Correction director reports Texas prison measures up

BOISE – A new private Texas prison to which Idaho hopes to transfer 56 inmates from a problem-ridden facility turned out to be a “pleasant surprise,” Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said after a visit this week.

Reinke wants to move the Idaho prisoners next month to a new 659-bed addition at the Val Verde Correctional Facility and Jail in Del Rio, Texas, from the Dickens County Correction Center in Spur, Texas. Both prisons are run by Florida-based private prison operator the GEO Group.

Problems at Dickens, including decrepit conditions, lack of treatment and education programs and an Idaho inmate’s suicide, prompted this planned move to Val Verde, which, like Dickens, would cost Idaho about $54 per inmate daily.

Idaho, which has about 400 additional inmates at Texas facilities, first moved prisoners to other states in 2005 to relieve overcrowding at home prisons where more than 7,000 inmates are quickly running out of space.

Reinke, who visited the Val Verde prison Thursday to make sure it met Idaho standards, said he’s optimistic it will be an appropriate place to house inmates for as long as three years, by which time the state hopes to have enough new prison capacity to bring all its inmates back home.

“It was a pleasant surprise,” said Reinke, reached by cell phone Friday on his return from Del Rio. “The facility is in excellent condition because it’s new.”

Val Verde County has been forced to hire a full-time prison monitor to keep watch on prison operations as part of a recent settlement with the family of a female Texas prisoner who killed herself at the Val Verde facility in 2004 following allegations she was sexually humiliated by a guard and raped by another inmate.

Reinke said he met the monitor – whose first day on the job was Thursday – and was pleased with the arrangement.