Briefs

• AFSCME is featured in the September 2000 issue of Penthouse magazine. The union is included in a riveting article about the increasing mayhem and violence in Texas prisons during the tenure of Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee for President. The story relates AFSCME’s push to get the governor to increase the pay of COs, as well as the horrific murder of CO3 Daniel Nagle, president of Local 3890 (Council 7). The article opens with a painting of Bush wearing a toga and playing a violin while a prison burns in the background.

• Missing for two months after an escape from a private prison in New Mexico, murder suspect Antonio Martinez was found recently near Las Vegas. Martinez was released June 10 from the Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, N.M., because of an administrative foul up. The inmate is accused of killing Dale Garcia, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office. Garcia’s truck was found partially burned in Albuquerque; his body was found three weeks later lying in sagebrush near Camel Rock.

• The Morning Star newspaper in Wilmington, N.C., reports that state officials are ready to end an experiment with two private prisons and are prepared to cancel the five-year, $19.8 million contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The company has operated the prisons for only two years. The medium-security prisons are located in Spruce Pines and Bayboro. The state already has held back $1 million in payments to CCA after audits detailed serious problems. The biggest shortcoming in the prisons is understaffing, which led to the escape of a convicted murderer from the Bayboro facility in November. As of late June, the inmate still hadn’t been found.

• Doctor R. Crants has been fired as chief executive officer of Prison Realty Trust Inc. and CCA and replaced by John Ferguson.
  
  Ferguson is the former Tennessee finance commissioner. He served as the state’s chief financial officer under Gov. Don Sundquist before resigning on June 30.
  
  Crants is a co-founder of Nashville-based CCA. He built the company into the world’s largest private prison operator. But increasing problems at CCA-run prisons and shareholder accusations of improper dealings, which caused the stock price to plummet, led to his ouster.

• Before they cough up more millions to Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, officials in New Mexico want assurances that reforms will be included in any new contracts.
  
  An independent inquiry conducted by a five-member panel of national prison experts looked at violence in prisons and privatization in the state. The panel was highly critical of contracts for housing inmates in Wackenhut-run prisons in the towns of Hobbs and Santa Rosa.
  
  The state doesn’t contract directly with Wackenhut, but with Lea and Guadalupe counties, which in turn contracts with the company to house inmates. The experts’ report notes that the tiered contract allows prisons to be designated legally as county jails, a move that exempts them from requirements of the state’s procurement code.
  
  New Mexico and Wackenhut are currently working to renegotiate the contracts. The state pays the company $25 million a year to house inmates in the two prisons.
  
  The Department of Corrections must improve each contract because it also wants $4 million for a new “super maximum” facility at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe.