Private prison in Youngstown isn’t being asked for the moon

Remember when the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Youngs-town’s North Side was being mothballed because it lost its contracts to house prisoners from Washington, D.C.?

The warden at the time, Brian Gardner, issued this appeal to city council:

“We feel confident in asking your help in obtaining contracts in an effort to keep 500 plus jobs in the Valley. We are not asking for maximum security inmates here.”

That was in May of 2001. The prison closed, but then reopened in 2004 after the U.S. Bureau of Prisons awarded a contract to Corrections Corporation of America of Nashville, the parent company of NOCC.

How did that contract come about? Certainly not because CCA had a magic wand or had the political muscle to flex in Washington.

Here’s what we said in an editorial published Dec. 26, 2004:

“Two years ago, Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine urged the U.S. government to buy the then mothballed private prison on Hubbard Road in Youngstown because of the growing need for housing federal inmates. Officials of the Bureau of Prisons weren’t enthusiastic. Congress had authorized the construction of 12 new facilities, and that’s what the bureaucrats in Washington seemed to want.

“But DeWine, a member of the Senate Appropriations and Judiciary committees, would not take ‘no’ for an answer. He rallied local officials, including U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, and Youngstown Mayor George M. McKelvey, opened lines of communications with executives of Corrections Corporation of America … and established a relationship with the decision-makers in the bureau of prisons.”

In December 2004, DeWine announced that the bureau of prisons had awarded a contract to CCA resulting in 1,195 male prisoners classified as low security being assigned to Youngstown. Most of the inmates are designated “criminal aliens” because they entered the country illegally and committed some type of federal crime. DeWine is now Ohio’s attorney general.

CCA was to be paid $129 million over the four-year term and was given three two-year options.

Why bring up the past? Because the private prison operator seems to have forgotten what this region did to help it reopen the facility.

That’s the only explanation we can come up with for CCA’s rejection of a $1 per prisoner tax imposed by city council in 2009. The company went to court challenging the constitutionality of the tax.

Court ruling

Recently, Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge R. Scott Krichbaum ruled that the city did not violate the U.S. or Ohio constitutions or the city’s home rule charter.

But that isn’t the end of it. CCA intends to appeal, which is the company’s right. However, we would remind the executives in Nashville that when they needed this region’s help in reopening the private prison, there was no hesitation. The support for the facility has been unwavering.

It is also worth noting that when Mahoning County had a contract to house federal prisoners, it subcontracted with NOCC. The county was paid $3 per prisoner by Corrections Corporation of America.

Youngstown is only asking for $1 a prisoner, and for the 2 Ω years since the tax was imposed, the tab is $1.3 million. That’s a pittance compared to what CCA is earning through its contract with the federal government.