Exposing the misuse and abuse of the public commons
This edition of the “Watch Your Assets” newsletter is a joint project between Texans for
Public Justice and Grassroots Leadership.
Vol. 1, No. 9
February 6, 2008

Lax Oversight Plagues Private Prisons in Texas
Discovering squalid conditions at a youth detention facility in West Texas last October,
state officials abruptly shuttered the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, moved its
young prisoners to other facilities and cancelled the contract under which a private
company had operated that facility for the state. For all the outrage that officials voiced
over that feces-smeared youth prison, however, the same contractor—the Geo Group—
continues to operate nine other corrections facilities for the state of Texas.
Texas’ massive private prison industry has been plagued by recent scandals involving
unsafe facilities and prison guards who abuse prisoners entrusted to their care. These
scandals have helped expose the woefully inadequate safeguards and oversight that Texas
established during its 20-year-old prison privatization stampede.
Geo Group’s Coke County youth detention facility operated under the oversight of the
Texas Youth Commission. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) oversees
the state’s 28 contracts with private prison corporations and operates many more prison
facilities on its own. Where its own facilities are concerned, TDCJ dutifully collects data
on such things as how many officers each facility employs and which of those employees
have been disciplined. Yet the agency does not collect such data on the privately run
facilities that is oversees. Indeed, a key rationale for privatization was that the state could
save money if it granted private contractors leeway to manage their facilities more
efficiently than the state. A 2001 study national study of prison privatization by the U.S.
Department of Justice, however, found that private prisons cost an average of one percent
less than public facilities. 1
Furthermore, as Geo Group demonstrated in Coke County, for-profit companies
operating without adequate state oversight may cut their own costs to the bone. As such,
private facilities, which cost taxpayers more than $200 million a year, pose additional
hidden costs that can include the violation of prisoners’ rights and the abuse of tax

dollars. In 2006, Texas incarcerated 10.8 percent of its prisoners in private facilities, well
above the state average nationwide of 6.2 percent. 2
Origins
The state of Texas has long been a leader in private prison construction. One of the first
private correctional facilities in the United States was an immigration detention facility
that opened in Houston in 1984 under contract to the Corrections Corporation of
America. 3
Having outgrown its aging prison system by 1990, Texas went on a prison-building binge
that ballooned TDCJ’s operating budget from $700 million to $2.2 billion in just five
years. So quickly did Texas overcompensate for its overcrowded system that by 1996 it
lacked prisoners to fill eight empty new prisons. With the state spending so much prison
money so fast, oversight went out the revolving prison door. During the boom, some state
officials and legislators secured lucrative state contracts for themselves or their friends.
The former head of TDCJ, Andy Collins, collected kickbacks from private contractors
that were supplying Texas prisons. Officials also went straight from the state payroll to
high-paying jobs with prison contractors. 4
This tawdry tradition continues more
than a decade later. In December, the
GEO Group hired former TDCJ Director
Gary Johnson as vice president of a
multi-state region that includes Texas. 5
The revolving prison door also turns in
the other direction. In a monumental
lapse of judgment, the state assigned
three officials whom it recruited from
the Geo Group to oversee that
company’s now-shuttered facility in
Coke County. 6 Remarkably, this
deteriorating facility repeatedly won
high marks from these inspectors. Yet
auditors touring the facility in October
got so much feces on their shoes that
they had to wipe it off in the grass
outside. The auditors determined that the
facility flunked state standards for
safety, hygiene, medical treatment,
education and maintenance. 7 The state
is still investigating if any of its officials
received Geo Group kickbacks.

Neglected security shower at the GEO Group’s
Coke County Juvenile Justice Center. Human
excrement was found floating in the drain during
an audit in September 2007.

Oversight
Months after the Coke County scandal broke, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst
announced in January 2008 that the Senate Criminal Justice Committee will review the
state’s 28 remaining privately run facilities. Dewhurst directed the committee to
determine if privately run prisons are complying with state laws and to compare them
with state-run facilities in terms of cost, safety, living conditions and rehabilitative
services. 8
Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen), who urged Dewhurst to order this
investigation, opposes privatization because the private companies lack oversight and
their drive to increase profits poses conflicts.

“There is very little accountability,”
Hinojosa says. “Some of the businesses have
been sued repeatedly for abusing prisoners.”
With the study, Hinojosa says he plans to
ensure that the services of private prison
companies “are equal to, if not better, than
the services provided by the state.” He also
says he plans “to make sure they are not
cutting corners, putting the public at risk for
the lack of guards, lack of health services
and the lack of drug counseling.”
Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa
(D-McAllen)

Some experts monitoring the private prison industry say that TDCJ sets higher oversight
standards for private prisons than does the Texas Youth Commission, which oversaw the
mismanaged juvenile facility in Coke County. In scheduled and unscheduled visits, TDCJ
checks contracted facilities for compliance with almost 400 agency standards. In response
to requests for records under the Texas Public Information Act, however, the TDCJ
acknowledged that it does not collect basic statistics about private facilities, numbers that
it routinely gathers for facilities that it operates itself. TDCJ officials say that its
inspectors monitor some employment information during site visits but the agency could
not provide staffing numbers for its private facilities. The requested data that the agency
did not provide were records on: the number of guards each facility employs, the guardto-prisoner ratio, guard disciplinary data, and enrollment in drug-treatment programs. 9
Such lax oversight is remarkable given that the state spends $200 million a year on these
facilities, which control the lives of 16,000 people.
Texas consciously designed its privatization system to grant contractors considerable
leeway. The rationale for this leeway was to foster cost-cutting competition and
innovation. Yet the great failing of this policy was that the state granted contractors
innovative leeway and then failed to collect the basic performance data that would allow
it—the client—to determine whether contractor experiments have succeeded or failed.

How deeply, for example, can contractors slash the guard-to-prisoner ratio and still meet
state standards? Despite its professed interest in experimentation, the state of Texas is not
collecting data to address such fundamental questions. This appears to be a key failure of
Texas’ prison privatization experiment—one so negligent that it invites abuse.
Prison Privatization in Texas
TDCJ has 28 facilities under private contracts (including correctional facilities, preparole facilities and halfway houses). Currently, contract facilities account for 30 percent
of all TDCJ facilities and house 10 percent of the agency’s offenders. The state spent
almost $218 million last year on these private facilities, which housed a daily average
population of more than 16,000 offenders. (The appendix lists all of the state’s privately
run facilities.)
Private Companies Housing Offenders in Texas
Estimated Share of
Annual
Total
No. of No. of
Private Company
Facilities Beds
Cost
Cost
Corrections Corp. of America
9 10,615 $112,390,736
52%
GEO Group
9
5,295 $64,312,734
30%
Management and Training Corporation
3
1,070 $12,868,918
6%
CiviGenics
2
736 $11,064,115
5%
Cornell Companies
1
421
$6,648,326
3%
Southern Corrections Systems
2
216
$4,818,287
2%
Correctional Systems, Inc.
1
170
$2,962,799
1%
Wayback House
1
175
$2,843,755
1%
TOTALS:
28 18,698 $217,909,670
100%
Note: Includes $18.5 million in medical costs that the state pays at 12 facilities. TDCJ did not provide costs
for drug-abuse programs, which the state funds at three facilities.

Although Texas contracts with eight different private corrections contractors, two giants
account for more than 80 percent of this contract money. Nashville-based Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest corrections company in Texas and the
nation. Nine of its 63 facilities nationwide are in Texas. These include five state jails, two
correctional centers and two pre-parole facilities. Florida-based rival GEO Group
(formerly named Wackenhut Corrections Corp.) manages 67 facilities worldwide. Its nine
Texas operations include four correctional centers, two transfer facilities, a halfway
house and a county jail that houses some state offenders. (Federal and local governments
fund many other private correctional facilities in Texas that are not addressed here.)
Staffing
A leading criticism of prison contractors is that they maximize profits through dangerous
cuts in staff levels, staff training and staff pay. Comparing government-run to private
prisons, a 2001 U.S. Department of Justice study found that private facilities had 49
percent more prisoner assaults on staff and 65 percent more prisoner assaults on prisoners
than government-run prisons. 10 A contributing factor to this violence could be that

private-prison guards are less experienced. Private prisons generally pay lower salaries
and suffer significantly higher staff-turnover rates. 11
While TDCJ does not maintain basic staff data on its contract facilities, there have been
troubling reports of security problems. CCA’s minimum-security, pre-parole facility in
Mineral Wells, for example, contains the state’s largest privatized offender population.
The state pays $24 million a year to house an average population of 2,075 prisoners there.
CCA summoned local police to this facility in 2005 to help quell a riot that injured 17
prisoners. A violent prisoner-guard clash there in August 2007 required 30 local police
officers to put down. 12 Over the past two years at least three prisoners escaped from this
facility—a porous record unmatched by any state-run lock up. 13
The Prison Lobby
One state agency—the Texas Ethics Commission—does collect data on one elite group of
private-prison employees: lobbyists. The Ethics Commission’s numbers demonstrate that
the industry has gone on a hiring spree in the wake of its recent scandals. By the end of
last year, private prison companies paid 18 lobbyists a total of up to $1.1 million to lobby
Texas officials. (The exact amount is not known because lobbyists report contract values
in ranges, such as $50,000 to $100,000.) This is almost three times what the industry
spent on the lobby during the preceding legislative year in 2005. With its starring role in
the scandal, Geo Group increased its Texas lobby spending tenfold, accounting for more
than half of the lobby money that the industry spent in 2007.

Texas’ Private Prison Lobby
Max. Value
No. of
Max. Value
No. of
of Contracts Contracts of Contracts Contracts
Company
In 2005
In 2005
In 2007
In 2007
3
6
Geo Group
$60,000
$625,000
5
6
CCA
$180,000
$235,000
4
4
CiviGenics
$120,000
$120,000
0
1
Cornell Co's
$0
$100,000
1
1
MTC
$50,000
$50,000
TOTALS:
$410,000
13 $1,130,000
18
This table lists the maximum value of contracts, which lobbyists report in ranges (e.g. ‘$50,000-$100,000’).

During the height of the Coke County scandal, Senate Criminal Justice Committee
Chairman John Whitmire (D-Houston) 14 excoriated the GEO Group for unleashing the
lobby to convince legislators that the state had overreached in shutting down that facility.
“Now enters GEO with their paid lobbyists attempting to put a good face on this,”
Whitmire told the Dallas Morning News. “I’m saying the corporation should back off.
They've run a very poor facility that probably violates the youths’ civil rights,” he said.
“Kids were stepping in their own feces. The sheets were such that a cat or dog wouldn't
sleep on them.” 15
Texas’ Private-Prison Lobby in 2007
Min. Value
Max. Value
Client
of Contracts of Contracts
Geo Group
$200,000
*<$200,000
Geo Group
$50,000
$100,000
Geo Group
$50,000
$100,000
Geo Group
$50,000
$100,000
Cornell Co’s
$50,000
$100,000
CCA
$50,000
$100,000
Geo Group
$50,000
$100,000
CCA
$25,000
$50,000
CiviGenics
$25,000
$50,000
CiviGenics
$25,000
$50,000
MTC
$25,000
$50,000
CCA
$25,000
$50,000
Geo Group
$10,000
$25,000
CCA
$10,000
$25,000
CiviGenics
$0
$10,000
CiviGenics
$0
$10,000
CCA
$0
$10,000
CCA
$0
$0
TOTAL:
$645,000
$1,130,000
*Contract reported as “$200,000 or more.”
Lobbyist
Lionel Aguirre
Ray Allen
Scott Gilmore
Jeffrey Heckler
M. Edward Lopez
Demetrius McDaniel
Michelle Wittenburg
Lara Laneri Keel
Andrea McWilliams
Dean McWilliams
Allen Place
Michael Toomey
Bill Miller
April Seabaugh
Daniel B. Mays
Robert Nathan
Merita Zoga
Laurie Shanblum

Three weeks after the GEO Group lost the Coke County contract and one week after the
Senate Criminal Justice Committee met to review the resulting scandal, GEO Group
pumped up its lobby force further. This time it hired HillCo lobbyist Bill Miller, a close

friend of House Speaker Tom Craddick, agreeing to pay him up to $25,000 for the last
two months of the year. GEO’s lobby team also includes former Craddick General
Counsel Michelle Wittenburg and former Rep. Ray Allen, who previously chaired the
House Corrections Committee under Craddick. Then-Rep. Allen sponsored a failed 2003
bill in 2003 that would have raised the cap on the number of private beds TDCJ could
contract to private prison companies. During the 2007 session, House Corrections Chair
Jerry Madden (R-Richardson) introduced a successful bill that raised the cap on private
prison beds. The Geo Group and CCA political action committees ranked amount
Madden’s top ten donors in the 2006 election cycle, giving him a total of $4,500.
CCA heavyweights include lobby partners Mike Toomey and Lara Laneri Keel. Former
Rep. Mike Toomey is a key architect of the controversial 2002 House elections that made
Craddick Speaker. Laneri Keel married the cousin of Terry Keel, Craddick’s House
parliamentarian and a former chair of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.
Management and Training Corp. lobbyist Allen Place also chaired that committee—
during the prison-building boom in the 1990s.
Conclusion
Privatizing prisons is a failed experiment in Texas. Lack of oversight and close ties
between state officials and the companies contracting with the state have allowed private
companies to continue to benefit from lucrative state contracts while operating at
substandard conditions. This week the Legislative Budget Board announced that Texas’
prison population is growing slower than expected. Contrary to previous projections, no
new prisons will be needed in the next two years. 16 Texas should take advantage of this
reprieve to review carefully all of its contracts with private prison companies. The state
should not renew contracts with companies with poor track records or with companies
that have not delivered substantial cost savings. TDCJ should cancel any contracts that do
not meet high standards and transfer the affected inmates back to the state’s direct
supervision.
Some will rob you with a fountain pen. – Woodie Guthrie
Lauren Reinlie, Project Director

Thanks to Bob Libal and Nick Hudson from Grassroots Leadership and Omair Khan
from Texans for Public Justice for their help on this report.
Texans for Public Justice
Non-partisan, non-profit policy and research
organization, which tracks the influence of money and
corporate power in Texas politics. Texans for Public
Justice is a vocal advocate for citizen rights, open
government and corporate accountability in Texas.

Grassroots Leadership
Southern-based national organization that does
grassroots organizing, research, policy advocacy and
public education on a range of privatization, prison
and criminal justice issues. Grassroots Leadership
works to enhance the public good and to stop the
erosion of the public sphere.

1

A 2001 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that the supposed cost-savings of up to 20% often
promised by privatization advocates have “simply not materialized.” Instead, the savings, if there were any
at all, averaged only around 1%. “Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons,” Bulletin NCJ 181249, James
Austin & Garry Coventry, Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. 2001.
In 1996, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed multiple state studies comparing
operational costs of private and state-run prisons. Of five state studies, three showed little difference in
costs between private and public prisons while one showed that private prisons cost more. The study on
Texas private prisons showed substantial cost savings in private facilities, but the GAO researchers deemed
that study “problematic” because the private prisons were compared to hypothetical public prisons, not real
facilities. The GAO decided that the studies did “not offer substantial evidence that savings [in private
facilities] have occurred.” “Private and Public Prison: Studies Comparing Operational Costs and/or Quality
of Service”, GAO/GGD-96-158, U.S. General Accounting Office. August 1996, pg. 3.
2
“Prisoners in 2006,” Bureau of Justice Statistics. December 5, 2007. Available online at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/p06.htm.
3
http://www.correctionscorp.com/ccahistory.html
4
“The Great Texas Prison Mess,” Robert Draper, Texas Monthly. May 1996.
5
“Corrections veteran hired by prison operator,” Mike Ward. Austin American-Statesman, December 5,
2007.
6
“Fired TYC monitors had worked for facility’s operator,” Steve McGonigle, Dallas Morning News. Oct.
12, 2007.
7
“TYC official blasts GEO Group over Coke County facility conditions,” Doug J. Swanson, Dallas
Morning News. October 5, 2007.
8
Texas State Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, 80th Session Interim Charges, available at
http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c590/c590.htm.
9
TDCJ does oversee drug treatment at one privately operated facility in Kyle because the facility uses the
agency’s own rehabilitation and reentry programs.
10
“Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons,” Bulletin NCJ 181249, James Austin & Garry Coventry, Bureau
of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. 2001, pg 57.
11
Data reported in The Corrections Yearbook documents that turnover for prison guards was 41 percent for
the private prison industry in 1998, compared with 15 percent for correctional officers in publicly run
prisons. Turnover actually increased to 52 percent in private facilities in 2000, compared to 16 percent in
publicly run prisons. http://www.afscme.org/publications/2541.cfm
12
“Prison riot quelled in Mineral Wells,” Staff and Wire Reports, San Antonio Express-News. Aug. 29,
2005. “N. Texas prison disturbance quelled,” Associated Press. August 14, 2007.
13
According to records provided by TDCJ, two prisoners escaped from this facility over the last two years.
Yet, media reports indicate that at least three prisoners escaped from this facility in that period. No other
prison under state oversight had more than one prisoner escape during this period. “Inmate escapes from
Mineral Wells,” Bill Miller, Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Aug. 25, 2006. “Prison escapees captured after 6
hours,” Staff Reports, WFAA. May 14, 2007.
14
Whitmire lobbies federal and local governmental entities for the firm Locke Liddell.
15
“Seven TYC workers fired after inmates found living in filth,” Doug J. Swanson and Steve McGonigle,
Dallas Morning News. Oct. 3, 2007.
16
“Prison growth flat,” Mike Ward, Austin American-Statesman. Jan. 31, 2008.

Appendix:
The State of Texas’ Private-Prison System
Private Company
CiviGenics
CiviGenics
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
CCA
Cornell Companies
Correctional Systems, Inc.
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
GEO Group
MTC
MTC
MTC
SCS
SCS
Wayback House

Facility Name
Bowie Co.
Limestone Co.
B.M. Moore
Diboll
Bridgeport
Mineral Wells
Bartlett
Bradshaw
Dawson
Lindsey
Willacy
Houston
Beaumont
Bridgeport
Cleveland
Estes
Lockhart
Ft. Worth
North Texas
South Texas
Jefferson Co.
Newton Co.
Kyle
East Texas
West Texas
Austin
El Paso
Dallas

CCA = Corrections Corp. of America
MTC = Management & Training Corp.
SCS = Southern Corrections Systems

Facility Type
Leased Beds
Leased Beds
Correctional Center
Correctional Center
Pre-Parole Transfer
Pre-Parole Transfer
State Jail
State Jail
State Jail
State Jail
State Jail
Halfway House
Halfway House
Correctional Center
Correctional Center
Correctional Center
Correctional Center
Halfway House
Intermediate Sanction
Intermediate Sanction
Leased Beds
Leased Beds
Correctional Center
Intermediate Sanction
Intermediate Sanction
Halfway House
Halfway House
Halfway House

Estimated
Facility
Annual Cost
Ownership To the State
Company
$5,453,022
Company
$5,611,093
State
$6,214,291
State
$6,633,720
State
$2,774,550
Company
$23,884,605
State
$11,738,892
State
$16,606,134
State
$23,177,553
State
$10,640,577
State
$10,720,413
Company
$6,648,326
Company
$2,962,799
Company
$6,380,328
State
$6,908,578
State
$11,680,156
State
$11,191,250
Company
$3,291,234
Company
$5,800,377
State
$4,511,183
Company
$4,502,737
Company
$10,046,892
State
$6,084,077
Company
$3,672,778
Company
$3,112,063
Company
$1,758,741
Company
$3,059,546
Company
$2,843,755
TOTAL: $217,909,670