Legislative Alert: HEAR THE PRIVATE PRISON BILLS!!!

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE (AFSC) - Tucson
ACTION ALERT

Tell Reps. Weiers and Mesnard to Hear Private Prison Bills!

FACT:  Private prisons in Arizona are not saving the state money

FACT:  Private prisons are not safer or providing better quality than state prisons

FACT:  Private prisons are unaccountable to Arizona taxpayers


Unfortunately, the attitude of state lawmakers is, “don’t bother me with the facts.”

There are 6 private prisons, all operated by Corrections Corporation of America, that are located in Arizona that do not contract with the state.  They take prisoners from other states, like California and Hawaii, and immigrant detainees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  There is practically no state oversight over these prisons.  Rep. Chad Campbell (D-14) has introduced 6 bills that would impose transparency, accountability, and state regulation onto private prisons in Arizona.

Despite the horrific escapes from the Kingman prison in 2010, recommendations by the Auditor General, and testimony heard by legislative committees, these bills face serious obstacles to passage.  The House Speaker has assigned them to two committees, plus Rules.  The bills must pass out of their first committee by February 17th or they are effectively dead.


The first committee is Commerce.  The Chair is Rep. Jim Weiers and the Vice Chair is Rep. JD Mesnard.  So far, they have refused to put these bills on the agenda for a hearing.

Why wouldn’t they want private prisons to be required to notify the state if there is an incident that threatens public health or safety (HB2204)?
Why wouldn’t they want Arizona to prohibit transfer of serious or violent offenders from other states (HB2204)?
Why wouldn’t they want state monitoring and oversight of private prisons (HB2205 & HB2299)?

Why wouldn’t they want private prison’s records made public (HB 2203)?

Take Action!  Tell Reps. Weiers and Mesnard to HEAR THE PRIVATE PRISON BILLS!

The deadline for bills to be heard in their first committee is February 17th.  CALL TODAY!

Please call, email, or fax the Chair of the House Commerce Committee, Rep. Jim Weiers,  jweiers@azleg.gov;  Phone Number: (602) 926-4173

And the Vice Chair, Rep. JD Mesnard, jmesnard@azleg.gov ; Phone Number: (602) 926-4481

Ask them to put these bills on the agenda for Commerce Committee:

HB 2202 Private prisons; prisoner; facility; limits
HB 2203 Private prison contractors; public records
HB 2204 Private prisons; regulation
HB 2205 Auditor General; private prison monitoring
HB 2206 Private prisons; prisoner transfer; prohibition
HB 2299 Private prison study committee

Private Prisons in Arizona Need Oversight and Accountability Because:

Arizona should have the right to tell private prison companies like CCA that they can’t import dangerous or violent offenders from other states.
Arizona taxpayers are shelling out millions for private prisons every year.  We deserve to know what kind of return we’re getting on our investment.
Prisons are fundamentally about public safety.  

Our communities should be assured that these facilities are safe,
and the public should be notified when there are incidents like escapes or riots.

**If you can blind copy or cc us, we will have a better idea how effective this initiative is.  If you receive responses, even boiler-plate ones, please forward those to us, if possible.

Caroline Isaacs,
Program Director,
American Friends Service Committee, Arizona Area Program
103 N. Park Ave., Ste. 111
Tucson, AZ  85719
520.623.9141
www.afsc.org/tucson
CIsaacs@afsc.org

Check out our blog:  www.tucsoncitizen.com/cell-out-arizona
And join us on facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=177122610652&ref=ts

AZ Auditor General's report on private prison security

Here's the AZ Auditor Generals' website, the link to the report highlights, and the link to the full report. Thanks to Bob Ortega for staying on top of developments around the Arizona's prison privatization debacle...

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Arizona prison safety lacking, report says

Auditor finds flaws but notes progress

by Bob Ortega - Sept. 24, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Arizona's Department of Corrections needs to do more to improve security at private-contract and state-run prisons, a report released Friday by the state's auditor general concludes.

The report credits the department with making many significant improvements since the July 2010 escapes of three prisoners from the Kingman prison.

These improvements include revamping the state's monitoring and inspection programs, which had failed to detect obvious security flaws at Kingman before the escapes; new, tougher annual audits of each prison; better security and reporting requirements in new contracts; and stiffer requirements and better training for state monitors who oversee private prisons.

The audit called for further steps to address ongoing security problems.

On their visits to several state prisons between December and May, auditors noted instances of correctional officers failing to pat down inmates properly when they were being moved, failing to inspect personal property and food items that were brought into prisons by employees and contractors, failing to adequately inventory tools, and failing to require inmates to wear their IDs. These issues also had been noted by the department's own inspectors, as previously reported by The Arizona Republic.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan, in a written response, didn't dispute the issues raised by the auditors, though he stated that, according to the department's data, "over 93 percent of the time policies and procedures are followed and no violations are found." But Ryan agreed with all of the audit's recommendations, which included:

- Carrying out a biannual comparison of private and state-run prison services, as required by state law. As The Republic has reported, Corrections has never conducted this comparison, but Ryan said the department designed its new inspection program with this comparison in mind and will complete its first such study next month.

- Continuing to develop and carry out formal training for contract-monitoring staff. Ryan said the first such training, lasting 32 hours, was conducted this week.

- Using the new inspection process to identify systemic or ongoing security issues and analyze ways to address them across the prison system, whether by training, making written orders known as "post orders" more consistent, or improving supervision.

- Giving supervisors more leadership training as part of their required annual training.

The audit also noted that Corrections spent more than $29 million on overtime and compensatory leave last fiscal year, to cover for staff shortages. Ryan asked to add 306 officer positions this fiscal year but didn't receive the funding for them, though Corrections was the sole department to see its budget rise from the prior fiscal year.

The auditors noted that, before the Kingman escapes, Corrections' annual audits of each prison were conducted by officers at other prisons, creating a "quid pro quo" culture in which officers reviewing each other had incentives not to report problems. Now, those audits are conducted by the department's Inspector General's Office.

And although the department plans to impose tougher security and reporting requirements in contracts for up to 5,000 prison beds it is now evaluating, it said it can't impose those requirements on existing private-prison contracts until they come up for renewal or are rebid.

Chuck Ryan and prison insecurity...

Maybe I missed this, but was there no mention of ASPC-Tucson's Christmas Day escape attempt in this article about state prison security? Nor any mention of the skyrocketing homicide rates in the state prisons under Chuck Ryan's management? Nor any reference to the vote of no confidence in ADC leadership by the correctional officer's union in November due in part to their safety concerns?

Hmm. Wonder where the Republic gets all their information from...looks like the PR wing of the ADC itself is their main source of insight. No wonder.

-------------Arizona Republic----------------

Security lapses found at all of Arizona's prisons

Bob Ortega
Arizona Republic

June 26, 2011

The same kinds of serious security lapses that led to the escape last July of three prisoners from the Kingman state prison have been and continue to be found at the 14 other Arizona state and private prisons, according to interviews, audits, correspondence and other documents obtained by The Arizona Republic.

The failures include faulty alarm systems, holes under fences big enough to crawl through, broken perimeter lights and cameras, and scores of poor security practices across the board by state and private corrections officers and managers.

While Corrections Director Charles Ryan says the department is correcting these problems, it seems to be doing so on a piecemeal basis as they're found; and there is no evidence that wardens or senior managers, aside from those at Kingman itself, are being held accountable to address or prevent security issues.

Though he didn't say so publicly, within days of the Kingman escapes on July 30, 2010, Ryan ordered a security review of every state facility: the two run by Utah-based Management & Training Corp., including Kingman; the three run by Florida-based Geo Group; and the 10 operated directly by his department. Those reviews, obtained by The Republic through public-records requests, show security problems run across the entire system.

Among the more damning findings were large holes under the razor-wire fencing and blind spots at the Florence, Eyman and Douglas state prisons; constant false alarms going unchecked at Perryville; alarms at Yuma's Cibola unit that often were missed or went unchecked because they sounded the same as the call buttons that officers pushed to get in and out of buildings. There were long gaps between patrols of the perimeter fence at Yuma. At all of the state prisons, officers up to the deputy-warden level admitted they didn't understand their perimeter-security systems well, according to an Aug. 20, 2010, internal memorandum by Ivan Bartos, regional operations director.

At the three Geo prisons - Florence West, Phoenix West and the Central Arizona Correctional Facility - Corrections Department inspectors found such issues as inmates having access to a control panel that could open emergency exits; an alarm system that didn't ring properly when doors were opened or left ajar; and that staff didn't carry out such basic security practices as searching commissary trucks and drivers, among many other failures.

At MTC's Marana prison, there were broken monitors, a control-room panel that didn't work, missing perimeter lights, missing razor wire, missing visitor passes. Marana's swamp coolers - in August, in Arizona - weren't working, making it hotter inside the prison buildings than outside.

The inspectors made a slew of recommendations, focused on repairing or replacing broken equipment and on training staff. Ryan sent these to Geo and MTC, and to wardens at the state-run prisons.

Geo declined comment on how it responded, saying in writing only that its facilities "adhere to contractual requirements and standards set by our clients."

In a written reply, MTC listed 16 changes it made or says it is making to improve security, including replacing the control panel and enforcing medium-security standards even though Marana holds only minimum-security inmates. It also fixed the swamp coolers.

Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson, said reinspections show Geo and MTC have addressed these issues.

After the August reviews, Ryan ordered new, tougher audits. And the more they looked, the more problems inspectors discovered.

At the Lewis state prison, in January 2011 - five months after the Kingman escapes and the August security review - auditors found holes under the fence "big enough for a person to crawl through unimpeded."

They also found areas where someone could cross the perimeter without activating the alarms; one captain said he had tried to report the problem and had been told to keep quiet. Some zone lights along the perimeter had been out for months. "Count boards," used to identify prisoners, were missing 137 photos; most inmates weren't wearing IDs, and there were dozens of fundamental security failures, including such basics as properly searching visitors and staff.

In February 2011, auditors found equally worrisome issues at the Yuma prison: problems with the alarm and control systems; lights randomly shutting off; monitoring cameras that had been broken for five months; staff uniforms and tools stored in rooms accessible to unsupervised inmates; areas where visitors could approach the fence and throw things over unseen; and the same litany of failures to properly search people or carry out other basic security practices.

Corrections spokesman Marson said equipment issues identified in these two audits have been fixed, and that, as necessary, staffers at those two prisons have been retrained. Asked whether such flaws should have been apparent to wardens and senior officers and addressed sooner, Marson replied that "it was determined that the findings did not relate to 'top-down administrative failings.' "

Corrections critics say it shouldn't be surprising that security has been lax systemwide.

"They know about these problems; they've known about them for years," said Caroline Isaacs, who monitors prisons for the American Friends Service Committee, in Tucson, which advocates for alternatives to incarceration. Especially at private prisons, department officials have tended to avoid delving into problems they come across because they don't want to deal with it, Isaacs said.

"These kinds of issues go on in both private and state prisons - lack of training, sometimes poor leadership, alarms that go off constantly. People become complacent, and that's when problems happen," says Tom Jones, a Florida attorney and former quality-assurance manager at Corrections Corporation of America, the country's largest private-prison operator. "You need a very active, very good monitoring plan, and you must carry it out. With private prisons, you have to have a contract that allows you to fix things when they're broken. . . . You need to do unannounced inspections."

Ryan said, "That was the most telling thing at Kingman, the complacency of the staff."

But Ryan also concedes that the problems go well beyond Kingman. He says he noted a change in the culture of the Department of Corrections when he returned as acting director in January 2009.

He had retired in 2003 after more than 25 years in the department. Then he served in Baghdad as part of a team overseeing the Iraqi prison system - including Abu Ghraib - for nearly four years. Ryan played no part in and appears not to have known about the abuses in the separate section of Abu Ghraib run by the U.S. military, according to a 2005 report by the Department of Justice's inspector general.

"One thing I recognized after I came back" to Arizona, said Ryan, "were major incidents occurring that I'd ascribe to complacency." These included an escape attempt, assaults on staff and the death of Marsha Powell. A Perryville prison inmate, Powell died May 20, 2009, after being left for four hours the day before in an 107-degree outdoor cage without shade, food or water.

To combat that complacency, even before the Kingman escapes, Ryan instituted a policy requiring officers to rotate to different units every three years. That move continues to draw bitter complaints from staff posting anonymously on Corrections blogs.

As the department's audits of other prisons continue, Marson said, one other state monitor has been reassigned and replaced with a more seasoned deputy warden. He did not identify any structural changes other than at Kingman.

Ryan says he sees two defining moments in the history of the department. The first was the 1978 escape of two murderers from a lower-custody unit at Florence. They killed six people. That incident led to sweeping changes in how inmates were classified, and reduced the autonomy of wardens.

The second moment was the murder of correctional Officer Brent Lumley on March 7, 1997, at a unit in the Perryville prison. According to Ryan, that incident led to changes meant to place more priority on protecting prison staff and controlling inmate movement.

As in those two "defining moments," the Kingman escapes and murders of Gary and Linda Haas revealed systemwide issues that Corrections continues to address nearly a year later.

Private Prisons: Race, Criminalization, Cooptation and the Profit Motive

This well-researched video was produced by a comrade ("sally darity"), who blogs at Chaparral Respects No Borders - she's a brilliant, thoughtful area activist and artist. Any community considering building a prison in their hometown should first give some thought to what you learn here...

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GEO Group, the Townwrecker: NPR, Part II.

Signs of the Times: "Homes not Prisons"
Phoenix Public Library, Central St. Bus Stop.
November 15, 2010.

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Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble

by John Burnett

March 28, 2011

NPR

Second in a two-part series on private prisons

The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in the prison business.

More From This NPR News Investigation

Part 1: Town Relies On Troubled Youth Prison For Profits

Are profits distorting the mission of rehabilitating inmates at Mississippi's Walnut Grove prison?

What Is GEO Group?

It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

A Hard Sell

"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis good-naturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour.

John Burnett/NPR

The 372-bed Bill Clayton Detention Center is a medium-security prison that is currently sitting empty in Littlefield, Texas.

For sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and five living pods.

Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk beds and stainless-steel furniture.

"You can see the facility here. [It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint, it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale.

For the past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city.

A Resident Burden

Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of Littlefield?

"Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well, today that would probably be the case," Davis says.

To avoid defaulting on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still, the city's bond rating has tanked.

The village elders drinking coffee at the White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.

"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they left us ... "

"... Holdin' the bag!" says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence.

The Declining Prison Population

The same thing has happened to communities across Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over.

Some prisons are struggling outside Texas, too.

Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled out its 700 inmates.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

The Texas Legislature, looking for budget cuts, is contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

"Too many times we've seen jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to make money off of it and they end up fallin' on their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the commission.

The packages look sweet. A town gets a new detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates pay off the debt and generate extra revenue.

The economic model works fine until they can't find inmates.

In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now decline to comment on it.

Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success of the facility."

Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants — James Parkey and Herb Bristow — declined repeated requests for interviews.

The Inmate Market

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

Private prison companies insist their future is sunny.

A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across the country.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong, particularly for federal immigration detainees.

New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across Texas, issued a statement that "the current [jail] population fluctuation" is cyclical.

One of the places where CEC is canceling its contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate, we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those beds," he said.

Another place where they're desperate for inmates is Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The county's Public Facility Corp., which borrowed the money to build the lockups, owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to sweat.

"The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project. And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says.

Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30 million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal.

"When you put the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent.

When the supply of prison beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries.

The overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other underoccupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston.

"It really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our size," says Capt. Robin Konetzke, who is in charge of inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're getting good deals."

Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the newest commodities of the volatile inmate market.

Mose Buchele, of member station KUT, and Aarti Shahani contributed to this NPR News investigation and report

Casslyn Welch: Pleading guilt v. taking responsibility.

Below is the Washington Post's coverage of Casslyn Welch's guilty plea for her role in this summer's Kingman Prison escape, along with the comment left at the end by private prison expert, Frank Smith. He's right on the money about the whole bungled affair (and reporting - don't take this article at face value). And really, though she may not have intended things to unfold as they did, for her part Cassie should have foreseen the probability of violence and injury to someone as a result of her actions, given who she helped spring.


That said, I should add that Cassie's articulated that she accepts responsibility for the hurt and grief she's caused, regretting that it can't be undone. That will probably get me hate mail for saying, because of how profound that injury is, but I think the government put out sufficient propaganda compromising her due process from day one of the escape by sensationalizing the extent of an Aryan Brotherhood connection with Charlie, and their supposed romance-between-first-cousins, that I'm not giving her an undue PR advantage. The worse she looks, the better ADC Director Chuck Ryan looks - he can divert attention from the fact that he let Kingman prison get so bad on his watch.


Cassie didn't initiate the contact with me, anyway, or ask me to print anything on her behalf. She was writing in response to my letter to her expressing concerns that I'd heard she wasn't getting her mail. I observed that it also appeared as if she wasn't getting as vigorous a defense as the US Constitution requires, but it turns out that she just doesn't want to put up a fight. I actually gave her an open door, a loaded cannon, and the ACLU's address to lodge a complaint about the conditions of her confinement or the quality of her defense, if she wanted to, but she politely declined any help, and is planning to quietly do her time; I expect to see a guilty plea in New Mexico, too.


This woman wasn't offering her remorse for media consumption, nor do I want to contribute to the frenzy - and glamour - around this case. My bet is she'd rather I leave it alone, frankly. I think she honestly feels she can't justify that what she did led to the murders of the Haas couple, and is ashamed that anyone tries to defend her; it's as if arguing for a "fair" trial seems inappropriate to her.


A few days after writing me back saying she didn't need my help, though, Cassie took the time and postage to refer another prisoner to me - a young woman who's actually facing even worse trouble for the actions of an abusive partner...I'll probably be posting on that soon. That was right before she entered this plea below.

So, thanks for looking out for the others there, Cassie. There will be more women in need along the path you've taken, so take care of yourself; you owe the community and grieving families your service, at the least, anyway. There are people who have lost their loved ones in prison recently, due to violence or neglect, who will appreciate what you did for the most reviled mother in this state - as will the families of our prisoners who are still living. You'll have your hands full if you plan to help other women like her in prison - let me know if you think I can help.

That goes for the rest of you in there, too. Cassie stood up for a woman accused of a pretty hideous crime, inviting further animosity from the public and prosecutors at potential risk to herself. That lack of self-interest tells me she's probably sincere.


Don't mistake your plea of guilt for taking responsibility for having harmed others, if you have, folks: let go of the pettiness of prison's minor inconveniences, and do something to help someone else in greater need - including stepping in the line of fire in a losing battle, if it's the right side, and in some cases defending your own rights yourself. In prison, if you don't fight back against the oppression, chances are you'll die waiting for someone who will. How far we advance human rights in the prisons in the next few years will depend a lot more on prisoners like Cassie Welch taking risks than on agitation by free women like me...

So, if you really want to fight power, prisoners,
don't just take a swing, run away, or tell them where to go -
grieve it it right, and write to me instead.

Peggy Plews

Arizona Prison Watch

PO Box 20494

Phoenix, AZ 85036

prisonabolitionist@gmail.com

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Woman accused of aiding inmate trio escape, NM couple’s deaths pleads guilty to Ariz. charges

Washington Post
April 12, 2011
AP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/woman-accused-of-aiding-inmate-trio-escape-nm-couples-deaths-pleads-guilty-to-ariz-charges/2011/04/12/AFFPY2RD_story.html#weighIn

By Associated Press, Tuesday, April 12

KINGMAN, Ariz. — The cousin of an Arizona inmate pleaded guilty Tuesday to state charges of helping him and two other men flee a state prison, but she still faces federal charges in the deaths of an Oklahoma couple who authorities say were killed during the escapees’ run from the law.

Casslyn Welch, 44, entered her plea before Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn, who said he would sentence her after she resolves the pending federal charges. The judge ordered the sentence to be served concurrently with any federal sentence if Welch is convicted.

Under a plea agreement with Arizona prosecutors, Welch will receive 20 years in prison on an escape charge and two counts of armed robbery. Prosecutors agreed to drop kidnapping and aggravated assault charges stemming from the prison break last July, and also dismissed six drug charges in a separate case.

“That’s a good resolution,” said prosecutor Victoria Stazio.

Welch’s attorney declined to comment following the hearing.

Welch is charged in New Mexico on federal carjacking and murder counts relating to the deaths of the couple, whose remains were found in New Mexico. Welch was expected to be transported to that state, where she has an initial hearing Monday in Albuquerque.

Welch previously pleaded not guilty to the Arizona charges from the escape, which sparked a nationwide manhunt. On Tuesday, she acknowledged throwing cutting tools onto the grounds of the medium-security prison near Kingman, which allowed John McCluskey, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick to break through a perimeter fence and flee into the desert.

Welch, who is McCluskey’s fiancée and cousin, also admitted to supplying them with guns and money, and Renwick with a get-away vehicle.

Province, McCluskey and Welch found themselves without transportation and hijacked a semi-truck at gunpoint near Kingman, forcing the drivers to take them to Flagstaff. Prosecutors say the three also targeted Gary and Linda Haas, of Tecumseh, Okla., at a rest stop in New Mexico for the couple’s camping trailer. The Haases were taken to a remote ranch where they were shot.

Renwick was captured first after a police shootout in western Colorado, followed by Province. Welch and McCluskey were arrested later at an eastern Arizona campsite.

Welch and Province have pleaded guilty to armed robbery. Neither is listed as witnesses in the Arizona trial of McCluskey, who has pleaded not guilty.

Welch’s drug charges arose from a prison visit last June. Authorities said she lost her visitation rights, but not her phone privileges, when a vehicle search turned up marijuana, heroin and drug paraphernalia.

Welch wasn’t immediately jailed after the search because sheriff’s officials said she agreed to be a drug informant. She was charged following the prison escape with six counts of narcotics violations.

Province was sentenced to more than 38 years on the escape charges, but a judge acknowledged it meant little because Province already was serving a life sentence for prior crimes.

Renwick, who was serving time in Arizona for murder, faces three counts of attempted murder in Colorado.

(Here's the real story...)

fsmith3 wrote:

"The prison corporation, the prison builder and the state of Arizona are being sued by the bereaved family of the Oklahoma victims, for $40 million.·

How can the reporter fail to mention that this escape was from a for-profit prison, operated by Management and Training Corporation of Salt Lake City, Utah?

After the escape, the MTC founder, Bob Marquardt, claimed that this was the corporation's "first major glitch."

Apparently the dozen or more prior escapes they'd experienced, the frequent riots and murders, don't count as "major glitches." Anyone who cares to can watch the YouTube video of two of those murders during a riot at an MTC California prison.

Google: Eagle Mountain/Private Prison Riot gone bad

The AP reporter in this case has chronically repeated mistakes of fact.

This couple was not "taken to a remote ranch and shot." They were shot in their trailer alongside I-44. When the carjackers drove their truck and camper to a filling station they realized blood was running out the door, so they drove to Santa Rosa, NM, then on to rural Colonias, 25 miles north. On a remote ranch, the trailer was detached from their pickup, doused with alcohol, and their remains were cremated inside the trailer after their dogs were freed and watered.

The escapees and their accomplice, Welch, did not "force the drivers to take them to Flagstaff." Welch and McCluskey drove the semi themselves. They voted on whether or not to kill the east Indian drivers, and Welch and Province spared their lives.

The real story is prodigious incompetence, which the AP reporter, Felicia Fonseca, somehow avoids.

The killers never should have been moved to the cracker box Kingman for-profit prison in the first place. They were clearly incapable of handling such security risks. Two were lifers, the third had two fifteen year sentences and a Pennsylvania parole hold. At least two were white supremacists, "security threat group" members who were again well beyond the capacity of the high turnover, poorly trained, paid and chosen staff to manage.

The state also ignored the blatant malfunctioning of the alarm system which never worked well and hadn't been repaired in years. The state's monitors ignored such obvious problems, it's hard to imagine that they were not doing exactly as they had been expected to do. The alarms, for instance, went off scores of times during the 16 hours before the escape, so the green employees ignored them.

The Governor has been trying to shift the blame to her predecessor and director of corrections who preceded her appointee. That simply won't wash. She has taken substantial campaign funding and support from the prison industry which explains the failures of oversight.

The for-profit staff couldn't count properly, so didn't know the escapees were gone for about 2 1/2 hours, were still unable to identify the fugitives, gave inadequate notice to the Mohave County Sheriff's Office and finally delayed notice to the state Department of Corrections for another 80 minutes. The media may not have been alerted until 12 hours after the escape.

The Mohave Sheriff never should have released Welch. Her arrest was widely known, as was her release. Because of that, her cousin would have been quickly marked for a hit by her suppliers. He was almost forced to escape.

The pursuit was lackadaisical. Close relatives and friends of the escapees were not contacted until five days after the escape, in clear disregard of professional correctional policy. By then one had been captured in a Colorado shootout, the other three had gone to Texas, reversed direction to Billings, Montana, and finally the cousins went all the way to Pennsylvania before returning to Arizona."

More prisoners bound for Kingman; no legislative oversight in place.

I hope the ADC does a better job of monitoring their contract than they have been - people seem to forget that this place fell apart after nearly two years of business-as-usual under Ryan before those escapes. I think Central Office fell down on the job as much as the people of Kingman running that place did. The legislature didn't have the courage to put better oversight mechanisms in place, either, despite the escape.

WHAT is wrong with those people, anyway?

The next family who sues the state after the Haas' are done with us will have a whole body of people to blame, now, who were willfully indifferent to the safety of both the surrounding community and the staff and prisoners inside these places. Looking at how the rest of Arizona's private prisons are running, the next suit will probably be the survivor of a prisoner who gets murdered by another prisoner, or raped and beaten by guards, like what's been happening in CCA's Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy.

Of course, they aren't doing that much better in the state prisons, either. They need some serious legislative oversight, folks.

Chuck Ryan's tone in this press release is a little self-righteous: the ADC just had their own escape attempt at ASPC-Tucson on Christmas Day that no one likes to talk about. One guy was on the roof and the other was cutting through a fence when they got caught. We didn't see a big public investigation of their security protocol there.

It doesn't bode well that the only people we can really market to private prisons anymore are non-violent offenders and immigrants. That means CCA, GEO et al - as well as all these private prison towns that will need a constant supply of warm bodies to fill their cells -- will be lobbying for more punitive sentencing laws for drug, property and immigration offenses, so we can fill all the new beds we're giving the industry. Doesn't it alarm folks that no one has any incentive to actually bring down crime rates in this state?

Our government is getter bigger and badder in all the wrong places. At $20,000 a prisoner, those 5,000 new beds are going to cost us another $100,000,000 per year, increasing the corrections' base budget by at least 10%. That's staggering. We'll need more police and prosecutors, too. The profit-motive embedded in the punishment end of our criminal justice system supports continued victimization and progressive criminalization, and these prisons are sucking precious resources from areas where crime could actually be prevented. The public's interests are not being well-represented in this legislature.

Needless to say, a whole lot of people would be working more productively in our communities if their health and mental health needs were taken care of on the front end, and a good many lives could be salvaged if our corrections' funds went into rehabilitation and treatment. Sadly, Arizona's priorities are inverted. For the sake of boosting a few rural economies with prison jobs - and padding their legislative districts with non-voting bodies - we're about to lock up a whole bunch more people like Shannon Palmer and Marcia Powell - as well as Good Samaritans - as dangerous criminals and throw away the key.

--------------------

ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

1601 W. JEFFERSON
PHOENIX, ARIZONA 85007
(602) 542-3133
www.azcorrections.gov

JANICE K. BREWER GOVERNOR CHARLES L. RYAN DIRECTOR

NEWS RELEASE For Immediate Release

For more information contact:

Barrett Marson
bmarson@azcorrections.gov

Bill Lamoreaux
blamorea@azcorrections.gov

March 24, 2011

ADC to restart loading Kingman prison

Phoenix, AZ. - Following an extensive security review, the Arizona Department of Corrections next week will resume sending prisoners to a privately-operated facility in Kingman.

ADC ordered significant security and operational improvements after a July 30, 2010, escape of three inmates from the 3,400-bed facility. ADC conducted several security inspections of the Management and Training Corp.-operated prison and has determined the company is prepared to securely house inmates in accordance with ADC policies.

“The prison is now adhering to ADC security policies and is ready to house more inmates,” ADC Director Charles L. Ryan said.

Ryan said he will keep in place restrictions that prevent the Kingman prison from receiving inmates convicted of murder or attempted murder, or those who have a history of escape attempts. Additionally, a seasoned ADC deputy warden has been assigned to oversee daily operations at the MTC facility.

“The security failures that led to the escape cannot be allowed to occur again,” Ryan said. “The state will insist that MTC continue following ADC policies.”

Prison town eats troubled youth alive: The "profitable operation" of Walnut Grove.

This wasn't just Cornell's or the GEO Group's responsibility - this is the doing of the people of Walnut Grove, Mississippi. That's the problem with being a "successful" prison town: if you aren't careful, you'll be so busy raking in the profits that you lose your soul...

-----------------------------------

Town Relies On Troubled Youth Prison For Profits

By John Burnett

National Public Radio
Fri., March 25, 2011 2:12pm (EDT)

The Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility houses 1,200 boys and young men
east of Jackson, Miss.

First in a two-part series on private prisons


Prisons are filled with stress and violence; without proper supervision they can revert to primitive places. That's what happened at Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, an NPR news investigation has determined.

As the nation's largest juvenile prison, Walnut Grove houses 1,200 boys and young men in a sprawling one-story complex ringed by security fences about an hour's drive east of Jackson. The State of Mississippi pays a private corrections company to run the prison.

NPR's investigation found that allegations swirling around the prison raise the fundamental question of whether profits have distorted the mission of rehabilitating young inmates.

An Environment Of Violence

Walnut Grove "started out and it was formed to be something good for youth, but somewhere down the line it took a turn for the worse," said former inmate Clayborne Henderson, 27. He spent two years for kidnapping in "the Grove," as they call it, between his 19th and 21st birthdays. Now he's working at a car wash and taking community college courses in Jackson, trying to straighten out his life.

He and other former inmates describe an environment of violence inside the youth prison as so pervasive it became entertainment.

"It'd be like setting up a fight deal like you would with two dogs," Henderson said. "I did witness twice while I was at Walnut Grove, they actually bet on it. It was payday for the guards."

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 13 inmates against the prison operator, GEO Group, the prison administration and state officials. The complaint describes rampant contraband brought in by guards, sex between female guards and male inmates, inadequate medical care, prisoners held inhumanely in isolation, guards brutalizing inmates and inmate-on-inmate violence that was so brutal it led to brain damage.

"When we began investigating conditions inside this facility and seeing how these kids were living with the beat downs and the sexual abuse and violence and corruption, it became a no-brainer. It became something we had to do," said Sheila Bedi, the lead attorney on the case and deputy legal director for the SPLC.

Earlier this year, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice launched its own investigation into some of these charges. A spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said the probe is ongoing and declined to comment.

Questionable Prison Guards

Several former inmates who spoke to NPR say guards are a big part of the problem. Justin Bowling, who spent 17 months in the Grove in 2007 and 2008 for marijuana possession, says the prison is overrun with gangs, whose members include correctional officers.

"A lot of times, the guards are in the same gang. If the inmates wanted something done, they got it. If they wanted a cell popped open to handle some business about fighting or something like that, it just pretty much happened," Bowling said.

There's also a problem of too few guards. A state audit in 2005 and another one last year noted that staffing at Walnut Grove decreased even as the prisoner population increased.

According to the audit, in 2009 there were three inmate injuries a day. In the first six months of 2010 there was more than one fight a day, an assault on staff at least every other day and nine attempted suicides.

The Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, whose members represent youth facilities in all 50 states, reports that a guard-to-inmate ratio of 1 officer to 10 or 12 juvenile prisoners is common. The state audit of Walnut Grove found the guard-to-inmate ratio to be 1 to 60. Salaries are the largest expense of a correctional budget, and reducing staffing is typically a way to keep costs down.

Pablo Paez, vice president for corporate relations for GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, Fla., declined repeated requests by NPR to give the company's side of the story. He cited the pending lawsuit. GEO, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, is the nation's second largest prison corporation and had more than $1 billion in revenue last year.

Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps also declined repeated requests for an interview, citing the litigation. In a brief email in January, he wrote, "If staff ... abused inmates they should be punished. However, I have no knowledge of them abusing inmates."

He added that the facility has improved since GEO took over last August. Two months later, his spokesperson confirmed in an email to NPR that the Department of Corrections had hired an independent consultant, experienced in fixing troubled lockups, to review operations at the Grove.

Ethel Heard is one of 100 parents who have banded together to pressure the state to make reforms at Walnut Grove. Her 21-year-old son, Tyrone, is serving time there for armed robbery.

"We know that our children have made mistakes," she said. "We're not asking that they open the cell doors and let our kids out. We're asking for them to have better treatment."

Creating A Distinct Youth Facility

When Walnut Grove opened 10 years ago it was a model youth facility. The idea was to get teenaged felons out of the notorious Parchman penitentiary and away from hardened criminals. As one young inmate said, "An old fool has lived his life, but a young fool can change."

But that's not how it has turned out, says state representative John Mayo, a member of the corrections committee that oversees Walnut Grove and other Mississippi prisons.

"To me, in my mind, it's just a prison," he said. "It's another adult prison."

Mayo says the Legislature kept raising the age of inmates sent there from 18 all the way up to 22. He says he voted against the age increases.

Today, Walnut Grove is the only juvenile facility in the country that locks up 22-year-olds with 13-year-olds.

"Initially, it was to be 13- through 18-year-olds," Mayo said. "And then, quite frankly, that did not populate Walnut Grove to what I'm going to call a 'profitable operation.'"

Two years ago, Walnut Grove added 500 beds to accommodate all the new prisoners. According to the 2008 and 2009 annual reports for Cornell Companies, the prison operator at the time, the expansion created an extra $3.4 million in revenue. GEO acquired Cornell last year.

George Cole, a career educator who served as principal of the prison school for four years, was at a legislative hearing held in January to look into alleged abuses at Walnut Grove.

"I thought when I went to Walnut Grove I was going to a place that was really interested in the rehabilitation of our children, but I found out quite the opposite. And I guess as a private facility they had to make money," Cole testified.

The hearing was heavily attended by inmates' parents, most of whom are black, and all of whom wore bright orange T-shirts that read, "Friends & Family Of Youth Incarcerated At Walnut Grove." Though invited, neither GEO nor the state corrections department sent a representative to the hearing.

Taking Educational Grant Money

NPR examined thousands of pages of public records associated with federal grants paid to the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. Records show that Warden Brick Tripp and his deputy wardens already paid by GEO have been receiving checks for $2,500 to $5,000 as "supplemental salaries" for administering federal Title 1 education funds.

"The warden and deputy warden had no dealings whatsoever with educating students," Cole stated emphatically in a phone interview.

The warden declined an interview request. Jeff Webb, the lawyer who represents the five-member Walnut Grove Correctional Authority, which writes the checks, says overseeing the grants is part of the warden's job, though he did not say why deputy wardens receive paycheck bonuses.

GEO Group's Paez was also asked why the prison administration was receiving supplementary paychecks from federal education grants, which have nothing to do with the civil rights lawsuit or Justice Department investigation. He said he had no comment.

NPR forwarded the paycheck supplements to the U.S. Department of Education and asked if this was normal. Chief of Communications Justin Hamilton said the agency is concerned and has referred the matter to its Office of Inspector General for investigation.

Support For Walnut Grove

Despite all the controversy, the youth prison has staunch defenders.

Dennise Jones-Putnam, municipal clerk of the town of Walnut Grove, says her nephew is in the prison boot camp program. "He will be one of the first ones to tell you that's the best thing that's ever happened to him. It's turned his life totally around," she said.

As to why the kids are frequently placed on lockdown and fight with staff?

"Walnut Grove is not a day care," said the Rev. Justin Chaney, the prison chaplain there from 2007 to 2010. "I'm afraid a lot of people think it might be just a little detention center. It's maximum security. So yea, you do have those that can be rough."

Grady Sims, mayor of Walnut Grove, says he visits the prison frequently and knows the staff well. "I wouldn't interfere with the way they're operating it," he said. "They've done an excellent job."

Why The Prison Matters To The Town


The town of Walnut Grove is so small there's no stoplight or supermarket. In fact, inmates outnumber citizens 2 to 1. The prison just about saved this town from extinction. The 200 prison jobs helped fill the void when a shirt manufacturer and a glove maker closed and moved overseas several years ago.

The mayor's own vending company has 18 snack machines inside the prison.

"It's been a sweet deal for Walnut Grove," Sims said. Indeed, every month, the prison pays the town $15,000 in lieu of taxes which comprises nearly 15 percent of its annual budget.

"For a small town, that's a lot of money," the mayor said, "and it helps us maintain a full-time police department that we wouldn't be able to afford without that income."

There's more.

GEO pays the Walnut Grove Correctional Authority which sends the prison all of its grant money $4,500 a month. Webb, the authority's lawyer, says the money is kept in escrow and rarely spent.

Finally, there's a full-time state corrections employee whose job is to monitor how the prison is run. His salary is reimbursed by GEO.

All of this raises the question: Is oversight of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility negligent because it's a golden goose?

"All this community is just making so much money off Walnut Grove that no one wants to upset the applecart. Then that means they're not gonna make their money anymore," says State Representative Earle Banks, chairman of the state Juvenile Justice Committee. He called the recent hearing to investigate Walnut Grove. Banks, a plaintiff's lawyer, is suing the prison for wrongful death of an inmate.

That hands-off policy might be about to change.

"If there's mistreatment going on at Walnut Grove and the Justice Department finds that it is, they ought to sue the hell out of somebody," Mayo said. "I can't understand why we have to be sued to do what's right."

Aarti Shahani contributed to this NPR News investigation and report.

Prepare the prey for prison profiteers: New 5,000-prisoner RFP Released.

Via the good folks at KTAR.com. What a bizarre headline.

Funny they don't mention the Christmas Eve escape attempt at ASPC-Tucson/Manzanita. Think that still hasn't hit the mainstream press? No one ever talks about it...

More on all this another time. Here's just the news, for now.

----------------

Prison break prompts call for more prison beds

KTAR.com
AP - January 27, 2011

PHOENIX -- State officials have released a revised request for 5,000 additional private prison beds following a months-long review prompted by three inmates' escape from a privately operated state prison near Kingman last summer.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan canceled the original request for proposals last September, saying it needed stronger requirements on security and operations to avoid repeats of the July 30 escape.

The three violent offenders who broke out have been apprehended. Two face charges of murdering an Oklahoma couple in New Mexico while on the loose.

Ryan has said the Kingman prison was riddled with security flaws that the department's oversight failed to detect.

The department released the new 186-page request for proposals for providing beds for minimum- and medium-security male inmates on Monday. A 14-page amendment was released Wednesday.

The new request includes detailed provisions on security, including ones requiring both random and scheduled perimeter checks of prisons. The original, now-canceled version didn't have those specifics.

The Kingman escapees were able to avoid the prison's scheduled perimeter patrol by timing its movements, enabling them to cut through fencing. They had made getaway arrangements with an alleged accomplice by using a telephone tossed into the prison yard, authorities said.

Also, the department said the revision include new requirements for reporting of problems, expanded evaluation criteria for proposals additional sanctions for violations, including those that pose a risk to public safety.

Under the state's request, proposals can be for the entire 5,000 beds or submitted in increments of 500. It said the state wants 2,000 beds available by April 2013 and an additional 3,000 by April 2015.

The request said the state could provide state-owned land at existing prison complexes in Florence, Buckeye, Litchfield Park and Yuma available for use.

The deadline to submit proposals is Feb. 24.

The Kingman escape became an issue in last year's gubernatorial race, with Democratic nominee Terry Goddard running a television spot attacking incumbent Gov. Jan Brewer in connection with the Kingman prison break.

Two of the three escapees and an alleged accomplice are charged with murdering Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., in eastern New Mexico's Guadalupe County, and the Goddard ad questioned whether Arizonans should feel safe with Brewer as governor.

Brewer, a Republican, was elected to a full term on Nov. 2.

The 5,000-bed expansion program was authorized under a 2009 law.

Arizona's prison system houses approximately 40,000 inmates, including nearly 5,300 in private facilities. Those include 2,200 at the Kingman prison. The state's public prisons house approximately 34,700 inmates, above the design capacity of just over 31,000.

Mohave County's Holiday Cheer for the Poor: New Jail.

Those of you in Mohave County know that the new jail is now open in Kingman, as about 350 prisoners were moved there yesterday. The Sheriff's website hasn't been updated with new visitation or a clear mail policy yet, so I called the information line this afternoon (928-753-0759).


KINGMAN
DANGER: KEEP OUT

(this is neither the new nor the old jail, by the way - just a well-placed word of warning to unsuspecting travelers and home-grown drug addicts who haven't found redemption yet: they have plenty of beds to put us up in now)


I always hate to see new jails and prisons built - especially at a time when so many people have been losing their homes and jobs and health care...those places are overwhelmingly filled with the poor. But the old one was in horrible shape, and posed a threat to the health and safety of prisoners and officers alike. It's just so sad to see such an enormous investmant made in plans for large numbrs of prisoners down the road, instead of expecting the region's kids to grow into high school and college classrooms and find homes that their incomes can afford.


Anyway, the officer I spoke to was quite pleasant and professional, but advised that visitation has been suspended for all prisoners, until further notice, due to the move. She suggested calling back on Wednesday or Thursday (December 15/16) to see if they had worked out a schedule yet. The officer I spoke to expressed hope, but not certainty, that visitation would resume before Christmas. The officer was unable to find the new jail's mailing address, but assured me that prisoner mail can still be sent to the old jail - at least for now.


That address is:
Mohave County Jail
415 Pine Street
Kingman, AZ 86401
Phone: 928-753-0759


Remember that you can only use standard store-bought postcards, write in black or blue ballpoint pen, no highlighter or felt tip markers, no stickers or crayons, and keep your conversation away from inflammatory, provocative, and (of course) criminal subjects. DOn't send stamps or cash, either. Be sure your name and return address is clearly visible, as well, and that you are using the legal name of the person you're writing to.


If you have legal documents you want to provide a prisoner, either suggest that they request the specific item from the jail law library, or pass the material on to their attorney to give to them. Actually, below is the notice I received from the jail in correspondence they returned when I tried to send information to John McCluskey about concern for his legal rights as a prisoner and defendant. There are quite a few rules that make frank correspondence difficult, and the limited visitation opportunities leaves prisoners extremely isolated and families feeling abandoned.


It would help if this kind of information was readily available on the jail's website, along with the inmate manual, so family and friends have a clue about their policies there. I'm learning to write long, open letters on postcards now, between the Mohave and Maricopa County Jails. Frankly, I think if they're going to strip-search our mail for contraband and forbid contact visits with prisoners, they should strip-search and sniff every single guard when they arrive for shift, too.

(you may have to click on this and download it, then print to read it -
sorry it's such a poor quality.)

More trouble at MTC's Kingman Prison.

This is an email notice from Frank Smith, sent last night. He's my buddy with the Private Corrections Working Group, which has been helping communities fight prison privatization for something like 20 years. He's a pretty credible source...

------------------------------

At 8:00 PM on Thursday November 4, 2010 there was more trouble at MTC in Kingman. An inmate was running away from an officer with a cell phone in his hands. When the young (and I do mean young) officer caught the inmate he hand cuffed him so hard that his wrists were bleeding. The inmate complained and yet this young officer did not loosen the hand cuffs. Finally another senior officer approached and then loosened the handcuffs, but the inmate was bleeding a lot. The other inmates began to up rise and ran the officers off the yard and were throwing rocks at the officers. This took place at the Cerbat complex (the low level prison that ADOC approved to house 200 men in a dormitory style setting, there are 10 dorms but only 8 have inmates). The young officer that caused the incident was sent home, the Mohave County Sheriff office was called and deputies were sent to the scene. The for-profit prison is on lock down.

MTC being sued by Haas Family for Murders

Private Prison Blamed for Two Murders

By JAMIE ROSS

Courthouse News

Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Last Update: 6:40 AM PT

PHOENIX (CN) - The Arizona prison breakout that led to the killing of two campers was caused by "lax procedures and incompetent management" of the private prison operator in Kingman, the mother of one of the victims says. Vivian Haas, whose son, Gary and his wife were shot to death, claims that Management and Training Corp. admitted in an Aug. 13 letter its responsibility for the escapes, and that the circumstances "were shocking and egregious."

Haas claims that one of the escaped inmates, John McCluskey, killed her son and his wife in New Mexico in the days after the escape. Haas says the private prison operator "had duties to protect the general public in employing proper incarceration policies and procedures to assure that violent offenders stayed locked up and away from the general public."

McCluskey was sentenced to 15 years in 2009 for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault, and discharge of a firearm, and was sent to the private prison, according to the complaint. His fellow escapee Tracy Province was sentenced in 2009 for murder and robbery, and escapee Daniel Renwick was sentenced to two 22-year sentences for second-degree murder, the complaint states.

On July 30, McCluskey, Province, and Renwick escaped from the Kingman prison through a door wedged open by a rock, "climbing one improperly protected fence, hiding behind an inappropriate building in 'no-man's land,' and cutting through the wire of a second chain link fence," according to the complaint.

Haas says that Management and Training Corp.'s officers failed to check an alarm that sounded when the men cut through one of two security fences surrounding the prison. She says the alarm system set off false alarms so often that the guards ignored them.

Haas adds that the "perimeter fencing was substandard," and that patrols of the perimeter "were scattershot at best." Light poles around the prison were routinely burned out, and "intrusions by outsiders near the fence perimeters were common."

On Aug. 2, McCluskey and Province, allegedly with help from Casslyn M. Welch, "confronted" Gary and Linda Haas while they were "in or near their pickup truck towing a camping trailer." Gary and Linda Haas were traveling from Oklahoma to Colorado.

McCluskey and Province ordered Gary and Linda Haas into the truck, and forced Gary to drive to the west, his mother says. McCluskey directed Gary to leave the highway and drive to a secluded area, then took the couple into the camping trailer and "brutally shot them, killing each of them," Haas says.

McCluskey, Province, and Welch then allegedly drove the camper on the highway until they noticed blood leaking out of the trailer door. The escapees and accomplice "drove to a remote location, disconnected the trailer and intentionally set fire to the trailer with the bodies of Gary and Linda Haas still inside," according to the complaint.

Haas says the escapees abandoned the stolen truck in Albuquerque. Province was captured on Aug. 9 in Meeteetse, Wyo. McCluskey and Welch were captured on Aug. 19 in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

On March 22, 2004, the Arizona Department of Corrections awarded a contract to Management and Training Corp. to operate the private prison which was "designed and constructed for 1,100 minimum security beds and 300 medium security beds to house DUI inmates," according to the complaint.

Haas seeks punitive damages for negligence and recklessness. She is represented by Christopher Zachar.