Briefs

• It’s a rainy night in Georgia for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Although the firm is paid $33 million a year to run two prisons in the towns of Alamo and Nicholls, a state report unveiled a bundle of problems in the facilities. Chief among them is a lack of inmate discipline: Some prisoners refuse to get out of bed or cooperate with the routine counts that security officers conduct. There also are incidents of food shortages, altered medical records of inmates, rampant drug abuse, insufficient cleaning products and key watch posts left unmanned. Said an editorial in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Evidence continues to mount that, in Georgia and other states, private prisons are an all-time bad idea.” Corrections Commissioner Jim Wetherington, who succeeded Wayne Garner, stated: “I’m calling [CCA’s] hand. They’re not getting any more inmates until they meet the requirements we’ve given them.” Each prison can hold up to 1,500 inmates. They’ve already been limited to 1,000.

• Hernando County (Fla.) Commissioners locked the door and threw away the key, preventing Wackenhut Corrections Corporation from building a federal prison near the county airport. In a 5-0 vote, the commissioners halted a petition that sought a rezoning to accommodate the prison. The company said the facility would bring high-paying jobs to the area but balked paying $1.8 million in water and sewer connection fees. Refusing to be bluffed, the county didn’t offer financial incentives. The St. Petersburg Times reported that the commissioners’ decision was influenced by a “60 Minutes II” news report that detailed problems at Wackenhut prisons in Texas and Louisiana.

• Empty beds in for-profit prisons in Colorado have signaled a stone-cold reality for private firms: Crime may not pay. At a county correctional facility in Olney Springs — operated by Dominion Correctional Properties — 400 inmates are being transferred back to Washington state because it has built a new prison. Dominion is taking a big hit: The loss equates to $51 per prisoner per day, which amounts to $612,000 a month. The dire situation has company officials sending out invitations to anyone who wants to unload inmates. CCA is facing a similar plight. Its facility in Burlington is designed to hold 820 inmates, but the current population is 375. CCA is running more than $672,000 in the red each month. As in Olney Springs, Burlington is losing inmates because of a state-instigated transfer — in this case into a new, expansive state-owned facility in Sterling.