Prison company launches job-saving campaign

Prison company launches job-saving campaign

YOUNGSTOWN

The company that owns the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Hubbard Road has launched a campaign to retain NEOCC’s contract to house federally convicted and sentenced undocumented immigrants.

Corrections Corp. of America, the for-profit Nashville-Tenn.-based company that owns the prison, has created a new website, www.JobsForYoungstown.com, which asks local residents to write to their elected officials and U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials before Feb. 28 in support of renewal of the inmate housing contract here.

CCA’s contract with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to house the immigrants here at $69.72 per inmate per day for 1,507 inmates expires May 31, 2015.

Loss of that contract would eliminate most of NEOCC’s 418 jobs, CCA said.

The immigrants constitute about 75 percent of about 2,000 prisoners at the Hubbard Road prison, which opened in 1997.

The Bureau of Prisons is reviewing competitive bids from prisons for a new contract to house inmates and has said it will look at both price per inmate and other factors in deciding where to award the contract.

Today, CCA executives are to with mayor-elect John A. McNally IV and give a luncheon briefing on this matter to local business and elected leaders at the Covelli Centre.