Senate Criminal Justice Committee chairman John Whitmire (D-Houston) has begun looking into all the state contracts with The GEO Group Inc., a company that specializes in private corrections facilities.

The Florida-based company runs six Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facilities, totaling about 5,000 adult offenders, and until this week ran a single Texas Youth Commission (TYC) facility.

Whitmire told LSR Oct. 4 he has already called TDCJ, asking for reports on all the GEO facilities, the contract terms, and copies of recent inspections.

 “I think from what I’ve learned about the operation in Coke County,” he said, “[it] warrants a review of their entire operations in the state of Texas.”

The lone GEO-run TYC facility, in Coke County, was shut down this week after top TYC officials declared it unsafe. Some 197 juvenile offenders were transferred out on Oct. 2.

TYC released a statement Oct. 1 saying it would remove all youths incarcerated at the center, located in Bronte. Dimitria Pope, acting TYC executive director, found that the facility was in an “advanced state of disrepair,” that programming and rehabilitation efforts were not being pursued, and that the overall health and safety of the youth were in jeopardy.

The grievance process established in SB 103, the omnibus TYC reform legislation passed in the 80^th session, helped to bring about the investigations at the GEO facility, Whitmire said.

TYC’s statement said that the situation at TYC was first uncovered on Sept. 24 when a top TYC official discovered unsanitary conditions throughout the facility.

Then on Wednesday Sept. 26 an unannounced audit of all phases of operations there was officially begun by TYC officials. The audit went through the weekend, when Pope ordered all the juveniles to be transferred. TYC also brought in additional security staff and deployed law enforcement officials from the Officer of Inspector General.

In the early morning of Oct. 2, Whitmire’s general counsel received a call from lobbyist Michelle Wittenburg on behalf of GEO. “They were very, very aggressive about, you know, defending their practice there, and that they disagreed with TYC,” Whitmire said.

TYC communications director Jim Hurley said that on Oct. 3, GEO “took people on a tour of a nicely, freshly painted, rejuvenated facility.” Whitmire characterized the occasion as a “pep rally.” Whitmire, House Corrections Committee chairman Jerry Madden (R-Richardson), and Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) each sent a staff person to observe the event, as did Speaker Tom Craddick , Whitmire said.

Hurley said he had been “deluged” by calls from citizens and investors who are concerned about the economic impact that shutting down the facility, which employs about 140 people, would have on the community.

“This is the Texas Youth Commission,” Hurley said, “We are not the Texas Economic Development Commission. Our mission statement says that we are to take Texas’ most incorrigible kids, provide rehabilitative services, treatment—all the things that they need, and try to make them fit to reenter society … Our priority are the youth that we have been charged with handling. That was the only consideration when we took this action.”

The economic side-effects of the action for the community are “unfortunate,” Hurley said, “but our charge is the youth … We do care. But,still, we got to stick with what we do.”

GEO’s chief executive officer George C. Zoley said in a press release Oct. 2: “We are disappointed in the Texas Youth Commission’s decision to discontinue our contract at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center. We have provided quality detention services at the Center for 13 years.”

GEO, according to its press statement, has worldwide operations that include “management and/or ownership” of 68 correctional and residential treatment facilities, totaling 58,000 beds. The company operates part of the Migration Operations Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to Whitmire, GEO representatives admitted Wednesday to staff that because they had a month-to-month contract with the state, they were not going to put any capital or improvements there. “That’s why you got sheets that haven’t been washed in three months,” Whitmire said. “That’s why kids have infections from unsanitary conditions.”

As of press time, the company’s corporate communications office had not returned a phone call from LSR seeking comment.

Whitmire said incredulously that GEO representatives claimed that the human feces that the kids were standing in (as reported by TYC officials) were actually glue. “One of the buildings that they were locking the kids in had no restrooms,” he said. “ … The kids were required to urinate or relieve themselves in trash cans or on the floor.” He later added, “If they want a hearing on that, I’ll give them a hearing … They ought to be careful what they ask for.”

Whitmire said he was certain that the situation with GEO would be reviewed at the next TYC Operations and Management Joint Committee hearing, which will likely be near the end of October. He also indicated that he might call his own Senate Criminal Justice Committee to discuss the matter before then. As chairman, he can give 24 hours notice to call the committee at any time.

Whitmire in his press release characterized Wittenburg’s call to his and other lawmakers’ offices as intending “to pressure TYC to continue to operate at the Bronte, Texas, facility after the commission documented abuse and neglect at the GEO facility.”

Whitmire disclaimed knowledge of which legislators she had called, apart from himself. Wittenburg did not return calls from LSR seeking comment.

“We still have a problem downstream and in the field within TYC,” Whitmire said, “of a culture that doesn’t understand the seriousness of their business.”

 He said there are several reasons for this, such as that many TYC facilities, Coke County’s being “a prime example,” are in remote locations, where there is no press. Whitmire also cited lack of parental involvement on account of the inmates’ coming mostly from San Antonio, Dallas and Houston, to be overseen by locals who “just don’t get it that abuse and neglect are not acceptable.”

Whitmire attributed the abuse and neglect by local TYC employees to an attitude that “if they [the youth] don’t like the way they’re being treated, they shouldn’t have done it in the first place. We’ve just gotta weed that mentality out, and I think the current administration is committed to that.”

Pope said in a TYC statement that the parties responsible for conditions at the GEO facility would be held accountable. Gov. Rick Perry said Pope’s decision to shut the place down was a “clear indication of the positive changes underway at the Texas Youth Commission.”

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst also sounded off on the recent findings, calling it “horrible treatment by a private contractor … I will not tolerate any kind of abuse or neglect of juveniles in the state’s custody.”

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