Free Republic

A federal jury has determined that The GEO Group must pay nearly $17.3 million to immigration detainees who were paid $1 a day to perform tasks such as cooking and cleaning at the company’s for-profit detention center in Washington. . . . . GEO maintained that the detainees were not employees under the Washington Minimum Wage Act. Even if they were, the company said, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for Washington to require GEO to pay them minimum wage — now $13.69 an hour — when the state doesn’t pay minimum wage to inmates who work at its own prisons...

A mysterious illness at a Del Rio detention center that has killed two inmates and hospitalized two others within the past month has baffled health authorities, who have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for help. All four men — three of them foreign nationals from Honduras and Mexico held on immigration charges, the fourth a Val Verde county prisoner who was one of the dead — were described as in their 20s and 30s, and apparently healthy when they arrived at the Val Verde Correctional Facility and County Jail. The privately operated 850-bed medium-security facility is under...

... Joe Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions pertaining to racial equity, including phasing out the use of private prisons at the federal level. "We have never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation, to state the obvious, that all people are created equal and have a right to be treated equally throughout their lives," Biden said just before signing the actions. ...

Video at link. Exclusive tour of California immigration facility cA law library. Access to 24-hour health care and mental care. Outdoor soccer fields. An exclusive look inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center revealed scenes dramatically at odds with claims the facilities are poorly run and the scenes of misery and overcrowding. Fox News was given rare access to an immigration detention facility in Adelanto, Calif. Video cameras were allowed inside. The ICE facility, just one of 31 such centers in the U.S., is run by privately contracted company GEO Group. During a tour led by Thomas Giles, acting...

SANTA ROSA COUNTY - The FBI seized the computer of a Santa Rosa County Commissioner today. The computer was being used by Commissioner Jimmy Melvin, but he says the FBI told him their investigation does not involve him. The computer was used previously by former commissioner Gordon Goodin, and he told me tonight he doesn't have a clue why the FBI wants that computer. While the FBI isn't talking, they seized documents from Team Santa Rosa earlier this year. That's the economic development group for the county. The FBI wanted Team Santa Rosa's documents relating to the Blackwater State Prison...

California will begin shipping thousands of inmates to prisons in four other states next month at a cost of more than $51 million a year, corrections officials said Friday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency this month to speed up the no-bid contracts with two private companies. He said the transfers are needed to ease crowding in the nation's largest prison system, where more than 172,000 inmates are crowded into space designed for about 100,000, forcing some inmates to sleep in gymnasiums and auditoriums. The GEO Group Inc. of Florida will be paid an estimated $28.7 million a year to...

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation signed two contracts Friday to begin moving California inmates to out-of-state private prisons beginning as soon next month. Deals with the GEO Group and the Correctional Corporation of America will result in the transfer of 2,260 prisoners to institutions in Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona and Tennessee. The GEO contract will run at $28.7 million a year while the CCA deal is pegged at $22.9 million. The average daily per inmate cost under the agreements will amount to $63 a day, compared to the average cost of approximately $90 a day the state is paying...

The state plans to house up to 1,200 prisoners from California in unused portions of the New Castle Correctional Facility, a move that Gov. Mitch Daniels said Thursday would create up to 200 jobs. The announcement came a day after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in that state's critically crowded prisons, a step that allows him to use his executive powers to ship inmates elsewhere. Daniels said the arrangement will benefit both states. Under a contract between California and Florida-based GEO Group Inc., the company Indiana hired to operate the New Castle prison will be paid...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a prison overcrowding emergency Wednesday in California, paving the way for inmate transfers to out-of-state institutions within a month. Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton said that the state is on the verge of signing no-bid, sole-source contracts with three private prison companies and that he expects to begin sending inmates to Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arizona at a rate of 100 to 200 a month within 30 days. In a recent survey, Tilton said, 19,000 inmates expressed interest in doing their time in other states. He said his immediate goal is to get...

CROWDED PRISONS: California's survey offers 23 states in which they could finish their terms. California Corrections officials, who expect to run out of prison beds by June, are asking inmates if they would volunteer to do their time in other states. To ship prisoners out, California must sign up enough volunteers and negotiate deals with other states willing to take them, said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state has 172,000 prisoners, and officials predict capacity will be reached next summer. Male inmates surveyed this week were given a choice of 23 states to...

SACRAMENTO - Less than two months after giving $10,000 to an initiative campaign committee tied to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a well-connected private prison company was tentatively awarded a $20 million contract by the state of California to operate a San Joaquin Valley correctional facility. Altogether over the past two years, GEO Group has donated $68,000 to various Schwarzenegger committees, according to campaign reports. Officials with the state prison system insist there is no tie between the donations and the contract, which is part of a broader strategy to use less-expensive private beds to relieve severe overcrowding in the 33 state-run...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration this week abruptly canceled a no-bid contract it was set to award to a private prison company that employs two former high-ranking state corrections officials. After pursuing a deal with the company for several months, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections said the department decided Wednesday that it was no longer interested in finalizing a $5.7 million contract that would have reopened the Mesa Verde Community Corrections Facility in Bakersfield. The contract would have been with a Massachusetts-based company called CiviGenics, which recently hired two retired Department of Corrections officials. The company...

SACRAMENTO — The Schwarzenegger administration has quietly moved to reopen two private prisons a year after mothballing them — and after a company that stands to profit retained consultants close to the governor and his inner circle. Administration officials attribute the reversal to an unexpected rise in the number of prisoners. Prisons Department critics point to the private prison company's lobbying. The administration has decided to reopen two facilities, one of which is a 224-bed prison in the Central Valley town of McFarland. A Florida company ran the McFarland facility for 15 years until Dec. 31, 2003, when the state...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has quietly taken steps to reopen two privately run prisons in Kern County -- with no-bid contracts -- that were shut down as a cost-saving move barely a year ago. The Department of Corrections said they were needed because of an unexpected increase in inmates. But the move sparked angry outbursts from critics who questioned the prison population figures and said lobbying by former administration insiders persuaded the governor to reopen at least one of the facilities. A Bakersfield man who ran one of the closed prisons sharply criticized the department for taking the...