Rep. Trey Caldwell, R-Faxon, said The GEO Group, which operates the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility in south Comanche County, no longer wants to continue its business relationship with the state.
Caldwell, who chairs the House’s appropriations committee and authored House Bill 2780, said legislators have made “multiple overtures” to the company to avoid having to purchase the prison, which included offering increases in the amount the state pays in per diem rates to care for inmates.
“The company has stood steadfast now going back to January that they do not want to continue their business relationship with the state of Oklahoma,” Caldwell said.
He said Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office also requested the state purchase the prison.
Caldwell said last year, lawmakers passed a per diem increase to keep up with cost of living increases, but it was vetoed by Stitt. At the time, Stitt wrote in his veto message that he rejected the $3 million increase because he did not want to put taxpayers on the hook for increasing salaries of private corporations that have state contracts.
The GEO Group responded to the veto by announcing it was abruptly ending its contract with the state. The Department of Corrections, which at the time had over 2,600 inmates in the prison, responded, alleging that the Lawton facility was the “most violent prison” in the state and lacked “the standard of care expected.” Around the same time, two inmates were killed and 30 others were injured during a fight.
The Department of Corrections and The GEO Group ultimately agreed to a one-year contract extension.
Caldwell said both The GEO Group and the Department of Corrections have had legitimate frustrations.
He said the Department of Corrections has been concerned about inmate safety and violence in the facility, and The GEO Group had concerns that the state agency was incorrectly reclassifying inmates to make sure they qualified for incarceration in Lawton.
“I think that in the past there are things that both sides could point to and say that they’ve done wrong,” Caldwell said. “I think our job as a Legislature is looking at problems and trying to find solutions going forward. That’s what this piece of legislation does. It gets Oklahoma out of the private prison business.”
The Lawton facility is the state’s last privately operated prison, though the state leases and runs one other that is owned by a private entity.
The $312 million purchase is an “all-in price.” He said in the past, the state has purchased private prisons where the company took everything within the parameters of the prison with them, which made it very hard to immediately take control. This time, the contract includes vehicles, refrigerators, furniture, utensils, security cameras, the computer system and the warden’s house. It also includes private acreage next to the facility.
He said estimates show it would cost the state between $1.3 billion and $2 billion to build a similar facility.
The prison employs about 450 people, and every employee will be offered employment with pay that is at least equal to what they’re receiving now as well as state benefits, Caldwell said. The Department of Corrections will continue to be allocated the $47 million appropriation that The GEO Group had received, but the agency instead will use it to maintain and pay those employees.
Caldwell said the state has excess capacity to house minimum security inmates, but it doesn’t have the same space availability to incarcerate offenders classified as medium security or who must be in protective custody.
Rep. Meloyde Blancett, D-Tulsa, said lawmakers did not intend to purchase a prison from a strategy perspective, and questioned if all efforts had been made to reconcile the differences between The GEO Group and the state’s executive branch “at a time when we could be investing in other things that are of greater value.”
Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Oklahoma City, who cast the sole dissenting vote against the purchase, said he had hoped this purchase would open up some additional capacity to help address issues with Oklahoma’s aging prison infrastructure. He was told it would not.
“I was hoping to hear that we might have some capacity that we could shut down someplace else,” he said. “We have a number of prisons that are desperately in need of renovation, ancient, and those are places, frankly, oftentimes our DOC folks are not safe,” he said.
The measure, passed the House committee by a 27-1 vote, and the Senate panel by a vote of 20-6.
Meanwhile, the Senate passed the funding measure to buy the new prison, Senate 1160. About $238 million will come from the state’s Revenue Stabilization Fund, one of the state’s savings accounts, and nearly $74 million will come from the state’s General Revenue Fund, the state’s main account.
Barbara Hoberock contributed to this story.
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