Who's Guarding the Roost at Private TX Prisons?

At least one Texas private prison is giving away its keys to, well, just about anybody.

Or so one recent inspection at the Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown, Texas would suggest. The inspectors found that fully 72% of prison guards had only temporary licenses, meaning they hadn't yet undergone mandatory training and testing.

Not surprisingly, the prison already had a terrible track record. In December, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards classified Coastal Bend as an "at-risk" facility, because guards had erroneously released one prisoner due to a mistaken identity (the prisoner's still at large). Giving "at-risk" status to the facility meant it would remain under intense scrutiny for 90 days, subject to "surprise" inspections. Although the inspections could happen at any time without notice, I put surprise in quotes because prison officials knew they were coming eventually and could have cleaned up some cobwebs.

Temporary jailer licenses are perfectly legal in Texas (though people holding them must complete training and testing within a year). So the prison passed its inspection, and is now on its way to getting off the "at-risk" list. And sure, this inspection is an improvement over a previous one, which found that 24 guards didn't even have temporary licenses. But the results are still disturbing.

In particular, the prison has a history of high guard turnover, meaning it might just be cycling guards in for stints of less than a year to avoid paying licensed guards more. Even if the prison offers its own comprehensive training to new guards, this reliance on a loophole in the licensing laws is troubling.

As the Corpus Christi Caller reports, the Coastal Bend Detention Center is run by Louisiana-based LCS Corrections -- a mom-and-pop private prison operator, at least when compared to the big guys like GEO and CCA.

I've written several times here about serious issues we invite when we turn our prisons over to for-profit operators concerned more about the bottom line than safety or prison conditions. The lawsuits, allegations of misconduct and deaths in custody are too numerous to count. The allegation that LCS Corrections left Coastal Bend under the watch of an untrained workforce isn't new to private prison operators, either.

Late last year, for example, after a prisoner committed suicide in a Texas facility managed by GEO group, Idaho pulled its outsourced prisoners from the facility. When Idaho's director of corrections health care visited the prison, he said it was the worst facility he'd seen. Problems with guard training at the prison were also noted.

LCS may be slowly cleaning up its act -- the lack of guard training isn't the most embarrassing mistake it's made (that honor goes to when its guards happened to free the wrong guy). But with 72% of guards at Coastal Bend lacking certification, there's still a lot of room for improvement.

(Via the excellent blog Private Prison Watch)

Photo Credit: Rennett Stowe