(MPRN-Lansing) Vermont intends to move 319 high-security inmates to a privately run prison in Michigan. That would allow the GEO Group to re-open the facility in Baldwin that’s been closed since 2005, when Michigan scrapped its agreement with the company.
The transfer from other private prisons in Kentucky and Arizona could begin this summer. But, first, the Legislature must adopt a change in state law. A bill that’s before the state Senate would the GEO Group to bring in high-security inmates with a history of violent behavior and escape attempts. Sen. Steve Bieda (D-Warren) opposes the bill.
“I am concerned kind of about where we’re going as a society when you start to sell the right to imprison people to a private corporations – you create a profit motive for keeping people under lock and key,”
he says. Chris Gautz of the state Department of Corrections says the prison is built to handle those highest-security inmates.
“We did have several department employees do a walk-through of the facility recently,” he says, “and feel that it’s up to the code and up to the standards that a Level 5 facility would have.”
But Gautz says Michigan will not be sending its own inmates to the private prison in Baldwin.
“It would be our policy at the current time to not bring Michigan prisoners into that,” he says. “We would not co-mingle our populations.”
Gautz says the department does not see big cost savings in sending inmates to a privately run facility. State law says Michigan can only send inmates to a private prison if it would save more than 5 percent in incarceration costs.
