It's only been a few months since the Hernando County Jail was in disarray.
Suicides by prisoners whose deaths might have been prevented if they were better supervised. An escape by an inmate. Guards who were charged with stealing and planning getaways for their incarcerated detainees. Other corrections officers who did not correctly report criminal histories of prisoners to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
It was one careless, embarrassing or dangerous foulup after another.
Then the Nashville-based corporate officers of Corrections of America showed up to assuage the concerns of the County Commission. They made several promises and they appointed what appears to be a competent and dedicated warden, Donald Stewart, who appears to be doing a yeoman's job handling the few incidents that have occurred on his watch with admirable temperament and openness.
Now CCA is proposing to build an addition to the jail that would house between 240 and 360 inmates. This comes on the heels of Hernando County taxpayers' footing the bill for an $11-million-plus-interest expansion that just opened seven months ago, and about the time the unfortunate sequence of events called into question CCA's management of the facility.
Is the memory of county government leaders so short that they would actually consider extending their involvement with CCA before the company has proved its ability to run the jail beyond reproach?
Not enough time has passed for the County Commission to declare the problems solved, or to reestablish the public's trust in one of its most essential institutions.
All the jail's bricks and mortar, from when it was constructed for $6.3-million in 1988, right up until last year's expansion to 730 beds, has been paid by taxpayers. When things went wrong last year, CCA officials were quick to blame security and equipment problems on the continuing construction of the expansion. They also said the expansion necessitated hiring undertrained guards just to keep up with the influx of more prisoners.
If CCA was to undertake another major expansion project now, can the company guarantee those circumstances won't re-create the opportunity for similar oversights?
Granted, the number of prisoners is growing in proportion to the county's increase in population. As of Wednesday, there were 691 prisoners there, of which 155 are housed by CCA for the federal government. The private company is paid $42.50 per prisoner, per day for doing so, and the county receives only about 15 percent of that fee. CCA is offering to pay for the expansion so it can make a bigger profit by bringing in more federal prisoners.
Given the existing 730-bed capacity and the estimated increase in prisoners, it would be 3 years before the jail reaches capacity - if only county inmates are housed there.
The jail was built by Hernando County taxpayers for the purpose of sheltering local prisoners. Any request by CCA to mushroom that operation into a larger profit center, which is borne by residents' federal taxes, should be cautiously scrutinized, especially when the company's very recent and very problematic history here is taken into account.
The county's contract with CCA expires in 2010. As that deadline approaches, if CCA has not repeated its operational mistakes and still wants to build an addition to house federal inmates, the commission should consider the request. It also should consider renegotiating the lopsided 85-15 split, as well as soliciting bids from the Sheriff's Office and other private vendors.
Until then, the county should lay claim to all the available beds and tell CCA the federal government needs to look elsewhere for a place to warehouse its prisoners.
