An Oklahoma private prison facility that has been vacant since 2010 is set to reopen after the prison’s corporate owner signed a contract this week to house federal inmates.
The Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, owned by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group, was awarded a 10-year, $361 million contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Monday.
The contract would allow the facility to house 1,500 to 2,000 low-security federal inmates.
The prison, whose capacity is around 2,000 inmates, closed in 2010 after Arizona ended its contract with Geo Group to house prisoners there. The facility has been unoccupied since, although some Oklahoma lawmakers have pushed for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to place inmates there.
The Hinton facility is one of six private prisons in Oklahoma. The reactivation would mean that the only non-operational private prison facility in the state would be Watonga’s Diamondback Correctional Facility, owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America. Diamondback closed in 2010 after Arizona ended its contract with the facility.
In March 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons began soliciting offers for two prison facilities to house federal inmates. Officials at the city of Hinton told Oklahoma Watch in September 2013 that Geo Group had been holding job fairs to staff the facility in anticipation of a new contract, although Geo Group would not confirm that at the time.
Corrections Corp. of America was also holding job fairs to staff the Diamondback facility. No announcement has been made about a new contract to house prisoners there.
A report from Ohio television station WKYC on Tuesday states that federal prisoners housed at the privately owned Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio, were to be moved to the Hinton and Philipsburg facilities after the Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to end its contract with the Youngstown facility’s owner, Corrections Corp. of America.
Chris Burke, spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the bureau’s contract with Corrections Corp. for use of the Youngstown facility, which houses 1,419 federal prisoners, ends May 31.
According to federal documents, the 1,500 to 2,000 inmates to be sent to Hinton are low-security, primarily adult male criminal immigrants, most of whom have 90 or fewer months remaining on their sentences. The facility must be able to accept the prisoners by June 1, 2015, and non-federal prisoners are prohibited from being housed in the same fence perimeter as the federal prisoners, the federal solicitation states.
Also awarded was a $431 million contract renewing Geo Group’s management of the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center in Philipsburg, Penn., which houses federal prisoners, federal records show.
The 10-year contracts will allow Geo Group to house a combined 3,818 federal prisoners at the Oklahoma and Pennsylvania prisons, and will generate about $76 million in annual revenue for the company, according to a statement released by Geo Group.
The Hinton facility is expected to start accepting the federal prisoners in the second quarter of 2015, according to Geo Group.
“We appreciate the confidence placed in our company by the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” said George C. Zoley, Geo Group’s chairman and CEO. “The signing of the new ten-year contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the continued management of the Moshannon Valley Correctional Center and the reactivation of the Great Plains Correctional Facility will strengthen our long-standing partnership with the federal government.”
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