On Nov. 1, Gov. Jared Polis announced through his budget request his intention to close down the private prison Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center, a last stop before prisoners are integrated back into society, in Colorado Springs.

Tuesday, he got his wish, but it’s a lot earlier than his corrections chief might want.

GEO, the company that has operated the Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center in Colorado Springs since 2017, sent a notice Tuesday to the Colorado Department of Corrections that it will close the facility on March 7.

That gives the state just 60 days to find beds for the 642 male inmates currently housed at the facility on East Las Vegas Street in southeast Colorado Springs. And 180 employees at CMRC are going to be job-hunting in the coming months.

GEO spokesman Brian Miller, in a statement to Colorado Politics, said “the Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center was identified for closure in Governor Polis’ Fiscal Year 2020-21 budget proposal. Since that announcement, and related legislative hearings, we have experienced challenges in retaining and recruiting staff at CMRC.

“Given these circumstances, and in the interest of our staff and those entrusted to our care, we have informed the Department of Corrections that we will conclude our services at CMRC . … We will work with the DOC to develop a transition plan and prioritize the health, safety and well-being of CMRC staff and residents. The state has made its intentions clear; that it wants to manage this population within its own facilities, and we will work with them toward that end.”

GEO’s contract with the state for CMRC was set to expire in June.

According to Department of Corrections officials, their plan was to shift those medium-security inmates at CMRC to other state prisons. Eventually, an equal number of high-risk inmates currently located at state prisons would be moved to a $160 million state prison that has sat vacant since 2012.

But the 60-day shutdown of CMRC is a nightmare feared by corrections officials when they talked to the Joint Budget Committee just three weeks ago.

During a Dec. 11 budget hearing with the committee, DOC Executive Director Dean Williams said that “We have 650 men at that facility. We do not have room for 650 men” at another facility.

Williams said he feared a 60-day shutdown notice from GEO. The department and GEO had negotiated another contract during the summer, but the negotiations “caused us a great deal of angst … if this contract goes away … . I could not have something shut down with 650 inmates” all of a sudden in need of a new facility.

A ‘last stop’ for inmates

CMRC was opened by Community Education Centers in 2005. GEO, which also owns the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Aurora, acquired CMRC in 2017 and since then has invested more than $1.3 million in facility improvements, according to a fact sheet. The facility has employed at least 257, according to a 2017 audit, as security officers, medical and mental health staff, maintenance and food service workers, case managers and administrative support.

It currently houses 642 inmates and is a “Level 3 Medium Security” prison. It was originally designed as a reentry treatment facility with drug and alcohol, psychiatric, personal development and mental health programming. The state pays GEO $14.7 million per year to operate the prison. The Department of Corrections refers to CMRC as a “last stop” for inmates before community integration.

Polis’ intention, as outlined in his Nov. 1 budget request, is to put $9 million toward shuffling the CMRC inmates to various state prisons, with some headed to Centennial South, aka Colorado State Penitentiary II (CSP II).

Centennial South, which is located in Cañon City, opened in 2010 as a 23-hour-per-day solitary confinement facility, at a cost of $160 million. It was closed two years later as state policy shifted away from solitary confinement facilities.

The notion of closing down private prisons is one popular with Democrats, including the governor. But state prisons are woefully short of beds to house inmates currently housed at private prisons.

Colorado’s prisons are at or near capacity, according to 2018 statistics. Polis said in a letter to the Joint Budget Committee last January that only 93 beds were available out of a total of 14,000. He asked for legislation that would allow CSP II to function as an emergency backstop when vacant prison beds drop below 1% for two consecutive months. That measure, SB 19-259, was signed into law in May.

In that same budget letter, however, Polis suggested closing not CMRC, but the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, a state-run facility that houses 575 inmates. The “swap” of functions would increase state beds by 824, offset by a reduction in private prison beds, and would allow the state to use private prisons as originally intended, for overflow situations.

State-run vs. private prisons

Polis put the plan into action with his November budget request. But JBC staff have been leery of the reasoning behind it.

In December, JBC staff recommended the committee reject the Polis administration request to close CMRC, in a briefing held Dec. 2. The staff analysis said legislation would be needed to make that transition, and the staff also said the Polis administration request of $9 million was far short of what they thought it would really cost.

The legislation to fully re-open CSP II is already in the works. An interim committee that met during the latter part of 2019 voted 4-2 to support a bill that would allow CSP II to reopen for “close custody” inmates.

The JBC staff asked the Department of Corrections for data justifying the request, and the department responded that the move to a state prison would improve reentry outcomes and reduce recidivism. However, a JBC staff briefing said “no data exists that shows a difference between the results in private prison versus public prison.”

The staff pointed out that the JBC had taken a hard look at the difference in outcomes between private and state prisons just three years ago. That 2017-18 report said that the legislature “does not have enough information to decide how Colorado’s private prisons compare to their public counterparts, despite twenty years of experience with private facilities. Nor does it have enough information to decide if Colorado’s private prisons have gotten better or worse over time.”

JBC staff asked the department for evidence that there was a marked difference between private and public prisons in preparation for the Dec. 2 briefing. The department’s response? “The Department does not have empirical analysis and statistical results that shows moving offenders from private to public prison facilities will lead to improved re-entry programming.”

The department cited several other reasons for closing CMRC and reopening CSP II, in a presentation made to the JBC on Dec. 11.

First, the number of beds currently utilized at CMRC is roughly equivalent to the number of beds available at CSP II. CMRC’s location, in Colorado Springs, gives its staff better opportunities for employment than prisons operated in rural communities. And this facility has struggled to both maintain a stable workforce as well as keep up its licensure for clinical and substance use disorder treatment, according to the department’s presentation.

But JBC staff noted in their briefing document that the ability to maintain the workforce at CMRC is no different than it is for state-run prisons, “so how that could be a determining factor in closing CMRC is puzzling.”

The JBC staff also questioned whether the costs per inmate cited by the department were realistic. “This is not an accurate portrayal of the costs, but rather the least amount of money it could cost per bed,” the JBC staff wrote. In fact, the JBC staff estimated that housing inmates at CSP II would cost about $11.2 million more than the department claimed, both for per-inmate plus administrative and overhead costs, which CMRC does not charge.

“This request presents as an answer looking for a problem rather than a discussion on the merits of the concept of private versus public prison,” the JBC staff memo said, and it also called information from the department “demonstrably false.” The JBC staff said it cannot recommend such a move, at an additional cost of $11.2 million per year, with no evidence that closing CMRC and reopening CSP II would lead to improved outcomes.

The DOC makes its case

The department struck back on Dec. 11 at its budget hearing.

According to the department presentation, “line staff” employees at CMRC are paid about $16 per hour as of mid-August, which department officials categorized as low pay. The prison has failed to meet contractually obligated staffing levels, and the facility has also failed to meet contractual obligations on areas such as drills, security equipment accountability, offender counts, property inventory and vehicle searches, corrections officials said.

The department also has concerns about the facility’s substance abuse treatment license, noting that it is operating under a provisional license granted by the state’s Office of Behavioral Health.

In contrast, CSP II has a capacity of 948, and is authorized for temporary, emergency utilization. It would require retrofitting to create recreation yards, day hall improvement and cell modifications, the presentation said. As to the workforce issue, the department said they would be able to find an “ample” workforce in Fremont County and surrounding areas.

The facility’s 700 inmates — categorized as “medium custody” — would relocate to prisons in Sterling, Limon and Buena Vista, according to the department presentation. In turn, the state would send about 632 “close custody” inmates — the highest level of custody — to CSP II.

Closing CMRC would end “our contractual relationship with GEO Group in a responsible manner,” corrections officials had said, and would also provide CSP II employees with better pay, benefits and working conditions. Inmates would benefit from better access to education, clinical, behavioral and job training programs. And moving the “close custody” inmates to CSP II would “remove the most disruptive influence from other facilities.” Those high-risk inmates have created security issues, in part because those facilities are also understaffed.

Travis Trani, the department’s deputy executive director of prison operations, told the JBC that deficiencies in the way CMRC is operated repeated month after month, which he called unacceptable. As a result, the department reduced its payments to GEO by $186,000 in between January and October 2019, which he said create a safety risk for the facility, staff and inmates and a liability for the state.

The contract with GEO was extended during the summer, Trani explained. GEO wanted to cut 10 staff positions, something the department was not comfortable with. Ultimately, after negotiating with GEO, the 10 positions were eliminated, mostly officer positions who work with low-risk offenders.

But Williams also made it clear that CSP II isn’t ready to take those private prison inmates. “I was under the gun” to keep the contract, Williams said.

Williams credited GEO for meeting him part way in the contract negotiations. “It could have gotten really ugly, but ugly did not break out.”

Trani said some of the upgrades to CSP II are already underway, such as outdoor recreation yards and a common room for watching TV or using a microwave. “This is a good use of state resources. We have this vacant multi-million dollar facility that’s been empty since 2012.”

The state last closed a private prison — the Kit Carson facility in Burlington — in 2016. It cost the area economy 142 jobs. The district schools lost $400,000 out of their $7 million budget, and total economic losses to Burlington were estimated at $1 million.

This story will be updated.