Suicide aftermath reveals squalor at private rural Texas prison

The state of Idaho decided to pull the plug on a contract with GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) after an inmate who'd previously tried to escape, citing hideous conditions, committed suicide in his cell, leaving behind a 20-page letter to his uncle full of lurid detail about the squalor he and other inmates lived in there. The warden was fired at the facility, and a guard there was convicted this spring of smuggling contraband to a prisoner. But it was the suicide that shook Idaho officials from their potato growing to pay attention to what was going on in Dickens County. Reported AP's John Miller ("Suicide exposes squalor in Texas prison," 7-6), the late Scot Noble Payne:

was among Idaho inmates sent to the prison in Spur, Texas, run by a Florida-based company called the GEO Group. The business operates more than 50 prisons across the United States as well as in Australia and South Africa.

Soon after Payne's suicide, the Idaho Department of Correction's health care director inspected the prison and declared it the worst facility he had ever seen. Don Stockman called Payne's cell unacceptable and the rest of the Dickens County Correctional Center "beyond repair."

"The physical environment ... would have only enhanced the inmate's depression that could have been a major contributing factor in his suicide," he wrote in a report on Payne's death.

Stockman said the warden at Dickens ruled "based on verbal and physical intimidation" and that guards showed no concern for the living conditions.

After Idaho's complaints, GEO reassigned warden Ron Alford, who told the AP he was later fired. He insisted GEO did not provide enough money to make necessary improvements.

"They denied me everything. To buy a pencil with GEO, it took three signatures. They're cheap," Alford said in an interview. He disputes Stockman's findings on his treatment of Idaho inmates.

GEO spokesman Pablo Paez declined to comment on Alford's performance and would say only that the company had been working to address Idaho officials' concerns. But on Thursday, the state announced plans to move 125 inmates from Dickens to other facilities, citing the poor living conditions.

The private prison business has been booming as the federal government seeks space to house more criminals and illegal immigrants.

"Sometimes it may be a better situation for the inmates, and sometimes it's not," said prison consultant Douglas Lansing, a former warden at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, N.J. "Monitoring is a vital component. You can't just move them out of town and forget them."

That appears to be largely what happened with Idaho's inmates.

The prisoners were sent to Dickens in August from another GEO-run Texas prison after complaints about abuse by guards.

But in the following seven months, Idaho sent an inspector to Texas only once. That inspection found major problems, including virtually no substance-abuse treatment, and a complete lack of Idaho-sanctioned anger-management classes and pre-release programs.

There's no evidence the inspector's recommendations were followed. And no one from Idaho visited the prison again until after Payne's suicide.

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. After all, that's how we let prisons in Texas get that bad in the first place.

See more on GEO's operations in Texas from Texas Prison Bidness.