“The poll results are pretty clear,” Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, told the Idaho Press on Tuesday. “Colorado voters are not in support of this.”

Annie Skinner, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, sent a statement to the Idaho Press, which read: "Colorado state statute requires a private company to receive express permission from the Department of Corrections Executive Director if they want to bring inmates into Colorado from another state. Neither Core Civic nor the state of Idaho have made such a request to the department. If a request is received, the Department of Corrections will extensively vet and review the request before any decision is made."

Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt said Tuesday he did not want to comment on what Dean Williams, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, should or should not do. 

CoreCivic declined to elaborate on the potential arrangement.

"Out of respect for the integrity of the procurement process and for competitive reasons, we do not elaborate on any proposals that may have been submitted in response to active procurements," Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic's public affairs manager, wrote in an email to the Idaho Press on Wednesday.

The poll comes weeks after the Idaho Board of Correction voted to allow the state correction department to enter into a contract with CoreCivic to house more than 1,000 Idaho inmates at Kit Carson Correctional Facility in Burlington, Colorado. The move is necessary due to lack of bed space in Idaho prisons.

Idaho currently has a contract with another private prison firm, the GEO Group. On Wednesday, there were 651 Idaho inmates in the company’s Eagle Pass Correctional Facility in Texas. That contract expires in September. The proposed five-year contract with CoreCivic would replace it.

Donner, with the reform coalition, wrote a letter to Williams on Jan. 31 urging him not to approve the deal.

Colorado has a troubled history with private prisons, she wrote in the letter, and cited four instances — in 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2010 — in which inmates had rioted within prisons operated by private companies. The 2004 riot at Crowley County Correctional Facility was especially damaging — inmates rioted all night, chased the small staff off the premises, and caused millions of dollars of damage, the Denver-based Westword reported in 2011. At the time, the facility was managed by Correction Corporations of America, which later became CoreCivic. This company also operated a notoriously violent and understaffed Idaho prison near Kuna under the state severed the contract in 2014, according to the Associated Press. 

More recently, Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis made closing private prisons one of his campaign issues, and, in his budget request for fiscal year 2020, suggested the closure of one of the three private prisons where Colorado housed inmates, the Colorado Independent reports. Democrats generally agree with him — the Colorado General Assembly is considering a bill that would direct its corrections department to study how to end the state’s involvement with private prisons by 2025.

STAFFING CONCERNS

One of the reasons Donner is concerned about Idaho’s proposed arrangement with CoreCivic is because the company has, in the past, had trouble recruiting enough staff to properly manage the prison.

“CoreCivic must ensure adequate staffing levels to house the approximately 1,100-1,200 inmates they want to transfer,” she wrote in the letter to Williams. “It is my recollection that when (the prison) housed Colorado inmates, the population never could exceed approximately 700-800 inmates due to chronic staffing shortages, despite the larger design capacity. Even though the staff is employed by CoreCivic and not the state, most of them are also Colorado residents and their safety should be considered and protected, as well.”

Additionally, she was concerned about Idaho inmates who had medical or mental health needs, as “there have been challenges in providing that kind of care at (the prison) when Colorado inmates were housed there.”

Gustin with CoreCivic, in his response emailed to the Idaho Press, did not address questions about these staffing concerns.

Under the proposed contract, Idaho would be able to house up to 200 close custody inmates at the facility. "Close custody" is the department's highest security classification. Colorado law, however, prohibits the Colorado Department of Corrections from housing its highest risk inmates in private facilities unless the state's governor declares a "correctional emergency."

Part of the staffing shortage problem is the prison’s location. The prison was an economic engine for the town, and when the facility closed in 2016, according to the Denver Post, the town’s population dropped to 3,600 from 4,200.

Donner was skeptical of the arrangement.

“I’m not saying they can’t (hire enough staff) to have a 1,200-bed facility,” she said. “Historically, they have not.”

Tewalt pointed out CoreCivic is obligated to ensure the facility is properly staffed proportional to the number of people imprisoned in the facility. At the Jan. 22 Idaho Board of Correction meeting during which the board endorsed the proposed agreement, Tewalt specifically mentioned the department’s high expectations for medical staff. Staff concerns are why the proposed contract will cost Idaho more than its current contract with the GEO Group, and more than what other states pay in private prison contracts. Colorado, for instance, pays private prison firms $57.94 per inmate per day, according to Skinner.

For the first year Idaho has inmates in the facility, the state would pay the company $75.50 per inmate per day. That rate would stay the same — unless the prison’s population dips below 1,200 inmates. If that happens, the state would pay the company $79.50 per inmate per day.

That evens out to more than $33 million per year, if 1,200 Idaho inmates stay in the prison. The added cost will ensure the company properly staffs the prison, Tewalt said Tuesday. If 1,200 Idaho inmates are housed in the facility, it means roughly 12.6% of the state's prison population will be housed out of state in a private facility. Nationally, less than 8% of prison inmates are held in private facilities, the Prison Policy Initiative reported in 2019.

Tewalt said the department has high expectations from CoreCivic for the program opportunities available to inmates, and also has high expectations from the company’s staff.

“Having appropriate staff is something that’s of critical importance to us, and that’s represented in the per diem cost,” he said.