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December 30, 2006
Legislative bumbling is to blame for much of the prison problems
Letter published in Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, CO
Regarding The Daily Sentinel's story about exporting of 240 prisoners to Sayre, Oklahoma, this crisis is the direct result of malfeasance by Colorado legislators and officials.
A lack of nerve plus pandering to the fears of the public have resulted in increased sentences for Colorado prisoners and backward parole policies that keep many minor, non-dangerous offenders in prison for so long.
Along with TABOR, a deficit of DOC ethics and professionalism have kept Colorado from building its own prisons and the failure to properly monitor the performance of the for-profit lockups that were built in their place.
I predicted a riot would occur at the Crowley private prison months before it exploded in flames on July 20, 2004. Colorado officials blithely looked the other way, ignoring the same whistleblowers to which I’d been speaking for a year.
That riot cost taxpayers over $700,000, less than half of which the DOC recovered after it was finally forced to assess damages. It was the second such Crowley riot. The first required intervention of law enforcement from four states.
Recently, the Pueblo Chieftain editorialized, "Private prison plans for Pueblo have been declared dead as the result of a scathing state audit and other serious questions involving the proposed operator, Florida-based GEO Group. We say good riddance."
State Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo requested the audit, which found that a former state director of prisons, for $1 million, was helping GEO to get a contract for a private prison in Weld County while he still was employed by the state.
The Crowley warden went to Sayre, Okla., the destination of the Colorado inmates. It was closed for years after Wisconsin withdrew its prisoners because they were deprived family contact.
FRANK SMITH, National Field Director Private Corrections Institute Bluff City, Kan.
http://www.gjsentinel.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2006/12/24/12_24_06_letters.html
Posted by lois at December 30, 2006 11:05 AM