Joe Corley Detention Facility

Once inside, the new Joe Corley Detention Facility feels like a maze of painted white cement block walls and dim lighting.

After being assigned to either a single-, eight-, 12- or 24-bed room, the only time an inmate will have a chance to exit through the steel doors is for recreation, visitation or to leave the facility.

The 167,000-square-foot facility, which will have 1,100 beds, will begin receiving its first inmates on Thursday, while the facility officially opens Friday. Located off 500 Hilbig Drive, just down the road from the current Montgomery County Jail, the Joe Corley Detention Facility is a product of the county’s growth.

Paid for by a $42 million bond with a 20-year debt service, the facility will first be contracted out to the U.S. Marshal’s Office and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

An eight-bed cell in the new Joe Corley Detention Center is shown. The jail, which opens Friday, will have cells ranging from single beds to 24 beds.

With the current jail running near capacity, Montgomery County officials initially planned to use the building in five to seven years, but a recent renovation approved for the Montgomery County Jail may allow the county to wait a few more years, said county consultant Linda Breazeale. The kitchen is being transformed into more processing, holding and jail space, and the new 97-by-65-foot kitchen at the Joe Corley facility – designed to feed 3,000 – will be used for both jails.

Privately Operated

For at least the first two years of operation, the Joe Corley Detention Facility will be managed by the GEO Group Inc., a Florida-based private correctional management company that operates 40 facilities in the United States and 10 facilities in other countries, including the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center in Cuba. GEO will have 237 new employees at the Joe Corley facility.

Although GEO has not received the best news coverage in recent years, the new warden, Chris Strickland, and Sheriff Tommy Gage say no major incidents should occur at the Joe Corley facility.

“We’re still responsible for the jail,” Gage said. “I can assure everyone in this county there won’t be any problems because of our good working relationship.”

In the spring of 2007, the Texas Youth Commission began investigating reports of conditions at the Coke County Juvenile Detention Center in West Texas, which was operated by GEO. The TYC terminated its contract with GEO based on the findings and allegations that TYC officials had improper ties with GEO. The state Senate Criminal Justice Committee held a hearing on the GEO operations in October 2007 and issued an interim charge to investigate all private correctional operations in Texas.

The report is not complete.

A riot involving a courtyard fire and injury to two staff members occurred in 2007 at a medium-security men’s facility in Indiana.

Warden earns top grades

Strickland has said those incidents are unique, and he doesn’t expect to have such problems in Montgomery County, saying that while it is a volatile business GEO employees know how to correctly handle the “bumps.”

A warden for eight years, Strickland oversaw two California facilities at the same time before arriving back home in Texas. According to the latest reports conducted by the Kern County grand jury, the California facilities run by Strickland made the grade.

County grand juries conduct reviews of penal facilities in California.

The Central Valley Modified Community Correctional Facility was “well-managed and well-maintained” and “the management and staff are to be commended for running a most efficient facility,” reports state.

The Golden State Modified Community Correctional facility was cited as being “a well-run facility with dedicated staff.” The only discrepancy mentioned in the report was a lack of documentation on revenues from telephone usage. However, documented later in the report is a record of the itemized accounts being sent to the grand jury for review.

Reassurance

Alfredo Perez, a spokesman with the U.S. Marshal’s Office, said the U.S. Marshal has never encountered problems with GEO and the office doesn’t hesitate to terminate contracts when a facility is poorly operated. The U.S. Marshal did just that in Nueces County a few years ago, he said.

At the end of the two-year contract, Montgomery County can choose to continue working with GEO or decide to run the facility itself, Breazeale said.

Gage previously had an opportunity to allow GEO to run a new wing of the current Montgomery County Jail in 2005. Gage said he did not approve of the measure at the time because it affected too many people’s lives in the county because they “would have lost a job.”

This time is different, he said, because the facility will not be housing Montgomery County inmates during the first year of operations. Instead, it will house U.S. Marshal and most likely ICE inmates. The county is still in negotiations with ICE, but ICE officials have expressed an interest in 800 beds at the Joe Corley Detention Facility.

Paying for itself.

The U.S. Marshal’s Office has already signed a contract stating they intend to use 800 beds, and will pay $57 a day. Of that amount, $46.87 will go to GEO for jail operations and the remainder will be paid to Montgomery County for debt service. With both the U.S. Marshal’s Office and ICE using the facility, Montgomery County officials are expecting it to generate revenues of more than $16 million during the next fiscal year.

“We built all of our models at a break-even point at 70 percent occupancy,” Breazeale said.

“At 90 percent we think there is a profit and at 100 percent, I sleep well.”