Colorado fines prisons company

$126,000 penalty for short-staffing is a first in state

Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 28, 2006 at midnight

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The state has levied fines of $126,000 for short-staffing at two private prisons run by Corrections Corp. of America, which just won a contract to incarcerate 720 more Colorado prisoners.

The new inmates will go to a different CCA prison in Las Animas, which had only minor staffing violations during inspections last winter.

The fines are the first in Colorado. The penalties were recommended by a searing state auditor's report on the private prisons last year.

The audit was prompted by a riot at the CCA prison in Crowley County in 2004. An inquiry found that CCA's staff-to-inmate ratio was one-seventh of a state prison's at the time. Only 33 uniformed officers were guarding 1,122 inmates.

Staffing has improved since the fines were levied, said Alison Morgan, the state's supervisor of private prisons.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen agreed and added, "We certainly are working very hard to recruit and retain staff. That's a challenge for corrections systems, both public and private, around the country."

In Colorado, private prisons pay guards about two-thirds as much as state prisons, the state auditor found.

The fines amount to about 2 percent of what the two prisons earned from the state for housing 1,500 inmates for the 71-day period reviewed.

CCA's Kit Carson County prison in Burlington, near the Colorado- Kansas state line, was fined $103,743 for leaving 701 required shifts empty in a 10-week period from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10, records show. That's about 10 people short per day over three shifts.

The missing staff members were largely guards in various locations. On five shifts, the supervisor was missing, and on 44 shifts, there was no assistant supervisor.

The fines could have been much higher. The state waived nearly $46,000 of penalties for October 2005 at the Kit Carson prison, saying it was unfair to enforce the contract only a few days after it was signed in September.

Documents say state officials complained that in November, there were 435 cases in which employees did not sign out, making it impossible for state inspectors to know if the short-staffing had been even worse.

CCA's Crowley County prison in Olney Springs was fined nearly $23,000 for leaving 157 shifts open in the same period. It, too, was given a reprieve for October's fines, which would have been $18,000.

The state allowed both prisons to staff at lower levels on holidays because there are fewer work, training and counseling programs and fewer prisoners moving around the facility, Morgan said.

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