MTC’s private prison history raises worry

Bethany Lange, Herald Reporter / (PHOTO COURTESY SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE/John Gibbins)
Posted 6/19/17

Some question proposed ICE facility for Uinta County

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

MTC’s private prison history raises worry

Posted

EVANSTON — As Management and Training Corporation (MTC) proposes putting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility just outside Evanston, there have been many questions about the project.

Although many people look toward the prospect with hope and anticipation, many others are eyeing it with misgivings, citing MTC’s prior record of poor management and scandals with other facilities (mostly private prisons) elsewhere in the U.S. 

MTC operates 24 facilities in eight states, most of which are private prisons. Private prisons, including those operated by MTC, have been embroiled in controversy for years, and former U.S. Department of Justice deputy attorney general Sally Yates issued a memo in August of 2016 directing that the U.S. start phasing out use of private prisons. However, that directive was rescinded by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in February. 

According to MTC Vice President of Corrections Marketing Mike Murphy, who presented to local officials last month, the proposed facility for Uinta County is not slated to be a prison. The company’s proposal is for a detention center or immigration “processing facility” for non-criminals whose only legal wrongdoings are living in the United States illegally. Murphy said the detainees would be housed at the facility for 30-60 days.

MTC boasts a 30-year history of offering programs and education for prison inmates with the goal of reintegrating them into society. It also opened a detention facility — similar to the one proposed for Uinta County — in Calexico, California, last year, and according to www.jaildata.com, the facility has a total of 216 staff (out of the 225 that MTC originally estimated). According to TRACImmigration, the average stay for 477 individuals transferred out of the facility was 36 days — a figure that is also in line with what Evanston and Uinta County officials have heard. (Those 477 individuals represent 20.4 percent of the 2,335 individuals held at the facility during that time period.)

Including the Calexico facility, MTC operates just three detention centers similar to the one proposed for Uinta County; the other two are in Chaparall, New Mexico, and Livingston, Texas.

Elsewhere in the U.S., and especially in the private prison system, a rash of violent incidents have plagued MTC’s steps since 2003, especially through riots but also through accusations of corruption and employee abuse of inmates. 

Furthermore, while Murphy said at a May 24 town hall meeting that there have been no escapes or walkaways from ICE facilities, there was one notable incident at MTC-managed Arizona State Prison-Kingman in Golden Valley, Arizona. 

According to the Kingman Daily Miner, an Oklahoma couple was murdered by two inmates who were in prison for violent crimes but escaped from the Kingman facility in 2010 before being recaptured. The Oklahoma couple, traveling to an annual camping trip in Colorado, were found dead in New Mexico. One of the men was apprehended in Meeteetse, near Yellowstone Another inmate with a violent past escaped but was caught within 48 hours.

A lawsuit alleged MTC employees ignored breached fence alarms — up to 89 of them in an 18-hour period — because some alarms were faulty and would sound when there wasn’t a breach. The suit alleged MTC was negligent and used substandard equipment.

In the wake of the escapes, two MTC employees resigned (a unit warden and a unit security chief), and the state stopped sending inmates to the facility until MTC threatened to sue for breach of contract. 

According to the Arizona Republic, the state later terminated the MTC contract and awarded it to GEO Group after there were two more incidents in 2015 (an inmate died after being sexually assaulted and beaten in January 2015 while the facility was understaffed) and three riots over the space of four days in July of 2015 resulted in the injury of nine guards and seven inmates as well as a state deployment of 96 special tactical unit members. 

All told, seven facilities have had significant issues since 2003, with Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, and Arizona State Prison-Kingman having multiple major incidents. Two of those seven facilities closed down (Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility in California and Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in Mississippi). The Walnut Grove facility closure also came after a federal investigation into Operation Mississippi Hustle. 

Closer to home, Boise Weekly reported in Sept. 2016 that the CAPP facility in Kuna, Idaho, has had a higher rate of violent incidents needing discipline than comparable Idaho facilities in the past year, although Idaho Department of Corrections deputy warden Tim Higgins says otherwise. Higgins, who manages the CAPP contract, said violent incidents are rare at the CAPP facility. He did recall a scandal around the Idaho Correctional Center, which was operated by Correctional Corporation of America (CAA) until the state canceled the contract. 

Overall, Higgins said he had a positive view of MTC’s work, saying that MTC’s CAPP correctional officers and IDOC officers train together, the CAPP facility has not increased costs or safety concerns for the area and MTC initially paid all the costs to build the CAPP facility. The state does pay the costs for lease payments, service rent and improvements and renovations. 

“We believe CAPP is making a positive impact on recidivism rates using these new programs, but it will take several years of collected data (normally three) before we will be able to assess our actual recidivism rate,” he said. 

Issa Arnita, communications director for MTC, said the aforementioned incidents need to be put into perspective.

“Context is important,” he said. “We’ve operated dozens of facilities for state and federal agencies and safely secured hundreds of thousands of inmates and detainees over the past 30 years. We have a strong track record of safety. No prison, regardless of the operator, has zero incidents. It’s inherent in the work that we do as we’re managing a high-risk population.”