Inmate's mother to speak against private Texas prisons
By JOHN MILLER Associated Press Writer
BOISE, Idaho — The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself in a private Texas prison on March 4 plans to urge Texas lawmakers to stop accepting out-of-state prisoners at their for-profit lockups.
Shirley Noble said she expects to speak Friday to the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee. She filed a $500,000 negligence claim against Idaho in August in Scot Noble Payne's death. Since 2005, Idaho has moved more than 500 inmates to Texas and Oklahoma to relieve overcrowding at home; Noble says the practice keeps prisoners like her son from family contact needed to rehabilitate them for their eventual return to freedom.
She also blames Idaho and The GEO Group, Inc. — the Florida-based private prison company that runs the Dickens County prison in Spur, Texas, where her son slashed his throat — for neglecting to monitor deteriorating conditions that Idaho officials now concede may have contributed to his suicide. Payne, 43, a convicted sex offender, was kept alone for months in a cell with a constantly wet floor, bloodstained sheets and smelly towels.
"It's what I have found out about GEO, the filth, and people being taken away from their families," Shirley Noble told The Associated Press about her reasons for testifying. "They can't afford the fares to go visit. They can't afford the excess telephone bills."
After Payne's death, Idaho Department of Correction officials investigated and called Dickens the worst prison they'd ever seen. The state has until early November to respond to Noble's claim. She said she'll sue if Idaho doesn't settle.
Separately, she said she's working with a Laredo, Texas-based lawyer, Ron Rodriguez. In 2006, he won a $47.5 million verdict against Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which became GEO, on claims it destroyed evidence in an inmate's beating death.
Texas state Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, called Friday's hearing just as scrutiny of GEO in his state is intensifying. Texas closed the 200-bed Coke County Juvenile Center, run by GEO, and canceled the state contract for the facility last week over shortcomings such as dirty bed sheets, feces-smeared cells and insects in the food — despite the presence of state monitors.
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