ID & TX: anywhere but there

The good news is that no more Idahoans will be going to the Black Hole of Newton County. From the Idaho Statesman:

Idaho inmates will leave Texas prison and some Idaho jails

Idaho inmates housed at a private Texas prison that has been criticized for prisoner abuse will be moved elsewhere because the prison canceled its contract with Idaho. And more Idaho prisoners will be headed out of state soon.

It's unclear where the 419 Idaho prisoners currently housed at the Newton County Correctional Center will be sent, but the private prison in Newton, Texas, notified the Idaho Department of Correction that it needs to move the prisoners to make room for Texas inmates, department spokeswoman Melinda O'Malley Keckler said Tuesday. Keckler said the decision had nothing to do with recent reports that Newton prison employees abused Idaho prisoners...

Well, okay, if you say so...

(For Josie Daniel, whose brother, inmate Eddie Daniel, has reported abuse at the Newton prison, the news of the move is a relief. Josie Daniel said her brother has been threatened by prison staff for speaking out and was recently placed in solitary confinement. "I'm happy because I know they're going to be out of that horrendous facility," she said.)

... but you might want to check with your own director to get your stories straight. For whatever reason IDOC's not sending Idaho inmates to Newton County any more, you're still shipping them far from home and family to serve their time. From the Houston Chronicle (and other news outlets):

Idaho will move 100 more prisoners out of state

Beset by overcrowded prisons, Idaho will transfer 100 more inmates out of the state, bringing the total prisoners who will have been sent elsewhere to about 550. Idaho also plans to send 419 prisoners now in a private Texas prison to an undisclosed facility after allegations of prisoner maltreatment emerged there and because that state's prison officials said they wanted the space for Texas inmates.

Though Texas prison officials have asked for the space in Newton County for their own prisoners, (Idaho Department of Correction Director Tom) Beauclair said Tuesday an important reason for the move is he's become dissatisfied with the situation there, including the prison's trouble hiring qualified staff. "The problem with Texas was, we have a culture clash going on," Beauclair said. "That's why we're looking at moving."

ID: more Texas private prison woe

Via the blog of an Idaho prosecutor, Thoughts on Justice, from KIFI:

Idaho Prisoners Stage Protest at Texas Corrections Facility

85 Idaho inmates housed in a Texas jail are on lockdown after a non-violent protest Saturday morning. The inmates refused to return to their cells inside the building after completing recreation time outdoors at the Newton County Correction Center...

Via e-mail from a former co-worker of mine, from the Idaho Statesman:
Idaho inmates escape from private Texas prison

Two Idaho inmates escaped Monday evening from a privately run prison in Texas, taking advantage of a disturbance in another part of the minimum- and medium-security facility to scale a perimeter fence...

The prisoners were among 419 inmates who were sent to the Newton County Correctional Facility in Newton, Texas, earlier this year...

From the Dallas Morning News: 1 prisoner caught, 1 at large after escape

The pair's escape is just the latest in a string of incidents involving Idaho inmates at the prison run by Geo Group Inc., based in Boca Raton, Fla. Idaho officials have traveled repeatedly to the former county jail in Newton to scrutinize the operation.

On April 7, six Idaho inmates complained of abuse, and one supervisor was fired while another guard was demoted after an investigation. On May 30, another inmate was doused with pepper spray. And last weekend, 85 Idaho inmates staged a strike, demanding butter for rolls, more TV channels and cheaper prices at the prison commissary.

Idaho corrections officials who have been to the Texas facility said it doesn't have the amenities of prisons in Idaho. It meets Idaho requirements, but "it's a very different cultural atmosphere than Idaho," said Jones, adding that disgruntled inmates unhappy with the move to Texas are one cause of the incidents...

The same damned facility: that privatizing prisons policy is working out really well for Idaho. How do you like this "money-saving" for-profit gulag archipelago now?

And the escapee out of Twin Falls County? He was my client. Suerte, Orlando.

Update: a local angle from the Beaumont, Texas Enterprise, Manhunt scours Newton County woods

Update: via Sean at Objective=Justice, the ACLU of Idaho is speaking out

"Inmate frustration and anger is constantly rising," ACLU Executive Director Jack Van Valkenburgh quotes just one of the stack of letters on his desk from irrate Idaho inmates now living at the Newton County Correctional Facility in Texas. "And the majority of the population expresses their anger, disappointment and frustration at the setting they find themselves forced to live in."

Go, Jack Van V.!

ID & TX: remind me again - why do we send our Idaho inmates to Texas?

From the Houston Chronicle:

55 Idaho inmates sidetracked during move from Texas prison

Fifty-five Idaho inmates who were moved out of a troubled Texas prison on Thursday have been forced by a contract delay to make a temporary stop before going to their final destination... More than 500 Idaho prisoners are in Texas and Oklahoma due to overcrowding at home. The prisoners being moved are bound for the Val Verde Correctional Facility in Del Rio, Texas, after more than a year at the Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur, Texas, where one Idaho inmate killed himself in March.

Because a Texas county official has yet to approve the contract to house Idaho prisoners at Val Verde, they have first been sent 100 miles away... There, they will sleep in groups of up to 10 men on makeshift cots in day rooms until resolution of the contract allows them to complete the final 250-mile leg of their journey to Val Verde...

Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said he learned only last week that a Texas county judge wanted a lawyer to look at the contract one last time. "It was something we did not anticipate," Reinke said. "GEO is paying the transport costs..."

This is just the latest uprooting of Idaho inmates since they were first shipped out of state in 2005. Since then, they have bounced from prison to prison in Minnesota and Texas amid allegations of abusive treatment...

Despite the stopover, GEO has a hefty incentive to make sure the move to Val Verde goes smoothly, Reinke said. The company hopes to win contracts with Idaho to build a large new prison here to help accommodate the state's 7,400 inmates. "They're really monitoring this closely, and doing a good job at this point," Reinke said. "It's not a lot different than triple bunking..."

Great: when you get to the intersection of prison politics and institutional indifference, the two start hot-bunking.

ID & TX: Idaho dollars for Texas squalor

Very big expatriate - Idahoan thanks to Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast for his watchdog work in general, and for his concern for some benighted Idahoans languishing in Texas private prisons:

The blog Texas Prison Bidness has updates on what's happening with Idaho prisoners who were pulled out of the Geo Group facility in Dickens County after a suicide prompted an investigation of poor conditions:

• Idaho moving inmates yet again in Geo prison shell game

• Idaho to send inmates to scandal-ridden Geo Val Verde Prison

• While Geo scandals continue, executives get rich

• Idaho planning to send more prisoners to Geo Group; what is Reinke thinking?

It's a shame when a blogger in Austin cares more about the welfare of some Idahoans than the governor in Boise, but as Scott noted last week:

I guess corrections officials in Idaho figured, "out of sight, out of mind." I often think that's how a lot of folks feel about people in prison, generally...

Bonus link goes to this news item: Prison firms give cash to pols to spur Idaho privatization

Update 07/15/07: fellow Idahoan The Mountain Goat is raising the alarm back home: The Growing Idaho Inmate Scandal

ID & TX: "they basically put us down here and just dumped us"

From the Seattle P-I:

Suicide shows squalid conditions in privately run Texas prison

After months alone in his cell, Scot Noble Payne finished 20 pages of letters, describing to loved ones the decrepit conditions of the prison where he was serving time for molesting a child. Then Payne used a razor blade to slice two 3-inch gashes in his throat...

Payne's suicide on March 4 came seven months after he was sent to the squalid privately run Texas prison by Idaho authorities trying to ease inmate overcrowding in their own state. His death exposed what had been Idaho's standard practice for dealing with inmates sent to out-of-state prisons: Out of sight, out of mind...

Link via Randy Stapilus' Ridenbaugh Press:

Idaho behind bars

Some years back, when Idaho started getting into the business of outsourcing prisoner control to private contractors, we predicted that investigative scandal stories would be on their way, the only question being how long that would take. Took a little longer than we thought...

ID & TX: just because a prisoner's from Idaho doesn't make Texas less responsible

From the Houston Chronicle:

Inmate's mother to speak against private Texas prisons

The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a private Texas prison on March 4 plans to urge Texas lawmakers to stop accepting out-of-state prisoners at their for-profit lockups. Shirley Noble said she expects to speak Friday to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee. She filed a $500,000 negligence claim against Idaho in August in Scot Noble Payne's death...

Grits says:

Friday's Texas Senate hearing on private prison oversight and the Geo Group just got more interesting...

ID & TX: things looking up for 300+ Idaho prisoners

From the Houston Chronicle:

Idaho ends contract with GEO-run Texas prison

The Idaho Department of Correction has terminated its contract with private prison company The GEO Group and will move the roughly 305 Idaho inmates currently housed at a GEO-run facility in Texas to a private prison in Oklahoma...

ID: Ninth Circuit to Idaho County - release or retry death row inmate

Via Sean Serrine at Objective Justice, this news from the home state:

Retrial or release ordered for Idaho death row inmate - Federal court says his attorney was ineffective

Court rules in case of Conroe man on Idaho death row

A Texas man sentenced to death for the 1983 slayings of a young Texas couple camped in the Idaho wilderness must be released or retried, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today. Mark Henry Lankford has been on Idaho's death row for more than two decades... The appeals court ruled that Lankford received ineffective assistance from his attorney, and that the state must "retry Mark Lankford within a reasonable time or release him..."

Lankford and his brother, Bryan Lankford, were arrested, but each blamed the other for the crime. Prosecutors offered Bryan Lankford life in prison in exchange for his testimony against his brother...

Mark Lankford's attorney, Gregory FitzMaurice, told the jury they could consider Bryan Lankford's testimony even though it was uncorroborated, the appellate court found. Though federal law allows uncorroborated testimony, Idaho law forbids it, the 9th Circuit found, so FitzMaurice's instruction prejudiced the jury against Mark Lankford and effectively denied him his right to effective counsel...

"There was ample evidence that either one or both of the Lankfords killed the Bravences, but there was no evidence that Mark attacked and killed the Bravences other than Bryan's testimony," the 9th Circuit noted in its ruling...

FitzMaurice was a part-time public defender whose only felony case experience before the Lankford trial involved cattle rustling... "FitzMaurice simply overlooked important differences between Idaho law and federal law," the court wrote. "FitzMaurice's error is perhaps understandable, given his limited experience and resources, but it is constitutionally inexcusable..."

Today's Ninth Circuit opinion in Lankford v. Arave is here (PDF file).

ID: ACLU calls for more prisons

...considering the alternative, which is continuing to ship Idaho inmates out of state to an uncertain fate. From the Times-News:

ACLU Idaho calls for more state prisons

Overcrowding and the practice of housing inmates out of state have prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho to call for state leaders to build more prisons.

"Bottom line, we probably have to immediately start thinking about building more prisons in Idaho, which is a terrible thing for an ACLU activist to say," Jack Van Valkenburgh, head of ACLU Idaho, told The Spokesman-Review... "I want my money going to schools; I don't want it going for prisons, but you've got to provide minimally adequate care..."

Van Valkenburgh said sentencing reform and increased drug-treatment programs are "the way to solve the prison problem," but in the meantime he believes Idaho is risking an increase in crime by sending its prisoners to Texas.

"My sense is the mentality of this facility doesn't have rehabilitation and reintegration into society as a goal," he said.

ID & TX: prison disease "just part of the 'pleasant surprise'?"

By e-mail from Grits for Breakfast, your Texas-based source for Idaho corrections news:

"Mysterious illness" afflicting inmates at private Del Rio prison that Idaho corrections director called a "pleasant surprise"

So let's get this straight: Just a week ago the Director of the Idaho Department of Corrections visited the Geo Group private prison facility in Del Rio and pronounced it a "pleasant surprise" compared to what he'd expected. Now, we learn from the San Antonio Express News medical writer Don Finley ("Fatal Del Rio illness baffles authorities," Aug. 10) that even while he was there, officials already knew about: "A mysterious illness at a Del Rio detention center that has killed two inmates and hospitalized two others..."