Private prison poised to grow 1,200 federal inmates to arrive in '05

The 'criminal alien' prisoners brought here will be classified as low-security.
YOUNGSTOWN -- The city has received an early Christmas present: a federal contract to house prisoners at the private prison on Hubbard Road that will bring jobs and boost the city's tax base.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons awarded the contract Thursday to Corrections Corporation of America of Nashville, parent company of the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, the prison here.
Some 1,195 male prisoners, classified as low-security, will be housed at the NOCC, and that population number will remain in effect for four years.
Damon Hininger, CCA's vice president of federal customer relations, says the contract requires CCA to start taking inmates in about six months, "so we're looking for the first prisoners to arrive around July 1."
Who will be coming?
Most of those coming are those who CCA designates as "criminal aliens," people who illegally have entered the country and who have committed some type of federal offense, Hininger said.
He said the 1,200-inmate population will remain stable for years because the contract calls for a 90 percent guaranteed rate of occupancy.
Hininger said CCA selected the Youngstown facility because it met two major requirements from the bureau of prisons: It was already operating, and had at least 1,000 beds.
"We weren't aware of another facility around that could match what Youngstown had," Hininger said.
CCA will be paid $129 million during the initial four-year contract period. It also will have three, two-year options to extend the contract.
New employment
The company expects to hire 320 employees during the first and second quarters of 2005 to manage the increased prisoner population, CCA officials said.
U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who has been in the forefront to secure a federal contract for CCA since it mothballed the Youngstown facility in July 2001, hailed the announcement as "a great Christmas present for the Mahoning Valley."
The senator said the contract between the federal government and CCA resulted from hard work by many people, including Youngstown Mayor George M. McKelvey and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th.
McKelvey said, "We've been working on this contract with CCA for about a year, and I could not be happier for the 300 people that will be hired at the facility.
"The city will get another $400,000 a year in income tax, and it also means millions of dollars a year in wages, benefits, and food, laundry and other service contracts."
Additional prisoners?
The NOCC has 2,016 beds, and the mayor said he has spoken with CCA officials about bringing in an additional 500 prisoners.
McKelvey thanked Law Director John McNally and city council for their work on the project, adding that the contract could not have happened without the support of DeWine, U.S. Sen. George V. Voinvoich, R-Ohio, and President Bush, "who gave a big thumbs up to Youngstown."
While reluctant to take credit for the successful conclusion of negotiations, DeWine acknowledged that he intensified his efforts to bring federal prisoners to the Youngstown facility when it became clear that it was the only way the region was going to get back the 400 jobs created when the prison had 1,500 federal inmates, mostly from Washington, D.C., after it opened in mid-1997. The facility had an annual payroll of $11 million.
It closed in 2001 after losing its contract to house federal prisoners. The NOCC reopened in March of this year when 100 federal prisoners were brought in through the U.S. Marshals Service. Since then, the number has grown to 349, served by a staff of 135.
DeWine's membership on the Senate Appropriations and Judiciary Committee gave him access to high-ranking Bureau of Prisons officials and also gave him the ability to speak about the need for the federal government to consider using current prison facilities rather than building new ones.
"Their complaint about this facility [the NOCC] ... is that they wanted to have more flexibility in programming, but the people who are going to go in there are going to be short-termers, they're not going to be there for long periods of time," DeWine explained. "These are people who the bureau feels they can get by with less programming."