An Oklahoma Department of Corrections transport van chugged through the downtown intersection of Main and Broadway on a warm Thursday morning.
The prisoners glimpsed the cafes and gas stations that prison staff will patronize after work. Residents were reminded of the economic boost their incarcerated neighbors to the south have brought.
Since 1999, The GEO Group has leased the Great Plains Correctional Facility from the Hinton Economic Development Authority and paid the trust $1 to $1.25 per prisoner per day when the facility is occupied. The money, nearly $1 million annually, has spearheaded several infrastructure projects over the past three decades.
But The GEO Group claims it’s no longer obligated to pay the per diem. If they’re right, it could dramatically change Hinton’s future.
“It affects the whole entire town and the area itself,” said HEDA board member and former mayor Shelley Smith, noting that the money has been used to revitalize the downtown area and improve public school facilities. “There are 3,000 people that live in Hinton and at least that many out of town that depend on our businesses.”
The Great Plains Correctional Facility reopened in May 2023 after sitting vacant for two years, this time as a state-run facility instead of a federal private prison. Oklahoma agreed to pay the GEO Group $9.9 million per year over at least five and a half years to house more than 2,000 prisoners at the facility. Department of Corrections Director Stephen Harpe cited the facility’s proximity to population centers–Hinton is less than an hour’s drive from downtown Oklahoma City–as a motivator for making the deal.
Civic leaders were optimistic that the prisoner per diems would help alleviate a housing shortage and expedite business development on the north side of town near Interstate 40.
The GEO Group had a different understanding.
In a November 2023 lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, attorneys for the Florida-based private corrections company claimed they are not required to pay the per diem because the Oklahoma Department of Corrections is subleasing the facility and staffing it with state personnel. In the filing, The GEO Group asked the court to issue a declaratory judgment affirming that their only obligation is to pay HEDA $100,000 per year.
Kimberlee Spady, the attorney for the Town of Hinton representing HEDA in the lawsuit, said the town and The GEO Group have largely had a positive relationship dating back to the early 1990s. Wardens lived in town and were civically engaged. Company representatives stopped by the town’s annual fair in late August.
The partnership soured after the Biden administration issued an executive order in January 2021 directing the federal government to phase out contracts with private prison companies. The Great Plains prison housed non-citizen federal offenders from August 2016 through May 2021.
In the months after the prison shuttered, Spady said GEO officials began negotiating with the U.S. government to bring ICE detainees to the prison without the town’s input. Town officials pushed back, fearing detainees could be released directly into the community.
As The GEO Group negotiated with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections in early 2023, Spady said the company intentionally withheld information from HEDA and dissuaded town officials from contacting the state directly.
“This go around, they have basically been bullies,” Spady said. “They’ve taken that attitude of we’re big and you’re small and you’ll do what we say.”
In a counterclaim filed in December 2023, HEDA asked U.S. District Judge Charles Goodwin to uphold the original agreement and bar The GEO Group from subleasing the prison to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections until payments are made. The matter is on pace to go to trial in January.
The GEO Group contends that their hands are tied because the state of Oklahoma is running the prison.
“There simply is no ‘base management fee’ under the current circumstances,” GEO Group attorney Randall J. Wood wrote.
Prison’s Future in Question
Faced with population decline and economic despair at the height of the 1980s oil bust, the Hinton Economic Development Authority issued public bonds in 1989 to build a 500-bed, privately owned and operated prison two miles south of downtown.
The Great Plains Correctional Facility opened two years later as Oklahoma’s first private prison. The sprawling prison has since expanded to accommodate more than 2,000 male offenders.
Oklahoma, like the federal government, has soured on private prisons over the past decade, citing patterns of subpar care and mismanagement. Elected officials have also faced public pressure over the ethics of mingling incarceration and profit. However, with a lack of state-owned bed space, Oklahoma hasn’t opened a new prison since the mid-1990s, and officials continue to rely on private companies.
Just one private prison, the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Center, remains open in Oklahoma. The state said it will take over operations of the notoriously violent and understaffed facility sometime in 2025.
The Great Plains prison has faced its own string of controversies over the past 15 months as a state-run facility. In August 2023, two correctional officers filed a report detailing the confinement of prisoners in small shower stalls for days without access to basic necessities. Those allegations spurred a civil rights lawsuit that’s pending in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Oklahoma. The stabbing of a correctional officer and bacterial meningitis death this year also made headlines.
Controversies of prison conditions aside, Mayor Henry Warren said the debate over the prison’s future is complex. While sales tax revenue is up and the town benefits from selling water to the prison, most of its employees will have to commute from El Reno or Weatherford if the town can’t invest in housing development.
“It’s hurting the town to a point,” Warren said of the outstanding per-diem payments. “We’ve counted on that since the prison was built.”
Spady said the current contract is far too favorable for The GEO Group. The per-diem payments requested account for less than 10% of The GEO Group’s contract with Oklahoma.
“This asset, that the community has spent millions and millions of dollars on, is not bringing benefit to the community,” she said.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
