Briefs

• AFSCME members of the Corrections and Criminal Justice Coalition (CCJC) met recently in Las Vegas to discuss workplace safety. Their biggest concern: how to handle terrorist cells in prisons. CCJC has contacted the FBI — the agency responsible for terrorist training — and requested that the department conduct a training session at ACU's May steering committee meeting, which coincides with National Correctional Officers and Employees Week. In addition, Sens. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) have introduced S.R. 24, which designates the week of May 4 as National Correctional Officers and Employees Week. Information concerning the declaration, plus a sample e-mail to send to your Senator, can be found on the AFSCME Corrections United page at AFSCME's Web site, [Note: SR 24 passed, so alert and sample e-mail have been removed from this site.]

• James Austin, director of the Institute on Crime, Justice and Corrections at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., warned Oklahoma lawmakers that their dependence on private prisons could return to haunt them. Although only 6 percent of the country's prison population is housed in private facilities, Austin noted that 30 percent of that state's inmates are locked up in prisons managed by for-profits. He told the Joint Committee on Accountability in Government that Oklahoma is opening itself up to such problems as vendors walking away from contracts or going out of business. "Don't expect to save a lot of money with private prisons," Austin said. "It's not going to happen" — because private-prison operators tend to pay lower wages and have few employee benefits, which has led to problems of inexperienced staffing and high turnover in some facilities.

• Say it isn't so: To keep open Montana's unprofitable Crossroads Correctional Center — managed by Corrections Corporation of America — state Rep. Edith Clark (R) plans to sponsor a bill that will allow the company to house out-of-state prisoners in the 500-bed facility, which isn't filled to capacity. State law currently forbids the for-profit from bringing in inmates from outside of Montana's borders.

• Colorado Department of Corrections officials fear that the state's prison population is set to soar in the next 10 years. One of their solutions: build more private facilities. But state Rep. Tom Plant (D) isn't convinced. If anything, he told The Denver Post, it's just a ploy to give control of the state's prison system to Corrections Corporation of America, creating a monopoly that could leave the state vulnerable to higher costs. "We are becoming overly reliant on the private prison system, which is motivated by profit, not societal objectives of rehabilitation," Plant said. "As we become more reliant on them, we become hostages of private prisons." Department officials are set to ask the Joint Budget Committee for the construction of enough private prisons to house 1,500 low-to medium-security inmates by 2006.