Prison Workers Have Criminal Backgrounds
Colorado uses private prison companies to house many of its inmates. Last month, some guards were fired and charged with having sex with female inmates. Now, it turns out, that other prison workers have criminal convictions and that the companies did not do adequate background checks to find out. The company is G-R-W Corp. a private Tennessee-based company that runs five prisons in Colorado, including the one in Brush where the prison guards were charged with sex offenses. The Colorado Department of Corrections is passing the buck to the prison company.
State Corrections Department spokeswoman Alison Morgan said Thursday that five convicted criminals and three people whose backgrounds "merited further investigation" had been hired at the Brush Correctional Facility, a privately run women's prison where several guards face charges of having consensual sex with inmates and smuggling tobacco into the facility. ...She said it appears that fingerprints for the guards that were sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation were smudged or otherwise unreadable. The prints were sent back to the prison, which did not follow up, Morgan said. "That's where the failure of leadership was," she said. ....Morgan said the Corrections Department's Private Prisons Monitoring Unit does not have the staff or funding to regularly conduct its own background checks of private-prison employees.
Comments
Submitted by anissa sutton (not verified) on Sun, 2005-09-18 01:52.
I am a recent parolee from a prison in Pueblo Colorado.. The issues that have been made public are not only going on in Brush, but they are going on in the Pueblo Faclity also. In fact when I was there and inmate was moved back to DWCF because of a relationship she was having with a male CO at San Carlos Correctional Facility. He was able to keep his job, and work with other female inmates. I worked under this CO for a period of one month, but was asked not to come back after that time. He wanted to hire someone else, but he wanted to do the hiring. He only wanted what he thought to be attractive females working for him. At that time, the CO, would bring in soda, smokes, or fast food to the girls he liked. This is still going on, or was as of my release in June. This was brought to the attention of the Warden of both prison's but had not changes as of June. Relationships with Guards and inmates are not a uncommon thing. When they are found out, the inmate is transfered quickly, and it is covered up. The behavior still continues. It's very hard to bring any of these types of issues to the Warden or to case managers. The Co's lie and say that it is not happening. Who can believe a criminal right? So that inmates is moved so they cannot makes waves.
