Cell-out-arizona: Private Prison Lies.

Wes Bolin Plaza / AZ State Capitol Complex
February 2011

-------------thanks to the AFSC-Tucson for the following insights--------

Top 10 Lies Told By Private Prison Corporations at the Arizona Hearings

Tucson Citizen
by cell-out-arizona on Aug. 22, 2011

It’s been a hot summer in Arizona, but there were a lot of private prison corporate executives whose pants were on fire over the past two weeks. On the plus side, our crop yields will set records this year due to the amount of b.s. that we just got showered with.

Over the past two weeks, the Arizona Dept. of Corrections (ADC) conducted public hearings on proposed private prisons in 5 Arizona towns: Eloy, Goodyear, Winslow, San Luis/Yuma, and Coolidge. At each hearing, the ADC gave a presentation on the bidding process, the Corporation gave a (sometimes quite lengthy) presentation on how awesome they think they are, and members of the public got 5 minutes apiece to raise concerns, ask questions, or, in many cases, beg them for jobs.

In their efforts to win a multi-million dollar contract, the corporations—CCA, GEO Group, MTC, and LaSalle—told some real whoppers. Here are our favorites, plus the truth that they are trying to hide.

Lie # 10: “No immigrant prisoners have died in CCA’s Eloy Detention Center.”

When asked about an ACLU investigation that revealed the Eloy Detention Center had the most inmate deaths of any detention center in the US, CCA’s talking head said it just never happened.

But records from the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement prove that nine immigrants have died while in custody at Eloy since 2003, two more than reported at any other facility. The deaths were only discovered because of an ACLU lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act asking for a comprehensive list of deaths in 2007. In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a list of 90 individuals who died while in custody.

Just because CCA tried to cover the deaths up doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

Lie # 9: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”

At all the hearings, the sales pitch was the same: This prison will create umpteen construction jobs and kazillions of guard jobs. The corporations are manipulating the financial distress of rural Arizona towns to get themselves a multi-million dollar contract. So, what will the people of the next Arizona Prison Town get?

Well, they’ll get a few jobs, but not nearly the number they were promised. Here’s why:

• Private prison corporations are based in other states. They are huge companies and bring in their own architects and construction companies. They usually have relationships with distributors, and because buying in bulk is cheaper, they will go with those companies over local ones. They will tell you that they will “try” to use as many local vendors “as possible,” but then they will determine that those local vendors are not competitive in their pricing or cannot handle the volume and they will go with the ones that they usually use.
• These towns are tapped out. Every one of them already has at least one prison or a prison nearby. Eloy has several. Pinal County, where Eloy and Coolidge are located, has 6 CCA prisons, two entire state prison complexes (with about 5 units each), a few federal detention centers, and a county jail that also rents out space to CCA.
• The private prisons can’t keep people in the jobs they have now. The Arizona Republic has reported that, “This year, through the end of June, the state has withheld about $844,000 from Kingman, $54,000 from Marana (also operated by MTC) and about $6,000 from Geo Group’s Phoenix West and Florence West prisons for failing to fill vacant positions quickly enough.”

Obviously, working in a prison isn’t for everyone. These are difficult jobs, with long hours, and stressful conditions. One corrections officer described it as “long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.” Not every unemployed person in this town is going to want to work in the prison. Or they will get a job there and quit shortly after.

Oh, and here’s another interesting twist: The Yuma Sun recently reported that Bullhead City has reached a deal with the Arizona Department of Corrections and Management and Training Corporation for inmates from the Arizona State Prison in Kingman to perform park and street maintenance work in the city. That’s right: Instead of creating jobs, they are tossing Bullhead City residents out of these low wage jobs and replacing them with prison labor. How many jobs will be lost there? How many other towns will follow suit?

Lie #8: “The prison will bring economic development to your town.”

Decades worth of research proves that prisons are not good economic growth for towns.

• In states with at least one private prison as of 1990, prisons have been shown to reduce the number of jobs overall in a community. You might get prison jobs, but you won’t get other kinds of jobs that pay better.
• Private prisons pay less, which means that state prisons have to compete, driving wages down for everyone.
• As mentioned previously, relatively few corrections officers live in the same town as the prison where they work, which means they spend their money somewhere else. One study estimates that up to two-thirds of potential tax revenues and other economic benefits leave the host community in this way.
• Having a prison nearby is not a draw for other kinds of businesses, and in many cases will scare them away. Who wants to build a housing development or school near a prison? Many Arizona towns are cultivating tourism due to historic landmarks and buildings, natural beauty, or scenery—what happens when you plop a huge prison with hundreds of feet of razor wire down in the middle of a historic area or pristine natural landscape?

One need go no further than Florence, AZ to see the true economic impacts of being a prison town. You can bet they heard the exact same sales pitch when those prisons were proposed. Where is the economic boom they were promised? Where are the stores? The industry? The housing developments? If prisons are so great for local economies, why doesn’t Florence have a thriving downtown?

The bottom line is, once you have prisons, all you will ever have is prisons.

One final note: Several residents noted during the hearings that Arizona is in a very sorry state when the only type of economic development offered to people is from an industry that is so harmful to our communities in so many ways. One retired firefighter at the Goodyear hearing put it this way: “Our fire station budget was cut and many firefighters were laid off. But we don’t go around saying, ‘we need more fires.’”

Lie #7: “We’ve learned from our mistakes.”

You gotta hand it to them—it takes some serious moxie to tell people that, because of your company’s gross negligence resulting in two deaths, your prisons are now the safest in the state. Especially when we know that MTC dragged its feet on fixing the problems at Kingman and only got its act together when the state stopped paying them.

A security audit of Arizona’s private prisons completed after the escapes reveals that the problems at Kingman are endemic to all private prisons in the state. Here’s what it found:

“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.”

You can read the full report, obtained through a public records request by Arizona Republic reporter Bob Ortega, on the Republic website.

Not only did MTC resist making the necessary fixes to Kingman demanded by the Department of Corrections, they threatened to sue us for attempting to hold them accountable. When ADC pulled our prisoners out after the escapes and refused to pay MTC until the security problems were fixed, MTC threatened to sue us for $10 million. Because they have better lawyers and more money than God, we rolled over. We paid this corporation $3 million for empty beds—beds that were empty due to their gross negligence, which resulted in two deaths.

Clearly, this is not a corporation that “learns from its mistakes. It’s a company that is wholly unaccountable for its mistakes.

Lie #6: GEO Group’s contract to run the Cook County juvenile detention center was cancelled because the state wanted to move the facilities from rural to urban areas, NOT because of the rampant abuse of children by GEO’s guards.

Baloney. The New York Times reported that “Juvenile detainees as young as 13 years old slept on filthy mats in dormitories with broken, overflowing toilets and feces smeared on the walls. Denied outside recreation for weeks at a time, they ate bug-infested food, did school work that consisted of little more than crossword puzzles and defecated in bags.”

In response, Texas “has transferred the 197 offenders in Bronte to other institutions, fired seven monitoring officials and canceled an $8 million contract with the GEO Corporation, the prison company in Boca Raton, Fla., that managed the center. The state has also opened a criminal investigation and a review of the adult prisons run by GEO.”

Lie #5: “Our security system is state-of-the-art”

I would bet a large sum of money that this exact same pitch was made to the people of Kingman when that prison was built. They might have fancy technology, but does it work? And if it stops working, will they fix it? See the security audit referenced under Lie #5—broken monitors, control-room panels that don’t work, alarms that don’t ring properly, malfunctioning security cameras. These problems were found in all our private prisons.

Technology is only as good as the people using it. We consistently hear after a riot or escape that a for-profit prison was having “staffing issues.” That pay was low, there was a lack of training, and the guards were inexperienced. Clearly, ADC has gotten wise and is requiring contractors to provide the same training as the state—it’s written into the RFP. But that doesn’t address the turnover problem. Those folks might get trained, but they won’t stick around. That means that a large percentage of the staff is inexperienced and unlikely to know how to handle a dangerous situation. One report stated that 80% of the guards at Kingman were recent hires.

At Kingman, the guards were propping those state-of-the-art security doors open with rocks. They ignored those high-tech alarms when they went off. The ADC monitor was either asleep at the switch or being blown off by Central office. As they say, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Lie #4: “The town is not taking any risks in the financing scheme for the prison”

Prison construction for private facilities is almost always financed through lease revenue bonds. They generally create an “Industrial Development Authority” or “Public Facilities Corporation,” which is essentially a paper tiger created through the city or county. The reason they fund through this mechanism is because they don’t want to take the risk, carry the paper, nor pay the interest.

When industrial revenue bonds are issued, the public is often told that neither the local government nor the taxpayers will be obligated or negatively affected in any way if the project fails. While it’s true that revenue bonds are not a general obligation of the issuer, it is not true that governments and taxpayers will be unaffected by the risks of the project.

The debt is paid off with the money received as per-diem payments for each inmate housed. This looks great on paper, but what happens when there are no inmates?

The savvy businessperson approaches any financing project asking “where is the market?” In this case, the financing for these prisons is dependent on a guaranteed occupancy of state prisoners. Yet the Arizona Auditor General reports that our prison population grew by only 65 prisoners in 2010. And there’s a movement afoot in the state legislature to reduce our prison population as 25+other states have done through sensible reforms to criminal sentencing laws favoring cheaper alternatives like probation, drug treatment, and house arrest.

If there’s no market, then these projects are doomed to fail. And what will happen to the town then? What if the corporation gets a better offer somewhere else and decides to pull out of the contract? What if Arizona’s prison population goes down?

Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what the Director of the Oklahoma DOC said after Arizona pulled its inmates out of a private prison there: He said the private prison industry is a speculative market. “It is not immune to recession and trends in sentencing and crime,” Jones said. “A lot of states have gone back and applied research to their sentencing practices, which results in sentences that are more evidence-based, and that obviously affects a market that relies upon incarceration.”

There are numerous cautionary examples of towns facing default struggling to pay the debt on an empty prison: Hardin, MT is one of the most notable. The town there got so desperate that they actually asked the state to send them sex offenders and lobbied the Obama administration to send Guantanamo detainees. A few weeks ago, the town of Littlefield, TX had to hold a public auction to sell a prison there so that they could pay the debt on the facility after GEO group cancelled its contract and left the town holding the bag.

Even if the town isn’t directly responsible for paying the debt on the prison, a default on the bond can affect the town’s credit rating (kinda like S&P just did to the United States). That can make it difficult for the town to borrow money for other needed projects like new schools or a hospital. Some towns have taken desperate measures to try to pay the debt on a prison in an effort to avoid default, including raising taxes and cutting other critical city budgets. A bond default can also make a city the target of costly litigation, further draining the town’s coffers.

Lie #3: “It’s impossible to measure recidivism from our prisons, because the prisoners may be housed in several different facilities during their incarceration.”—Terry Stewart, former Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections and now consultant for MTC

We asked every one of the companies what their recidivism rate was, and none of them had an answer. Isn’t that convenient? These companies can make claims about how they supposedly are “changing lives” and rehabilitating people, and they don’t even have to prove it.

Probation departments, social service providers and re-entry programs all measure recidivism. They don’t say, “well, this guy is also getting services at the VA and the food bank, so there’s no way to measure the impact of our programs.”

Let’s face it–these corporations know that their recidivism rate won’t be any better than the state’s and probably worse.

What’s more, the Arizona Department of Corrections has all this data, they just won’t go to the trouble to analyze it. They could easily do a comparison between state prisoners who have been housed in private prisons at any point in their incarceration, and those who have only been in state facilities.

Lie #2: “What lawsuits?”

When directly asked whether the company had settled lawsuits over abusive conditions in its juvenile prisons in Michigan and Louisiana, GEO Group representatives hemmed and hawed and refused to answer the question. We consider this the same as lying.

As reported in the Dallas Morning News, GEO not only faced lawsuits over bad conditions, but they actually lost contracts due to their abuses.

The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2000, when it was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., alleging that juveniles at the company’s Louisiana facility were subjected to excessive abuse and neglect. Wackenhut agreed to a settlement that provided for sweeping changes to Louisiana’s juvenile justice system and required the company to move all juveniles from its facility. The former security chief pleaded guilty in 2001 to beating a 17-year-old handcuffed inmate with a mop handle. In October 2005, Michigan closed the state’s private youth prison run by GEO after an advocacy group sued the prison over inadequate inmate care.

And, rather than accepting responsibility for its actions, the company turned around and sued the state of Michigan for wrongful termination of contract. How’s that for being a “good corporate citizen”?

And the #1 Lie told at the Arizona Hearings: “I’m accountable to you”—George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group

Waaah! Ha! Ha! Good one, George! About 30 seconds after uttering this whopper, Zoley proceeded to tell the crowd that GEO does not even bother to measure recidivism and then refused to disclose how much money he makes. Accountability, indeed.

Fortunately, Frank Smith of Private Corrections Working Group was in attendance and informed the crowd that Zoley made $16 million last year. Zoley’s pay, he pointed out, is a matter of public record. As a follow up, Frank provided us with the exact figures. Zoley’s salary, per companypay.com, was $3,825,433. He made $23 million in stock trades in the last 18 months.

Just a note to the boys at GEO corporate—don’t send Zoley to these things. He creeps people out.

Congratulations Winslow; Condolences, Tucson.

Winslow Officials Advised That CCA Will Look To Tucson As Prison Site

February 26th, 2010
AZjournal.com
By Sam Conner

  The Winslow City Council met on Tuesday to hear reports from City Manager Jim Ferguson and Finance Director Regina Reffner. Ferguson reported that the Corrections Corporation of America had informed him that although they remain interested in Winslow as a possible site for a private prison, they foresee bidding to put the entire 5,000-bed facility near a larger metropolitan area, namely Tucson, when the state issues its call for requests for proposals.

Private Prisons and Resistance in Arizona

People interested in doing something with AZ Prison Watch after the holidays should get in touch with us in the next few weeks. Several for-profit prison operators – including Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's (and one of the world's) largest – are aggressively trying to grab Indigenous and small-town land in Arizona, exploiting fear and profiting from our down times, as incarceration rates rise with unemployment. They also lobby for more money to be spent on immigrant detention, which is where the real fortune is right now.


Where will it be when we’ve deported or naturalized everyone? Who will fill those prison beds then? Our grandchildren will be next in line.

Helping communities make informed decisions about hosting new prisons could be done in any number of ways: from researching or working on a community website, to helping with public meetings and materials, to documenting the sociopolitical terrain and the process of organizing resistance: the story always  needs to be told.

Those of you who are resisting must already know that you can build better things for the future than what you're being offered today as the town's only hope. You're just going to have to work harder for it - it's not going to come courting the way that the prison industry will.  

Here are just some random ideas I had this morning for those fighting the siting of private prisons in their communities right now. The best sources of information are already linked to this site: the guys at Private Corrections Institute, the American Friends Service Committee–Tucson, the Business of Detention, and the Real Cost of Prisons Project. These are just supplemental thoughts:

First, as for the potential wealth in the property being looked at as a site for the prison: Help your neighbors re-envision that land as untouched community space - as a "Field of Dreams". Who do you want to come there? Don't begin with the prison on the horizon and figure out how to make the town fit into it now – prison profiteers can paint that pretty picture for you; they already have, I guess. Put your kids' future on the clear horizon, instead, then re-create the landscape around them based on their hopes and dreams.  

Don't let them settle for less - at least not while we're still dreaming. What do you want to build there that will outlive you, for future generations to draw their livelihoods from, for your grandchildren to play in the shadow of, and perhaps spend their lives working at - or living at, if they turn out to be mentally ill, developmentally disabled, poor, a minority, chemically dependent, or otherwise vulnerable to being criminalized?

It’s tragic that as a whole, we will pay almost any price for the immediate gratification of hurting the “bad guys,” yet we hesitate to make investments in things that will really pay off for our communities in the long run. That’s similar to the thinking of an addict – who we punish in that same way. Look at how budget priorities are being set right now. Where are all the conservatives on that one? It doesn't have to be a prison we leave for younger generations as their default solution to the things we gave up looking for answers to, or that we thought were too much of an up-front investment to make.

I’ve been well-advised in my life not to believe a wealthy, handsome stranger who says he has come to help me if there's a trail of wreckage in his wake. Make visible the already-powerful lobby that more private prison beds reinforce in the state. They will be putting more money into criminalizing people and delivering "justice" through mass incarceration (championing “public safety” and “victims rights”) – we know that always comes from money we wanted to use for education. What legislators are profiting from the industry of incarceration, anyway? And what kind of industry is it? Look at CCA's record all over the country - the world. It speaks for itself. 

There are so many layers of effects that people need to be aware of before they let this prison in. Once being a prison town becomes your identity - there is absolutely no avoiding it - it will not be possible to shake if you (or your children) collectively change your minds. It would be easier for the town to move than to get the prison out of there. It will reflect on you, whether or not you have any oversight or interest in its operation; lack of either will speak volumes for the character of the town. Private prison or state-run has a similar effect: Goodyear will always be associated with what happened to Marcia Powell and the guard who shot himself out there soon afterwards.  

Regardless of who runs that prison, then, in many ways it will still be yours, so everyone should be concerned about what kind of place it will be, as it will affect who you become. Is the prison a "corrections" center, or just a warehouse to be set far enough away that you don’t have to notice that there are children going out there to visit their parents each weekend? Will prisoners or their families be a part of the larger community, rather than being shunned and set apart from the rest of you – seen only as a means to bolster your own economic base? What will that kind of detachment from other human beings teach your own kids?

Will your prison be a place which helps damaged or oppressed people rebuild broken lives and their abilities to be responsible citizens? Or will it be the place ignored in your own backyard where  people will languish indeterminately, the sick and elderly dying of abuse and neglect, the young and vulnerable emerging even more traumatized? We have too many places like that here in Arizona already.  Examine the atrocities of prisons; they take on the names of the communities they're a part of - abuse, prison rape and suicides will forever Google back to the town that hosts it. It cannot be that easily undone.  

You have some difficult conversations to have and decisions to make that will have implications not only for your own community, but for all others where this insidious mantra of fear reigns that blinds us to the human realities of what it means to individuals and communities when we mass incarcerate. Some criminals are pretty malevolent and the public needs to be protected from harm. But not all of the real bad guys are behind bars, nor is everyone behind bars necessarily “bad”, so much as they are poor or addicted and desperate.

Remind your neighbors not to let the hard times harden them to those who are also suffering, and not to assume that embracing the task of imprisoning so many people – among whom are always the innocent - won't affect a community’s character and soul. Mass incarceration is an industry which profits from a growing supply of both victims and criminals (not mutually exclusive categories), and therefore has no investment in treatment alternatives, restorative justice, real crime prevention, or meaningful immigration reform. Just incarceration: it turns the best profit. Having one’s community derive its primary sustenance from the misery of those caught up in that machinery – even if they are someone’s else’s kids - will trouble some people very deeply.

As it should. Even Israel’s high court recently found that allowing prisons to operate for profit would inevitably compromise the human rights of prisoners, and outlawed it. That’s something serious to think about, given how poorly they treat their prisoners. Where do we stand on prisoner’s human rights? 


Most prisoners in America are just "ordinary" people with families, hopes, and a few more amends to make than some of the rest of us. Prisoners and families could really  use some allies in the effort to address sentencing reform, public mental health services, education, and sustainable employment options so we don’t end up needing so many new prisons down the road. For now, though, I guess you have your hands full just trying to protect your own...

I do believe that we have far too much talent and capital in America for your only economic hope to be a prison.  You each have some awesome potential, in both people and property, otherwise you wouldn’t be getting scoped out. Any leaders who think a prison is the answer to this economy are looking for the easy way out, and fundamentally lack vision for a better tomorrow. I would work next on seeing that they get replaced. 

Good luck to all you communities out there making these kinds of decisions right now. Let us know if we can help. We'd even help you build your own private prison watch website - just say the word.

Winslow: Such a beautiful town could do something much more creative...

Navajo-Hopi Observor
November 24, 2009

WINSLOW, Ariz. - The Winslow Planning and Zoning Commission recently approved conditional use permits for Ruby Wash Properties, LLC regarding a private prison complex to be built near the present Arizona State Prison at the southern border of the city.

An attorney representing the company said at the meeting that the company plans to build a 5,000 bed prison facility in Winslow if the company is awarded a contract for constructing and operating the facility by the state. The state has said that the contract would be awarded by June 30. The attorney said that once the contract has been obtained, the company would begin construction as quickly as possible and expects to complete the project in approximately 18 months from then.

The area is already properly zoned and the permits required were expected to be acquired by Tuesday. The attorney said that the staff working for the city of Winslow was a great team to work with and were totally cooperative.

The company has agreed to donate 30 to 35 acres to the city and a site for police and fire substations west of Route 87.

The city has agreed to allow use of the airport for transportation of prisoners. This is a very important ingredient to the facility as it is perfect for the safe handling of ICE and federal prisoners.

The plans indicate that the 5,000 bed unit is only phase one of the development the company plans in the area. Two more units are planned for a total of 12,000 prison beds or 16,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the next two phases of the development. There may also be an ICE processing unit constructed. The entire area of the proposed development contains some 900 acres located south of the Winslow-Lindberg Airport, north and to some extent east of the Arizona State Prison and west of State Route 87.

Phase one of the projects is expected to cost approximately $350 million and employ some 1,000 people not including those who work during the construction of the facilities. Those added jobs and residents would be a huge benefit to the city.

The facilities will large house state prisoners who are currently farmed out to other states, prisoners from other states and ICE prisoners. Arizona currently has nearly 5,000 prisoners serving their time in other states and locating them in Arizona should lower the cost of incarceration. The lack of adequate prison space is a factor in many states and the federal system is also overcrowded.

There are at least two more actions the city council and a staff committee need to perform before the company can expect the state to grant the contract they need to build and operate the prison. The state, according to legislation authorizing the 5,000 prisoner facility, will award the contract on June 30. It should be to the advantage of the city and the company to have their plans in place and local conditions met as soon as possible.

The first item that needs to be considered is for the Winslow City Council to accept a development agreement with the company. The council may accept, reject or modify such an agreement and is expected to do so at its Dec. 8 meeting provided the agreement is ready for such action.

After an agreement is has been accepted by the council, the staff Development and Review Board will review the agreement, looking at plans to make sure they meet the city code, suggesting changes, looking at the plot plan and building plans. There are a host of items the board will address including most of those mentioned by speakers in opposition to the project.

Once the agreement has been accepted by the city agencies, the company will seek a contract with the state for the 5,000 prisoner beds in question. Construction of phase one of the projects will begin immediately after the contract is awarded.

The Gravediggers would know what to do...

The size and scale of this monstrosity is deeply disturbing, as is the enthusiasm with which the town awaits its construction; soon they will unknowingly begin to feed off the souls sent there to be punished and broken...and know we have the knowledge that there are always at least a few we've locked away who are completely innocent of their crimes. That doesn't slow us down a bit.


Each new prison promises a future in which we expect to only defeat violence with violence, giving the state even greater discretion about who to perpetrate what kind of violence against for what sort of offense. Planning ahead for Arizona, right now, means planning more prison beds - we've got our criminals planned for and accommodated 50 years down the road - which doesn't instill much confidence in the Department of Corrections, I must say.


But what if citizens took control of that planning process, turned it around, and said: "we don't want no more prison beds, so what are we going to do instead?". Then proceeded to have a five day conference with people from across the state to answer that question and develop a summary of recommendations for the governor and legislature to look at criminal justice reform when they reconvene - first under the heading of immigration reform, I suspect.

Anyone interest in forming an "Arizona Juvenile Justice Watch" group and putting together a website, we can use some research now on juvenile justice issues in America, particularly those issues which are most likely to present as campaign issues for the 2010 election. Running this site would require not only extensive internet research, but organizing with people across the country, predominately through email.


Another front we need to address is the prosecutors and judges coming up for re-election, what prominent cases people should be aware of, how they're ranked by their peers, what kind of fund-raising and campaigning activity they'll have going on, where they have their money invested, etc.;

There we also need a valley-wide "Judicial Watch" organized. We'll need to come up with some form for evaluating judges based on decisions and sentences and abolitionist reform criteria, and then we'll ask them each some questions, and publish the results (if any). We can also use it to survey ex-prisoners / parolees about their experiences with different characters along the way in the CJ system (who was helpful / who was not/ why).


This is your chance, geeks of all varieties. It's an historical moment. Organizer wanna-bees, unarmed revolutionaries - do your thing. This place is ready for some major change.


Crashing now but hit me back as soon as you get this and have any ideas. Thanks,  Peggy
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009





WINSLOW, Ariz. - The Winslow Planning and Zoning Commission recently approved conditional use permits for Ruby Wash Properties, LLC regarding a private prison complex to be built near the present Arizona State Prison at the southern border of the city.

An attorney representing the company said at the meeting that the company plans to build a 5,000 bed prison facility in Winslow if the company is awarded a contract for constructing and operating the facility by the state. The state has said that the contract would be awarded by June 30. The attorney said that once the contract has been obtained, the company would begin construction as quickly as possible and expects to complete the project in approximately 18 months from then.

The area is already properly zoned and the permits required were expected to be acquired by Tuesday. The attorney said that the staff working for the city of Winslow was a great team to work with and were totally cooperative.

The company has agreed to donate 30 to 35 acres to the city and a site for police and fire substations west of Route 87.

The city has agreed to allow use of the airport for transportation of prisoners. This is a very important ingredient to the facility as it is perfect for the safe handling of ICE and federal prisoners.

The plans indicate that the 5,000 bed unit is only phase one of the development the company plans in the area. Two more units are planned for a total of 12,000 prison beds or 16,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the next two phases of the development.  There may also be an ICE processing unit constructed. The entire area of the proposed development contains some 900 acres located south of the Winslow-Lindberg Airport, north and to some extent east of the Arizona State Prison and west of State Route 87.

Phase one of the projects is expected to cost approximately $350 million and employ some 1,000 people not including those who work during the construction of the facilities. Those added jobs and residents would be a huge benefit to the city.

The facilities will large house state prisoners who are currently farmed out to other states, prisoners from other states and ICE prisoners. Arizona currently has nearly 5,000 prisoners serving their time in other states and locating them in Arizona should lower the cost of incarceration. The lack of adequate prison space is a factor in many states and the federal system is also overcrowded.

There are at least two more actions the city council and a staff committee need to perform before the company can expect the state to grant the contract they need to build and operate the prison. The state, according to legislation authorizing the 5,000 prisoner facility, will award the contract on June 30. It should be to the advantage of the city and the company to have their plans in place and local conditions met as soon as possible.

The first item that needs to be considered is for the Winslow City Council to accept a development agreement with the company. The council may accept, reject or modify such an agreement and is expected to do so at its Dec. 8 meeting provided the agreement is ready for such action.

After an agreement is has been accepted by the council, the staff Development and Review Board will review the agreement, looking at plans to make sure they meet the city code, suggesting changes, looking at the plot plan and building plans. There are a host of items the board will address including most of those mentioned by speakers in opposition to the project.

Once the agreement has been accepted by the city agencies, the company will seek a contract with the state for the 5,000 prisoner beds in question. Construction of phase one of the projects will begin immediately after the contract is awarded.

Winslow Private Prison Deal: Ruby Ridge llc (?).

The AZ Fraternal Order of Police (ADC Labor Council) appears to be on top of the corrections news here, with some thoughtful questions about this disturbing development in Winslow...
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Done Deal
Director Melissa Wallace, FOP ADC Labor Council, received some disturbing news last week.  By Thursday, November 19, 2009, she had participated in a Winslow City Council Zoning and Planning Hearing.  The only questions allowed were, however, limited to planning and zoning. 

The zoning hearing confirmed that a 26,000 bed new private prison was being built right next to ASPC Winslow.  The new private prison will be just north of ASPC Winslow and south of the city of Winslow.  Ground has already been broken to start construction, with an estimated opening of the first 5000 beds by 2012.

15,000 beds are earmarked for ICE, with the remainder hopefully taking advantage of Arizona’s ever increasing prison population.  The Winslow airport has a runway sufficient to land jets used by the federal government to transport ICE and other federal inmates.  Improvements to the airport may be the city of Winslow’s responsibility.

Wallace has serious reservations about just how such a large project had come so far in the development with little or no public knowledge.  Apparently this has been in development for the past two years.  The project is under the name Ruby Ridge, LLC and does not appear to be part of any of the large private prison corporations well known throughout the nation.

Upon contacting Director Ryan of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Ryan seemed to have little or no knowledge that a project of this magnitude, 26,000 private prison beds, was being built on property adjoining an Arizona Prison Complex.

Director Wallace and Stephen Vandegrift, Labor Services of the FOP ADC Labor Council, met with Scott Smith, Director, Legislative Affairs for Governor Brewer, on Friday, November 20, 2009.  Smith stated he and the Governor’s Office had no prior knowledge of this expansive private prison.  Smith was concerned that a project of this size and scope would have had to have quite a few public hearing on the matter.  The dates and notice for such public hearing will be reviewed for compliance with local and state laws.
Many questions remain.

• Impact on the aquifer.
This aquifer is utilized not only by local citizens of Winslow and the surrounding ranches, but also by both the Hopi and Navajo Nations.  The private prison operation will have more than five acres of waste water treatment ponds.

• Impact on local infrastructure.
Infrastructure includes the potable water system, waste water treatment, local roads and highways as well as the local airport.  Questions still remain on the city of Winslow’s area of financial responsibility.  The 26,000 private beds will also mean a substantial increase in residential needs and the infrastructure to accommodate such expansion.

• Impact on the environment.
It remains unclear what, if any, type of environmental impact studies were concluded by the EPA or the state of Arizona.

• Emergency services.
Winslow is a small community and it is unclear what the proposed emergency response plans will encompass.  Hospital availability and bed space, EMT’s and local police and fire departments would be stressed beyond capacity during any prison riot or medical quarantine. 

The Ruby Ridge project hopes to keep wages for private prison guards approximately one dollar under ADC wages, however there are no benefits other than stock options for employees to purchase and put towards retirement.  Sick leave, generous vacation leave, health and dental coverage as well as life insurance, short term and long term disability all make employment with the state of Arizona more attractive.

The concern for ADC employees as well as all state employees is the current fiscal problems facing Arizona.  Facing a possible 15% reduction in force to help balance the states budget is an ever increasing possibility.  Ruby Ridge LLC may be counting on that to provide trained prison staff in the near future.

Director Wallace represented the concerns of the FOP for Corrections at the local zoning and planning hearing.  The FOP ADC Labor Council will continue its investigation into the lack of public hearings and the corporate financing for this private prison project.  The FOP for Corrections moved quickly to address this project with the Governor’s Office and keep ADC Director Ryan informed.  Wallace provided Director Ryan with copies of the projects schematics, infrastructure drawings, engineering plans and statistics.


Although other ADC employee organizations were aware of the project, representatives from AZCOPS, AZCPOA and ACA were absent at the zoning and planning public hearing.  As our investigation evolves, we will keep our membership advised.