In June 2024, after Oklahoma failed to meet a $3 million pay hike demanded by The GEO Group, Inc., the private prison operator gave notice to terminate its contract to run Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility (LCRF), the state’s last private prison—giving the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) just three months to find another home for 2,375 prisoners. Unsurprisingly, the state Board of Corrections (BOC), which provides oversight for DOC, then approved a one-year extension for GEO Group to continue running the prison.

Three prisoners died at LCRF in 2023: Matthew Treat, 36, suffered a fatal fentanyl overdose on March 21; Loren Dean Tucker was fatally stabbed by fellow prisoners on May 6, four days after turning 31; and Raymond Bailey, 45, was found dead in a trash can on October 26, gagged, hogtied and stabbed multiple times. After getting rid of 10 guards, GEO Group blamed them for a laundry list of contractual failures which contributed to the deaths: prisoners who were allowed to roam unsupervised and not locked in their cells; mandatory security checks that were skipped; and records that were falsified in all three deaths—a crime under state law, though none of the former employees was referred for prosecution, according to Comanche County District Attorney Kyle Cabelka.

But what had the company done to keep it from happening again with the firm’s remaining employees? The prison’s camera system was upgraded, GEO Group said. It also asked for a $3 million raise. State lawmakers fell in line to vote for the hike, but Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) vetoed that bill in June 2024, calling out the company for failing to fix problems at LCRF. That same month, GEO Group told DOC goodbye.

It wasn’t the first time a private prison operator gave up running a state lockup. After persistent fines for short-staffing and 18 stabbings in less than nine months, CoreCivic handed over the keys to what was then called Davis Correctional Facility in October 2023; however, assumed control of the lockup—still leased from CoreCivic, now called Allen Gamble Correctional Center—it was even more short-staffed than before, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.45; and June 2024, p.12.]

To keep GEO Group from running off too quickly, BOC agreed to relocate 238 prisoners that the firm is too short-staffed to supervise. Since the contract is based on a per-diem rate, that will lower payments by about $1.7 million through June 2025. After that, DOC expects to ink a lease deal similar to its CoreCivic contract, renting the lockup from GEO Group and staffing it with DOC personnel.

Fighting Get Out of Hinton
Prison Lease

Meanwhile, 70 miles north, GEO Group was apparently trying to extricate itself from a lease of the Great Plains Correctional Facility (GPCF). The lockup was built 35 years ago to revive the town of Hinton with new jobs at the prison, as well as a small ecosystem of cheap motels and eateries that sprang up around it, catering to prisoners’ visitors.

But after a 2021 executive order from newly elected Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D), the federal Department of Justice stopped pulled out detainees held for the U.S. Marshals Service. GEO Group might have replaced those with immigrant detainees held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but local leaders were afraid that the immigrants might be released into the town.

The prison sat empty for two years until DOC agreed to sublease it from GEO Group in 2023. There have since been more troubling headlines; as PLN reported, a federal lawsuit filed in May 2024 alleged that prisoners who complained about being held in eight-man “special management unit” cells were locked in tiny showers for up to three days. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.59.]

GEO Group also sued Hinton’s Economic Development Authority (HEDA) in federal court for the Western District of Oklahoma in November 2023, asking for declaratory judgment that it is obligated to pay only its base rent of $100,000 a year for GPCF—just 10% of what it paid HEDA at a per diem of $1 to $1.25 per prisoner per day. See: GEO Grp., Inc. v. Hinton Econ. Dev. Auth., USDC (W.D. Okla.), Case No. 5:23-cv-01014.  

Additional sources: McAlester News-Capital, Non-DOC, Oklahoma Watch