{"id":8210,"date":"2012-07-26T06:15:13","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T11:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=8210"},"modified":"2012-12-27T13:37:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T19:37:07","slug":"impact-of-private-prisons-part-1-the-public-costs-of-a-private-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/07\/26\/impact-of-private-prisons-part-1-the-public-costs-of-a-private-riot\/","title":{"rendered":"The Public Costs of a Private Prison Riot in Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

The North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla. houses more than 2,000 inmates convicted in California.<\/p>\n<\/div>

When California ran out of space to house its growing inmate population, it turned to Corrections Corporation of America<\/a>, which owns private prisons in 16 states, including Oklahoma.<\/p>

Now there are more than 2,000 Californians locked up at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre. The arrangement wasn\u2019t supposed to cost Oklahoma anything, but a recent riot<\/a> at North Fork is changing that.<\/p>

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Forty-six inmates were injured before CCA guards were able to restore order in the October 2011 riot. The company isn\u2019t saying what caused the riot, but\u00a0prosecutors say\u00a0some of the California inmates who started it committed crimes in Oklahoma, and will have to face justice here.<\/p>

That task falls to Beckham County District Attorney Dennis Smith\u2019s office.<\/p>

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\u201cThe facility, we figure, pumps about $1.3 million into our town every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Sayre City Manager Guy Hylton<\/h6>

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\u201cNow, this riot will create substantial costs to us,\u201d Smith says. \u201cA lot of that is going to depend on how many cases we actually file. It\u2019s already added a strain. So, for me to be able to expound exactly how much it costs \u2014 there are so many factors that go into that. How many people are prosecuted? How many are convicted? How many are actually going to serve time.\u201d<\/p>

Smith oversees a five-county district, and his office is still dealing with job cuts resulting from the state budget crisis. Resources are thin, and the possibility of having to prosecute up to 20 riot-related violent crimes won\u2019t help matters.<\/p>\n

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Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Beckham County District Attorney Dennis Smith has his office going over a 2,700 page report from CCA on the circumstances of the October 2011 riot.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cD.U.I.s, shoplifting, burglary, we see that kind of stuff,\u201d Smith says. \u201cConversely, you get into cases that we don\u2019t deal with a lot. One of those is prison cases.\u201d<\/p>

Charges are expected to be filed within weeks, but prosecution is only part of the cost to the state.<\/p>

\u201cWhen we prosecute someone, say it\u2019s for assaulting a guard or assaulting a fellow inmate, and we assign them some length of sentence, they\u2019re not going to serve it in CCA. They\u2019ve suddenly become the property of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections when it\u2019s time to serve their sentence. That\u2019s an additional cost to the citizens, taxpayers of Oklahoma,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>

But for Sayre, with a population of about 4,000, having the prison means more than 400 area jobs. And City Manager Guy Hylton calls CCA a good corporate citizen.<\/p>\n

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