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MTC Shuts Down Texas Jail
On September 30, 2024, Utah-based Management & Training Corp. (MTC) ended its contract to operate the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility in Garza County, Texas. The lockup is owned by the county, which confirmed that most of some 170 employees were out of work.
MTC operated Dalby to hold federal detainees for U.S. Marshals until a ban issued in 2021 by the administration of Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D). Garza County officials quickly brought the lockup in line with Texas Jail Commission (TJC) standards as MTC inked contracts to hold overflow from jails in Harris County and Tarrant County.
But after a failed inspection, TJC issued Dalby a notice of non-compliance on December 18, 2023. The problems were corrected, Garza County Judge Lee Norman said. However, no one notified Tarrant County, whose blindsided Commissioners voted to end their contract on February 6, 2024. Harris County also pulled out its detainees and sent them to other lockups; one, Louisiana’s Natchitoches Parish Correctional Center, inked a new contract with private jail operator LaSalle Corrections for a five-year term beginning November 1, 2024—the same day that Harris County detainees were due to arrive. It was unclear where other overflow detainees went, but the county earlier inked a contract with CoreCivic’s Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2024, p.47.]
Judge Norman downplayed the problems that TCJ found at Dalby. “We got dinged on some paperwork, which put us in noncompliance,” he said. “They were paperwork issues. We’ve heard various other things, but technically they were all paperwork issues.” The judge said the county was pursuing another private operator to replace MTC.
Sources: KCBD, KSLA, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
