55 Idaho prisoners on move again
BOISE – Fifty-five Idaho inmates who were moved out of a troubled Texas prison on Thursday have been forced by a contract delay to make a temporary stop before going to their final destination, a lockup near the Mexican border.
The prisoners being moved are bound for the Val Verde Correctional Facility in Del Rio, Texas, after more than a year at the Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur, Texas, where one Idaho inmate killed himself in March.
Because a Texas county official has yet to approve the contract to house Idaho prisoners at Val Verde, they have first been sent 100 miles away to the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas.
There, they will sleep in groups of up to 10 men on makeshift cots in day rooms until resolution of the contract allows them to complete the final 250-mile leg of their journey to Val Verde sometime in early January.
The inmates “were a bit dubious and questionable about that,” said Randy Blades, the warden in Boise who oversees Idaho’s out-of-state prisoners.
That’s one reason why his agency has sent two officers to make sure the move runs smoothly, Blades said.
Both the Dickens and Val Verde prisons are run by private operator GEO Group Inc., based in Boca Raton, Florida.
Pablo Paez, a spokesman for GEO, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
GEO no longer has the contract to manage the Dickens facility after Tuesday. Because Idaho recently rejected an offer from the new company that will run Dickens, GEO on Thursday had to move the Idaho inmates to temporary quarters in Littlefield.
Though Idaho officials thought details of the move to Val Verde had been resolved, Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said he learned only last week that a Texas county judge wanted a lawyer to look at the contract one last time.
“It was something we did not anticipate,” Reinke said. “GEO is paying the transport costs.”
This is just the latest uprooting of Idaho inmates since they were first shipped out of state in 2005. They have bounced from prison to prison in Minnesota and Texas amid allegations of abusive treatment. There also has been the criminal conviction of at least one Texas guard for passing contraband to inmates; at least two escapes; and the death of Scot Noble Payne, a convicted sex offender who slashed his throat last March in a solitary cell at Dickens County.
Idaho officials who investigated concluded the GEO-run prison was filthy and the worst they had seen.
As a result, about 70 Idaho inmates were moved from Dickens to Littlefield, where about 300 Idaho inmates were already housed, while the state continued talks with GEO over sending the remaining 55 to a new 659-bed addition at Val Verde.
Despite the stopover, GEO has a hefty incentive to make sure the move to Val Verde goes smoothly, Reinke said.
The company hopes to win contracts with Idaho to build a large new prison here to help accommodate the state’s 7,400 inmates.
“They’re really monitoring this closely and doing a good job at this point,” Reinke said. “It’s not a lot different than triple bunking.”