An Alaska inmate being held at a private prison in Colorado died Sunday, Alaska corrections officials said today.

The death at Hudson Correctional Facility is being investigated by Colorado authorities.

The man's name is not being released until his family is notified. He was 44 years old.

The prison was built by Cornell Companies Inc., which recently merged with another private prison provider, The GEO Group Inc.

The company that operates a Colorado prison for Alaska inmates said an error by a guard led to an uprising at the Hudson Correctional Facility.

A correctional officer in a central area electronically unlocked the cells of 41 inmates, Cornell Companies spokesman Charles Seigel told The Anchorage Daily News on Thursday. The mistake at 1:20 a.m. on April 14 allowed prisoners into corridors of the segregation unit, which holds problem inmates.

At least eight prisoners refused to go back into their cells and attempted to break into an office where two guards had barricaded themselves. A prison tactical team ended the disturbance six hours later. Some inmates suffered minor injuries...

After 15 years of managing Alaska prisoners housed out-of-state, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has lost its contract to Cornell Corrections.

Cornell's will charge the state about $19,446,000 a year to house 900 prisoners, while CCA's plan would have cost $18,724,000 — $722,000 less a year.

Either way the state will realize savings over the $20,669,000 it now pays through a contract with CCA…

Prisoners are wiping down doorknobs with bleach. Guards are wearing plastic gloves whenever they touch anything inside a cell. And inmates are telling other inmates to go see a doctor when a rash shows up on their skin.

Within the walls of Alaska prisons rumors are rampant about the dangers of a drug-resistant bacteria that can cause painful and potentially dangerous skin infections. But medical staff in the facilities say worries about the staph infection MRSA are overblown and want prisoners and guards to halt what they call misinformation.

"This is a mirror image of society's response to HIV when it first came into existence," said Roger Hale, a physician's assistant at Palmer Correctional Facility for more than 20 years. "Ignorance causes a lot of confusion and fear."

A bill in the Arizona state Legislature that would have stopped Alaska and other states from sending certain inmates to Arizona prisons is dead. "We'll still be able to take your prisoners, and they'll be returned to you when their time is up," said state Sen. Robert Blendu, who proposed the bill along with Gov. Janet Napolitano.

As written, the bill would have barred Alaska and other states from sending inmates convicted of sex crimes and the most serious classes of felonies, such as murder, to private prisons in Arizona. Blendu said that won't happen.

"I didn't move it forward," he said…