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| MS DOC Sticks with Private Prisons |
| By jacksonfreepress.com - R.L. Nave |
| Published: 06/14/2012 |
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Mississippi - Sometime between the 8:45 p.m. and the 9:15 p.m. staff shift change on July 30, 2010, Tracy Alan Province, John Charles McCluskey and Daniel Kelly Renwick escaped from Arizona State Prison-Kingman. Just after 10 p.m., perimeter-patrol officers discovered a 30-by-22-inch hole in the fence. Two hours after the prison determined the inmates had escaped, Arizona Department of Corrections assumed command and the U.S. Marshals Service launched a manhunt. Eventually, marshals caught up with all three men—but not before McCluskey, Province and a female accomplice, Casslyn Welch carjacked and a killed a couple in New Mexico. On Aug. 12, ADC presented Management and Training Corporation, the Centreville, Utah-based firm that manages the prison, with a draft security-assessment report stating that human error on the part of MTC staff contributed to the escape. MTC took full responsibility for the incident. Frank Smith, a consultant with Private Corrections Working Group which runs a private-prison monitoring website, points to the Kingman escape as just one example in MTC's long track record of shoddy security and staff training. "These guys are amateurs," Smith said of MTC. This summer, MTC will take over running three Mississippi Department of Corrections facilities from The GEO Group, headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla. Under the contract, announced last week, MTC will manage East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs and the troubled Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Leake County. The 10-year deal is worth $430 million, the Salt Lake Tribune reported June 7. MTC is well aware that incidents like the Kingman escape fuels the perception that contract prisons are run poorly compared to government facilities. "We respond (to critics) by saying these are correctional facilities and incidents do happen in both public and private facilities. It's the nature of the corrections industry," said MTC spokesman Issa Arnita. Arnita said MTC's staff is well trained; they undergo the same corrections training as public corrections personnel. However, when events do occur, he said the company "takes responsibility, makes corrections and moves forward." Further, Arnita argues that private prison critic like Smith use isolated events to make companies look bad, and that no government agency has tracked incidents at privately run prison versus public ones. "Anybody can set up a blog and start saying what they want, picking and choosing certain numbers," Arnita said. Founded in 1981 as an administrator of the federal Job Corps program, MTC expanded into the corrections industry 25 years ago as a way to expand its successful educational programming to prisons (one of the company's mantras is "rehabilitation through education"), Arnita said. With the Mississippi additions, MTC runs 22 state and federal prisons in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and, now, Mississippi. It is also the nation's largest contractor with the federal Labor Department's Job Corps program, operating 25 Job Corps sites across 16 states. MTC is the nation's third largest for-profit prison company and is responsible for 25,760 inmates. Unlike its larger, publicly held competitors, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO, MTC's finances are not open to public scrutiny. However, just like CCA and GEO, MTC has a political action committee that contributes to politicians' election coffers, although no federal elected officials in Mississippi have received MTC donations. Read More. |
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