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Prison Firm: Brutality Shouldn’t Affect Bid Business Seeking Idaho Job Loses Missouri Inmates At Texas Jail

Associated Press

An executive for the contractor involved in alleged incidents of brutality at a Texas jail said Wednesday that the controversy should not affect a bid to build and operate a private prison in Idaho.

“I certainly hope and think not,” Bob Prince, vice president of marketing and development for Capital Correctional Resources Inc., said from his office in Groesbeck, Texas.

Capital Correctional Resources is one of nine companies bidding to run a 1,250-bed prison south of Boise. Idaho’s first such private institution is planned as a way to help reduce crowding in the state prison system.

Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Mark Carnopis said the company remains in the running. But now its bid must overcome a controversy that prompted Missouri officials this week to terminate a $6 million jail contract to house inmates at the Brazoria County Detention Center in Angleton, Texas.

It is expected to be about a month before Correction Department officials pare down the prospective contractors to an undetermined number of finalists, based primarily on the bids themselves, Carnopis said.

“Further on in the process we’ll be doing extensive reviews of their operations and facilities,” he said.

In Texas, guards in the area of the Angleton detention center leased by Capital Correctional Resources for out-of-state inmates were videotaped last fall using stun guns, dogs and kicks to subdue Missouri prisoners.

One of the guards, Wilton David Wallace, was a Capital Correctional Resources employee who pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor for beating a Texas state inmate with a riot baton in September 1983, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials said Wednesday.

Wallace was sentenced to six months in a federal jail.

Prince and Dennis Walker, security director for Capital Correctional Resources, said the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Department made the decision to hire Wallace and all other personnel employed as guards by the company.

“We screen and get applicants. The final approval is up to the sheriff’s office,” Walker said.

He was unsure why Wallace was hired and Prince declined further comment, citing a pending lawsuit against the company.

The FBI is investigating possible civil rights violations in connection with the manhandling of Missouri inmates at the detention center about 40 miles south of Houston.

A 32-minute videotape of the incident reportedly was made by a sheriff’s deputy for training purposes after a jailer said he smelled marijuana in an inmate housing area. It surfaced as part of a lawsuit.

The Missouri Department of Corrections plans to have all 415 of the inmates it had placed in Brazoria County out of the Texas jail by week’s end.

Idaho has been contracting with the Frio County Detention Center in Pearsall, Texas, about 60 miles south of San Antonio, to hold 248 inmates since last spring. That jail is operated by Sarasota, Fla.-based Correctional Services Corp., another of the companies bidding for the Idaho prison job.

No Idaho inmates are at the Brazoria County facility.

Prince said Capital Correctional Resources operates separate facilities or leases portions of jails in four Texas counties. The Idaho prison would be the company’s first venture outside the state.

The earliest it could open would be the summer of 1999.

A few months ago, Oklahoma officials began gradually bringing home the 560 inmates it had at the Limestone County Detention Facility, which Capital Correctional Resources operates in Groesbeck. They said they were concerned about the frequency with which its prisoners were being controlled with pepper spray.