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Bexar County Jail, Bexar County, Texas
March
12, 2008 Express News
A small plane crash Monday night killed a Louisiana businessman whose
private prison services company, Premier Management Enterprises, was at the
center of a public corruption investigation that last year forced the
resignation of Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez. Patrick LeBlanc, 53, died
with the pilot while trying to land in rough weather in Lafayette, La.,
according to a family friend and local press reports. LeBlanc and his
brother, Michael LeBlanc, co-owned Premier and LCS Corrections Services,
which build or service prisons in several states, including in three South
Texas counties. The brothers' company remains the subject of an ongoing FBI
investigation into "contracting irregularities," a bureau
official confirmed. "He had great integrity and honor, unlike what
some of you guys tried to do to him," said Ron Gomez, a close friend
and partner in a small weekly newspaper that published its first edition
last week. Gomez said LeBlanc went into the news business as a response to
negative publicity about his company's role in a Bexar County corruption
probe that caused him to lose a race last fall for state legislative
office. Premier Management Enterprises, which has operated jail
commissaries in Texas, was at the center of a Bexar County district
attorney's investigation involving a foreign vacation gift to Lopez and
cash payments to the sheriff's top aide, John Reynolds, before, during and
after the company was given commissary contracts. The LeBlanc brothers have
repeatedly denied all wrongdoing and have not been indicted or formally
accused of any crime related to the Bexar County jail commissary contract.
But Lopez resigned and pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges for
accepting a Costa Rica golf vacation from the LeBlancs,
while Reynolds last month was sentenced to 10 years for demanding thousands
of dollars in "consulting fees" and charitable donations from
Premier. The FBI took over from state authorities, and over the last
several months, agents have interviewed Lopez and Reynolds as part of their
respective plea deals. FBI Special Agent Erik Vasys
said the bureau was well aware of LeBlanc's death but declined to discuss
whether the tragedy might affect the investigation.
December 4, 2007 San
Antonio Express-News
A Bexar County judge has agreed to dismiss a libel lawsuit brought against
the San Antonio Express-News by Premier Management Enterprises, a
Louisiana-based company that formerly ran Bexar County Jail's commissaries.
In the lawsuit, filed in February 2006 against Hearst Newspaper
Partnership, the San Antonio Express-News and reporter Elizabeth Allen,
Premier's principals, Patrick and Michael LeBlanc and Ian Williamson,
claimed the newspaper published two stories and one editorial containing
“false and misleading statements” accusing them of conduct that was
“unethical, incompetent and, in some cases, illegal.” On Thursday, Judge
David Berchelmann of the 37th District Court
signed an order after both parties agreed to dismiss the suit with
prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again. As part of the agreement,
the newspaper acknowledged three errors that ran in Allen's stories and in
a subsequent editorial in December 2005: LCS Correction Services is not
Premier's parent company. Michael LeBlanc had no past legal problems at the
time the articles were printed. Charges against Patrick LeBlanc, Michael
LeBlanc's brother, in connection with a charitable bingo operation on an
American Indian reservation were dismissed. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals later affirmed the dismissal. Since Allen's stories, Premier has
phased out its commissary operations at the jail. Former longtime Sheriff
Ralph Lopez resigned in August as part of an agreement with prosecutors
regarding his dealings with Premier. It included that Lopez plead no
contest to three misdemeanor charges, and pay a $10,000 fine, resulting
from an all-expenses-paid golfing and fishing trip to Costa Rica that
Premier gave him in August 2005. Lopez's plea deal also shielded his wife,
Nancy, from any potential state charges. Lopez's longtime campaign manager
and friend, John Reynolds, also pleaded guilty to one felony count of theft
related to his dealings with the company. Reynolds was Lopez's appointee to
the Benevolent Fund board, which awarded and oversaw the commissary
contract. According to court documents, Reynolds told Premier to contribute
to Lopez's campaign and give charitable donations through Reynolds in
exchange for operating the commissary. Premier attorneys have insisted that
there was no wrongdoing in the way the company landed the contract.
Reynolds is awaiting sentencing.
Brooks County
Detention Center, Falfurrias, Texas
October
24, 2012 Caller Times
FALFURRIAS — A Corpus Christi jury returned a verdict Wednesday siding with
the widow of a man who died in January 2009 at the Brooks County Detention
Center in Falfurrias. The federal jury decided unanimously to award $2.25
million to the widow of 42-year-old Mario Garcia, who died of a seizure
while on suicide watch at the center. Garcia's family contends he was
denied prescribed medications while at the facility, which led to his death
12 days after being brought there. His condition began to quickly
deteriorate after being jailed, though he was never sent to a physician or
a hospital, according to the family's counsel. Garcia left behind a wife
and a 10-year-old son. Kathy Snapka, lead counsel
for the Garcia family, called the death preventable and said facility staff
disregarded his condition. Snapka said the family
hopes the verdict in Garcia v. Niderhauser will
send a message to other facilities that they will be held accountable for
neglect. "Monica Garcia's objective was to speak for Mario to ensure
that no other person is denied the right to receive medical
attention," Snapka said. Attorneys for LCS
Corrections, which owns Brooks County Detention Center, were not
immediately available for comment Wednesday. Both sides await the ruling of
U.S. District Judge Randy Crane, who has as much as 30 days to make a
judgment.
July 8, 2011 KZTV 10
On New Year's Eve 2008 Mario Garcia pled guilty to 2 charges of submitting
fraudulent bids to the government to win contracts at the Corpus Christi
Army Depot. U-S District Judge Janice Graham Jack ordered Garcia be taken into custody until sentencing. Garcia was
brought to the Brooks County Detention Center and placed on suicide watch.
He was there when he died January 12th, 2009. His family is suing the jail
and some of it's
officials. Kathy Snapka represents Garcia's
family. "It is our allegation that the prison disregarded his very,
very serious medical condition and that's why days after he was sent to
Brooks County he died," she said. Snapka
says the case has flipped between district and federal courts, but now a
February trial date has been set in Mc Allen where U.S. District Judge
Randy Crane sits. "He's aware that the matter's been on file for a
significant length of time. And I think that he wants the case moved
along," Snapka told Action Ten News.
According to the lawsuit, Garcia had a known seizure disorder and was on
medication for it. And that he suffered from seizures and headaches while
in jail. It also says jail officials 'breached their duty of care to Garcia
by failing to care for his medical needs. The Brooks County Death Certificate
lists Garcia's cause of death as seizure disorder. The Nueces County
medical examiner's autopsy says the same thing. The defendants in the case
are LCS Correction Services, which owns the jail, former jail warden Miguel
Niderhauser, and Dr. Michael Pendleton, former
head of the jail's medical staff. On Janaury 23rd
2009, just days after Garcia's death, we reported that LCS President Dick Harbison told us Niderhauser
resigned and Pendleton's contract was terminated. Attorneys for all
defendants told us by phone today that they couldn't comment on a pending
case, but that their clients plan to vigorously defend themselves.
July 23, 2009 Caller
Times
The family of a man who died in a privately run prison in Brooks County
has filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging he was denied medical
treatment. Mario Alberto Garcia, 42, was awaiting sentencing at LCS-Brooks
County on charges of bid-rigging at the Corpus Christi Army Depot when he
was found dead in January. Garcia suffered from a seizure disorder and was
prescribed medication to treat it. The lawsuit claims he was denied access
to medication, despite warnings from family members about his condition. An
autopsy by the Nueces County medical examiner found that Garcia died of the
seizure disorder. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. It names prison
owner LCS Correction Services, the prison’s former warden and former doctor
as defendants. The prison typically houses inmates facing immigration
charges. Representatives of the doctor and prison did not return calls for
comment. Garcia had pleaded guilty to submitting inflated bids for office
equipment. Along with those bids, he submitted lower bids from his own
company. In most situations, defendants facing white-collar crimes remain
free while awaiting sentencing. But a federal judge, concerned over
Garcia’s mental status, ordered him to the Brooks County facility on
suicide watch. Garcia could have been sentenced to as long as 10 years in
prison, but was likely to receive only a few months under federal sentencing
guidelines.
January 14, 2009 Caller
Times
An inmate awaiting sentencing on charges of rigging bids on federal
contracts was found dead Monday at the Brooks County Detention Center in
Falfurrias, and Texas Rangers are investigating how the death occurred. The
circumstances are unclear. The Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office
performed an autopsy Tuesday but has not released a cause of death. The
inmate, Mario Alberto Garcia, 42, had been placed on suicide watch at a
court appearance. Garcia pleaded guilty Dec. 31 to submitting fictitious,
inflated bids to supply office equipment at the Corpus Christi Army Depot.
He submitted the fake bids along with his company's lower bid to win
contracts. Under normal circumstances, a white-collar defendant like Garcia
would remain free while awaiting sentencing, but U.S. District Judge Janice
Graham Jack ordered him into custody over concerns that Garcia would take
his life, said Garcia's criminal defense attorney, Keith Gould. A physician
at the facility removed Garcia from suicide watch Jan. 8. He died Monday,
said Al Lujan, deputy U.S. marshal. As part of his agreement to plead
guilty, a third count of lying to U.S. Army investigators was dismissed.
Prosecutors say Garcia also faxed phony bids in July 2007. He was not
prosecuted for those incidents. Juan Reyna, an attorney representing
Garcia's family, said Garcia had a medical condition. Reyna, who declined
to identify the condition, said Garcia's family knew of it and warned jail
officials about it. "The family had some major concerns with respect
to medical treatment Mr. Garcia was receiving," Reyna said. "The
family made it very clear regarding medical treatment." Reyna said he
has requested the facility preserve several categories of records relating
to Garcia. The private facility is run by LCS Corrections Services of
Lafayette, La., and is typically used to house illegal immigrants. Gary
Copes, general manager for LCS, said a Texas Ranger visited the facility
Wednesday as part of the investigation. Copes declined further discussion.
September 15,
2004 Caller-Times
The manhunt for an escaped prisoner continued Tuesday as officers combed
the area surrounding the Brooks County Detention Center with dogs, on
horseback and by helicopter, Sheriff Balde Lozano
said. On
Monday, Elias Ramirez Martinez, 20, of Veracruz, Mexico, escaped from the
privately owned holding center. Inmates were being moved from an eating
area just before 7 p.m. when Martinez made his getaway, jumping a 10-foot
electric fence, Lozano said. It was the facility's first breakout since
September 2002, when two inmates escaped through the detention center's
ceiling. Measures have been taken since then to prevent similar escapes.
Ceilings were enclosed with heavy mesh and the electrical fence was installed,
Lozano said. It was not known if the fence was activated when Martinez
jumped it.
September 29,
2002 Caller-Times
Falfurrias residents reacted with fear and worry after learning that two
inmates escaped form the privately owned Brooks County
Detention Center early Saturday. The two men, Juan Guerra and Steven
Torres, were being held at the facility prior to their trials. Guerra, a
Mexican national, had been charged with murder and Torres was arrested for
a parole violation- an alleged robbery. The two men were missing
during an inmate headcount at 7 a.m. after they had been present for a
similar count at 3 a.m., said Patrick LeBlanc, president of the
Louisiana-based LCS Corrections Services Inc., the company that oversees
the operations of the detention facility. "I don't think it was whim ," he said. "I think they studied
and analyzed and searched for the scene and unfortunately they found
it." The two men kicked through a security ceiling that was
welded shut, LeBlanc said. Then, they climbed into the ceiling and
got into a mechanical chase that the facility's pipes run through- similar
to the escape in the movie "Shawshank
Redemption," he said. The chase leads to a door locked form the
outside that opens on the detention center grounds, he said. There,
the two men, wearing detention-center issued orange uniforms with white
T-shirts, scaled two double fences, each topped with three lines of razor
wire. Investigators found a blood trail, LeBlanc said. As the
search gout under way, residents learned of the news by word of
mouth. About half a dozen people called KPSO-Radio 106.3 news
director Steve Cantu to express their concerns. "A lot of people
are worried," he said. "These are not some of the nicest
people out there." LeBlanc said the detention center does not
have a procedure to alert area residents of an escape, instead turning over
the information to local law enforcement to get the word out.
Coastal
Bend Detention Center, Robstown, Texas
Mar 6, 2014 kiiitv.com
An inmate death at a private
jail facility near Robstown is raising questions. The inmate was a recent
graduate of the Navy flight school at Naval Air Station-Corpus Christi. The
death has been ruled a suicide, but the investigation is now being
questioned by the agency that oversees the LCS facility. That law
enforcement agency is the Nueces County Sheriff's Office, whose detectives
were turned away at LCS by U.S. Marshals. They were told Texas Rangers
would be conducting the investigation, and that, says Sheriff Jim Kaelin, is not proper protocol. "The private
prison LCS is under our charge, and we're responsible for the things that
go on out there," Kaelin said. "Meaning
that the U.S. Marshals service mandate that we make sure that we comply
with rules, regulations and law." It was Saturday when Sheriff Kaelin says he got a call from the LCS warden that an
inmate had attempted suicide by hanging himself with a bed sheet, and that the inmate was being transported to Christus Spohn Memorial
Hospital. That inmate has been identified as 26-year old Trevor Nash, a
recent graduate of the Navy's flight school at NAS-Corpus Christi.
According to sources, Nash was preparing to be transferred to helicopter
training school when he was arrested on charges of piracy. 3News contacted
the U.S. Marshals out of Houston in hopes of obtaining more information
regarding the charges, and why Texas Rangers and not the Nueces County
Sheriff's Office are heading up the investigation. We have yet to get a
response. In the meantime, Sheriff Kaelin says he
too is attempting to get some answers.
November 4, 2011 Record
Star
Texas Commission on Jail Standards officials recently said the organization
is powerless to oversee any changes at the Coastal Bend Detention Center in
Robstown, after center officials decided to move out all of their county
prisoners. Adan Munoz Jr., Executive Director of
the TCJS said he was notified last week that LCS Corrections Services Inc.,
owners of the CBDC, asked for the detention center to be pulled off the
state's inspection rolls, as they would no longer house county inmates.
July 12, 2011 Record
Star
A Robstown detention center was recently found to be in non-compliance with
state guidelines following an inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards. Coastal Bend Detention Center, owned and operated by LCS
Corrections Services Inc., was visited May 20 by representatives with the
TCJS, during which an inspection was conducted. The results were posted on
the agency's Web site last month.
May 3, 2010 Caller-Times
State jail inspectors ruled that a Robstown private detention facility
doesn't meet state standards because it failed to report an inmate's death
and its warden and deputy warden lack jailers' licenses. The Coastal Bend
Detention Center was cited Monday for failing to report the death of a
prisoner, who died April 18, according to commission Director Adan Muñoz. Michael Higgins,
a former state trooper found guilty of stealing money from Hispanic
drivers, also died of an apparent heart attack April 29, while in the
facility. Officials with the prison were not immediately available for
comment. Discussions with the deputy warden and the chief of security of
the facility revealed that neither official knew of the requirement to
notify the state agency of the deaths in custody, Muñoz
said. Jail commission Assistant Director Shannon Herklotz
told the men that their lack of reporting was a non-compliance issue and
would be handled accordingly in a follow-up notice of non-compliance for
failing to report the April 18 death. Herklotz
determined that neither of the top two prison managers had proper state
licenses, a violation of state standards. "Both the lack of the jailer
licenses by the warden and deputy warden, the lack of properly or entirely
filling out the inmate screening form, and failing to report the April 18,
2010, death in custody within 24 hours as required will immediately result
in a notice of non-compliance with minimum jail standards for the Coastal
Bend Detention Center," Muñoz said. The
facility is out of compliance for the second time in a year.
February 1, 2010 Caller-Times
A private detention facility in Robstown has passed two surprise state
inspections since the accidental release of a convicted sex offender put
its compliance status at risk. The Coastal Bend Detention Center mistakenly
released Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from
Matamoros, Mexico, instead of Mario Estrada Antonio in November. Estrada
Antonio was supposed to be turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement for deportation. Estrada Martinez, who was being held for
illegally re-entering the U.S. and set for a hearing before U.S. District
Judge Janis Graham Jack, was deported instead. The accidental release
wasn’t a violation of state standards. But the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards deemed the facility, operated by Lafayette, La.-based LCS
Corrections, at risk of falling out of state compliance and promised a
series of surprise inspections for 90 days, said Adan
Muñoz, the jail commission’s executive director.
State inspector George Johnson conducted the first surprise visit on the
evening of Jan. 6, according to documents obtained by the Caller-Times
through a public information request. The inspection did not reveal any
non-compliance issues. But Johnson noted that of 118 officers, 85 were
working with temporary state jailer licenses. All must complete training
and pass a state-mandated jailer certification course within their first
year of employment.
December 29, 2009 WEAU
There will soon be a new jail boss in town and he comes with a couple
championship belts. Art Crews is the soon to be jail captain in Chippewa
County, formally known as the Blonde Bomber. As the Blonde Bomber, he took
on the likes of Ric Flair, Jesse “the Body”
Ventura, Andre the Giant and, yes, even Hulk Hogan back in the 1980's. Now,
his biggest fear is Wisconsin’s cold weather. "You're to be up here on
Saturday?" Chippewa County Sheriff Jim Kowalczyk
asks his new jail captain on the phone. Kowalczyk
is looking forward to welcoming Crews up from Texas; he’s a man who comes
with a couple championship belts. "When I was in wrestling, I was in
corrections and I didn't know it,” Crews tells us with a laugh over the
phone. “In other words, you're dealing with people every single day and
wrestling has a lot of crowd psychology." Crews was
in wrestling for a decade all through the 80’s. He's been working at jails
and prisons ever since. Most recently as warden at Coastal Bend Detention
Center, a private prison in Texas. Crews said he resigned in August. Two
weeks later local newspaper reports show the prison failed an inspection.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards told the Corpus Christi Caller Times
it "borders really close to complete incompetence." Crews said he
knew it was bad when he left. He says that's why he left. "I voiced my
concerns to the company that there were going to be issues not meeting
standards and compliances. They did not comply and I had no choice but to
resign." "He indicated they were undermanned, understaffed; he
didn't have the budget he needed that he thought he could run the facility
to the best of his ability."
December 18, 2009 Caller-Times
A private detention facility in Robstown faces frequent, unannounced
state inspections for 90 days after its inadvertent release of a convicted
sex offender. The Coastal Bend Detention Center did not violate state
standards when Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from
Matamoros, Mexico, mistakenly was released, but it is at risk of falling out
of state compliance after corrections officers did not follow release
procedures, according to a letter from the Texas Commission on Jail
Standards obtained by the Caller-Times through an open records request. In
November, federal authorities asked the prison run by Lafayette, La.-based
LCS Corrections to release Mario Estrada Antonio to U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement for deportation. Instead Estrada Martinez, who was
awaiting sentencing for illegal re-entry to the U.S., was released and
deported. He was gone for three weeks before LCS corrections staff figured
out they released the wrong prisoner. In Mexico, where both prisoners are
from, the middle name serves as last name, and the last name is the
person’s maternal surname. “Certainly an improperly released inmate is a
liability to all parties involved,” Adan Muñoz, the jail commission’s executive director, wrote
in the letter. Prison Warden Elberto “Bert” Bravo
said an investigation is ongoing and focused on four employees. “We are
trying to narrow it down to where it happened,” Bravo said. “It was human
error. The procedures we had in place, they failed to follow the
procedures.” No other county jail or private correctional facility holding
county or out-of-state inmates is at risk, commission officials said. Being
at risk means any member of the jail commission staff may make frequent,
unannounced visits to the facility during the next 90 days. If no
violations or noncompliance issues are noted, the facility will be removed
from the at-risk list. “No one from point A to point Z ever verified his
identity during several stages of release. By more than one detention
officer, all the way to ICE, his identity was never confirmed,” Muñoz said Friday. Estrada Martinez had a prior
conviction for a sexual offense, according to U.S. marshals. He was
convicted in Iowa for sexual abuse and sentenced to 10 years in December
1999, according to court filings. He was paroled in 2002. U.S. District
Judge Janis Graham Jack issued a warrant for Estrada Martinez’s arrest when
the mishap was made public. He has not been rearrested.
December 11, 2009 Corpus
Christi Caller-Times
A convicted sex offender has been missing from a Robstown lockup since
Nov. 19, unknown to the prison’s officials until Thursday. Officials at the
Coastal Bend Detention Center discovered that they inadvertently released
Mario Estrada Martinez, 31, an undocumented immigrant from Matamoros,
Mexico, who most recently was arrested for illegal re-entry. He was being
held at the Robstown facility, owned by Lafayette, La.-based LCS
Corrections, awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to illegal re-entry
to the U.S., a felony, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said Friday
afternoon. Federal authorities asked the prison in November to release Estrada
Martinez to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
Coastal Bend Detention Center handed over Estrada Martinez. Federal
authorities actually were looking to deport Mario Estrada Antonio,
according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. In Mexico, where both
men are from, the middle name serves as last name, and the last name is the
person’s maternal surname. “We really want to leave the whole mix-up,
specifically how it happened, to Coastal Bend,” U.S. Marshals spokesman
Carlos Alvarado said. “(I am talking about this) just so the community
knows there is not a sex offender running our streets. He was deported and
sent back. ICE deported him.” Estrada Martinez had a prior conviction for a
sexual offense, Alvarado said. He was convicted in Iowa for sexual abuse
and sentenced to 10 years in December 1999, according to court filings. He
was paroled in 2002. LCS Warden Elberto “Bert”
Bravo did not return calls. LCS Vice President of Operations Dick Harbison would not comment and referred comment back to
U.S. Marshals. The Houston-based Immigration and Customs
Enforcement-Detention and Removal division deported Estrada Martinez early
this week, said Fred Schroeder, assistant special agent in charge for the
local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. ICE spokesman Greg Palmer
said late Friday he would research what happened with Estrada Martinez and
comment next week. It doesn’t appear that Estrada Martinez escaped on
purpose, said Adan Muñoz,
the jail commission’s executive director, after reviewing LCS’s preliminary
escape report. He was released. “What transpired between the wrongly
released inmate and the releasing officer is something that LCS will have
to investigate,” Muñoz said. “There is no overt
action shown by the mistakenly released inmate to indicate he made any
statements to the releasing officer that he was attempting to disguise who
he was while being released. “And why the receiving transport service did
not verify the inmate’s identity is also something that needs to be ascertained
and investigated,” Muñoz said. LCS contacted the
jail commission within 24 hours of the discovery, which is required by law.
The company must submit a written report detailing why and how the escape
happened, Muñoz said. The release counts as an
escape and could pose problems for the prison, Muñoz
said. In mid-September, Coastal Bend Detention Center was cited by the jail
standards commission for 17 compliance issues, including failure to
classify inmates or to check for contraband, improper staff training,
jailers without proper state licensing and no tuberculosis screening plan.
September 21, 2009 Corpus Christi Caller-Times
State jail inspectors have warned the owner of a private Robstown facility
to rectify 17 compliance issues immediately or face possible closure. The
Coastal Bend Detention Center was cited Monday for failing to classify
inmates, check for contraband, improper staff training, jailers without
proper state licensing and no tuberculosis screening plan, among other
issues. If the facility, owned by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections,
cannot correct its problems, especially the jailers’ licensing, then the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards could temporarily close it, commission
Director Adan Muñoz
said. “I have to bring any remedial order before the (jail) commission, but
this borders really close to complete incompetence,” he said. The jail
opened in September 2008. Its first inmates arrived in March. Jail warden
Art Crews was replaced in August by Elberto
“Bert” Bravo, who also is warden at LCS’ detention facility in Hidalgo
County, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president of
operations. The management shake-up should help fix the jail’s problems, he
said. “My people know exactly what needs to be done,” Bravo said. “I know
the report looks bad. They say it is the worst they have ever seen. But
honestly, we are going to be OK. It’s just going to take me a little bit of
time to do it.” The jail will be in compliance by late October, he said.
Within the past two weeks, Bravo hired two deputy wardens with more than 60
years of combined experience. He also laid off 26
jailers until they can get the correct state licensing. He fired another 10
for not doing what they were told, he said. The detention facility was
overstaffed and reassigned some of its 175 staff members to cover jailer
positions, Bravo said. The facility has a capacity for 1,056 inmates. When
it was inspected last week it held 475, according to state inspectors. Most
are undocumented immigrants housed in Robstown through a contract with
federal agencies. Another 41 are inmates from Duval, Jim Wells and Kleberg
counties, where jails are overcrowded, according to the jail standards
commission. Compliance Issues-- The Coastal Bend Detention Center in
Robstown had 17 compliance issues after state inspectors reviewed the
facility last week. -- Inmate toilet and shower areas have insufficient
privacy shields -- Jailers are not being trained properly for fire drills
-- Jailers are not being trained properly in the use of air packs -- No
documentation outlining generator testing or the transfer of the facility’s
electric load at least once a month -- Inmates were not classified
correctly -- Classification reviews were not conducted within 90 days of
initial inmate custody assessments -- Classification workers didn’t receive
the required four hours of training -- Internal classification audit logs
were not kept -- No tuberculosis screening plan had been approved by the
health department -- Twenty-four officers did not have a required jailer’s
license or temporary jailer’s license -- Hourly face-to-face prisoner
checks were not performed -- The facility did not meet the state mandated
1-to-48 jailer-to-inmate ratio -- Personnel did not conduct required
contraband searches -- Disciplinary hearings for minor inmate infractions
were conducted by a single person rather than a disciplinary board -- Jail
did not respond to inmates with grievances within 15 days or resolve issues
within 60 days as required -- Inmates did not receive one hour of supervised
physical education three days per week as required -- A fire panel doesn’t
show an inspection tag
March 7, 2009 Caller-Times
As federal prisoners began arriving at the privately owned LCS
detention facility in Robstown on Friday, a
company official said employees who were laid off in January have been
rehired. In response to the influx of prisoners into the 1,100-bed
facility, which has sat empty since it opened in September, the prison has
called back some 40 employees who were laid off in January, bringing the
current number of employees up to 75, said Dick Harbison,
LCS vice president of operations. “It’s full steam ahead right now,” he
said. And beginning Monday, the company plans to hire another 80 employees
with starting pay at $11 an hour. The news comes a week after Nueces County
Judge Loyd Neal and the U.S. Marshals agreed on a
temporary price tag for prisoner housing. LCS will get roughly $44 per
prisoner per day under the terms of an addendum to the contract already in
place for housing prisoners in Hidalgo County.
February 5, 2009 Record
Star
With necessary paperwork stalled in Washington D.C., the Coastal Bend
Detention Center has yet to receive its first inmate, and recently laid off or reassigned over half of its staff. The
detention center, a private facility owned by LCS Corrections Services,
Inc. and located just south of Robstown, held a grand opening ceremony in
November and was expected to receive its first inmates in early December.
Arthur Crews Sr., the warden of the Coastal Bend facility, said a final
contract that requires the signature of administrative personnel in the
Washington D.C. branch of the U.S. Marshal service has not been signed,
delaying the facility's opening. While that paperwork was filed months ago,
Crews said the change in administration in Washington D.C. has been largely
to blame for the hold up. "That's mainly due to the situation of the
timing that's going on, with the Democratic Party going in, the Republican
Party coming out, department heads not really knowing who's going to have
what job and who's going to be replaced," Crews said. The facility
initially hired 72 people in November, but that number fell to 60 by early
January, as individuals found work elsewhere or relocated. Without any
inmates, the facility is not bringing in revenue, which led the company to
make significant staffing changes two weeks ago. During that process, six
staff members were transferred to another LCS facility in the area, 12 were
hired by the Nueces County Sheriff's Department and 16 were laid off. Those
who were laid off primarily worked in the food service or customer service
departments, Crews said. Of the 26 staff members still on the payroll at
the Coastal Bend facility, most have seen their weekly hours reduced as a
cost-saving measure, Crews indicated. Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin said last week the detention center's loss was
the county's gain, as the 12 individuals hired by the county are already
certified through the state as corrections officers and will fill a significant
staffing need. "It just so happens that we had reached the point that
we had vacancies where we could hire all they wanted to send our way,"
Kaelin said. "It's going to be a win-win for
us and a win-win for LCS because it helps them reduce their payroll."
Although Crews could offer no timeline for when the final paperwork might
be completed, he said he has little doubt the facility will be fully
operational in the near future. "We don't know how long this
contract's going to take. It could be two weeks,
it could be two months or more. We just don't know," Crews said.
"My speculation, with 22 years in the correction business, is that
with us having 1,100 beds, it's not going to sit here empty." And
Crews said all the employees laid off or reassigned have guaranteed jobs
once the facility does start housing prisoners. "I let them leave
here, the ones we laid off, and keep their ID
badge and keep their uniforms," Crews said. "That's the bond that
I have with the employees, and they are going to come back."
January 24, 2009 Caller-Times
LCS Corrections Services laid off half of its Robstown detention center
employees Friday because federal authorities have yet to transfer in
prisoners, but the company plans to offer jobs to some elsewhere. LCS, a
private Lafayette, La.-based prison company, expected to have a full house
at its 1,100-bed facility shortly after the prison opened in mid-November,
but the center remains empty after a contract with the federal government
stalled, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president
of operations. Of the 35 correctional officers laid off, six will be
offered positions at the LCS detention facility in Brooks County, Harbison said. Short on correctional officers, Nueces
County Jail will offer jobs to 14 others, county officials said. Fifteen
temporarily will be left without jobs, Harbison
said. To start the intake of federal prisoners from agencies such as the
U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S.
Border Patrol, LCS needs Nueces County to sign an agreement with marshals
that will outline how much the federal government will pay for housing
their prisoners. Congress also must pass a 2009 budget, which should occur
when a continuing resolution allowing the federal government to operate
under its 2008 budget expires in early March. The prison company intends to
rehire the laid-off employees and hire additional staff once prisoners
start arriving, Harbison said. Nueces County
spent millions to clean up its jail's substandard conditions that led to
the June 2006 removal of federal prisoners. The federal inmates haven't
returned. County officials have been negotiating since January 2008 for a
higher fee to house them at the jail. The contract also will include fees
for housing federal prisoners at two LCS facilities. Because the federal
government doesn't deal with private detention contractors, LCS is
dependent on a "pass through" contract, where the county gets a
share of fees charged per prisoner for passing through overflow federal
prisoners to the company's private facilities in Hidalgo County and
Robstown. Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal said
Friday that the county, the U.S. Marshals Service and LCS are in agreement
on new rates for the jail and the LCS facilities. He wouldn't disclose the
negotiated rates. The proposed fees are awaiting review and approval from
the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, which oversees federal
detention programs. The county, which received a $45.15 daily rate per
prisoner prior to their removal from the county jail, was seeking a raise
to $61.49. County officials previously have said that negotiations were
stuck at about $53 a day per prisoner. "The marshals and I have agreed
on that rate. We have worked with LCS, and they agree it is very
favorable," Neal said. "We did this several months ago, and we
have been unable to get any kind of funding out of the federal government.
Until the new Congress and President (Barack) Obama reach an agreement (on
a budget) there is no money available for a new arrangement for federal prisoners."
The county receives $2 a day for each prisoner sent to LCS' Hidalgo County
facility, and LCS earns roughly $43. A similar pass through deal is in the
works for the Robstown facility once the county and the federal government
sign off on new rates. "The minute we hear anything at all we will be
contacting everybody to come back to work," Harbison
said.
January 23, 2009 KIII
TV
A new private prison near Robstown hasn't even opened up yet, but
already some staff members have been laid off. The transition of power in
Washington is said to be the main reason for the holdup. The Coastal Bend
Detention Center is ready to go, but with no prisoners and no revenue,
company officials were forced to do this for the time being. The new
private prison in Robstown is ready for business. More than 1100 beds are
made and waiting for federal prisoners, but the transition of power in the
presidency has caused problems for the U.S. Marshal's Office to sign the
contract and bring prisoners to the facility. "So we don't have
inmates at this time," said Art Crews, Prison Warden for the LCS
Coastal Bend Detention Center. "That's our revenue. Until we do, we
can't hire the people back." So the prison officials called a meeting
for its employees. They announced about 12 are being laid off, while
another 48 are seeing their hours reduced. "First time in my 22 years
in the correction field in a warden position having to tell them that and
that hurts," Crews said. The private prison did find jobs for about 15
guards at the Nueces and Kleberg County jail.
East Hidalgo
Detention Center, La Villa, Texas
March
3, 2012 The Monitor
The operator of Hidalgo County’s only private detention center brought in
additional medical staff this week after concerns from county and state
officials regarding inmate tuberculosis testing at the facility. The
Monitor learned of a meeting between several federal, state and local
agencies and LCS Corrections, which owns and operates the East Hidalgo
Detention Center in La Villa. Questions about the facility came after the
prison’s warden was suspended late last month. Health officials questioned
the prison doctor’s assertion that it was safe for possible carriers of
tuberculosis — including inmates who had tested positive in the past — to
be kept with the rest of the prison’s population, said Adan
Muñoz, executive director of the Texas Commission
on Jail Standards. “They were not agreeing with the opinion of the state
and the Hidalgo County Health Department that they were not being managed
correctly … as far as being segregated,” Muñoz
said. The meeting came after Hidalgo County Health Department officials learned a federal inmate at the facility recently who
tested positive for tuberculosis, was released to Border Patrol agents and
deported to Mexico without treatment, Sheriff Lupe Treviño
said. “He was deported without any precautions or advisories put out,” the
sheriff said. In another instance, county health officials learned of four
inmates at the prison who had tested positive for tuberculosis or were
possible carriers of the infection and were among other inmates, said
Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards, who attended the meeting last month. County
officials raised their concerns with LCS, but received little response from
the prison’s management. “I guess they were shunned for lack of a better
word,” Herklotz said. Tuberculosis, commonly
referred to TB, is an airborne bacterial infection that involves the lungs,
but can spread to other organs. It is spread via the air and can remain
dormant in a person for years. The state requires prisons to test new
inmates for tuberculosis within seven days of their booking at a
penitentiary with more than 100 beds. A March 2011 Centers for Disease
Control study shows Texas has one of the country’s highest rates for
tuberculosis, with four cases per 100,000 residents. But Hidalgo County has
an average rate twice as high as the state’s, Herklotz
said. Prisons, where scores of people are confined together for extended
periods, can be hotbeds for disease to spread, Muñoz
said. “Any time you have a magnitude of inmates … you’ve got the potential
for all sorts of diseases and so forth,” Muñoz
said. The Hidalgo County Jail tests all inmates upon their initial booking
into the facility and before they are placed among the general population, Treviño said. County inmates kept in La Villa are
separate from those brought in by federal agencies. “The reason we (test
inmates upon booking) is we do not want to take the chance of putting somebody
back there infected and causing an epidemic,” he said. But LCS was not
always testing inmates within the seven-day window, said Richard Harbison, the company’s executive vice president. “We
were falling behind on our time period for doing our TB tests,” he said.
March 1, 2012 The
Monitor
Details remain sketchy about a federal investigation into a La Villa prison
warden, but the facility has faced separate scrutiny in recent weeks. But
Hidalgo County’s only private detention facility faced allegations of unfit
conditions and a separate inquiry from federal investigators, only to have
its operators say they had “disproven everything.” East Hidalgo Detention
Center Warden Elberto E. Bravo has been on paid
administrative leave since he learned the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service
were conducting an investigation into fraud, bribery and theft allegations.
No criminal charges against Bravo have been filed. Sources who know Bravo
and are aware of the investigation say it’s unclear whether it involves his
job or political influence in the Delta region, given the private prison is
one of the area’s largest employers. While Bravo remains on leave, the
warden from the Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown will serve in the
interim, said Richard Harbison, executive vice
president at LCS Corrections, the Lafayette, La.-based company that owns
and operates the East Hidalgo Detention Center. “Any time there is (a
federal inquiry), we bring a warden in from another unit to make sure that
if there were mistakes they are not being repeated again,” Harbison said. The separate inquiry into the East
Hidalgo Detention Center launched in January, when Robin Whiteley, currently facing illegal re-entry charges in
federal court, told Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa of days
without hot water — or any running water — and said it sometimes took days
to be seen by a nurse. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño
said the investigation into Bravo was concerning, but he has been told the
federal investigation does not concern inmate safety.
July 21, 2010 The
Monitor
Prisoner housing may be free of charge for this city, but inmate labor
isn't freely available. That's the outcome of a dispute between an Edcouch
city alderman and the warden of the La Villa detention center over whether
Edcouch is entitled to sandbags made by the inmates. Elberto
Bravo, the warden of the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a privately run,
900-bed facility in La Villa, said he became incensed when Edcouch Mayor
Pro Tem Eddy Gonzalez threatened to write a letter to the warden's
supervisors because inmates didn't make sandbags for Edcouch residents when
Hurricane Alex approached. Gonzalez says no letter was ever written by the
city to Bravo's bosses — City Manager P.R. Avila said the same during
Tuesday's city meeting — but that he was upset that prison-made sandbags
weren't available this year like they were for 2008's Hurricane Dolly. The
apparent misunderstanding nearly led the warden to end his policy of
housing cash-strapped Edcouch's prisoners for free, which could have forced
the city to release people arrested on suspicion of driving while
intoxicated and other charges with a summons to show up at court. "I
don't need Edcouch, but Edcouch needs us," said Bravo, who manages the
La Villa facility and oversees two others detention centers in South Texas
that are operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc., the largest privately
held corrections company in the United States. "It's not costing these
cities in the Delta area one penny to house these individuals here."
Bravo, a long-time corrections officer, often puts inmates from the U.S.
Marshals Service — one agency that contracts to use the private prison and
allows him to use its detainees for labor — to work on special tasks. He
cooks turkeys and other food for special events in neighboring cities, and
he made 4,000 sandbags for Edcouch residents when Hurricane Dolly made
landfall two years ago, he said. But when Hurricane Alex turned this way
before the Fourth of July, he committed to make sandbags for Elsa and
Hidalgo County Precinct 1, which delivered sand by the truckload to the
facility off State Highway 107. When Gonzalez called him to demand that he
also make sandbags for Edcouch residents, Bravo refused to do so because of
his other commitments, he said. The warden said that's when Gonzalez
threatened to write a letter to the company's corporate office in
Lafayette, La. Gonzalez said he was upset sandbags weren't made for Edcouch
like they were for other entities, but he added that he never wrote a letter
to LCS to complain about the warden's approach. "I'm a little
discontent, but I have no say-so over what the prison does," said
Gonzalez, who hinted at prior political issues with the warden but declined
to say what they were. "I wish he would have (made sandbags) for
Edcouch and La Villa — small communities like ours." He also said he
thought the warden's warning that he would stop housing the city's
prisoners at the detention facility for free was based on business, not
sandbags. The city was set to approve a new contract with the East Hidalgo
Detention Center in which it would have to pay the going rate of $50 for
each day an inmate stays there. With an average of about six Edcouch
prisoners housed at the detention center each week, the bill would have
topped at least $2,000 each month. But Alderman Noe
Garcia said the warden decided to scrap the new contract after he and other
elected officials in the city called to make amends. The city will now be
required to cover any medical costs the detention center incurs, but the
warden said he won't charge them the daily rate. "People need to
understand that this is at no cost to the city," Bravo said.
"Even if the letter got to the corporate office, they're not paying
for our services. It's being provided free to them."
October 23, 2006 Houston
Chronicle
One of the five illegal immigrants who escaped from a privately run South
Texas jail along with a former police officer surrendered to federal agents
at a border checkpoint, officials said Monday. Joel Armando Mata-Castro, a
31-year-old Mexican citizen, walked up to the checkpoint Sunday night and
identified himself to Customs and Border Protection officers, who
identified him as a fugitive on federal escape charges, CBP spokesman Felix
Garza said. Mata-Castro was being held at the Cameron County Jail. He's the
only inmate captured after they escaped from the East Hidalgo Detention
Center in La Villa on Sept. 19 by overpowering a guard with a homemade
knife and gaining access to several exit doors. Authorities have said they
suspected the men had crossed the border into Mexico, about 20 miles away.
The five illegal immigrants are alleged members of the drug gang Raza Unida. Former McAllen
police officer Francisco Meza-Rojas, the supposed ringleader of the
escapees, was two weeks away from trial on drug-trafficking charges.
October 11, 2006 The
Monitor
The private prison from which six inmates escaped last month has repeatedly
violated state standards, according to inspection reports from the Texas
prison board. The most recent inspection, conducted eight days after the
escape, cites the prison for employing too few guards, adding an
unauthorized number of bunks and keeping unlicensed guards on the payroll.
Since LCS Correctional Services took over the Eastern Hidalgo Detention
Center in 2001, the prison has come out clean in only two of its annual
inspections. LCS spokesman Richard Harbison said
the violations were not intentional and that they had fixed all the
problems. "We are back in compliance," he said. The latest
infractions shed new light on the persistently troubled La Villa prison,
which has struggled with staffing and inmate security for years. LCS
President Patrick LeBlanc told The Monitor in previous interviews that the
La Villa prison staffed enough guards, even though a U.S. Marshals
spokesman said that was not the case. The state conducted an emergency
review after last month’s escape, when an 18-year-old guard said he was
overpowered by one of the inmates and stuffed into a closet. He has since
been fired. That inspection cited the prison for a third time for not
employing enough guards. The jail commission did not say in the documents
what the actual ratio of guards to prisoner was. It also found several
guards were working with expired licenses or no license at all. Harbison said the prison had a policy of not applying
for licenses until guards completed two weeks of work. The warden didn’t
want to waste the $100 application fee for a Texas jailer’s license until
he knew guards would stay, he said. That practice has since stopped, he
said. And since the emergency inspection the guards with expired licenses
have been fired, he said.
October 5, 2006 The
Monitor
Three people, including a guard, have been arrested in connection with
the prison break in which six inmates escaped more than two weeks ago.
Prison commissary officer Joseph Paul Llanos, Martin Angel Villarreal Jr.,
and Magdalena Peña, wife of one of the escapees,
were arrested last week in connection with the escape from the Eastern
Hidalgo Detention Center in La Villa on Sept 19.,
according to court documents obtained Wednesday. The six inmates, including
a former McAllen police officer accused of running a family drug smuggling
ring, are still on the loose and are most likely hiding in Mexico,
according to authorities. They are considered armed and dangerous. The five
other inmates who escaped with the former police officer are repeat
immigration offenders known as members of Raza Unida, a drug smuggling gang based out of Corpus
Christi. Information compiled from the three criminal complaints recently
filed in federal court paint two of the prisoners, Enrique Peña-Saenz, 38, and the former police officer,
Francisco Meza-Rojas, 41, as planning the escape from the inside. The U.S.
Attorney’s Office in Houston would not comment on the case because the
investigation is ongoing. But a spokesman for the company that runs the
prison, LCS Correctional Services, said that Llanos knew at least one of
the inmates before they were housed at La Villa. "One of our policies
is that if a guard recognizes someone they know in the past they need to
report it," said LCS spokesman Richard Harbison.
Llanos had not reported knowing any of the inmates, he said. But under
questioning after the escape, Llanos admitted to U.S. Marshals that two weeks before the escape he smuggled a cell
phone and charger to Meza-Rojas, according to a criminal complaint. Some time after, Llanos smuggled in a pair of pliers
that he handed to Meza-Rojas, according to the complaint. Those pliers were
later used to cut through at least three fences, including an electrified
one that someone had turned off, though the complaint didn’t specify who
may have done that. By the time the six inmates had reached the fences,
they had subdued 18-year-old prison guard Enrique Zepeda and stuffed him in
a closet. Once they made it outside, they split up into at least three
groups after crossing a levee east of the prison. Search dogs traced the
inmates’ scent to State Highway 107, which runs east
of the prison. Meza-Rojas used the cell phone that had been smuggled in to
him to arrange someone to pick him up at the highway, according to the
complaint. "Everything points that these guys are in Mexico,"
said Joe Magallan, the U.S. Marshal’s McAllen-based
spokesman. "These guys are too scared to be crossing back into the
United States." Marshals immediately began investigating Villarreal
after the prison break because three of his business cards had been found
in the eight-man pod where the six inmates where
held. One of the cards had Enrique Peña’s name
and home phone number on it. Villarreal, according to the complaint, had
visited Peña in prison two weeks before the
escape and listed himself as Peña’s compadre in the log book. Marshals believe he delivered
the cell phone, wire cutters and $200 to Llanos during two different visits
to the prison, the last one in August. Llanos was arrested Sept. 23, and
Villarreal on Sept. 25. They were each charged with aiding and abetting
Meza-Rojas’ escape. It wasn’t clear why they were not charged in connection
with the other prisoners’ escapes. As for Peña’s
wife, Magdalena, she told U.S. Marshals her husband told of her of the
escape plans some time in August. He told her
someone would give her $100 so she could pay the man who would smuggle in
the cell phone. She met an unknown older white man later that day in
Mission in front of Foy’s Supermarket. He handed her $100 and instructed
her to give the money to Villarreal. Magdalena Peña
was also arrested Sept. 25. She was also only charged with aiding and
abetting Meza-Rojas’ escape. The other inmates are Fernando Garza-Cruz, 20;
Joel Armando Mata-Castro, 31; Vicente Mendiola-Garcia,
34; and Saul Leonardo Salazar-Aguirre, 24. LCS Correctional Services has
made a series of personnel changes since the escape. Zepeda, the young
guard who the inmates overpowered, was fired for not following policy, Harbison said. The prison spokesman said Zepeda opened
a control room door, unwittingly letting the six inmates escape. He has not
been criminally charged, though, and the company believes he did not know
of the plot. Zepeda, who was employed shortly after his high school
graduation three months before, had undergone on-the-job training but had
not attended mandatory training at the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Academy.
New guards must take the course within a year of hire. Harbison
said there are at least 20 other employees, 13 percent of all La Villa
guards, at the prison who are like Zepeda and have yet to undergo the
academy training. The company has closed its investigation and is now
implementing a series of security policy changes, he said. The chief of
security at the prison was also demoted, he said.
September 23, 2006 KRIS
TV
A control box for the electrical fence surrounding a private jail was
tampered with before six federal inmates escaped this week and may have
kept the alarm from sounding, an official with the company that runs the
jail said Friday. Richard Harbison, co-owner of
LCS Corrections Services Inc., of Lafayette, La., said an internal
investigation revealed tampering with an outside control box. He also said
there were wiring problems with a control box inside the East Hidalgo
Detention Center. Meanwhile, two employees were placed on paid leave
pending the investigation into Tuesday night's escape of a former police
officer facing drug charges and five alleged members of a drug gang. All
six remained at large Friday.
September 23, 2006 The
Monitor
The 18-year-old guard overseeing the six inmates who escaped from the
local prison Tuesday had been on the job less than three months and had not
yet undergone a training course mandated for Texas jailers. Enrique Zepeda
was one of 27 guards on duty Tuesday night when the six inmates threatened
him with a foot-long homemade knife, tied him up and stuffed him in a
closet. They then escaped through several inside doors and layers of
outside fencing to make their way out of the prison complex. The escapees,
who included five prison gang members and a former McAllen police officer
accused of running a drug smuggling ring, were still on the loose Friday.
Zepeda — who began work at the Eastern Hidalgo County Detention Center this
summer just after his high school graduation — was slated to attend the
next round of training at the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Academy, said
Richard Harbison, a spokesman for the company
that runs the private prison. The Texas Commission on Jails gives guards a
year after their hiring date to complete the training, which at the Hidalgo
County Sheriff’s Academy lasts three weeks. As is standard for all guards,
Zepeda spent two weeks shadowing a more experienced officer when he first
began at the prison, Harbison said. Michael
Gilbert, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas-San
Antonio, called formal guard training key to prison security. “The training
is critical. The lack of training, it presents a clear liability for the
organization.” Publicly run prisons are exempt from lawsuits claiming
negligence for failure to adequately train prison staff, but private
facilities have no such protections, Gilbert said. Harbison,
the prison spokesman, said Zepeda’s injuries had not been serious enough to
warrant medical treatment. “When we have a guard that’s in that situation —
that’s the first thing we check,” he said of injuries sustained during
prison breaks. “But we have to move forward with an investigation.” LCS has
had ample experience with such situations. According to the Texas
Commission on Jails, the company’s Brooks County Detention Center has had
two escapes in four years — one in 2002 and another in 2005. The La Villa
facility had two escapes in 2000, while it was owned by a different
company. But in September 2005, when under LCS management, a prisoner
escaped from the parking lot of the McAllen Medical Center after he
convinced guard he needed medical attention at the hospital. Another inmate
tried the same trick on Wednesday, when he jumped out of an ambulance
headed for that same hospital. Hoping to avert any more security breaches,
LCS has begun work on a new fence to surround the entire complex and is
installing an outside camera system. Both will likely be complete within 10
days, Harbison said on Friday.
September 21, 2006 The
Monitor
Prison and law enforcement authorities were investigating Wednesday
whether a guard or other staffer at the La Villa detention facility may
have helped the six federal inmates who escaped late Tuesday night. The six
escapees were housed in a single cell in a minimum-to-medium security
building, even though five of them were known to be members of a Corpus
Christi-based prison gang known as La Raza Unida, according to local and federal officials. They
broke out Tuesday at about 9:45 p.m. by threatening a guard with a homemade
knife and then cutting a hole in the electric fence outside. They were
still on the loose as of Wednesday night and considered armed and
dangerous. Michael Hallett, chairman of the
criminal justice department at the University of North Florida in
Jacksonville, Fla. and an expert on privately-run prisons, said such
facilities face a greater risk of inmates escaping because they are
typically understaffed and pay low salaries in order to make profits. These
working conditions make for high staff turnover rates, he said. “So, you
have poorly trained guards who are too few in number and who are very
inexperienced — and that combination of factors makes them susceptible not
just to corruption, but also to coercion by the inmates inside,” Hallett said. “That sounds like an inside job,” Hallett said of the circumstances surrounding this
week’s escape in La Villa.
September 21, 2006 San
Antonio Express-News
The young guard who said he was overpowered by federal inmates at a
Valley detention center was one of two employees put on paid leave Thursday
as officials investigate how six men escaped. Enrique Zepeda, 18, who has
been on the job for three months, said the escape started late Tuesday with
a decoy. "They were distracting me to put my guard down for a moment
and it worked," he said. A spokesman for Lafayette, La.-based LCS
Corrections Services Inc., which owns and operates the East Hidalgo
Detention Center in La Villa, confirmed that Zepeda and one other employee
were put on paid administrative leave Thursday. All employees will be
questioned, said McAllen-based spokesman for the U.S. Marshals, Jose Magallan Jr. "We are looking at all avenues, we
are looking to see if it was an inside job," he said.
September 21, 2006 Houston
Chronicle
Not enough officers were on duty at a privately owned federal jail when an
ex-police officer charged with drug trafficking led five other inmates in a
daring escape Tuesday night, a federal marshal overseeing the investigation
said Wednesday. The six men broke out of the East Hidalgo Detention Center
at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday after using a footlong knife
made of plastic to overpower a guard. They managed to get through four jail
doors before using bolt cutters or wire snips to cut through two fences.
Teams of federal agents and Rio Grande Valley police using helicopters,
horses and tracking dogs searched for the escapees late Wednesday but had
not found any of them. ''The way we see it, there is lack of security there
right now," said Joe Magallan, a deputy with
the U.S. Marshals Service. ''There are a lot of safety issues pertaining to
that. There's just not enough personnel. More
security officers and more detention officers,
should be placed there."
September 20, 2006 The
Monitor
Federal and local authorities are still looking for six men who escaped
from a federal prison last night. The men escaped from the East Hidalgo
Detention Center around 9:40 p.m. Tuesday by holding a foot-long, homemade
knife to the neck of a prison guard, U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Joe Magallan said. They then tied up the guard and locked
him in a room before escaping through the backdoor of the building and
using wire cutters to detach an electric fence from the anchor holding it
to the ground, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño
said. Someone had evidently de-electrified the fence beforehand, Treviño said. The guard was unharmed. The men had been
housed in a minimum to medium security building within the prison complex,
said Richard Harbison, a spokesman for LCS
Correctional Services, the company that runs the private facility. Harbison said this is the first escape from the
facility since LCS took it over from the former management company in 2001.
That company had gone bankrupt. Treviño stopped
short of calling the escape an inside job but said the circumstances were
dubious. “From a law enforcement perspective, it appears to be highly
suspicious,” he said.
J.B.
Evans Correctional Center, Tensas Parish, Louisiana
November
19, 2009 News-Star
Inmates at a Tensas Parish prison are refusing to return to their cells
Thursday afternoon as a form of protest, according to Tensas Parish Sheriff
Ricky Jones. Prisoners at the J.B. Evans Correctional Center are not moving
from the prison yard to protest the amount of food they receive, Jones
said. The warden and deputy warden at the correctional center were not
available Thursday afternoon. Staff at the prison offered no comment on the
number of inmates or other details of the protest. According to LCS
Correctional Services Inc., the company that operates the prison, Evans
Correctional Center is a 400-bed multi-use facility that has housed
offenders for the Louisiana, Alabama and Harris County, Texas, corrections
departments. Richard Harbison, executive vice
president of LCS, was not available for comment Thursday afternoon.
LCS
Caldwell Detention Center, Clarks, Louisiana
April
6, 2006 The Town Talk
An Olla man who escaped from the Caldwell Correctional Center in Clarks
committed suicide tonight at a hunting camp near Dodson in Winn Parish,
authorities said. Jimmy L. Peppers, 36, barricaded himself inside the camp
as authorities tried to talk him into giving himself up. Authorities fired
tear gas into the building because they suspected he was inside. Peppers
yelled out that he was inside, and authorities tried unsuccessfully for
about 10 minutes to talk him into surrendering. At about 6:55 p.m.,
authorities heard a gunshot, and a Winnfield Police Department K-9 officer
went into the house and discovered the body. Assistant Chief Deputy Becky
Ledbetter said the department received calls at about 9 a.m. Thursday that
someone had escaped from the Caldwell Correctional Center in Clarks and
that a Kelly woman had been taken by force from her home. “We are not
really sure how he escaped,” Ledbetter said. “He went to the woman’s house
and took her by force. He forced her into her own car.” Ledbetter said the
two were driving on La. Highway 126 in Winn Parish, five miles east of
Dodson, when they got into a scuffle. The two were romantically involved at
one time. The unidentified victim dropped him off near Gaars
Mill in northeast Winn Parish. She drove to nearby Dodson, where she told
authorities that he was armed with a .38-caliber pistol that he took from
her. Peppers was serving time at the Caldwell Correctional Center for a
felony driving while intoxicated charge and was scheduled to go to court
Tuesday for another count of felony driving while intoxicated in LaSalle
Parish, Ledbetter said. This is the second prison escape to occur in
Caldwell Parish in less than a month. Five inmates escaped March 11 from
privately operated LCS Caldwell Detention Center, located directly beside
the Caldwell Correctional Center on La. Highway 845 in Clarks. All five
were caught and charged with additional counts and placed back at the
facility in less than a week. Owners of the facility are conducting an
internal investigation into the escape.
March 16, 2006 KATC TV
Authorities in Jefferson Parish have captured an escapee from the Caldwell
Detention Center. Twenty-seven-year-old Jeremy Robinson escaped along with
four other inmates over the weekend. He's the last one to be taken into
custody. Jefferson Parish deputies stopped a car yesterday afternoon --
that was suspected to be stolen by Robinson. Caldwell Sheriff Steve May
says Robinson's girlfriend was driving the car. Deputies then received
information that Robinson was at his girlfriend's house in Kenner. Robinson
was taken into custody without incident and is expected to be returned to
Caldwell Parish today. He was serving time on a drug charge -- and now
faces additional charges of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated escape, and
attempted murder of a police officer.
March 15, 2006 KPLC TV
Caldwell Parish Sheriff Steve May says an escaped prisoner from a
private prison in his parish has probably left the area.
Twenty-seven-year-old Jeremy Robinson of Jefferson Parish is the sole
inmate still at large after five men overpowered personnel at L-C-S
Caldwell Detention Center on Saturday night, then fled the facility. May
believes Robinson may have stolen a vehicle in the south end of the parish
and may be attempting to return to his home in the New Orleans area. May
says authorities statewide have been notified of the escape. Bond has been
set at 500-thousand dollars each on the other four escapees, who were
captured Saturday night and Sunday morning.
March 14, 2006 AP
Bond has been set at $500,000 each for four of the five men accused of
getting a prison worker to open a control room door, taking control of the
prison and then driving out in a prison employee's truck. The fifth, Jeremy
Robinson, 27, of Jefferson Parish, remained at large. He is described as
black, 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds, with "Shanda"
tattooed on his right arm. The five escaped Saturday night from the private
LSC Caldwell Detention Center in Clarks. Caldwell Parish Sheriff Steve May
said that after getting the control room open, the five overpowered
employees and eventually took control of the prison. When a town marshal
tried to stop their truck, they tried to run over him but crashed the
truck, May said. He identified those back in custody as Corey Manshack, 25, of Converse; Keith Gallow,
33, of Ville Platte; Melvin Tipton, 23, of West Monroe; and Ray Eugene Tate
of Lawrenceville, Ill. All four were booked with new charges of aggravated
kidnapping and aggravated escape; Manshack and Gallow also were booked with theft and trespassing.
Tate is wanted on seven counts of failing to appear in court for drug
charges in Hopkinsville, Ky., May said. He said Tate was moved to Clarks
from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
March 12, 2006 Houma Today
Five inmates escaped a privately run prison in Caldwell Parish, but
authorities were able to track down all but one of the escaped convicts by
Sunday afternoon, the sheriff's office said. Jeremy Robinson, a
27-yeasr-old inmate from Jefferson Parish, was still at large on Sunday,
said Glenn Gilmore, a chief deputy of the sheriff's department. The five
inmates overpowered a female guard at about 9 p.m. Saturday at the LCS
Caldwell Detention Center, Gilmore said.
Louisiana
Correctional Services
Jan 28, 2015 theadvertiser.com
Prison operator The Geo Group will spend $312 million in cash to buy eight
correctional and detention locations from the privately held LCS
Corrections Services. The deal price could rise to around $350 million, if
the locations meet some performance targets, Geo Group said Monday. It
didn’t detail those targets. LCS runs sites in Louisiana, Texas and Alabama
totaling more than 6,500 beds for federal, state and local governments. The
Geo Group Inc. designs and runs correctional, detention and community re-entry
sites around the world. With the LCS deal, it will own or manage 106
locations totaling about 85,500 beds. It hopes to complete the deal by the
end of February, Geo Group said the deal will immediately increase its
revenues by about $75 million to $80 million. The company also said it
expects to improve the utilization of the LCS locations, which have average
occupancy rates of about 50 percent. The company plans to finance the
acquisition, which it expects to close next month, by borrowing from its $700
million revolving credit line. Shares of the Boca Raton, Florida, company
rose 8 cents to $42.74 in morning trading Monday while broader trading
indexes fell slightly. GEO: Purchases LCS GEO,LCS http://www.theadvertiser.com/story/money/business/2015/01/27/lafayette-based-lcs-corrections-sells-prison-sites-million/22434743/
Lafayette-based LCS Corrections sells prison sites for $312 million
Associated Press 6:12 p.m. CST January 27, 2015 Prison operator The Geo
Group will spend $312 million in cash to buy eight correctional and
detention locations from the privately held LCS Corrections Services. The
deal price could rise to around $350 million, if the locations meet some
performance targets, Geo Group said Monday. It didn’t detail those targets.
LCS runs sites in Louisiana, Texas and Alabama totaling more than 6,500
beds for federal, state and local governments. The Geo Group Inc. designs
and runs correctional, detention and community re-entry sites around the
world. With the LCS deal, it will own or manage 106 locations totaling
about 85,500 beds. It hopes to complete the deal by the end of February,
Geo Group said the deal will immediately increase its revenues by about $75
million to $80 million. The company also said it expects to improve the
utilization of the LCS locations, which have average occupancy rates of
about 50 percent. The company plans to finance the acquisition, which it
expects to close next month, by borrowing from its $700 million revolving
credit line. Shares of the Boca Raton, Florida, company rose 8 cents to
$42.74 in morning trading Monday while broader trading indexes fell
slightly.
March 11, 2008 The Advocate
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, the
Federal Aviation Administration and the Vermilion Parish Sheriff’s Office
continue to investigate a single-engine plane crash that killed two people
Monday night, including Lafayette businessman and civic leader Patrick
LeBlanc. LeBlanc, 53, of Youngsville, co-owner of LCS Corrections Services,
and a pilot from Opelousas were killed in a plane crash Monday night near
Abbeville. Jason Aguilera, an air safety investigator with the National
Transportation Safety Board, has identified the plane as a Cessna 210.
Aguilera said an initial investigation indicates the pilot, believed to be
R. Solomon Reed. 60, of Pavy Road in Opelousas,
was attempting to land in Lafayette. The crash happened on La. 82 in
Vermilion Parish. The flight originated in Jackson, Miss., the Vermilion
Parish Sheriff's Office said. LeBlanc was a leader in the Lafayette
Jaycees, was active in the Acadiana Home Builders
Association and last fall ran an unsuccessful campaign for state House of
Representatives District 43.
Louisiana Correctional Services Center, Clarks Louisiana
A story in Thursday's The News-Star should have said inmate
Bruce Lanehart escaped from
Louisiana Correctional Services Correctional Center, a private prison in Clarks. (Ouachita, April 9, 2004)
Louisiana
Legislature
October 21, 2007 The Advertiser
The involvement of his opponent's company in a Texas jail contract
investigation may have helped Page Cortez capture the House District 43
race in Saturday's election. Complete but unofficial returns show Cortez,
R-Lafayette, with 7,742 or 55 percent of the vote and Patrick LeBlanc,
R-Youngsville, with 6,218 or 45 percent. Cortez replaces state Rep. Ernie
Alexander, R-Lafayette, who chose not to seek re-election to the District
43 seat. "I'm tickled to death that it turned out the way it
did," Cortez said Saturday night. "I think that ultimately the
people of District 43 said their priorities are roads, ethics and
teamwork." Cortez is the owner and operator of La-Z-Boy Furniture
Galleries and Stoma's Furniture in Lafayette. He previous worked as a
teacher and coached at Catholic High of New Iberia and Lafayette High.
LeBlanc, 53, owns and operates LCS Corrections Services, a private jail
company, as well as Premier Management Enterprises, which provides
commissary services to jails in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. He also has
been associated with the architectural firm The LeBlanc Group and LeBlanc
Construction Company. This race heated up in recent weeks when unopposed
state Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, and
unopposed state Rep. Joel Robideaux, I-Lafayette,
through their political organization Leadership for Louisiana, ran ads
opposing LeBlanc's candidacy because of the Texas investigation. The Bexar
County, Texas, sheriff resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting a free trip
to Costa Rica from LeBlanc and his brother, and not reporting the
contribution. The sheriff's campaign manager also pled guilty for accepting
donations from LeBlanc's company to a phony charity, then pocketing the
money. The FBI continues to investigate interstate aspects of a commissary
contract the LeBlancs had with the Bexar County
jail.
October 10, 2007 The Advertiser
Ethics reform is the buzzword of the fall 2007 election cycle. Everybody
from the gubernatorial candidates to state House and Senate candidates have jumped on the bandwagon calling for sweeping ethics
reforms. The two candidates for House District 43 in Lafayette Parish are
no different. Both said they support ethics reform. Page Cortez,
R-Lafayette, and Patrick LeBlanc, R-Youngsville, both newcomers to
politics, signed the Blueprint Louisiana contract, which calls for adoption
of the best ethics laws in the nation. But ethics is at the heart of this
particular race for another reason. Premier Management Enterprises, a
company LeBlanc co-owns with his brother, Mike, is involved in a Texas
investigation that took down a sheriff and the sheriff's campaign manager.
The FBI continues to investigate. Bexar County, Texas, Sheriff Ralph Lopez
was forced to resign and pled guilty to three misdemeanor charges: gift to
a public servant, failure to report a gift and tampering with a
governmental record. Some time after Premier
Management Enterprises was awarded a contract to provide commissary
services to Bexar County prisoners, the LeBlancs
took Lopez and other sheriffs on a golfing trip to Costa Rica. Patrick
LeBlanc has said the trip was a conference of several sheriffs his company
conducts business with to discuss escape attempts, gang threats and the
lockup of immigrants. The LeBlancs also own LCS
Corrections Services, which operates private jails in Louisiana, Texas and
Alabama. Some of them have experienced escapes by prisoners. As part of an
Aug. 31 plea agreement, Lopez agreed to provide information to the Texas
Rangers, FBI, District Attorney's Office and others about all transactions,
legal and illegal, involving, among others, Michael LeBlanc, Patrick LeBlanc
and Premier Management Enterprises. On Sept. 25, Lopez's campaign manager,
John Wayne Reynolds, who chaired a benevolent fund board that awarded the LeBlancs the commissary contract, pled guilty to three
counts of pocketing more than $22,000 in checks Premier Management had made
payable to the Optimist Club Scholarship Fund. The Bexar County District
Attorney did not file charges against the LeBlancs.
Documents show Ian Williamson, who was a one-third owner in Premier
Management at the time, signed the checks given to Reynolds. Patrick
LeBlanc said Williamson is no longer a partner in the company. LeBlanc
maintains he and his company are innocent of wrongdoing. He said the
sheriff was at fault for not reporting the Costa Rica trip. Trips like that are just a part of doing business, he said.
"There is nothing unethical or inappropriate about taking clients on
trips, be it public or private," LeBlanc said. His company was duped
by Reynolds, LeBlanc said. They believed they were donating to a legitimate
organization, he said. In late September, the Bexar District Attorney's
Office completed its case and turned it over to the FBI. FBI spokesman Erik
Vasys told The Daily Advertiser the investigation
is ongoing. There are interstate aspects of the case, such as letters,
e-mail and telephone communications, that crossed state lines and are still
under investigation. He was unable to say more. "Nowhere in ... the official public record that they used to get the
plea deal do they mention my involvement in any way other than as a
stockholder in this company," LeBlanc said. "You don't see them
investigating me, questioning me, calling me a target." Interviewed
Friday, LeBlanc again said elected officials should be able to accept free
trips if they are approved by the ethics commission and are for legitimate
reasons. While both House District 43 candidates say they're for ethics
reform, they seem to disagree to some extent on what it means. Cortez
disagrees with LeBlanc's assertion that doing business with government is
the same as doing business with oilfield companies. "To try and woo
somebody with gifts and money and trips, the taxpayers ultimately pay for
that," he said. Cortez said legislators should be required to provide
full financial disclosure for themselves and their families,
making is clear where they derive their money and whether they have state
contracts or do business with the state. Then full disclosure needs to be
applied to local governments, he said. "What is ethics reform?"
LeBlanc said Friday. "It's an overused word. The bottom line is we
need to provide more teeth to ethics laws so they can be enforced."
Gov.
Kathleen Blanco collected more than $1 million from private corporations
and individuals to spend on her inauguration activities and in her transition
to the governor's office, according to figures released Wednesday. The
Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the Winn Correctional Center
in Winnfield for the state Department of Corrections, donated $5,000.
Wackenhut Corrections, which runs the Allen Correctional Center in Kinder,
donated $10,000. LCS Corrections Services, which owns a private prison in Basile, contributed $4,000. (Times Picayune, March 18,
2004)
Nueces
County Jail, Nueces County, Texas
Mar 6, 2014 kiiitv.com
An inmate death at a private
jail facility near Robstown is raising questions. The inmate was a recent
graduate of the Navy flight school at Naval Air Station-Corpus Christi. The
death has been ruled a suicide, but the investigation is now being questioned
by the agency that oversees the LCS facility. That law enforcement agency
is the Nueces County Sheriff's Office, whose detectives were turned away at
LCS by U.S. Marshals. They were told Texas Rangers would be conducting the
investigation, and that, says Sheriff Jim Kaelin,
is not proper protocol. "The private prison LCS is under our charge,
and we're responsible for the things that go on out there," Kaelin said. "Meaning that the U.S. Marshals
service mandate that we make sure that we comply with rules, regulations
and law." It was Saturday when Sheriff Kaelin
says he got a call from the LCS warden that an inmate had attempted suicide
by hanging himself with a bed sheet, and that the
inmate was being transported to Christus Spohn Memorial Hospital. That inmate has been
identified as 26-year old Trevor Nash, a recent graduate of the Navy's
flight school at NAS-Corpus Christi. According to sources, Nash was
preparing to be transferred to helicopter training school when he was
arrested on charges of piracy. 3News contacted the U.S. Marshals out of
Houston in hopes of obtaining more information regarding the charges, and
why Texas Rangers and not the Nueces County Sheriff's Office are heading up
the investigation. We have yet to get a response. In the meantime, Sheriff Kaelin says he too is attempting to get some answers.
June 2, 2010 KRIS TV
A Taft man who was detained at the LCS Detention Center in Robstown died
this past Saturday. Warden Mike Striedel said
27-year-old Leo Guajardo died from a brain tumor. Striedel
said Guajardo had been at the detention center since January for taking the
weapon of a U.S. Marshal. Striedel says Guajardo
saw a doctor Friday afternoon for high blood pressure, he was immediately
put on medication, but a couple hours later he claimed to feel dizzy. The
Warden says he was taken to the hospital and doctors found a massive brain
tumor. His condition worsened and eventually he was put on life support. Striedel says the family decided to take him off life
support Saturday night and he was pronounced dead. The Texas Rangers will
investigate the incident to make sure everyone at the detention center did
what they could to help Guajardo. The man's family is not ready to make a
statement yet, as they are preparing for Guajardo's funeral.
February 27, 2009 Caller-Times
Nueces County and the U.S. Marshals Service agreed to a deal to put
federal prisoners in the privately owned LCS detention facility in
Robstown, which last month laid off half its staff when it sat empty.
Nueces County sends federal prisoners to an LCS facility in Hidalgo County
in exchange for $2 per prisoner per day. The prison receives about $44 a
day per prisoner. On Thursday, the county signed an addendum to the
contract, allowing the Robstown facility to house federal prisoners, County
Judge Loyd Neal said, but it won’t be paid for it
initially.
January 24, 2009 Caller-Times
LCS Corrections Services laid off half of its Robstown detention center
employees Friday because federal authorities have yet to transfer in
prisoners, but the company plans to offer jobs to some elsewhere. LCS, a
private Lafayette, La.-based prison company, expected to have a full house
at its 1,100-bed facility shortly after the prison opened in mid-November,
but the center remains empty after a contract with the federal government
stalled, said Dick Harbison, LCS vice president
of operations. Of the 35 correctional officers laid off, six will be
offered positions at the LCS detention facility in Brooks County, Harbison said. Short on correctional officers, Nueces
County Jail will offer jobs to 14 others, county officials said. Fifteen
temporarily will be left without jobs, Harbison
said. To start the intake of federal prisoners from agencies such as the
U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S.
Border Patrol, LCS needs Nueces County to sign an agreement with marshals
that will outline how much the federal government will pay for housing
their prisoners. Congress also must pass a 2009 budget, which should occur
when a continuing resolution allowing the federal government to operate
under its 2008 budget expires in early March. The prison company intends to
rehire the laid-off employees and hire additional staff once prisoners
start arriving, Harbison said. Nueces County
spent millions to clean up its jail's substandard conditions that led to
the June 2006 removal of federal prisoners. The federal inmates haven't
returned. County officials have been negotiating since January 2008 for a
higher fee to house them at the jail. The contract also will include fees
for housing federal prisoners at two LCS facilities. Because the federal
government doesn't deal with private detention contractors, LCS is
dependent on a "pass through" contract, where the county gets a
share of fees charged per prisoner for passing through overflow federal
prisoners to the company's private facilities in Hidalgo County and
Robstown. Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal said
Friday that the county, the U.S. Marshals Service and LCS are in agreement
on new rates for the jail and the LCS facilities. He wouldn't disclose the
negotiated rates. The proposed fees are awaiting review and approval from
the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, which oversees federal
detention programs. The county, which received a $45.15 daily rate per
prisoner prior to their removal from the county jail, was seeking a raise
to $61.49. County officials previously have said that negotiations were
stuck at about $53 a day per prisoner. "The marshals and I have agreed
on that rate. We have worked with LCS, and they agree it is very
favorable," Neal said. "We did this several months ago, and we
have been unable to get any kind of funding out of the federal government.
Until the new Congress and President (Barack) Obama reach an agreement (on
a budget) there is no money available for a new arrangement for federal
prisoners." The county receives $2 a day for each prisoner sent to
LCS' Hidalgo County facility, and LCS earns roughly $43. A similar pass
through deal is in the works for the Robstown facility once the county and
the federal government sign off on new rates. "The minute we hear
anything at all we will be contacting everybody to come back to work,"
Harbison said.
September 9, 2007 San Antonio Express-News
Bexar County Sheriff Ralph Lopez and some of his friends weren't the
only ones in South Texas who enjoyed the benefits of helping Premier
Management Enterprises secure lucrative jail commissary contracts,
according to interviews and records examined by the San Antonio
Express-News. Like Lopez, the sheriffs of two other counties awarded
contracts to the Louisiana jail services company, and either they or their
associates reaped financial benefits. Those sheriffs, now out of office,
also boasted to their staffs about going on a golf
and fishing trip to Costa Rica with Premier officials, the same trip that
last week forced Lopez to resign. Here in Kleberg County, then-Sheriff Tony
Gonzalez, a close friend of Lopez, gave Premier a contract to run his jail
commissary when he was in office in 2004 and has been paid by the company
for consulting work of an unknown nature. "I've done some consulting
for them here and there," Gonzalez told the Express-News during a
brief interview at his ranch-style home on the outskirts of Kingsville, declining
to elaborate. "I'm just down here keeping my nose clean." In
Nueces County, one associate of former Sheriff Larry Olivarez, another
Lopez friend, reaped rewards after helping Premier win a jail commissary
contract there in 2005. The associate, a commercial real estate broker who
was appointed by the sheriff to an ad hoc committee that awarded the
contract, later earned a commission from the sale of 56 acres where LCS
Corrections Services Inc., another company owned in part by Premier's
principals, is building a private detention center, the Express-News has
learned. In addition, the former sheriff's chief deputy won political
backing from LCS when he ran as a candidate to replace Olivarez, who had
stepped down to run for county judge. Premier, which
has come up repeatedly in an ongoing public corruption investigation in
Bexar County for doing favors for influential people in a position to help
the company, has denied any wrongdoing. That investigation, so far, has
narrowly targeted only individuals in Bexar County, such as Lopez and his
longtime campaign manager, John Reynolds, and Reynolds' financial
relationship with the sheriff's wife. Lopez, Reynolds and at least one of
their associates helped Premier land the local jail food commissary
contract in 2005. As part of an immunity deal with Bexar County District
Attorney Susan Reed, the sheriff resigned, effective Sept. 19, and pleaded
no contest Tuesday to three misdemeanor charges, two of which were related
to the Costa Rica golf outing he accepted from Premier. The deal protected
him from further state prosecution; his wife wasn't indicted. Reynolds, who
played a key role in awarding the contract to Premier, is suspected by Reed
of bribery, extortion, theft, money laundering and campaign finance
violations. He also went on the Costa Rica trip and received checks
totaling more than $30,000 from Premier and one of its owners for
consulting and donations to fake charities Reynolds set up. An associate of
both Reynolds and the sheriff, John E. Curran, voted with Reynolds on a
jail board to give Premier the commissary contract, then won a contract
himself from Premier to provide temporary workers for the operation.
Largely unexamined is the broader picture of how Premier, its owners,
Patrick and Michael LeBlanc, and LCS conducted a business expansion with
local government partners throughout South Texas. A closer look at some of
those operations reveals similarities in conduct with local officials that
have drawn none of the law enforcement or media scrutiny seen in Bexar
County. Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin, who
succeeded Olivarez, is among those who have been watching the news from San
Antonio with keen interest because LCS is about to open an 800-bed prison
in his county. So far, no law enforcement agency has contacted him, Kaelin said. Close relationships -- LeBlanc-run
companies Premier and LCS operate jail-related businesses in five South
Texas counties. The first started in Brooks County in 2000. They have
embarked on an aggressive expansion in recent years that has capitalized on
tighter federal immigration control policies. In addition to the work at
Bexar County Jail, the companies also operate jails, commissaries or
full-scale prisons in Brooks, Kleberg, Hidalgo and Nueces counties. They
also run four jails in the LeBlancs' home state
of Louisiana and one in Alabama. Current Texas law makes sheriffs key
gatekeepers for contracts such as those sought by Premier and to a certain
extent by the prison-building LCS. Under current law, Texas sheriffs have
almost unchecked authority to contract management of their commissaries
with no competitive bidding. County commissioners must approve deals to
build private prisons but often keep their sheriffs closely in the loop as
resident overseers and advisers. Premier, LCS or sometimes both arrived in
counties served by sheriffs who maintained close personal relationships
with one another and with Bexar County's Lopez, according to interviews
with personnel in several offices. Lopez's office calendar for the past few
years shows he often traveled to visit Kleberg's
Gonzalez on weekends for golfing and that Gonzalez traveled to San Antonio.
The calendar also shows a number of trips to visit Olivarez in Corpus
Christi, where he still lives in a house near a golf course. At the Kleberg
County Sheriff's Office, Gonzalez's former staffers say the three were
often joined in golfing and hunting outings by other sheriffs and elected
officials in counties where Premier or LCS are doing business today. Among
them was Balde Lozano of Brooks County, who did
not return three calls for this story. "He kept a close-knit circle of
friends," said Yvonne Barbour, Gonzalez's former office administrator.
"I know Tony was a big golfer." Those relationships would later
prove mutually beneficial for the Louisiana companies and the sheriffs or
their friends. Gonzalez, for instance, used his relationships in Nueces
County to help Premier and LCS gain entrance there. Assistant Deputy Chief
Peter B. Peralta, who worked in the office when LSC first began courting
county business, remembered that it was Gonzalez who made the
introductions. Later, Gonzalez approved giving Premier a food commissary
contract for his jail during his final weeks in office. At some point
either before or after Gonzalez left office in late 2004, he accepted
private consulting work from Premier's owners, he and a company official
acknowledged. When Gonzalez transferred the commissary contract to Premier,
two lifelong Kingsville residents, brothers who run a small local grocery,
felt the pain. Betos Community Grocery had held
the contract since the 1970s and had come to rely on the modest commissary
revenue as competition from large grocery stores cut into Betos' bottom line. They were told they should only bid
for the contract if they had a sophisticated computer system. "We
didn't even get one computer until last year," said Juan Garza, who
co-owns the grocery with his brother Albert and supported Gonzalez's last
failed re-election bid. "It hurt." It remains unclear what kind
of consulting work Gonzalez did for the company or when it started. But
former five-term Brooks County Judge Joe B. Garcia recalled one occasion —
after Gonzalez lost his election — that he came calling, apparently after
hearing that Garcia had begun agitating for Brooks County to renegotiate
better terms from its LCS detention center contract. It was during this
time that Gonzalez phoned Garcia wanting to meet for lunch and talk about
local LCS operations. "I've known Tony for a while. But I didn't want
to talk to him about my contract with LCS," Garcia said. Garcia
remembered another story he found disturbing, when Michael LeBlanc himself
showed up at his office, accompanied by the man Garcia had just beaten in
the election. That LeBlanc would travel to South Texas was not unusual; he
often has personally tended to his business affairs. But Garcia said what
he heard made him feel uncomfortable. "They said if I had a campaign
debt, they would contribute to my campaign," Garcia said. He said he
told them he had no campaign debt to pay off and wouldn't have accepted the
offer even if he did. "A lot of people try to do those type of things," Garcia said. "I've always
been the type who, hey, I've worked hard for my education. I don't have
fancy cars, no ranches." Attorneys for LCS and Premier have declined
all requests for interviews regarding the ongoing investigation in Bexar
County or for this report. Last year, the LeBlancs
sued the Express-News, alleging they were libeled in articles the paper
published in late 2005. The lawsuit is pending. But Chris Burch, chief
executive officer of Premier, acknowledged that Gonzalez had done some
consulting work for the company under an arrangement with a predecessor,
Ian Williamson, who is no longer with the company. Burch said he was not
privy to any details about that work. Gonzalez still may be working for the
company as a paid consultant, Burch said. "I do know he has done some
consulting work, but I'm not the one who put this together." Benefits
and campaign -- Like Gonzalez, then-Nueces County Sheriff Olivarez helped
Premier land a commissary deal in his jail during his final days in office
in late 2005. He then quit, as required, to run for county judge. During
his time as sheriff, LCS had a "pass through" contract with
Nueces to refer federal prisoners to its other Texas facilities, and it
advanced a proposal to build the 800-bed detention center, now nearing
completion. The project is expected to generate $800,000 for the county in
inmate transfer payments, plus $350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. The
Express-News has learned an ally of Olivarez benefited financially from
LCS' effort to build the detention center — after helping the sheriff give
the jail commissary contract to Premier. Corpus Christi commercial real
estate broker and developer Tim Clower served in
late 2005 on an ad hoc selection committee the sheriff appointed to examine
bids for the commissary management job, according to the office of Kaelin, the current sheriff. In February 2006, several
months after Clower voted for the commissary
contract, he brokered a real estate purchase of 56.6 acres on behalf of LCS
for the $20 million detention center. The property's seller, Patricia Ann Bernsen, said Clower's
company approached her and brokered the purchase of her farmland for $4,000
an acre, or $225,000. "He did get a commission, that's for sure,"
Bernsen said, declining to say how much. "It
was a good commission." On average, commercial real estate agents earn
between 6 percent and 10 percent, according to one South Texas commercial
real estate broker. At the time of the sale, the 2006 sheriff's primary
race was heating up. Clower co-signed for a
$20,000 campaign loan to Olivarez's former chief deputy, Jimmy Rodriguez,
whose opponent at the time was publicly criticizing him for helping bring
LCS to town. LCS went to Rodriguez's aid by lambasting his opponent. At one
point in the campaign, LCS went public with a threat to halt construction
of its detention center if Rodriguez did not win the Democratic primary.
"We're not going to work with or for someone who doesn't respect our
company," Michael LeBlanc was quoted in the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times as saying about Rodriguez's opponent. "If Mr. (Pete)
Alvarez wins, we're out of Nueces County — plain and simple," LeBlanc
said. Rodriguez won the primary but lost the general election. Last week,
he insisted that he was paying off the $20,000 bank loan he said Clower co-signed. "He's been a friend for a long
time," Olivarez's former chief deputy said of Clower.
"He had a long history with the department before we even got
there." Clower did not return repeated calls
seeking comment about the loan or his commission on the LCS land purchase.
Traveling together -- The Express-News could not substantiate or refute
comments from those in the Sheriff's Office that Olivarez, while he was
sheriff, went on the same Costa Rica trip in August 2005 with Lopez,
Reynolds and Premier officials. Olivarez did not return numerous phone
calls or respond to a message left during a visit to his home. Kaelin said Olivarez boasted of the Costa Rica trip and
a separate hunting trip to employees who remain on staff. Kleberg's Gonzalez, while in office, also told some of
his staff of going on the same Costa Rica trip, said Kleberg Sheriff Ed
Mata, who beat Gonzalez in the 2004 election. Mata conceded that he can't
prove the story, but he wondered why no one has investigated as in Bexar
County. Gonzalez, during the recent interview at his home near Kingsville,
was asked several times if he would deny going on the trip. He declined
each time. The Costa Rica trip was not the only reputed benefit Kaelin heard about in regard to Olivarez. Shortly after
taking office, Kaelin said, a staff person phoned
him to report that Olivarez had appeared with a small group of businesspeople
seeking to tour the detention center project. Kaelin
said he was told that Olivarez had represented himself as an "unpaid
spokesperson for LCS." Kaelin called LCS
officials to inquire as to whether Olivarez might have been hired to run
the detention center, a prospect Kaelin worried
would undermine his office's working relationship with it. But he was told
Olivarez had no known connection to the company or employment prospects.
Bexar Sheriff Lopez's office calendar indicates he planned to attend the
detention center groundbreaking with Olivarez on Feb. 23, 2006, after
Olivarez had left office to run, unsuccessfully it turned out, for judge.
Today, Olivarez works as a manager for the Corpus Christi branch of CGT Law
Group International, according to a woman who answered the phone there.
Richard Harbison, a vice president in charge of
LCS' Texas operations, is certain that Olivarez has had no financial
relationship with LCS. As he was preparing to take his own vacation to
Costa Rica, Harbison also said by phone that he
was unaware of any paid trips involving sheriffs in Texas and the LeBlancs. Burch, of Premier, said he was not working
for the company at the time of the August 2005 trip. In Bexar County, where
the public corruption investigation has been in high gear lately, District
Attorney Susan Reed has said she is mainly interested in prosecuting local
individuals such as Reynolds, whom she called "rotten fruit."
None of Premier's San Antonio offices have been searched, Reed acknowledged.
"I'm not finished, so I'm not ready to make any definitive
determination yet" about Premier, she said. The FBI and Texas Rangers,
which have been involved in the Bexar County investigation, aren't
commenting. Patrick LeBlanc, who last week formally became a candidate for
the Louisiana Legislature, is running in part on a message that he will
fight against political corruption that "robs us of our confidence in
government." Last week, he told the Lafayette Advocate that he has
been cooperating with investigators in Bexar County but couldn't elaborate.
"We haven't done anything wrong," he told the newspaper. "I
would never, ever risk my integrity over selling candy bars and potato
chips."
July 14, 2006 Correctional News
Concern over conditions at the Nueces County Jail resulted in the
removal of 55 federal inmates — a potential loss of nearly $1 million in
revenue for the county. County commissioners grew concerned after
complaints of clogged plumbing, lack of water and insect bites were brought
forth by inmates housed in the aging facility. Officials say that the
facility requires renovations and have ordered a full report on all
reported problems. The U.S. Marshals Service, which pays the county $45 per
day to house federal inmates, transferred the prisoners to facilities in
Aransas, Jim Wells, Victoria, Karnes, Bee and Brooks
counties.
April 13, 2006 Caller-Times
The county's deal to build a $20 million detention center near Robstown
is on no matter what the outcome of November's general election between
sheriff candidates Jimmy Rodriguez, a Democrat, and Republican Jim Kaelin. LCS Correction Services Inc. officials said
earlier this week they'd pull out if former police chief Pete Alvarez was
elected as the Democrats' nominee for county sheriff in Tuesday's primary
runoff, but after Rodriguez's win, the company's CEO says plans will move
forward. "The dust will be flying out there in late May or early
June," said Michael LeBlanc, chief executive officer. The company
expressed reservations about the project after hearing ads supporting
Alvarez refer to a Louisiana-based corrections firm that owns facilities
where rapes and beatings occur. The ad said Rodriguez helped bring the
company, which was not named in the advertisement, to the area. LCS is
based in Louisiana. "We're not going to work with or for someone who
doesn't respect our company," LeBlanc said Monday. "If Mr.
Alvarez wins, we're out of Nueces County - plain and simple." The
facility would house federal inmates awaiting trial and is expected to
bring in about $800,000 for inmate transfers, plus $350,000 to $400,000 in
taxes. LCS broke ground on a federal detention facility between Robstown
and Driscoll last month. Alvarez said Wednesday that LSC should not have
discussed the candidates leading up to the runoff, calling it unethical.
"My problem is they got involved," he said. Rodriguez said last
week he hoped LSC would remain committed to the Nueces County project.
"We need it," he said.
April 9, 2006 KRIS TV
The company proposing a detention center in Robstown has issued an
ultimatum that could effect
the outcome of the Democratic runoff for sheriff. Friday evening, LCS
Correctional Services confirmed to 6 News that if Pete Alvarez defeats
Jimmy Rodriguez in the runoff on Tuesday, they won't build a federal
detention center here in Nueces County. Thursday, company officials told 6
News they wouldn't make that kind of announcement until after the election,
but they've obviously changed their minds. Here's how it works, LCS wants
to house federal inmates. But those inmates technically would go through
the Nueces County Jail First, before being sent to the LCS Detention Center
near Robstown. The company said if there's a Nueces County Sheriff that
doesn't have confidence in the LCS operation, the inmates won't be sent to
the private jail and the company doesn't make money. It is the latest
controversy in a race that seems to have had plenty already. "If Pete
gets elected, they will pull out," said sheriff's Jimmy Rodriguez. He
announced the company's ultimatum during a live debate on the cable show
"South Texas Politics". He said the company's president told him
that just a short time beforehand. He blames the campaign ads of Pete
Alvarez that questioned LCS's history of escapes and cases of abuse.
"If you had a company, and somebody attacked you and told lies about
you and incited the community to turn against you, and not to want you, I
don't know if I would come here either," Rodriguez said.
April 6, 2006 KRIS TV
LULAC claims a private prison company that county leaders approved
poses a danger to the community. LCS Correctional Services is planning to
build a large detention center in western Nueces County. Leaders of LULAC
Thursday called it a bad move, but supporters of the project said the
complaint is merely for political gain in the runoff election next week. At
the news conference Thursday afternoon, the president of LULAC said the
community is tired of all the mudslinging in the sheriff's race. But
moments later she questioned one candidate's involvement in what LULAC
considers a deal that threatens public safety. "We want to bring
public attention to a potentially dangerous situation brewing in Nueces
County," said Nancy Vera. That situation is a federal detention center
being built between Robstown and Driscoll. Officials broke ground on it
back in February, but LULAC President Nancy Vera says LCS has a history the
public should know about. "We have discovered some very disturbing
information." Vera said. She claims LCS Correctional services has
experienced numerous escapes and cases of prisoner abuse. Vera is asking
the commissioners court and in particular Jimmy Rodriguez why those issues
were never discussed. 6 News asked Jimmy Rodriguez if he felt LCS was a
legitimate company. Rodriguez replied, "I think LCS spoke for themselves. They're a reputable company." Rodriguez
said the idea that he had any direct involvement in the LSC contract is
completely misleading. He said it's just a political attack on a company
trying to make a large investment in the area. "$20 million investing,
300 jobs, this is good for the economy, and to have it all put in jeopardy
because of incompetency is tragic," Rodriguez said. "The
commissioners court met with LCS, reviewed LCS, and awarded LCS. They
thought it was a good thing. They handled the contract."
April 5, 2006 Caller-Times
The latest political mudfest in the race for
Nueces County sheriff is originating in Pete Alvarez's political camp.
Alvarez's new "Bad Jimmy" television ads, claim that his opponent
Jimmy Rodriguez is responsible for the recent erroneous release of six jail
inmates and that Rodriguez is responsible for a series of lawsuits filed
against Nueces County over problems with the jail. Another Alvarez ad has raised
questions about whether a Louisiana prison administrator might ditch a plan
to build a detention facility in the county. The ad doesn't name the
company in question, but says a Louisiana-based company the county has
contracted with has an unsatisfactory record with the treatment of its
inmates. The ad is aimed at the sheriff's department's administration for
its advocacy of the company. Last month LCS Correction Services Inc. broke
ground on a federal detention facility between Robstown and Driscoll. The
facility, under contract with Nueces County, is expected to bring in about
$800,000 for inmate transfers, plus $350,000 to $400,000 in taxes. A
statement released by the company said the owners were upset by the ad. "We admit the operations of prisons do not
create a perfect world because we deal daily with imperfect people,"
Chief Executive Officer Michael LeBlanc said in the statement. "But
there has never been a death or a suicide at any LCS Corrections facility
in the Company's 16-year history." Company officials refused to
comment on whether the ad has now jeopardized the plans to build the
corrections facility, saying it might unfairly impact the election. Nueces
County Precinct 4 Commissioner Chuck Cazalas said
he didn't understand why Alvarez's ad targeted Rodriguez for something
former Sheriff Larry Olivarez championed. He also said everything he knew
about LCS indicated they were a quality firm. "I think they are
supposed to be a good company. Everything I heard about them was pretty
good," Cazalas said. "I understand . .
. that the company is supposedly thinking of pulling out." Alvarez
said his ads are a response to ads Rodriguez is running. The Rodriguez
campaign says they did not fire the first negative campaign volley, but
they are preparing to fire back, with new ads targeting Alvarez's record as
police chief. "Pete's radio spot hitting on jail releases was
first," said Rodriguez's campaign consultant Jeff Butler. "We had
a response saying, 'No it's not true.' He hit us first, so we responded and
it went from there." Alvarez denied that his team was first on the
assault. "I tried my best to keep a professional and clean campaign
and they decided to throw the garbage out," he said. "And we have
to defend ourselves. This is not something we initiated from the beginning.
The public needs to understand that what is being said about me is simply
not true." The Rodriguez campaign contends that ads they are running
against Alvarez are "infomercials" based on research and news
stories outlining Alvarez's record that have run on television and in the
newspaper in the past, Butler said. Butler said the Rodriguez camp is not
responsible for an anti-Alvarez flier mailed in February by political
action committee Citizens for Nueces County that may have sparked some of
the rancor in the campaign. The flier said Alvarez was more than a million
dollars over budget as police chief in 2001, that he tried to cover up an
incident where his son was driving drunk, that he had been sued for
misconduct and retaliation and that he had plagiarized a strategic plan.
Butler said Tuesday the campaign also did not put out a new flier that came
out this week saying Alvarez treats women like second-class citizens. The
flier cites a Caller-Times article about a grievance filed by female Corpus
Christi police officers, who said Alvarez had "relegated them to
second-class status." Alvarez would not comment on specific
allegations Tuesday but reiterated that neither flier is true. The only
member of the political action committee listed in campaign filings is
Roland Gaona, who could not be reached for
comment Tuesday. Though Alvarez and Rodriguez would not take responsibility
for throwing the first mud, both campaigns said Tuesday they are prepared
to duke it out to the last - the April 11 runoff. Rodriguez said he hopes
the nastiness won't get any worse. Butler nodded in response to whether he
thought the campaign would get any nastier and nodded again that the
Rodriguez team is ready for battle. "I knew the only way they could
win was to go negative on us," Butler said. "Especially after the
primary when Pete only got 40 percent. Everybody knew who Pete was. His 40
percent told me that 60 percent of the voters were voting against
him." Alvarez said future ads from his camp will come from watching
what Rodriguez does and then responding. "We have to strategize,"
Alvarez said. "This is a campaign, a political campaign. We have to
defend ourselves, or the public will begin to believe the nonsense his
campaign has come out with."
Perry
County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center, Uniontown,
Alabama
Nov 22, 2013 therepublic.com
UNIONTOWN, Alabama — Large
portions of the Perry County Correctional Center are sitting dark and empty
as the state continues to grapple with overcrowding of its prison system,
according to a report Friday by The Anniston Star. The private, for-profit
prison outside Uniontown houses just 30 inmates with 26 people on staff,
the newspaper said (http://bit.ly/1jqMpsm ).
Alabama once leased hundreds of beds but today all the inmates are from the
federal system. Prison owner LCS Correction Services is trying to persuade
the state to buy the facility or at least bring back prisoners, but
lawmakers say the state can't afford it. "We just don't have the
money," said Rep. Allen Farley, R-McCalla,
vice chairman of the Joint Legislative Prison Committee. More than 25,000
in the system are currently being housed at facilities built for 13,000,
the newspaper said. State officials say a lack of money was the reason the
state pulled its prisoners out of the C. Alabama housed 449 inmates there
at one point in 2011, according to Department of
Corrections statistics. The next year, there were only seven. This
year, none. Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said moving
inmates to the prison would not save money, because it doesn't reduce the
operating cost of the prison they're leaving. The overall state prison
budget is $389 million. "Our cost to run our prisons is pretty fixed,
if you will," Corbett said. "If you took out 100 inmates and put
them in Perry County, all you're doing is adding a new expense."
Meanwhile, Warden Jim Mullins oversees an eerily quiet Perry County prison.
Inmates eat at a pair of fold-up tables in the corner of a cafeteria built
for 250 and most live in a single 64-man pod in one of the prison's wings.
"If you were here on a day when this was at full capacity, it would be
impressive, to say the least, how smoothly it operates," Mullins said.
April 22, 2010 AP
The Alabama Legislature has given final passage to a bill that clears the
way for the state to buy a private prison in Perry County. The House voted
82-16 to approve the bill that would permit the state to issue $60 million
in bonds to buy the Perry County Correctional Center and to renovate it. The
Senate voted 19-0 to go along with changes made to the bill in the House.
The private prison is located near Uniontown in Perry County in an
economically depressed area. The prison is designed for 750 inmates, but
can be expanded to handle 1,500. The sponsor, Democratic Rep. John Knight
of Montgomery, said the prison is needed because of overcrowding in the
state prison system.
April 17, 2010 Gadsden Times
The state is negotiating to buy the privately owned Perry County prison and
is one step away from getting the money to buy it. A bill authorizing a $60
million bond issue on the House calendar and is in position to pass in the
final two days of the 2010 legislative session next week. Sen. Lowell
Barron, D-Fyffe, is sponsoring the bill for the Department of Corrections.
“Corrections is interested because we are so
overcrowded,” Barron said. “They’re interested in buying it as well as
expanding it.” Barron’s sponsorship of the bill for Gov. Bob Riley is not
that controversial even though they have butted heads politically. But an
aspect of the bill puts Barron at odds with previous statements about
Riley. He has vociferously and publicly lambasted Riley for a so-called
no-bid $13 million computer system upgrade contract. He even sponsored
bills this session to limit non-competitive bidding. Barron’s prison bond
issue bill strikes out the original requirement that the prison bond issue be competitively bid. Barron said he talked to an
independent financial expert he trusts who has no ties to the administration
about bidding versus negotiating. “I talked with an investment bank house
and they said it’s not always the best, especially when it’s not the most
favorable conditions,” he said. “It doesn’t square with my political stand,
but on this one time a competitive bid may not be the best.” Riley
spokesman Jeff Emerson didn’t directly respond to Barron’s apparent
about-face. “The bill doesn’t mandate a bid, but Gov. Riley will make sure
it goes through a competitive process if the bill becomes law,” he said in a
Friday e-mail. Richard Harbison is executive vice
president of LCS Corrections Services Inc., which owns the prison near
Uniontown. “Let’s just say we’re talking to the state of Alabama,” Harbison said. The Perry County prison houses about 500
inmates but is designed to house 750, Harbison
said. He said the facility can be expanded to house up to 1,500 inmates.
The state has about 400 inmates there now, a spokesman said.
June 24, 2009 Park Rapids Enterprise
Ashton Mink was arrested after a nearly 14-hour standoff June 6, on a ranch
south of Gladstone. Authorities say Mink and his wife, Jacquelin,
were wounded in an exchange of gunfire. Authorities say one of four Alabama
fugitives has been transferred from a Dickinson hospital to jail. Ashton
Mink was arrested after a nearly 14-hour standoff June 6, on a ranch south
of Gladstone. Authorities say Mink and his wife, Jacquelin,
were wounded in an exchange of gunfire. Stark County Sheriff Clarence Tuhy said Ashton Mink was released Tuesday from a
Dickinson hospital and taken to jail. He is awaiting a bail hearing. Jacquelin Mink is hospitalized in Bismarck. The couple
along with Ashton Mink's sister Angela and Joshua Southwick, face charges
of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit robbery. They are
accused of robbing a movie store in Dickinson and shooting at a Highway
Patrol trooper. Authorities say Southwick and Ashton Mink escaped from an
Alabama prison in May and that Angela and Jacquelin
Mink helped them.
June 10, 2009 Athens News-Courier
Tom Henning, state’s attorney in Stark County, N.D., said it’s possible
the four people accused in an escape from an Alabama prison facility will
remain imprisoned in North Dakota for some time. If convicted, the group
could serve sentences there before being returned to Alabama to face
charges of escape. “Yes, they could end up spending jail time in North
Dakota, presuming convictions and at such time as we’re satisfied, then
they’ll go back to the demanding state,” he said. Joshua Southwick, who was
convicted in the 2003 slaying of a Limestone County man, and Ashton Mink,
convicted of attempted murder in a stabbing during a home invasion in
Madison, escaped from the Perry County Correctional Facility in Uniontown,
Ala., on May 25. U.S. Marshals say Angela Mink, Ashton’s sister, and Jacquelin Mink, his wife, cut the fence from the
outside of the private prison facility to help the two get free. The four
were captured in Gladstone, N.D., Saturday during a video store robbery.
Southwick and Angela gave themselves up but Ashton and Jacquelin
held officers at bay for 14 hours. They were shot in the process. Ashton is
under armed guard at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Health Center in Dickinson,
N.D. His wife is under armed guard at St. Alexius Medical Center in
Bismarck, N.D., Henning said. “I have no idea when they will be able to go
to court,” he said. “I’d say at least a month.” In the meantime, Southwick
and Angela Mink are being held at Southwest Multi-County Correctional
Facility, each charged with criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, which
carries a 10-year maximum sentence. “It’s entirely likely there will be
more charges” stemming from the standoff and shootout, Henning said.
June 9, 2009 Bennington Banner
Vermont officials said Monday they made the right decision in March
when the state removed about 80 Vermont inmates from a private, for-profit
prison in Alabama where two inmates recently escaped. Needed improvement --
Vermont Department of Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito
said Vermont pulled the inmates out of the Perry County Correctional Center
in Uniontown, Ala., prison, which is run by LCS Corrections Services in
March. The first Vermont inmate was transferred to the facility in late
December he said. The prison, which has more than 700 beds, had security
equipment that did not work and an inadequately trained staff "for
what we were asking them to do," Pallito
said. "It wasn't what we were after. It wasn't what I would have
expected," he said. Pallito said the
Department of Corrections leveled several demands on LCS to improve, but
did not see action fast enough, and pulled inmates
out about two weeks later. State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick
Sears, D-Bennington, said he had doubts about the facility before the
Vermont inmates were transferred. Once the inmates were moved, Sears said
the facility failed to "keep up with things that were in the
contract." And there were issues with the "treatment of
offenders." "We sent some people down there and there were
continued problems. I was very skeptical myself," Sears said.
"Turned out there were a lot of problems and they moved them all
out." "It was a real loose outfit," Sears added. "There
have been some real problems there." The Associated Press reported Monday
that two men who escaped from the Perry County Correctional Center on May
25 were recaptured Saturday following a shoot-out with police. According to
the Associated Press, Alabama Prison Commissioner Richard Allen said all
250 of Alabama's inmates will be removed from the facility. Allen cited
cost, however, not security concerns, as the reason for removing inmates. Pallito said Vermont has an ongoing contract with LCS
Corrections Services, but it allows for a "zero minimum," meaning
the state can have no inmates at the facility and pay nothing. The contract
term is for two years, he said. Inmates housed briefly at the Alabama
facility have been moved to facilities in Kentucky or Tennessee run by
Corrections Corporation of America. Vermont had a contract with CCA when it
looked to diversify as a cost-savings measure. Pallito
said CCA agreed to take back the inmates at the $50 per day rate the
Alabama facility was charging. It costs the state about $140 per day to
house inmates in-state. Vermont currently has
about 2,200 inmates and only 1,500 instate beds. The contract with CCA will
expire next year, according to Pallito, so the
state will need to renegotiate a contract. Pallito
said LCS officials have recently tried to persuade the state to send
inmates back to the Alabama facility, but that is not likely to happen.
"Not at this time, particularly given the recent development of
events," he said. "We're interested in talking with other
facilities, but I don't think we'll be back with them."
June 8, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Alabama's prison commissioner says the state will remove about 250 inmates
from the private prison where two men recently escaped amid a string of
security failures. However, Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen said
Monday that money - not the threat of additional escapes - was behind the
decision. In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Allen said his
agency can't afford to continue housing 250 inmates at the Perry County
Detention Center. An executive at LCS Corrections Inc., which runs the
prison, said he knew of the state's plan. He said the company was told the
state could place twice as many inmates at the private prison next year if
lawmakers approve funding.
June 6, 2009 KFYR TV
Four of America's Most Wanted fugitives were arrested Saturday in
western North Dakota. The group started out in Alabama earlier in the week
and came to North Dakota where police say they went on a crime spree. By
Saturday night, two of the suspects were recovering in a Dickinson-area
hospital after being shot by police after a standoff in Gladstone. That was
the culmination of a series of crimes that started with a robbery Friday
night in Dickinson and included shots being fired at a North Dakota Highway
Patrol trooper during a chase. Let's take you back a week and set the stage
that led to these events. Police had been looking for 26-year-old Joshua Southwick, and 22-year-old Ashton Mink since they
escaped from an Alabama prison on Memorial Day. Mink was serving a 20-year
sentence for 1st degree assault. Southwick was serving a life sentence for
murder and 1st degree burglary. Authorities say they escaped prison in
Alabama by wearing kitchen workers` uniforms The pair allegedly fled
through holes that were cut out of the prison fence by Ashton Mink's wife, Jacquelin, and sister Angela Mink. Somewhere along the
way, all four made it to North Dakota. The trouble in North Dakota started
in Dickinson Friday night around 11:00, when the suspects, two men and two
women, robbed a movie rental store. The foursome fled, and a Highway Patrol
trooper noticed a suspicious car speeding away. The trooper followed the
car onto I-94, and that's when passenger in the suspects` car fired at the
trooper. At least one bullet went into the trooper's car. The fleeing car
continued east to Gladstone prompting the Highway Patrol to lock down the
small town. Authorities blocked off a two-mile section of road leading into
town. Police kept an eye on things during as residents were notified of the
threat through a reverse 911 system. Gladstone resident Kim Hetzel says, "After we got the automated phone
call early this morning, get up, and lock the doors, and kinda just watch out." Authorities found the
suspects after the owner of a farmstead noticed the four were staking out
in his detached garage. Stark County sheriff Clarence Tuhy
says, "They're from the Alabama area; the two males are escapees from
a private prison in the Alabama area which were aided in escape by the two
females." The perps took refuge in the
farmstead's garage as more than a half dozen
agencies flocked to the area. About 12 hours later Tuhy
says, "A male and a female came out giving up peacefully at which time
a male and female came out a side door firing at officers." Officers
then fired back, striking both Ashton Mink and his wife, Jacquelin. The couple is being treated at an area
hospital. So far, there's no word on the conditions of the two suspects who
were shot. No officers were injured, and Joshua Southwick and Angela Mink
were taken into custody. "Any time no officers get injured is a good thing,"
notes Tuhy. But while no officers or residents
were hurt physically, it will take a long time for the emotional scars of
this almost surreal crime to heal.
June 5, 2009 WAFF
It's been more than week since Joshua Southwick, 26 and Ashton Mink,
22, escaped from a private prison in Perry County. Now there's new
information on the two women who helped them escape and what the prison is
doing to keep this from happening again. New pictures are surfacing of
Angela Diana Mink. A tattoo artist by trade, the pictures
show specific tattoos which may assist the public in recognizing
her. Tattoos are on both upper and lower arms, and both wrists, plus one at
the base of her neck. Perry County prison officials said they believe she
and Jacquelin Rae Kennamer
Mink cut through an electrical stun fence to help Mink and Southwick
escape. It was a single cut that did in fact trip an alarm to alert the
control room operator on the prison. "That stun fence, if it's
touched, cut or grounded, sets off an alarm in our central control
unit," said Richard Harbison, the executive dirctor of the corporation that owns the private
prison. "Evidently because of the weather, the alarm after it was
sounded, no one went to the fence to check and see if it was cut." And
because of that, Harbison said there's been an
overhaul at the unit. "We dismissed seven people, two of which were
shift captains for failure to carry out correct policies and procedures at
the unit," he said. Others included correctional officers and the
control room officer that failed to follow proper procedures. "We have
proper procedures in place to ensure that something like this doesn't
happen. If you fail to follow those proper procedures, then you more likely
to have an escape such as this one," he said. Also overhauled is the
system that alerts officials when security has been breached. Now, the
warden, deputy warden and chief security officer will all be notified
automatically. Officials have also raised the level of security at the
prison to just below the level of a maximum security prison. That's a move
that won't happen overnight, but one much anticipated.
June 5, 2009 AP
A U.S. Marshals Service inspector said two women cut holes through
three fences at a private prison in Perry County, enabling a convicted murderer
and another prisoner to escape. The fugitives -- 22-year-old Ashton Kenny
Chase Mink and 26-year-old Joshua Loyd Southwick
-- were being sought Thursday after their escape from the Perry County
Corrections Center about 5:30 a.m. on May 25. Rewards totaling $15,000 were
being offered. Dick Harbison, the vice president
of operations for Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections Services, said two
shift captains and five guards were fired for not adequately supervising
the prisoners. Inspector Ross Herbert with the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive
Task Force said 25-year-old Angela Diana Mink, Ashton Mink's sister, and
25-year-old Jacquelin Rae Kennamer
Mink, his wife, are accused of cutting the holes in three perimeter fences.
June 3, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Two women cut holes in the prison fences at Perry County Corrections
Center in Uniontown last week, allowing a convicted murder and another
prisoner to escape, a U.S. Marshals Service inspector said. Ashton Mink,
22, and Joshua Loyd Southwick, 26, escaped from the
private prison about 5:30 a.m. on May 25. Angela Diana Mink, Mink’s sister,
and Jacquelin Rae Kennamer
Mink, his wife, allegedly cut holes in the perimeter fence, said Inspector
Ross Hebert with the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force. The Alabama Department
of Corrections has obtained warrants to charge the women, both 25, with
aiding the escape of state prisoners. They also have warrants to charge all
four with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, he said. Authorities
believe that the four are armed and dangerous. Records indicate that in
early May, Jacquelin Mink purchased a
.380-caliber gun that was found near the escape scene. She is known to
carry a semi-automatic pistol and owns several other handguns and longarms, Hebert said.
June 2, 2009 WAFF
Officers have confirmed a description of the vehicle that two escapees
convicted in North Alabama may be driving, and agencies across the state
are on the lookout for it. It has been more than a week since 26-year-old
Joshua Southwick and 22-year-old Ashton Mink escaped from a private prison
in Perry County. "The inmates are still at large and the search
continues," said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department
of Corrections. State troopers confirm the two men are believed to be
traveling in a pewter 2000 GMC Jimmy, with Madison
County tag 47A1F2. Corbett told WAFF 48 News a division of the U.S.
Marshals is leading the search. "The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional
Fugitive Task Force, they are the entity that are spearheading the search
and investigation into their recapture," he said. Southwick was
serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to murder and burglary for
the 2003 shooting death of Michael Bryant on Hays Mill Road in Elkmont in Limestone County. Mink was serving time for
attempted murder in connection with a 2005 Huntsville home invasion.
Investigators said he stabbed Jarold Lee several
times in his apartment. "You absolutely have to consider them armed
and dangerous," Corbett said. Investigators said someone helped them
cut through three fences to make their escape.
May 29, 2009 WAAY
TV
New information on two inmates who escaped from an Alabama prison.
Joshua Southwick and Ashton Mink broke out of a private prison in Perry
County on Monday. Southwick was serving a life sentence after pleading
guilty to a 2003 murder-for-hire case in Limestone County. Mink was serving
time for an attempted murder in Huntsville four years ago. Police now
believe both men are travelling with Mink's sister and another woman. The
four may be on their way to Mexico. Police say they are armed and
dangerous, and say the prisoners claim that they will not be taken alive.
May 28, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Authorities believe that two men who escaped from a private prison in
Perry County early Monday morning had outside help. Joshua Southwick, 26,
and Ashton Mink, 22, escaped the Perry County Detention Center in Uniontown
after someone helped them cut through three fences. Southwick is serving a
life sentence after pleading guilty in a 2003 murder-for-hire case in
Limestone County. Mink, 22, was serving time for an attempted murder
conviction in Madison County in 2005. The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Task
Force, which includes members of several law enforcement agencies and five
members of the Department of Corrections, are still looking for the men.
Prison Warden Tommy Buford did not answer phone calls from a Tuscaloosa
News reporter Tuesday or Wednesday. A prison employee referred calls to
Dick Harbison, the vice-president of Lafayette,
La.-based LCS Corrections Services, which owns and operates the prison. Harbison did not return a call placed to his cell phone
Wednesday afternoon. The 734-bed facility houses prisoners from Alabama and
other states in addition to federal prisoners. The state’s Department of
Corrections does not have oversight of the company’s management or security
practices at the prison because it is a private corporation. The Department
of Corrections pays the company $32 a day to house 249 state inmates, less
than the $41.71 it costs to house them in a state facility, spokesman Brian
Corbett said. He said that the department has not had problems with the
Uniontown facility or the company, which housed Alabama inmates in
Louisiana because of prison overcrowding between 2003 and 2006. Until last
month, the prison also housed around 80 prisoners from Vermont, but the
Vermont Department of Corrections removed those inmates after an
investigation into prisoner complaints that they had been injured in fights
with other inmates, said Seth Lipshutz, the
supervising attorney in Vermont’s Prisoners’ Rights Office. The prisoners
complained to the Prisoners’ Rights Office, a branch of the state’s Office
of the Defender General. Lipshutz said that an
investigator with his office conducted an investigation followed by an
independent investigation from the state’s Department of Corrections. “They
were letting the inmates run the asylum,” he said. The staff and management
did not pay adequate attention to security, he said, which resulted in
inmate-on-inmate violence and the smuggling of items such as drugs and cell
phones into the facility. “Drugs get into a lot of prisons, but cell phones
don’t get into many,” Lipshutz said. “It doesn’t
take long to figure out why this would be a problem.” He said that inmates complained
that an assistant warden boasted that he was drunk while driving the bus
from Vermont to Uniontown and behaved unprofessionally when he threatened
to shoot them if they tried to escape during a dinner stop at a fast-food
restaurant. Lipshutz said that Vermont, one of
the country’s smallest and least-populated states, sends around 700 of its
2,200 prisoners to out-of-state facilities because it costs roughly $140
per day to house them in in-state prisons. Prices in Vermont are high for
several reasons, he said, including union wages, small prisons and snowy
weather that makes transportation between
facilities difficult. Many of the state’s prisoners are housed in detention
centers owned by Corrections Corp. of America, the first company to open
private prisons more than 25 years ago. “I’m not too keen on the
privatization of prisons. This is an example of how things go wrong,” Lipshutz said. Ken Kopczynski is the executive director
of Private Corrections Institute, a private prison watchdog group based in
Tallahassee, Fla. The organization’s mission is to provide information and
assistance to citizens, policy makers and journalists about what they
consider the dangers of privatizing correctional institutions and service.
Kopczynski said no records are kept on the number of escapes from private
prisons. The last records kept, he said, were in
2002 and indicated that escape rates are higher at private institutions.
The institute compiles media reports of incidents at private facilities on
its Web site. According to their information, an inmate who had been on
suicide watch died at a LCS facility in Texas in January. At least 15
escapes were reported at some of the company’s prisons in Texas and
Louisiana since 2002, according to the institute. The Texas Prison Board
conducted a review of the Eastern Hidalgo Detention Center in 2006 after
six inmates escaped. The review found that the prison employed too few
guards, added an unauthorized number of bunks and kept unlicensed guards
and guards without adequate training on payroll, according to a news story
from The Monitor, a newspaper in the area. The company president said at
the time that those problems were later corrected. The six inmates escaped,
company officials said, after someone tampered with a control box for the
electrical fence surrounding the prison. Perry County prison guards noticed
that Southwick and Mink were not in bed during a 5:20 a.m. bed check. After
inspecting the perimeter, they noticed that the fences had been cut.
May 27, 2009 Seven Days
The Vermont Department of Corrections [1] has pulled all of its inmates out
of a privately run prison in Alabama after a state investigation confirmed
that some of the men had been injured by their fellow inmates. The
investigation was launched after the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office [2]
began receiving reports from clients who claimed inadequate security at
Perry County Detention Center led to the inmate-on-inmate violence. The
April withdrawal of some 80 Vermont offenders from the 734-bed facility in
Uniontown, Alabama, occurred just five months after the state signed its
first-ever contract with a new private prison vendor: LCS Corrections
Services. Based in Lafayette, Louisiana, the for-profit prison company
houses some 6000 inmates in eight facilities throughout the South. Deputy
Commissioner of Corrections Lisa Menard said last week that the state had
been looking for an alternative prison vendor in an effort to “expand our
options” and “ultimately save the taxpayers
money.” Vermont was paying LCS $49.50 per day per inmate. Its other
out-of-state vendor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), charges $67
per day to house Vermont inmates. In-state prisoners cost $140 per day.
Vermont currently has about 680 inmates in out-of-state prisons, mostly in
two facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both are owned by CCA, the
nation’s largest for-profit prison vendor. According to Menard, all the
Vermont inmates from the Alabama detention center have since been moved to
CCA prisons or returned to Vermont. Asked why the Vermont inmates were
withdrawn, Menard initially said, “Vermont has high standards as far as
conditions of confinement. Basically, this facility didn’t feel like the
best fit for us, without getting into a great deal of detail.” Probed further
about the alleged reports of abuse, Menard later confirmed the stories were
true. “We did get reports from offenders that there was some assaultive
behavior happening,” she confirmed. “When we checked into that, we found
that it … was accurate. Unfortunately, this was Vermont inmates committing
assaults on other Vermont inmates.” Menard downplayed the severity of the
injuries, noting that none was life-threatening and they were “basically
bruises, that type of thing.” But that’s not how a lawyer in the prisoners’
rights office in Montpelier characterized the situation in Alabama.
Managing Attorney Seth Lipschutz called it “a
total disaster.” According to Lipschutz, his
office received reports of alleged lax security, contraband being smuggled
into the facility, and inadequate bureaucratic procedures being followed
for addressing inmates’ grievances. There was even one allegation of a
corrections officer being intoxicated while transporting Vermont inmates to
the prison. “They were letting the inmates run the asylum,” Lipschutz added. “It was a system where the strong were
taking advantage of the weak.” Concerned about their clients’ safety, the
prisoners’ rights office notified the Vermont Department of Corrections,
which, according to Lipschutz, “acted on it right
away and got the inmates out of there as soon as possible.” Lipschutz also characterized the inmates’ injuries as
more serious than DOC let on. “There were some people who got beat up,” he
claimed. “There were more than cuts and bruises. I think some people had to
go to the hospital.” He put the number of inmates involved in such
incidents at “maybe two dozen.” But Deputy Commissioner Menard denied that
the problems in Perry were the result of poor security. Instead, she blamed
the problem on the physical design of the prison itself, which featured a
“more open floor plan … that didn’t work well.” Richard Harbison,
executive vice president of LCS Corrections Services, echoed that
sentiment. “The physical plant in Perry, frankly, was not very conducive to
the type of inmates they sent us,” he said. “That prison was designed for
low-custody levels and the inmates [Vermont] sent us were of a
higher-custody level.” Harbison said he wasn’t
aware of any Vermont inmates being hospitalized. “It’s the prison business
and these guys are going to get into fights,” he admitted. “But as far as
someone being seriously injured, I’m sorry, not to my knowledge.” Whether
the injuries at the Alabama prison were due to lax security or a “more open
floor plan,” the choice of this particular prison appeared problematic from
the get-go. Back in November, when the DOC signed its contract with LCS,
then-Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann pointed out that the new
facility would only be taking Vermont offenders who were “unacceptable to
be placed with a majority of other prisoners.” In other words, the more
dangerous inmates with behavioral problems. According to Lipschutz, the Perry County Detention Center is used
mostly as a holding facility for people arrested on federal immigration
violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those
detainees don’t even have a criminal record. Members of the Vermont House
of Representatives’ Committee of Corrections were notified of the move only
after the inmates had been withdrawn from Alabama, but weren’t told the
reason why. “I felt, from our discussions with the commissioner, that it
was not a comfortable situation,” said Rep. Linda Myers, vice chair of that
committee. Asked if she knew that Vermonters had been beaten up and injured
in Alabama, she said she’d heard word of it, “but I can’t say I heard it
from the Department of Corrections.” Though Lipschutz
credits corrections officials for their prompt response, he sees this
episode as symptomatic of the larger systemic problems associated with the
for-profit prison industry, which he described as “always a race to the
bottom. LCS “came in with a low, low price to take these Vermont inmates,”
he added, “which is very attractive to state governments in these tough economic
times.”
May 27, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Law enforcement officials were still searching Tuesday for two prisoners,
one of them a convicted murderer, who escaped from a private prison in
Perry County early Monday morning. Joshua Southwick, 26, was serving a life
sentence after pleading guilty in a 2003 murder-for-hire case in Limestone
County. Ashton Mink, 22, was serving time for an attempted murder
conviction in Madison County in 2005. He was accused of stabbing Huntsville
television and radio reporter Jarold Lee during a
personal dispute in 2004, according to media reports at the time. He is not
scheduled to be released until 2028. The Alabama Department of Corrections
leases bed space from the private Perry County Detention Facility in
Uniontown, department spokesman Brian Corbett said. The inmates disappeared
some time early Monday. The prison warden did not
answer several phone calls Tuesday because he was in meetings related to
the inmates' escape. An official at the prison who did not give her name said
that guards conducting a bed check at 5:20 a.m. noticed that the inmates
were missing. A check of the perimeter revealed that a fence had been cut
from the outside, she said.
May 26, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Authorities are searching for two state prisoners who escaped from a
private prison in Perry County Monday. Joshua Southwick, 26, is serving a
life sentence after pleading guilty to a 2003 murder-for-hire case in
Limestone County. Ashton Mink, 22, was serving time for an attempted murder
conviction in Madison County in 2005. He is not scheduled for release until
2028. The Alabama Department of Corrections leases bed space from the
private facility in Uniontown. The inmates disappeared some time Monday.
Authorities were unavailable Tuesday morning because they were in a meeting
to discuss the escapes. More details will be available today.
May 3, 2006 Selma Times Journal
The city of Uniontown welcomed a new business Wednesday, one which is
likely to employee more than 100 Perry County residents, but it wasn't the
sort of commercial site where officials and dignitaries usually hold
ribbon-cutting ceremonies. This ribbon-cutting took place in the shadow of
walls, watchtowers and razor-wire, as Black Belt officials celebrated the
completion of the Perry County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center.
Louisiana-based LCS Corrections, a private prison operator that houses a
number of female Alabama inmates at the South Louisiana Correctional Center
in Basil, La., will administer the facility. State Sen. Bobby Singleton,
who helped attract LCS to Perry County three years ago as a state
representative, said the city, county and surrounding area should be proud
of the facility. "We're never proud to be incarcerating someone, " Singleton said, "however, I feel we've partnered
with good corporate citizen, on that's looking toward rehabilitation and
other positive programs in their facility."
Pine
Prairie Correctional Center, Pine Prairie, Louisiana
October
27, 2011 The Advocate
Authorities in Oklahoma on Wednesday shot and wounded an escaped inmate
suspected in a Tuesday morning bank robbery in Evangeline Parish, officials
said during a news conference in Ville Platte. Trooper Stephen Hammons,
spokesman for Louisiana State Police, said the U.S. Marshals Service Metro
Fugitive Task Force in Oklahoma spotted Brian Keith Soileau
at a Walmart store in Norman, Okla., north of
Oklahoma City. Soileau fled in a pickup believed
to be the same vehicle he used after robbing the Guaranty Bank in Vidrine on Tuesday morning, Hammons said. Soileau led the Metro Fugitive Task Force and Oklahoma
Highway Patrol on a 35- to 45-minute pursuit, by vehicle and on foot, that ended with an exchange of gunfire, Hammons
said. Soileau was struck and was taken to a
hospital where he remains in serious condition, Hammons said. The incident
occurred shortly before noon Wednesday, Hammons said. “The chase is over,”
said Evangeline Parish Sheriff Eddie Soileau, who
said he is not related to the fugitive. “I hope the people of Evangeline
Parish feel a little safer today.” Soileau had
remained on the loose since Oct. 13, when he escaped from the Pine Prairie
Correctional Center, a private facility owned by LCS Corrections Services.
June 29, 2006 The Advocate
A former guard at a private prison in Evangeline Parish was sentenced
Wednesday to two years and eight months in prison on federal charges of
beating an inmate and then asking other guards to lie
about the incident. Gilbert Self, 51, of Florine
was convicted at trial in February of one count of a criminal civil rights
violation and three counts of witness tampering. Self worked as a captain
at Pine Prairie Correctional Center, owned by Lafayette-based private
prison company LCS Corrections Services. He was accused of beating a Cuban
national being held at the prison on immigration violations after the
detainee allegedly made crude remarks to a woman guard in July 2003. The
guard reported the incident to Self, her supervisor, who then went into the
detainee’s cell and punched and kicked the man while he was restrained and
lying face down, according to trial testimony. Three other guards who were
present have said they repeatedly asked Self to stop and eventually removed
him from the cell and sought medical assistance for the detainee. Self
asked the guards to file false reports to cover up the beating, telling
them that “if he went down they were also going down,” according to a
written statement about the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The three
guards initially prepared false reports, prosecutors said, but one of the
guards decided the next day to tell a supervisor what had really happened.
“This is a serious offense, and no one knows better than you the necessity
of promoting respect for the law,” U.S. District Judge Richard Haik told Self before handing down a sentence.
February 22, 2006 Pickens Herald
The Pickens County Commission in a press briefing last Tuesday after their
regular meeting questioned the state’s motives in housing several hundred
prisoners in Louisiana when they could easily house them at the Pickens
County Jail at a cheaper rate. County Attorney Buddy Kirk addressed the
Herald with four of the five commissioners present (Commissioners Earnest
Summer-ville, William Latham, Willie Colvin and
Ted Ezelle were present; Tony Junkin
was absent) about the matter after the Commission became aware that the
state had moved 140 male prisoners from the Bibb Correctional Facility in
Brent, Ala. to a private prison over 300 miles away in Pine Prairie, La.
The Commission has contacted the Ala-bama County
Commission Association about the matter, said Kirk, to ask for their help
in approaching state officials about this curious action. Brian Corbett, a
spokesman for the Ala-bama state prison system,
told the Associated Press last Monday that the state plans to move 500
inmates from the Bibb County facility to the Pine Prairie Correctional
Center in central Louisiana, a private prison operated by LCS Corrections
Services Inc. The sticking point for the Pickens County Commission is that
not only is the state having to carry the expense of transporting the
prisoners to another state but are willing to pay $29.50 a day per inmate
to house them there. The state only pays counties $1.75 per day to house
state prisoners in county jails. “It doesn’t seem right to the Commission,”
said Kirk, who noted that the state will virtually drive right by Pickens
County from Bibb County to travel 300 miles to Louisiana. Furthermore, Kirk
said if a prisoner has to meet with his attorney,
it is a general rule that the state will have to pay that attorney’s
expenses if the prisoner is housed far away.
February 13, 2006 AP
A total of 140 medium-security male prisoners were
transferred Sunday night from Alabama to a private correctional facility in
Louisiana, the first of 500 to be moved in the latest attempt to ease
overcrowded cellblocks. The prisoners were transferred from Bibb
Correctional Facility in Brent to Pine Prairie Correctional Center in Pine
Prairie, La., in an effort to make room for state inmates who are in county
jails in violation of an Alabama court order. State prisons spokesman Brian
Corbett said Monday the state entered into an emergency contract with LCS
Corrections Services Inc. to send up to 500 inmates to the central
Louisiana facility. The Department of Corrections currently houses 311
female prisoners at an LCS facility in Basile,
La. Prisons Commissioner Donal Campbell announced
Friday that he had resigned, effective Feb. 28. He had pushed for increased
state funding for prisons and recently said there was no money in Gov. Bob
Riley's budget proposal to pay for the use of private prisons, an
alternative he supported.
February 10, 2006 The Advocate
A former guard at a private prison in Evangeline Parish has been
convicted on federal charges of beating an inmate and then asking other
guards to cover up the incident. The jury deliberated about 45 minutes
before returning a guilty verdict late Wednesday against Gilbert Self, 51,
after a three-day trial. Self was a captain at the Pine Prairie
Correctional Center, owned by LCS Corrections Services. He faces up to 10
years in prison on criminal civil rights violations and charges of witness
tampering. “The Department of Justice will not tolerate civil rights
violations committed by those sworn to uphold the law,” U.S. Attorney
Donald Washington said in a statement. “… It was Mr. Self’s responsibility
to control such violent outbreaks in the facility, not to initiate the
violence.” Self was accused of beating a Cuban national who was being
detained for immigration violations. Prosecutors said the July 2003
incident began when the detainee allegedly made crude remarks to a female
guard. She reported the remarks to Self, who went into the detainee’s cell,
punched him repeatedly, slammed his head into the floor and kicked the man inthe ribs, according to guards who witnesses
the incident. The guards, who said they attempted to stop Self, told
investigators that he later asked them to file false reports to cover up
the beating. The guards prepared false reports on
the incident, but the next day, one of the men told Self’s supervisor what
had actually happened. The detainee, who lost consciousness during the
attack, suffered bruising and swelling to both eyes,
cuts, and rib injuries, prosecutors said. The injuries were not properly
documented at the time because Self asked a nurse to alter her medical
report, according to prosecutors, and LCS later fired the nurse for not
following proper procedures and sending the detainee to the hospital for
treatment.
A federal grand jury has joined local
prosecutors and civil rights attorneys in bringing charges against
employees at private, for-profit prisons in Evangeline Parish. In the most
recent charges, Gilbert Self, 49, of Florien, a former captain at the Pine
Prairie Detention Center, has been indicted on one count of felony criminal
civil rights violation and three counts of obstruction of justice for
allegedly beating a prisoner. U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said Self
was arraigned Wednesday morning in Lafayette and released on a $75,000
bond. A tentative trial date is set for July 12 on the four charges, which
each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Washington said sentencing in federal court is governed by the U.S.
sentencing guidelines, which do not allow for parole. He said the federal
charges stem from a government contract with LCS Corrections Services Inc.,
a Lafayette-based company, which owns the private prison near Pine Prairie
and another near Basile. The current indictment
alleges that in July 2003, Self assaulted and caused bodily harm to a Cuban
national, who was being detained at the facility under the authority of the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service. The indictment also
alleges that Self obstructed the investigation by trying to persuade three
fellow guards to lie to federal law enforcement
officials. LCS owns two private prisons in Evangeline Parish. Both are
currently facing ongoing lawsuits. Last month, Evangeline Parish District
Attorney Brent Coreil opened an investigation of
the South Louisiana Correctional Center near Basile
in regard to repeated charges of sexual assaults on female prisoners.
(Louisiana Gannett, May 6, 2004)
A guard at a private prison in Evangeline
Parish has been booked on charges of having sex with an inmate. Todd Daniel
Arnold, 22, of Oberlin faces one count of malfeasance in office for
allegedly having sex with a female inmate at Pine Prairie Correctional
Center, a prison run by Lafayette-based Louisiana Corrections Services.
Arnold was booked into the Evangeline Parish Jail on Monday and released on
$7,500 bond, according to jail records. The incident comes about two years
after the former warden of the Evangeline Parish Jail was convicted on two
counts of malfeasance in office for extorting sexual favors from the family
members of inmates. Michael J. Savant, 48, was sentenced to six months in
jail and three years probation on the charges.
(Daily Advertiser, July 7, 2003)
South
Louisiana Correctional Center, Basile,
Louisiana
August 1, 2009 New America Media
Some one hundred immigrant detainees at a private prison in Louisiana,
angered by what they say are awful conditions, are engaged in increasingly
tense protests. Beginning in early July, they’ve staged waves of hunger
strikes and provided immigrant advocates with testimonies to gain attention
for their complaints. Prison authorities, meanwhile, have been reacting by
placing hunger strikers in isolation for days at a time. Immigrations and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency in charge of immigrant
detention, has said the solitary confinement isn’t disciplinary, but
precautionary “medical isolation.” At least six inmates remain in solitary
confinement as a result of the last hunger strike, which began July 27,
according to Saket Soni,
of the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice. He spoke to New
America Media via cellphone Saturday afternoon.
He was on his way to visit the prison, the Southern Louisiana Correctional
Center, a 1,000-bed facility set near rice fields in the town of Basile, a four-hour drive west of New Orleans. The
detainees “are facing a severe sense of isolation and desperation,” he
says. In a report compiled by Soni and other
advocates and published on the center’s website July 30, some 100 detainees
acting as “human rights monitors” complain of lack of responsible medical
attention, even for serious ailments like leukemia, high blood pressure, and
asthma. They also report unreliable, and in some cases nonexistent, phone
contact with lawyers and family, a vacuum of information about their
deportation cases, and scarcity of soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, and even
underwear. One detainee reports “rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders
inside the cell,” one of several shared by scores of detainees. A Jewish
detainee says he was denied a kosher diet, while another said the detention
center’s food routinely made him sick. These testimonies would put the facility
in violation of several standards issued by the Department of Homeland
Security for immigrant detainees, according to Soni.
But federal officials responsible for the detainees flatly deny they have
been subjected to any mistreatment. Philip Miller, acting field office
director in New Orleans for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE,
says he visited the Basile facility on July 16
and found its maintenance and pest control program satisfactory. In the
July 30 report, one detainee claims there was no soap and toothpaste for
three weeks in May, but Miller denies that: “That’s not true,” since
inmates receive toiletries upon request. To date, there have been five
hunger strikes to protest conditions at the Basile
detention center, and they’ve involved some 60 detainees, says Soni. Prison staff reportedly sought to quell these
protests by isolating hunger strikers, sometimes even before they began
refusing food, according to testimonials from men who participated in
earlier hunger strikes. In the report, Joaquin López
says that on the morning of July 23 he and four other immigrant detainees
in a cell called Wolf 3 were put into the “hole” for planning a hunger
strike. The next day, López said, they were
brought out of the “hole,” cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and
interrogated for two hours, then placed in solitary confinement again, in
cells measuring twelve by six feet. He was brought out of the isolation
cell to speak with advocates on July 25. Another detainee, Fausto Gonzalez, who has asthma, said that on July 28,
over 30 people in his cell, Tiger 2, refused food and voiced their
complaints. Guards showed up in black riot uniforms, said Gonzalez, and two
men were sent to the “hole.” Soni says he doesn’t
know how long the men mentioned in the report remained in solitary, since
the limited contact doesn’t allow him to track them. “Solitary confinement
as retaliatory punishment for peaceful protest of conditions is
unacceptable,” said the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights in
a statement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency which
oversees immigrant detention, denies any hunger strikers would be punished
with solitary confinement, or unduly pressured. Federal detention standards
require that a hunger striker be placed in “medical isolation in order to
closely monitor the detainee and meet his medical needs,” says Miller, the
ICE field officer for detention and removal. Also, says Miller, hunger
strikers undergo a medical review and counseling about the health risks they
face. Seven national advocacy groups, including the Center for
Constitutional Rights, sent Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano a letter demanding she investigate the Basile,
Louisiana prison and the detainees’ grievances. Last month, Napolitano
denied a court petition asking for bolstered, legally enforceable detention
standards at facilities housing immigrant detainees. Instead, DHS opted to
stick with “performance-based” standards enforced by private contractors.
July 30, 2009 AP
A group of detainees at a Louisiana immigration detention center have begun
three-day hunger strikes to protest poor conditions there, immigrant
advocates said. The news comes just days after Department of Homeland
Security officials dismissed a report critical of conditions at its
immigration holding centers nationwide. About 100 detainees contributed to
a report released Thursday by the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial
Justice, claiming bleak conditions at a U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement lockup in Basile, La., 183 miles
northwest of New Orleans. "It's not fit for a human being," read
a comment attributed to Fausto Gonzalez,
according to the report a detainee from the Dominican Republic. "There
are rats, mosquitoes, flies, and spiders inside the cell and inside the
dorm. The ventilation is terrible," he said. "We have tried to
complain about all of these problems, and we haven't gotten anywhere. They
tell us, 'It's a jail. This is how it is.'" Dora Schriro,
special adviser on detention and removal for Homeland Security, which
oversees ICE, did not return requests for comment Thursday. Philip Miller,
ICE's acting field office director in New Orleans, who oversees five
southern states, said the facility was cleaned daily and that he had talked
with staff about addressing detainee concerns. "We acknowledge and
accept the fact that immigration detention is not punitive in nature,"
he said. "And we have to take a high degree of caution and a high
degree of sensitivity in how we maintain our facility." The Associated
Press has requested access to the 1,002-bed complex which is run through
private contracts with several law enforcement bodies, including ICE. Dick Harbison, executive vice president of contractor LCS
Corrections Services Inc., has agreed to the tour and ICE officials are
considering it. Access to immigration detainees is generally limited to
family and legal representatives, which staff attorneys at the New Orleans
group have become for those quoted in its report. Detainees at Basil are being
held on federal charges of staying in the country without authorization,
but in some cases local charges as well. Gonzalez is among 60 detainees who
have undertaken rotating 72-hour hunger strikes over the last month to
protest conditions, said Saket Soni, executive director of the Workers' Center. They
would strike for longer periods, Soni said, but
the detainees feared inadequate medical care and placement of strikers in
solitary confinement could lead to serious illnesses. The conditions
outlined in the report are similar to those highlighted in the report
released Tuesday by the National Immigration Law Center. Homeland Security
officials dismissed that report as being outdated because it used data and
detainee accounts no fresher than 2005. The grievances in the latest report
are no older than two weeks. Among the report's claims: - A detainee said
guards humiliated him and other men by issuing them women's nylon
underwear. - A Jewish man said when he requested Kosher food, guards said
they didn't know what it was and he was given unsealed food that made him
throw up. - One detainee said he has not had phone contact with his family
or lawyer for a month because phone cards that they are required to buy
take a week to be issued and then do not work in most holding cells. - For
about three weeks in May, the jail ran out of soap and toothpaste, said a
detainee. - A hunger striker said air conditioning was turned down in his
room after he began his protest and he was eventually placed in solitary
confinement and pressured to eat. "Ninety-five percent of it's untrue," said Harbison. "Occasionally, an inmate tells you a
lie." Harbison said records showed only two
inmates had failed to report to the mess hall during the period in which
the hunger strikes were to have taken place. Striking detainees reported to
the mess so they would not face retaliation, said Soni,
but left their trays full.
July 27, 2006 AP
About 320 female Alabama prisoners being housed in Louisiana are being
moved to another prison in that state but one closer to Alabama. The women
inmates had been housed at a private prison at Basile
in southwest Louisiana. They are being moved to J.B. Evans Correctional
Center in Newellton, La., which is on the
Louisiana-Mississippi line about 60 miles west of Jackson. The move brings
the inmates about two and a-half hours closer to the Julia Tutwiler Prison
for Women in Wetumpka, prisons commissioner Richard Allen said Thursday. It
also reduces travel time for corrections officers. The Alabama Department of
Corrections has a contract with LCS Correctional Services to house the
inmates to help reduce overcrowded conditions at Tutwiler. The J.B. Evans
Correctional Center opened in 1994 and is a medium security facility with
the capacity of holding 440 inmates. Allen said it will be used exclusively
for the Alabama women prisoners. More than 600 male inmates are also housed
in private facilities in Louisiana because of overcrowded conditions in
Alabama prisons.
January 25, 2006 Birmingham News
When the Alabama Department of Corrections decided to put prisoners in a
private out-of-state prison, women went first. The state opened a
transition center for people on parole, and it was for women. A close look
at these experiments, however, shows that, for the overall prison
population to drop by much, the state may need to turn to alternatives such
as expanded drug courts and community-based treatment and sentencing
reform. A bill endorsed by Gov. Bob Riley takes a step in that direction by
stressing changes in Alabama's sentencing structure. In reaction to a
federal court settlement that forced the state to cut the population at
Tutwiler Prison for Women to 950, the state Parole Board released several
hundred low-level offenders and the state began housing pockets of women in
other facilities - the Louisiana private prison, the LifeTech
parole transition center and county jails. But Alabama now incarcerates
1,920 women, only a 4 percent drop in three years. And instead of steering
female drug offenders into community programs - as numerous government task
forces have recommended - the state is locking up more women for drug
crimes than ever before. "The path that Alabama has taken over the
last four years of renting more bed space for women has proven to be the
wrong path," said Lisa Kung, director of the Southern Center for Human
Rights, a nonprofit law firm that has won settlements over conditions at
prisons. In Birmingham, only 40 of 100 spaces are filled in "Second
Chance" a federally funded program that allows newly released women to
live in apartments and work regular jobs while receiving drug treatment,
medical and mental health services. Not enough women are being paroled to
fill the slots. Kung agreed that LifeTech is a
better option than prison. But she wants the state to use the center for
incarcerated women, not probationers. Nearly 40 percent of the women at the
private prison in Louisiana will be eligible for parole over the next three
years, according to DOC records. Many have served terms of 15 years or more
for crimes Kung said often involved abusive partners. She's hoping parole
officials will consider letting some of these women into LifeTech, and she has been working with lawmakers on
gender-specific parole guidelines that might help cut the numbers of low-risk
women locked in private prisons. LCS Corrections houses 320 Alabama women
at its Louisiana prison, with a price tag climbing toward $10 million since
the contract began in 2003. A prison run by the same company is set to open
in Perry County and may end up housing Alabama men. Kung's problem with
shipping so many women to Louisiana is that they are housed 900 miles from
their children and families and have no opportunities to take the classes
that the parole board looks to as signs prisoners are trying to improve
themselves. "The inmates housed here have too much idle time on their
hands and that defeats the purpose of rehabilitation," inmate Sharron
Kay Jones, 47, serving 15 years for solicitation to commit murder, wrote in
a letter from Louisiana "There is no rehabilitation here at all."
Inmate Paula Settle, 34, of Tuscaloosa, serving 15 years for drug
trafficking, signed up for anger management, substance abuse, parenting and
trade school classes at Tutwiler. But she was immediately transferred to Louisiana.
"There are no classes, programs, meetings, jobs or counselors here. No
trades, no furthering education, no chaplain or religious assemblies or
functions," she said.
August 16, 2005 The Advocate
A private prison company has settled a federal lawsuit filed by the family
of an inmate who died in custody after he was allegedly beaten and denied
adequate medical care. Gregory Lee, 35, died June 22, 2003, less than a
week after he was transferred from LCS South Louisiana Detention Center in Basile to the state-run Elayn
Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel for medical treatment. LCS
Vice-President Dick Harbison confirmed Monday
that a settlement had been reached but declined to discuss the terms.
Willie Nunnery, the attorney representing Lee' family in the lawsuit, also
declined to offer any specifics on the settlement. "It is a strictly,
strictly confidential matter," he said. The settlement of the lawsuit
against Lafayette-based LCS comes after prosecutors filed charges last year
against guards at the company's two south Louisiana facilities. Gilbert
Self, 50, a former captain at LCS's Pine Prairie Correctional Center, was
indicted by a federal grand jury in May 2004, accused of hitting an inmate
and then trying to persuade three fellow corrections officers not to
cooperate in an investigation of the incident. Self, who faces one count of
violating civil rights and three counts of witness tampering, is set for
trial in September. An Evangeline Parish grand jury in June 2004 indicted
four guards at the company's Basile facility on
charges of malfeasance in office for allegedly having inappropriate sexual
contact with inmates. LCS officials have said that all of the guards facing
criminal charges at the two facilities were terminated after internal investigations.
April 6, 2005 Montgomery Advertiser
From the day the Department of Corrections began talking about sending some
inmates to private, out-of-state prisons, the Advertiser expressed serious
reservations about the idea, and for several reasons. Nothing that has
happened since has changed our view of the practice. Questions raised by
female inmates sent to a privately operated prison in Louisiana have
prompted a new concern -- whether incarceration there hurts their chances
for parole. The private prison in Basile, La.,
nearly 500 miles from DOC headquarters in Montgomery, now houses about 270
Alabama inmates. Severe overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka,
Alabama's only penitentiary for women, led the department to send some
inmates there to bring the Tutwiler population down to a more manageable
level. The state's short-term options were limited, so using the private
prison as a stopgap measure was understandable. But private prisons have a
lot of inherent qualities that should concern Alabamians. They are
for-profit enterprises, of course, so there are financial pressures that
could lead to potentially dangerous cutting of corners. In many cases, they
are little more than warehouses for inmates, with few opportunities for
work or training. That could be a detrimental factor in parole
considerations. As a group of inmates notes in a call for reform, this
prison that sits surrounded by Louisiana rice fields offers no classes, no
training programs, no rehabilitation groups or any of the things that inmates
can point to when they come up for parole consideration. "Down here,
the time is not constructive," said Phyllis Richey, an inmate from
Muscle Shoals. "We have nothing to do. We're basically housed. That's
it." For inmates who are well behaved and are trying to serve their
time responsibly and get out of prison, this is clearly frustrating. Rather
than having an incentive to improve themselves in
preparation for life outside prison, inmates are stuck in a prison far away
from their homes and families in Alabama, simply marking time. That's bad
enough. The prospect that their parole consideration is affected only makes
matters worse. Private prisons are a bad concept. The sooner Alabama can
get its inmates out of them, the better.
April 1, 2005 Birmingham News
Alabama female prisoners locked in a rural Louisiana prison are demanding
changes they say could give them a fairer shot at parole and curb the
state's reliance on private, forprofit lockups.
Women at the South Louisiana Correctional Center, some of whom have been
housed 500 miles from their families for two years, wrote a Platform for
Fair Reform. The two-page document includes reasons for their concerns and five demands they think would
improve their chances for getting parole and leading productive lives. The
women have asked for: Objective parole criteria, workrelease
opportunities, an end to the parole board's backlog, an end to the
''heinous crime'' designation that prevents some of them from working
outside the prison and a chance to face their victims as well as the parole
board. The move to the Louisiana prison, 475 miles from Montgomery, makes
it difficult or impossible for families to visit, the inmates said.
Surrounded by rice fields, the prison has no classes, programs or
rehabilitation groups, the opportunities prisoners rely on to show the
parole board they have worked to better themselves.
January 21, 2005 The Advocate
The family of an inmate who died in prison held a news conference Thursday
to release the details of his death. The family members of Gregory Lee, 35,
of Kenner, convicted in 2003 of distribution of cocaine near a church, say
he died because he didn't receive proper medical care at the South
Louisiana Correctional Center, a private prison in Basile.
The family has filed suit in federal court against LCS Corrections Services
Inc. and Patrick LeBlanc of Lafayette, Gary Copes, former Lafayette police
chief and warden of the facility, and several facility employees. The suit
was filed in 2003 and is pending before U.S. District Judge Tucker L. Melançon. Willie Nunnery, the family's attorney,
provided the media with a report from an expert his clients have hired.
"This case has taken on a new twist," Nunnery said. "It is
the intent of his family that the public know what happened to Gregory
Lee." According to his death certificate, Lee died June 22, 2003. The
medical transfer document from the SLCC indicates he left there June 17,
2003. The autopsy report, prepared by the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office,
indicates that Lee died of complications from AIDS. However, a forensic
pathologist hired by Lee's family has examined microscope slides -- which
the Orleans officials did not do -- and determined that Lee probably died
from sepsis, a severe infection. Dr. Robert Huntington III, an associate
professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the
University of Wisconsin, participated in the news conference via
speakerphone. Huntington said sepsis can be the result of infected wounds
that aren't treated, and it also can start with pneumonia, bladder
infections or heart infections, he said. Nunnery said he also has taken the
deposition of two inmates who were being held in Basile
at the time Lee was there. Those depositions indicate that the inmates
testified Lee was being beaten and sprayed with tear gas. Nunnery said Lee
was "hogtied" and beaten, shackled and left in chains for hours.
"There can be no justice until the courts deal with the privatization
of prisons in this state," Nunnery said. "There should be a massive
inquiry into what happened to Gregory Lee. This individual was beaten, and
the system sought to hide and cover this up."
October 21, 2004 Montgomery Advertiser
Although it is important to acknowledge that the filing of a lawsuit proves
nothing in and of itself, the suit filed by an Alabama inmate housed in an
out-of-state private prison raises anew some valid concerns about such
facilities. The Advertiser has long had reservations about private prisons
and nothing in Alabama's recent experience has alleviated them in the
slightest. In April of last
year, Alabama began sending female inmates to a private prison in Basile, La., to relieve overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison
for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama's only prison for females.
Private prisons are, of course, intended to be money-making ventures, and
that creates the potential for some serious problems. Even the most fervent
believers in free enterprise -- count the Advertiser among them -- surely
can see that the profit motive and the function of prisons are ripe for
conflict. When a state deprives a
citizen of liberty for having violated its laws, it also assumes the
custody of that individual. That is a solemn responsibility. When an
individual is incarcerated for the protection of society, the state is not
absolved of the obligation to carry out that incarceration in a
constitutional manner. With a private prison, the pursuit of
profit invariably creates the temptation to cut corners, to skimp on
safety, personnel, medical attention, nutrition and other facets of the
operation. It's simply a bad mix of private-sector motives and
public-sector responsibilities. The merits of this particular suit will be
determined in court, but the inherent problems with private prisons are
something Alabama has to face. They are not an acceptable solution to
Alabama's prison problems in the long term, and even their short-term use
is questionable.
October 19, 2004 Daily Comet
An Alabama inmate is suing the state Department of Corrections and a
private prison company in Louisiana, claiming she was raped after being
shipped out of state due to a lack of space. The lawsuit, filed Oct. 1 in Louisiana federal court, claims
that guards at the South Louisiana Correctional Center sexually assaulted
at least two prisoners, including raping the woman who filed the suit, and
that the guards had sex with one another and played cards and drank beer
during the night shift. The four guards named in the lawsuit
have been fired. Also, an Evangeline Parish grand jury indicted them on
charges of malfeasance in office for sexual conduct prohibited for people
confined in a correctional institution. All four pleaded not guilty, The
Birmingham News reported Tuesday. The lawsuit claims that Alabama prison
Commissioner Donal Campbell failed to properly
investigate LCS before shipping Alabama women there and failed to implement
proper policies and procedures for the oversight of the contract. The
inmate who filed the suit claims she got no medical treatment after the
assault.
Soon after arriving at the South
Louisiana Correctional Center near Basile in 2003
inmate Gregory Lee died. Attorney Willie J. Nunnery, who is representing
Lee's mother, Mae Thompson Lee, is charging that the private, for-profit
prison abused and tortured him. Nunnery is seeking access to prisoners who allegedly witnessed
what happened to Lee and a reexamination of the forensic evidence. When
the charges where first filed, prison guards said Lee jumped off the top
bunk of his cell, hitting his head on the toilet. Nunnery, a civil rights
attorney, has a darker theory. He claims that following an altercation
after the evening meal, prison guards attempted to punish Lee by beating
him. Following the incident, Lee, badly injured from whatever cause, was
transferred to Elayn Hunt
Correctional Center , a state facility,
where he died several days later. Nunnery said he is in possession of
photographs taken when Lee arrived at Elayn Hunt.
"They were very barbaric pictures," Nunnery said. "If you
saw those pictures it would make your stomach turn." The Basile facility and another LCS private prison at Pine
Prairie have repeatedly made headlines recently with both female employees
and inmates bringing charges of sexual harassment against the company.
"I don't understand why there isn't any public outcry to have that
place shut down," Nunnery said. (Daily World, August 15, 2004)
Four guards who worked at the Basile
Detention Center in Evangeline Parish were indicted Friday for allegedly
having sexual contact with female inmates. An Evangeline Parish grand
jury indicted the four guards on charges of malfeasance in office for
sexual conduct prohibited for persons confined in a correctional
institution. Kenneth Stenson Sr., Horace
Edwards, Frank Lenoir and Jeffery Collins will be arraigned July 1 and will
face up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.The
indictments follow four days of testimony from investigators, prison guards
and 22 inmates at the south Louisiana correctional center. (AP, June
11, 2004)
Allegations of sexual contact between
security officers and female inmates from Alabama at a private prison in Basile are scheduled to be studied this week by a grand
jury. Two prison employees were fired after an internal investigation
into the allegations made by female inmates who were being held at the
South Louisiana Correctional Center. (AP, June 7, 2004)
A
grand jury is set to meet in June to decide whether criminal charges should
be pursued against guards at a private prison in Basile
accused of having sexual contact with inmates. The allegations, which arose last year, involve a
group of female inmates from Alabama that were being held at the South
Louisiana Correctional Center, owned by Lafayette-based LCS Corrections
Services. LCS Vice President Richard Harbison
said two employees at the Basile prison were
fired after an internal investigation of the allegations. The grand jury investigation into the allegations
at Basile comes after a former captain at LCS's
Pine Prairie facility was indicted earlier this year for allegedly hitting
an inmate and then trying to persuade three fellow corrections officers not
to cooperate in an investigation of the incident. (Advertiser, May
21, 2004)
A Louisiana district attorney says he will pursue
criminal charges against guards at a private prison over sexual contact
with inmates from Alabama, The Birmingham News reported. About 200
female prisoners from Alabama are being housed at the South Louisiana
Correctional Center, where they were transferred last year to help relieve
overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison for Women. The criminal case,
involving an incident late last year, is the result of an investigation
begun by the Alabama Department of Corrections. "There is
definite misconduct that did occur, and we will follow through with
it," Evangeline Parish District Attorney Brent Coreil
said Tuesday. He said he has not decided whether to file direct charges or
present a case to a grand jury. The Basile,
La., lockup is owned and operated by LCS Corrections, based in Lafayette,
La. Alabama pays the company about $23 per inmate per day to house the
women. "ADOC's investigation produced a confession from an
employee at South Louisiana Correctional Center, along with subsequent
termination of that employee. We then turned our investigative report over
to the local district attorney for prosecution," Alabama prisons
spokesman Brian Corbett said. (AP, April 7, 2004)
Investigators are looking into
allegations of illegal sexual contact between a female prisoner and a guard
at the Louisiana private prison housing prisoners from Alabama. This is the
second such investigation involving an Alabama inmate and an employee or
employees of Southeastern Louisiana Correctional Center, said Richard Harbison, general manager of LCS Corrections Services.
The Lafayette, La., company runs the prison housing about 275 Alabama
women. "We do have the district attorney involved in it," Harbison said Thursday. "Which
means we're taking it very seriously." (Al.com, February 13,
2004)
The mother of former South Louisiana Correctional Center
inmate Gregory Lee has filed a lawsuit alleging that Lee was beaten and
tortured before being transferred to Elayn Hunt
Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, where he died. The lawsuit was filed
Aug. 15 in U.S. District Court in Lafayette against Warden Gary Copes,
state Corrections Secretary Richard Stalder and
unnamed prison guards. Lee was incarcerated May 6 at the Basile facility to begin serving an eight-year sentence
for distribution of drugs, said Willie J. Nunnery, an attorney for Lee's
mother, Mae Thompson Lee. Sometime before June 17, "we believe he was
severely beaten and brutalized before he left Basile,"
(The Advocate, September 25, 2003)
Lawyer Bruce Rozas, who
was handling four sexual harassment cases against LCS Corrections Services
Inc., which operates private, for-profit prisons in Basile
and Pine Prairie, is now handling seven. "Following the media
coverage, I had three more women come to see me today," Rozas said Friday from his office in Mamou. He said the newest complaints date back to 1998,
all involving the same two officers named in his earlier Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission complaints on behalf of Maggie Dupre,
a nurse at South Louisiana Correctional Center near Basile,
and Sandra Whittington, a nurse at Pine Prairie Correctional Center. Dupre was fired this week after coming forward with her
complaints. According to Rozas, the new
complaints show the same pattern. He said two of his new clients, Carla T.
Zeno and Laurie Ardoin, both claim they were also
fired after making complaints about unwanted sexual advances by superior
officers. (Daily World, September 15, 2003)
The private Louisiana prison where Alabama sent
female inmates Monday was the scene of a riot, escapes and other problems
that led Idaho to remove its inmates five years ago. The problems occurred
at South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile,
La., which is operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. Alabama sent 70
female inmates to the prison on Monday and plans to send more, Department
of Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell said
Tuesday. Teresa Jones, public information officer for the Idaho Department
of Corrections, said Idaho transferred 300 inmates to the LCS prison in the
summer of 1997. In September 1997, five inmates escaped by cutting a hole
in a fence. Most were recaptured, but one remains at large eight years
later, Jones said. Idaho hired a monitor, who conducted an audit of the
prison. In an Oct. 2, 1997, report, he found the prison generally complied
with the terms of its contract with Idaho, but also cited problems. Among
them: A riot had occurred in July 1997; the warden was at the prison only
two days a week; some cells had the windows painted over with no natural
light; and staff training was inadequate. Jones said Idaho removed all of
its inmates by January 1998 and has not used LCS facilities since. (The
Montgomery Advertiser, April 16, 2003)
Authorities are saying the inmate who escaped
from the Basile Correctional Facility on Sunday
night is considered armed and dangerous. Gerald Matte of Eunice escaped
from the private prison Sunday night by overpowering a prison guard and
later stole a truck, which he abandoned near Mamou
Monday morning. An all-day search by more than 30 law enforcement officials
in the wooded area near where the truck was found turned up nothing. (The
Baton Rouge Advocate, June 29, 2001)
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Texas Legislature
Jan 23, 2015 breitbart.com
MCALLEN, Texas — Texas State
Representative Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) is denying any wrongdoing after
the former warden of a private prison on the Texas border was charged for
his alleged role in bribing a convicted Texas border judge in order to get
a bond lowered so that a Mexican drug smuggler could flee. Canales was the
attorney who represented the smuggler in court, and could still face
charges. Elberto Esiquiel
Bravo was the warden at the East Hidalgo Detention Center, a private prison
owned by LCS Corrections. Bravo is currently out on bond until his trial on
the charge of being an accessory to a felony. The charge stems from the
2010 arrest of Luis Martinez Gallegos, a Mexican drug trafficker who was in
the country illegally. Martinez had been caught by Texas border sheriff
deputies with 89 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records obtained
by Breitbart Texas. Bravo, another woman,
and a local attorney worked to get Martinez’s bond lowered so that federal
authorities could deport him before the case went federal, the criminal
complaint shows. Justice of the Peace Melo Ochoa
set Martinez’s bond at $2.5 million but after taking a bribe lowered the
bond to $50,000, allowing Martinez to be turned over to federal agents who
deported him to Mexico. As previously reported by Breitbart
Texas, Ochoa pleaded guilty last month to bribery charges and received a
probation sentence in exchange for his cooperation. While the criminal
complaint does not name the attorney, Canales told The Monitor newspaper
that he had been Martinez’s attorney. He admitted that he had gotten
Martinez a bond reduction, but insisted it was a basic procedure and he had
done nothing wrong. Canales has not been criminally charged in the case.
Canales’ attorney John Ball said the representative was innocent of any
wrongdoing and was ready to go to trial if charges were brought against
him.
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