The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

She also blames Idaho and The GEO Group, Inc. — the Florida-based private prison company that runs the Dickens County prison in Spur, Texas, where her son slashed his throat — for neglecting to monitor deteriorating conditions that Idaho officials now concede may have contributed to his suicide. Payne, 43, a convicted sex offender, was kept alone for months in a cell with a constantly wet floor, bloodstained sheets and smelly towels.

"It's what I have found out about GEO, the filth, and people being taken away from their families," Shirley Noble told The Associated Press about her reasons for testifying. "They can't afford the fares to go visit. They can't afford the excess telephone bills."

After Payne's death, Idaho Department of Correction officials investigated and called Dickens the worst prison they'd ever seen. The state has until early November to respond to Noble's claim. She said she'll sue if Idaho doesn't settle.

Separately, she said she's working with a Laredo, Texas-based lawyer, Ron Rodriguez. In 2006, he won a $47.5 million verdict against Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which became GEO, on claims it destroyed evidence in an inmate's beating death.

Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, called Friday's hearing just as scrutiny of GEO in his state is intensifying. Texas closed the 200-bed Coke County Juvenile Center, run by GEO, and canceled the state contract for the facility last week over shortcomings such as dirty bed sheets, feces-smeared cells and insects in the food — despite the presence of state monitors.

According to a Texas state report, the company downplayed the conditions there; afterward, its lobbyists tried to pressure legislators to reinstate its contract.

"I look forward to reports, good or bad, on how well out-of-state inmates are being monitored," Whitmire told the AP on Wednesday. "Just because they are from out-of-state doesn't reduce the responsibility of the state of Texas to run safe facilities. If corporations and the communities they're in partnership with are not going to do it properly, they ought to be out of the business."

GEO spokesman Pablo Paez didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Since Payne's death at Dickens, Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke has revamped his agency's monitoring of out-of-state prisoners.

But he missed a September deadline to send 56 prisoners who remain at Dickens to another GEO prison near the Texas-Mexico border, amid unresolved contract differences. Reinke said he still hopes to transfer them later this fall.

Idaho is expected to have nearly 10,000 prisoners by 2012, up from 7,300 now. A consultant this year said the state must spend $1 billion on new prisons over the next decade. So far, the Legislature has approved funding for 648 new beds, including 400 at a proposed drug-treatment prison. There are also separate plans for nearly 700 more beds, including about 400 south of Boise and 300 at a proposed prison for mentally ill inmates.

In addition, Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter favors a proposal in which private companies such as GEO or Tennessee-based Correction Corp. of America could build and run a new Idaho prison with space for as many as 2,500 inmates — including inmates sent here from other states to bolster the companies' profits.

Still, lawmakers and Otter differ over how much control Idaho should cede over its inmates to private industry, setting up a debate that could dominate the 2008 Legislature.

"We're setting the stage for a policy discussion between the governor and the Legislature for which of those options they want DOC to pursue," Reinke told the AP.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5204502.html