Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America opened the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in job-starved Tutwiler, Miss., in 2000. The $35 million medium-security prison currently houses 40 county inmates and has never held more than 500, CCA spokesman Steve Owen said.

With some adjustments, the prison will be able to hold all 1,400 of the Alabama men, Owen said.

Alabama will pay the for-profit CCA $27.50 per inmate per day, and will begin sending prisoners in about three weeks, said Alabama prisons spokesman Brian Corbett.

The transfers will be done in increments, and from all across the state, he said.

The contract will be a boost to the depressed area, as CCA will increase its staff from about 40 employees to 275, Owen said.

Many of the needed employees will be rehires, people who previously worked at area CCA prisons who were laid off because of a drop in inmate populations. Depending on how long the officers have been off work, CCA will require them to complete some training. The newly laid off will need 40-hour refresher courses. Those who have been out of work longer will be required to complete the full complement of CCA training four-weeks in the classroom and two weeks of on-the-job training in the prison, Owen said.

CCA, which bills itself as the nation's largest operator of private prisons, owns several lockups that gained notoriety in the industry for chaos and mismanagement.

Months after opening in Burlington, Colo., the Kit Carson Correctional Facility was plagued with high turnover and an inmate-guard sex scandal. About 10 female guards, a nurse and a teacher were asked to resign or were fired for affairs with prisoners. CCA also hired a felon as an officer, according to published reports from 1999 and 2000.

More than half the staff quit or got fired within a year, including the warden who complained the prison's security system was shoddy. State inspectors often found the prison dangerously short-staffed. After the state stepped up inspections, a prisoner died of a heroin overdose, and a high-ranking officer was charged with a felony after flying into a rage about forced overtime and damaging the metal detector as he fled.

In the mid-1990s, CCA's Youngstown, Ohio, prison was the site of two inmate slayings, more than 20 stabbings and six escapes.

CCA in 1999 agreed to pay prisoners injured in the Ohio riots $1.65 million.

Five killers and a robber escaped from the Ohio prison, the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center. An investigation later found that CCA imported predatory, maximum-security inmates from Washington, D.C., and housed them in a medium-security prison.

"Those are so far in the past, really I would rather not address them," Owen said. "We have an excellent track record."

Gov. Bob Riley and the Department of Corrections authorized Alabama's emergency contract on a short-term basis while the state develops a plan for the future, CCA said in a statement issued Thursday. The state is trying to comply with two court orders to end overcrowding one calling for removal of state prisoners from county jails and another ordering the state to reduce the number of inmates at Tutwiler Prison for women in Wetumpka. More than 300 women are being housed at a private prison in Basile, La., run by Louisiana Corrections Services.

Back to News