Problems in Idaho's Outsourced Prisons

The suicide in March of an Idaho prisoner being held in a privately-run prison in Texas has focused attention on the practice of outsourcing. Suicide shows squalid conditions in privately run Texas prison, Seattle P-I (AP), July 6, 2007.

Idaho's prison authorities seldom sent inspectors to out-of-state facilities and relied on telephone and e-mail to handle grievances.

Washington also has some inmates in prisons out of state, but stations full-time inspectors at the prisons and sends a superinendent every six weeks.


The private prison in Texas is run by the GEO Group, Inc., which "operates facilities in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and soon, in the United Kingdom."

Thanks: Ridenbaugh Press (whose blog I encountered for the first time today but intend to keep an eye on).

Photo: Dickens County Correctional Center (Spur, TX) from GEO Group website.