The following brief report is from WSFA12 News.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday for [Alabama]’s first all-female federal prison.  The prison will be built on 120 acres in Pickens County near Aliceville.  It will house 1,300 medium security inmates and have 350 employees at a price tag of $185 million dollars.  It will open in 2011.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, Female Inmates

Corrections Corp. of America said Wednesday it has won a 4-year contract worth up to $226.4 million to house federal inmates at a new prison in Mississippi.

Under the 4-year contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons, the company would house up to 2,567 inmates the company’s recently completed 2,232-bed Adams County Correctional Center … The contract carries up to three 2-year renewal options and a guarantee of 50 percent occupancy at the beginning and eventually 90 percent.

The Nashville-based company houses more than 8,500 Bureau of Prisons inmates at several facilities and expects to begin taking inmates at the new prison during the third quarter of this year.

vericatrajkova CCA, Federal Systems, Private Prisons

New Hampshire’s newest correctional facility is a three-story brick walk-up that looks like any other along Manchester’s upper Elm Street. But step inside Hampshire House and enter the highly structured and supervised world of a federal prison inmate.  This report from the Manchester Union-Leader.

The newly renovated townhouse … is a locked facility laced with surveillance cameras. Here federal offenders serve out the final two to six months of their sentences. Inmates must submit to random and routine drug testing, thrice nightly head counts, spot room checks, pat downs and, once employed, rigorous staff oversight.   “Everything they do is structured,” Hampshire House Director John L. Sullivan explained during a tour of the building yesterday.   “They are still technically inmates. If they fail our program, they go back to prison,” he said.

The first inmate arrives tomorrow. By June, there should be a waiting list to get one of the 30 beds — 20 for men and 10 for women, Sullivan said … Up until now, the only halfway houses available to federal inmates convicted of New Hampshire offenses were in Boston …

Inmates first undergo a skills assessment and training for employment readiness, money management, parenting and other life skills, Sullivan said. They then must get full-time work and connect with counseling or other social service programs. Inmates gradually earn more freedoms — such as a pass to briefly visit with family or go out to dinner — as they prove they can handle them, Sullivan said.   “When they leave here, they will have a pretty good chance of making it in a community,” he explained …

There aren’t enough halfway houses to accommodate every returning inmate, Sullivan said. But every inmate isn’t suitable for a halfway house …”The Bureau of Prisons does not send out serious, violent criminals and serious sex offenders,” he said.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, New Hampshire, Re-Entry

Latino convicts now represent the largest ethnic population in the federal prison system, accounting for 40 percent of those convicted of federal crimes, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

Nearly half of Latino offenders, or about 48 percent, were convicted of immigration crimes, while drug offenses were the second-most-prevalent charge, according to the report. As the annual number of federal offenders more than doubled from 1991 to 2007, the number of Latino offenders sentenced in a given year nearly quadrupled, to 29,281 from 7,924 …

“The immigration system has essentially become criminalized at a huge cost to the criminal justice system, to courts, to judges, to prisons and prosecutors,” said Lucas Guttentag, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “And the government has diverted the resources of the criminal justice system from violent crimes, financial skullduggery and other areas that have been the traditional area of the Justice Department.”

The federal justice system accounts for 200,000, or 8.6 percent, of the 2.3 million inmates in federal and state prisons and city and county jails. Nineteen percent of state prisoners and 16 percent of jail inmates were Latinos, the Pew study found. African-Americans, who make up about 12 percent of the national population, make up 39 percent of state prisoners and jail inmates.

Deborah Williams, an assistant federal defender in Phoenix, said that the large number of Latinos in the federal system, particularly those who are not citizens and have limited English proficiency, had sharply changed federal prison culture. “I have Anglo and Native American clients who tell me about being the only non-Spanish speaker in their pod,” Ms. Williams said. “Ten years ago, it just wasn’t that way.”

The full New York Times article has more information.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, Immigration Issues / Illegal Aliens

The construction management contract has been issued by the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the building of a new facility at Aliceville AL, according to a press release from Jacobs Engineering.

Officials did not disclose the contract value, yet estimate the construction value at over $130 million. This design-build project encompasses a total building area of approximately 45,000 square meters with living units and support facilities for a rated capacity of approximately 1100 to 1500 inmates. The facility will be a “campus plan” type of institution consisting of several one- and two-story buildings, a Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) factory, and three general housing units of four levels each all within a secure compound. A minimum security Federal Prison Camp with living units and support facilities with a capacity of 256 inmates also is included. A central utility building, outside administration building, firing range, and associated parking and roadways will be constructed outside the secure perimeter.

vericatrajkova Alabama, Federal Systems, Prison and Jail Construction

In a new report that captures how federal sentencing caseloads have changed over the last 17 years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found the rate of offenders sentenced to federal prison time has increased while alternative sentencing (probation, probation with confinement) has declined. A partial reason for the drop in alternative sentences is that a significant number of offenders (37.4 percent) are non-citizens and mostly illegal foreign nationals.

Other Findings:

• In fiscal year 2007, 81.1 percent of sentences imposed on citizens involved prison time, probation (8.4 percent), probation with confinement (5.8 percent), prison split with community confinement (4.7 percent);
• For citizens, the average prison sentence was 76 months, offenders sentenced to a prison/community split received an average of 9 months, the average probation only sentence was 33 months, and offenders sentenced to probation with confinement was 39 months;
• Offenders with higher levels of education are more likely than less educated offenders to receive an alternative sentence.

vericatrajkova Corrections History, Federal Systems, Sentencing

Just two years ago, the Pinellas County FL Jail was chronically overcrowded. The facility at times housed 1,000 more inmates than it was designed to hold. Some slept on the floor.  However, as the St Petersburg Times reports, things have changed.

But an effort by justice officials to reduce the jail population has worked. In addition, a new medical building opened and an old bus garage nearby was converted into an annex.  Now, the jail has hundreds of empty beds. Sheriff Jim Coats hopes to make that pay off — literally.  The sheriff will meet with Florida Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil in Tallahassee on Friday to discuss housing state prison inmates in the jail — for a price …

As of Wednesday, the Pinellas jail had 2,942 inmates. In its current configuration it can hold nearly 3,600. But Coats said it was as low as 2,700 just a few months ago.  The sheriff said his agency might be able to lease as many as 400 empty beds to the state without incurring extra costs or risk overcrowding at the jail again.  But Coats said the jail will only accept minimum security, low-risk prisoners with just a few years left on their sentences …

The jail overcrowding problem was alleviated when Pinellas’ court system began moving cases quicker and getting non-violent offenders out sooner.  A new 432-bed medical facility and an old bus garage converted into a 256-bed annex also helped.  But even the sheriff had to admit his shock at all this, considering recent overcrowding.  Said Coats: “Two years ago at this time I would find it hard to believe that we would be in this situation.”

vericatrajkova FL Pinellas County, Federal Systems, Overcrowding

A Michigan lawmaker has introduced legislation to transfer some of the state prisoners who have deportation orders to federal custody. From the Chicago Tribune:

Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith said Wednesday the idea could save the state up to $9 million by moving the convicts out of state prisons.  The Democrat from Washtenaw County’s Salem Township said that under current state law prisoners must serve their full sentences in Michigan prisons before being deported.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, Immigration Issues / Illegal Aliens, Michigan

Law officers and equipment Tuesday moved in and out of a federal prison that was damaged by inmate rioting.

The company that runs the West Texas prison said Saturday’s riot, the second in two months at the Reeves County Detention Center near Pecos, caused “significant” damage.   Authorities said the facility at this time is unable to resume normal operations …

The GEO Group said inmates in two of the center’s three units remain under staff view in a central area.  The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company says inmates remain “cooperative and compliant.”    No serious injuries to staff or inmates were reported.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, GEO, Private Prisons, Texas

According to the 2009 National Gang Threat Assessment released by the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) and the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), approximately one million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs were criminally active in the U.S. as of September 2008. The assessment was developed through analysis of available federal, state, and local law enforcement information; 2008 NDIC National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) data; and verified open source information.

“Gangs have long posed a threat to public safety, but as this study shows, gang activity is no longer merely a problem for urban areas. Gang members are increasingly moving to suburban America, bringing with them the potential for increased crime and violence,” said Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, FBI Criminal Investigative Division.

Other key findings are as follows:

• Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they still constitute the largest number of gangs nationwide. Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution.
• According to NDTS data, 58 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions in 2008 compared with 45 percent of state and local agencies.
• Gang members are migrating from urban to suburban and rural areas, expanding the gangs’ influence in most regions. They are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping from other gangs. Many suburban and rural communities are experiencing increasing gang-related crime and violence because of expanding gang influence.
• Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation. Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder, and weapons trafficking.
• Gang members are the primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs. They also are increasingly distributing wholesale-level quantities of marijuana and cocaine in most urban and suburban communities.
• Some gangs are trafficking illicit drugs at the regional and national levels; several are capable of competing with U.S.-based Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
• U.S.-based gang members illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border for the express purpose of smuggling illicit drugs and illegal aliens from Mexico into the United States.
• Many gangs actively use the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate with members in other areas of the U.S. and in foreign countries.
• Street gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs pose a growing threat to law enforcement along the U.S.–Canada border. They frequently associate with Canada-based gangs and criminal organizations to facilitate various criminal activities, including drug smuggling into the United States.

vericatrajkova Federal Systems, Gangs (STGs)