More Idaho inmates sought for Texas prison

BOISE – A company that’s due to take over a troubled privately run Texas prison in 2008 made a sales pitch Monday to Idaho Department of Correction officials, saying it hopes the management shake-up and $1.2 million in proposed renovations will overshadow past problems and persuade Idaho to ship more inmates to the lockup.

Civigenics, a unit of New Jersey-based Community Education Centers Inc., with prisons or treatment programs in 23 states, will manage Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur, Texas, starting Jan. 1 after winning a competitive bid.

Until now, The GEO Group Inc., based in Florida, ran the facility.

In March, Idaho prison officials called Dickens under GEO’s oversight “the worst” prison they’d seen, citing what they called an abusive warden, the lack of treatment programs and squalid conditions they said may have contributed to the suicide of inmate Scot Noble Payne, who was held for months in a solitary cell.

Idaho is nearly ready to move 54 prisoners who remain at Dickens to a new GEO-run facility near the Mexican border, after shifting 69 inmates elsewhere this summer.

Dickens County and Civigenics officials came to Boise to offer assurances they’ll remedy concerns over their 15-year-old prison as they aim to stay in the running to house some of the hundreds of prisoners that Idaho plans to ship elsewhere in coming months to ease overcrowding. Some 550 of Idaho’s 7,400 inmates have been sent out of state since 2005.

Idaho plans to send 120 additional prisoners to a private prison in Oklahoma in January. It’s also looking for space in other states for groups of inmates in increments of about 100 starting in mid-2008.

Bob Prince, a Civigenics salesman, said his company could house as many as 150 Idaho inmates at a revamped Dickens.

The $1.2 million from Dickens County, which owns the prison, would cover new fencing, exterior lighting, security improvements, kitchen renovations and more rooms for education and treatment programs.

Still, Idaho officials including Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke indicated the plan may not be enough to address complaints that have prompted him to vacate Dickens.

Despite past problems with GEO, Blades said Idaho aims to soon finalize a contract with that company to move inmates still at Dickens to a new 659-bed addition at the Val Verde Correctional Facility, near the Mexican border. That contract also calls for roughly 40 inmates currently in Idaho to be sent to Val Verde.