility in Olney Springs. Corrections Corp. of America, headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., signed new contracts with the Colorado Department of Corrections in September that address a host of problems uncovered in the wake of a riot by some 300 inmates on July 20, 2004. Similar contract requirements and state oversight also will apply to two other non-CCA private prisons in Brush and Colorado Springs to ensure consistency. Those prisons house more than 500 inmates. The new contract requires increased staffing levels at CCA facilities, better staff training and emergency preparedness, increased medical and mental health services for inmates, improved food standards, and state takeover of inmate financial accounts. While some of those issues were not considered direct causes of the 2004 riot, all have been cited as trouble spots that may have fed the discontent that finally erupted into violence and destruction at the Crowley County facility. During the riot, inmates ransacked two cellhouses and prison offices, destroyed furniture, smashed doors and windows, and set dozens of fires, one of which burned down the prison greenhouse. Two inmates were seriously injured and several received minor injuries. The Department of Corrections found afterward that the Crowley prison had only 33 uniformed officers supervising 1,122 inmates and that some officers had been on the job two days or less. When inmates began damaging property, the small force of officers withdrew from the yard and cellhouses, and the riot quickly grew. Staff size and training were central concerns in the DOC report issued two months after the riot. But a Legislative Audit Committee report last April found other unequal conditions between state and private prisons that could breed future riots. But the staffing shortage seen as a major problem in the Crowley riot remains a difficult problem for CCA. The company has agreed to maintain staff sizes closer to those at comparable state-run medium-security prisons and to train officers to state standards. But a gap remains between the salaries of state and private prison staff members that has led to high employee turnover. The state's post-riot report found the average monthly salary for private prison officers was about two-thirds that of state officers. CCA has raised salaries every year despite decreases in Colorado's compensation rate since 2003 because of state budget cuts, Owen said. He did not disclose current CCA salaries. "It is a challenge in trying to make salaries competitive with what is paid by the state," Owen said.

October 13, 2005 Pueblo Chieftain
The Colorado Department of Corrections has dramatically improved its oversight of private prisons in the state, prisons officials told lawmakers last week. In giving the Legislative Audit Committee an update on changes it has made in how it manages the state's five private prisons, DOC director of prison operations Nolin Renfrow told lawmakers that all is well. That audit he was referring to was a scathing report released in June that criticized the department for being lax in its oversight of private prisons and ignoring problems with them for years. Prompted by a riot at the Crowley County Correction Facility in Olney Springs last year, the audit said DOC knew or should have known about numerous problems concerning the operations of the prisons but did little to nothing to correct them. The state audit said the department diverted DOC workers whose job was to monitor private prisons to other duties, and failed to enforce operations rules and regulations. And in those instances when the department's private prison monitoring units did discover problems, the department failed to follow up to ensure that corrections were made, the audit said. Four of those facilities are operated by the same Nashville-based company, Corrections Corporation of American. In additional to the Crowley County facility, CCA also operates private prisons in Bent, Huerfano and Kit Carson counties. A fifth private facility that houses female inmates is located in Brush. It is owned by the Brentwood, Tenn.-based GRW Corporation.

October 7, 2005 The Gazette
Private prisons in Colorado could face cash penalties for failing to meet minimum safety standards under new contracts negotiated by the Department of Corrections in the wake of a stinging audit. In June, an audit of Colorado's private prisons, which house about 2,800 of Colorado's 18,000 prisoners, found numerous problems, including inadequate staffing levels, unlicensed medical clinics, employees with criminal backgrounds and poor food services. Thursday, corrections officials gave state lawmakers an update on their response to the audit. For instance, private prisons will be fined if staffing levels do not meet minimum standards or if the meals they feed prisoners are not up to par. "I'm not sure the liquidated damages have enough hammer to them," said Rep. Fran Coleman, D-Denver. Corrections officials said they need time to see if the new penalty system works.

July 8, 2005 Rocky Mountain News
Waste is in the eye of the beholder.  Opponents of two fall ballot measures that would boost state spending say government doesn't need more money because it wastes what it has now.  They drafted a report this month detailing that alleged overspending.  But much of what the report calls overspending - including locking up drug users, prosecuting anti-trust cases and employing a lieutenant governor - others call core government functions.  The Independence Institute, a think tank based in Golden, identified the alleged government waste in a draft report it recently posted online by mistake. The "Piglet Report," at www.taxincrease.org,warns voters against ballot measures Referendum C and Referendum D. Two of the priciest overspending examples the institute cites are $3 billion in an unfunded liability for a state pension program - money that the state is not, in fact, spending at the moment - and up to $53 million for private prisons, which cost the state less per-inmate than public prisons.  Examples of alleged government waste identified in a draft report by the Independence Institute:  • Up to $53 million on private prisons, for which the report says the legislature "is not getting good value for its money."

June 27, 2005 Tribune Capital Bureau
CHEYENNE -- Scarcity of space and a recent sexual misconduct scandal have prompted state officials to move the 54 prison inmates Wyoming currently houses at private facilities in Colorado to Texas by the end of the summer.  But by the end of 2007, Wyoming expects to have all of its prisoners housed within the state's borders, according to Wyoming Department of Corrections spokeswoman Melinda Brazzale. Brazzale said a lack of available private prison space in Colorado prompted Wyoming officials to begin consideration of moving state inmates out of Colorado. Contributing to the decision were allegations of sexual misconduct between prison guards and inmates at a private prison in Brush, Colo., where Wyoming had been housing 38 female inmates. Those inmates have since been moved out of Colorado.

June 26, 2005 Loveland FYI
This we know: • More prisoners exist in Colorado than there are cells in the state’s prisons. • No new prisons are under construction. • No money is available to build new prisons even if the state wanted to. Thus, Colorado is stuck with using private prisons whose operators contract with the state to incarcerate prisoners who won’t fit in the state-run system. It stands to reason that because incarceration is part of the judicial system and an essential function of government, the state should do all that it can to make sure all parts of the system — including private prisons — work according to the law. Colorado’s Department of Corrections has done a horrible job of monitoring the five-unit private prison system and has violated state law in the process. So says an audit of the private prison system conducted after a riot at the Crowley facility. The scathing audit left little cover for the DOC. The agency simply blew it. While required by law to monitor the private prison system, the DOC failed to reasonably do its job. In fact, the Legislature provided additional funding for staff so that monitoring could occur, but the DOC diverted those employees to other functions. The DOC knew about problems but ignored them, said the audit report. Inmates judged to be high security risks were sent to private prisons in violation of the law. Mental health treatment was not offered as required to those needing it. Medical centers at private prisons are not certified. Inadequate background checks were conducted on private prison employees. Sex offenders were given earned time off for treatment that they didn’t attend. It would be far better for Colorado to own and operate all of its prisons itself to assure better accountability. But the decision made several years ago for financial reasons to contract with private prison operators can’t be easily undone. The DOC must do a better job of overseeing the contracts, and the Legislature should consider a gradual process of bringing private prisons back into the public fold. In the future, if the state continues to struggle with having the capital funds to build new prisons, it should give more consideration to the idea of letting private entities build prisons and lease them back to the state to operate.

June 14, 2005 Pueblo Chieftain
The Colorado Department of Corrections has been lax in its oversight of private prisons, and has ignored known problems for years, according to a scathing state audit released Monday. Prompted by a riot at a private prison in Crowley County last year, the audit said DOC's inability to properly manage the five private facilities operating in the state led to numerous inmate problems, and could spark more. The audit said that the department knew about specific problems with how private prisons were being operated, but did little to nothing to correct them. And when the DOC did point out violations to private facilities, it failed to ensure that they were corrected, the audit said. "Noted violations by the private prisons are not being addressed by the department, and have been allowed to continue unresolved," the audit stated. "Furthermore, the department has not instituted a systemic follow-up process to ensure that its recommendations are follow by the private prisons or that documented violations are corrected." The audit found that the DOC used employees whose jobs were to monitor private prisons do other work, failed to enforce rules and regulations on how they are to operate, and was shoddy in how it monitored private facilities. Nolin Renfrow, director of prison operations for DOC, admitted that the department has made mistakes in its oversight of private prisons, but chalked it up to inexperience. "We have over 150 years experience running our own prisons, but only five dealing with private facilities," Renfrow said following the audit report. "We're learning as we go." Currently, there are five private prisons operating in the state, four of which are owned by the same national private prison firm: Corrections Corp. of America based in Nashville, Tenn. CCA operates facilities in Bent, Huerfano, Crowley and Kit Carson counties. A fifth private facility, which houses females, is located in Brush. It is operated by GRW Corporation based in Brentwood, Tenn. Steve Owen, CCA spokesman, said that while the audit was not about his company per se, CCA takes its role in working with DOC seriously and will help the department address concerns raised in the report. Still, Owen said the audit was a little too general to help the company address specific concerns. "We're a partner to the Department of Corrections and we view ourselves as apart of the system," Owen said. "The conclusions and the observations were so general for the most part, it's hard to specifically identify what specific things apply to our direct operations. The report doesn't lend itself to identifying specific things to specific facilities." One part of the report, for example, says that a mental health providers were not meeting with seriously mental ill inmates, but didn't say at which facility. Another section of the report, however, says that the medical staff at the Bent County Correctional Facility in Las Animas administered two medications to an inmate that led to his death. Another death occurred at a different private facility in Kit Carson County when an inmate's medication was changed. Both are operated by CCA. "We identified two cases where physicians changed the inmates' medications without examining them," the audit said. "Department clinical and administrative records indicate that medication changes made by private prison staff potentially contributed to the death of these inmates." Owen said he knew nothing about those deaths, and questioned whether they occurred at CCA facilities. Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West and an outspoken critic of private prisons, said the audit supports what she's been saying all along, that they have no place in Colorado. "These for-profit prisons would have a hard time passing even the beginning of the Boy Scouts of America oath: 'On my honor I will do my best,' " McFadyen said. "It's clear that the for-profit prison industry has no desire to follow their contracts, and it is costing taxpayers money every day. This year, the state could've spent $ 1.1 million on heath care, job creation or tourism. Instead, we had to spend that money to watch over private prison facilities that aren't doing their jobs and putting the public safety at risk." McFadyen was referring to additional money the Legislature gave to the DOC to add positions to its private prison monitoring unit. The audit said that the department has 15 monitoring unit positions, but that only four were actually going to the prisons. Additionally, one of those positions, for a unit operations manager, has been vacant for three years. Yet, the DOC asked the Legislature for five new private prison investigators and two additional monitoring unit workers. Renfrow said that cuts to the department's overall budget in recent years forced it to use some of those workers for other duties. The audit said that the monitoring units that did visit facilities missed numerous required inspections and filed incomplete reports. Auditors were particularly alarmed that the units failed to conduct the security and emergency activation drills it was suppose to, particularly one at the Crowley County facility at which a riot occurred last summer. "Of particular concern, we noted that the monitoring unit had never conducted an emergency activation drill at the one private prison that experienced a riot in July 2004, and only produced monitoring reports for one-third of the targeted weekly inspections at this facility during fiscal year 2004," the audit said. "Additionally, we identified several weekly inspection reports and security audits that appeared to copy the findings from prior inspection reports, changing only the date and time of the audit work performed," the audit said. "Department management does not review these reports, so management was not aware that the reports contained errors."

June 14, 2005 Colorado Springs Gazette
Two Colorado inmates died last year because their prescription medications were changed by unlicensed medical clinics in private prisons, according to a stinging audit that charged the state with lax oversight of an out-of-control private prison system. The Colorado Department of Corrections houses about 2,800 of its 18,000 inmates in six private prisons. Five are in Colorado, and one is in Missouri. It cost taxpayers $53 million in 2004. An audit of those prisons released Monday found numerous problems: inadequate staffing levels, unlicensed medical clinics, employees with criminal backgrounds, poor food services and more. The audit laid much of the fault with the state corrections officials, saying the state did a shabby job of monitoring and enforcing standards in private prisons. The state’s private prison monitoring unit has been plagued by job vacancies and only spends a fraction of the time it should at the prisons evaluating conditions and addressing problems, the audit found. “I think, from our audit perspective, we identified substantial compliance issues,” said Cindi Stetson, the deputy state auditor who managed the project. For instance, the audit found that private prison monitors filed reports that were copies of old documents that merely had a new date. Top level managers reportedly didn’t review private prison reports anyway. Additionally, not all the people assigned to monitor private prisons were doing that. Fifteen employees were allocated to that unit, but four were assigned to other duties and the key unit manager job was left vacant for three years. Corrections officials said they have not done a good job regulating private prisons but insisted they are taking steps to fix the problem. “We’ve taken the recommendations very seriously,” said Nolin Renfrow, director of prisons. “We feel confident we are headed in the right direction.” Renfrow said staffing has been beefed up in the office and that computers will track compliance reports. Additionally, he said top executives will pay closer attention to private prisons. As to the specific problems, DOC officials say they are tightening the contracts with private prison providers to force them to take care of the issues. Many of those new contracts take effect July 1. New stipulations will require private prisons have a licensed medical clinic. That’s a response to one of the main findings in the audit. “None of the clinics in Colorado’s five private prisons are licensed,” said auditor John Conley. “Since the clinics are not licensed, they are not monitoring them and are not aware of any deaths or problems at private prisons.” Nine deaths at private prisons last year were not reported to the Colorado Department of Health, as they should have been, the auditors said. So there was no investigation. The auditors said seven of the deaths were from natural causes, but two were linked to medical complications after prison operators changed prescription drugs. No other details were provided. The findings outraged lawmakers. “Obviously, they have been having a free-for-all in practicing medicine the way they wish for a long time,” said Sen. Deanna Hanna, D-Lakewood. “We are paying a lot of money to these private prisons for health care, and we need to get a better product than we are getting.” The audit found problems in many private prison practices, including their hiring standards, the nutritional value of their food and their staffing levels. The audit didn’t specify which private prisons were having the most problems. But four of the five prisons in Colorado are owned and run by the Tennessee-based Correction Corporation of America. Company officials said they are reviewing the audit and promised more efficiency and accountability. “We certainly would embrace that goal and have been working and will continue to work with our customer, the Department of Corrections, to enhance both of those,” said Steven Owen, a spokesman for the firm. A 500-bed, privately run prison under construction on East Las Vegas Street near the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center is scheduled to open in August. The medium security facility will be operated by New Jersey-based Community Education Centers. The prison, called the Cheyenne Mountain Pre-release Center, will house parole violators and inmates making the transition into society or to community corrections after serving state prison sentences. Its purpose is to reduce recidivism by giving inmates about 180 days of vocational training, drug and alcohol counseling, adult education classes and other last-minute lessons they can apply outside prison. Joe Ortiz, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, said part of his agency’s problem is funding. “When we talk about medical, we talk about food, we talk about programs . . . that always comes with a price tag,” he said. “That’s not to say the department hasn’t been remiss in some areas, but it is a difficult mission, and it is difficult to provide all of these services given the current budget conditions.” The department’s budget was cut during the recession but has seen much of that funding restored in the past two years. The approved budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, which starts July 1, is $589.2 million, a 6 percent increase. Lawmakers say they will take a hard look at the issues surrounding private prisons. “It’s clear that the for-profit prison industry has no desire to follow their contracts, and it is costing taxpayers money every day,” said Rep. Liane “Buffie” McFadyen, D-Pueblo West. KEY FINDINGS - None of the clinics at private prisons are licensed with the state. At least two inmates who were treated in those clinics died last year when their prescriptions were changed. Those deaths were not reported to state officials. - Inmates with serious mental illnesses were not seen by mental health staff in a timely manner. - Private prisons are serving meals that do not meet the state’s dietary standards. - The DOC doesn’t review staffing patterns at private prisons as part of their contracts. - Some private prison employees have questionable backgrounds, including some who have been convicted of violent crimes. In some instances, private prison employees begin working before a background check is completed. - Private prisons are not properly deducting court-ordered inmate restitution and child support. - The Department of Corrections office charged with monitoring private prisons was understaffed and didn’t get the job done. - Dangerous inmates were sent to some private prisons even though state law stipulates private prisons should only house medium security prisoners and lower.

June 14, 2005 Denver Post
Privately owned prisons in Colorado fall far short of minimum safety and medical standards, possibly resulting in the deaths of two inmates and the early release of a sex offender, according to an audit released Monday. Part of the problem, the report from the state auditor's office said, is lax state oversight of the private prisons, which collected $53 million to house 2,800 inmates in 2004. The audit's key findings: Nine inmates died between January 2001 and September 2004. Two of those deaths may have been caused by physicians who changed medications without physically examining the inmates. A sexual offender was released from prison three months early because officials awarded him credits for treatment sessions he didn't attend.  None of the five private prisons in Colorado have licensed medical clinics. Four private-prison employees had previous convictions for motor-vehicle theft, assault, criminal mischief and harassment. Staffing levels are lower at private prisons than at state institutions, with the worst ratio at the Crowley County prison, where inmates rioted last year. Steve Owen, spokesman for Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, which operates four of the five private prisons in Colorado, declined to comment on the audit, saying he had not yet read it. But he said his company meets the standards set by a national trade association for private prisons. "We are doing our part to help the state be good stewards of the taxpayers' dollar," said Owen.  Last year, the prison company settled a lawsuit brought by Tamara Schlitters, the mother of Jeffrey Buller, a 26-year-old inmate who died 27 hours before he was to be released from the company's prison in Kit Carson County in 2001. Buller suffered from a hereditary condition that caused his breathing passages to swell. Despite his pleas, the company wouldn't spend $35 on the medicine he needed during his final 10 days in the prison, according to the lawsuit. Instead, he was switched to another drug. James Gillies, the lawyer for Schlitters, said the case was "heartbreaking" because Schlitters was planning a welcome-home party for her only son. Instead, the guests attended a funeral. Buller was in prison for a sexual encounter with an underage teenage girl. The Department of Corrections acknowledged the shortcomings and promised to fix them. Joe Ortiz, executive director of the department, said tight state budgets have contributed to some of the problems. "It is difficult to provide all of these services, given the current budget condition the state is in," Ortiz said. "Sometimes you want platinum treatment when you're paying for copper fare." The audit tied many of the problems to lax oversight by the Department of Corrections.   Since 2002, department officials knew they were failing to enforce a contract requirement that private prisons operate licensed medical clinics. None of the five private prisons in Colorado are licensed by the state Department of Public Health and Environment, the audit said. Lawmakers on the Legislative Audit Committee chided state corrections officials for failing to enforce the rules in the contracts. "Two departments have dropped the ball," said Rep. Fran Coleman, D-Denver. "I don't understand why this has been let go so long." Ortiz said that hiring medical professionals in rural communities is difficult - and even more complicated for prison operators. Still, he acknowledged the problem. "We were lax in our supervision of medical staff," he said. Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.