In the wake of news that private prison corporations are spending millions of dollars lobbying for tougher immigration laws comes a study that says privatizing prisons does not save taxpayers any money and may increase costs in some cases.

With five private prisons currently operating in Colorado, the state seems to be benefiting from the arrangement...

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.

Most of the employees at High Plains Correctional Facility will lose their jobs after the state removes the last remaining inmates from the Brush women’s prison today.

“We have already notified our staffs that most of them unfortunately have to be laid off for now,” said Charles Seigel, spokesman for Houston, Texas-based Cornell Companies, Inc., which owns the Brush prison.

The local facility normally employs 83 people, Seigel said, but management has left about half of the positions vacant in anticipation of the closure...

HUDSON, COLO. — The Colorado Department of Corrections is investigating a disturbance at the Hudson Correctional Facility, a private prison that houses inmates from Alaska.

Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti says the disturbance happened late Tuesday or early Wednesday and is reportedly under control. Details of the disturbance were not immediately available.

Cornell Companies Inc. built the 1,250-bed, medium security prison last year and hoped to house up to 1,000 Alaskan inmates there. Company spokesman Charles Seigal did not immediately return a message...

HUDSON, Colo. - A private prison in Hudson was locked down Wednesday morning after a handful of inmates took over part of the facility.

The Hudson Correctional Facility at 3001 N. Juniper St. houses about 100 inmates from Alaska, according to a spokesman for the facility.

Charles Siegel of the Cornell Companies in Houston said that 7 or 8 inmates took over one module of the 1,250-bed, medium security prison. No guards were injured and there were no hostages, Siegel said...

If you're Sherman Schuett, the answer to the question posed by the headline above, at least for lawsuit-filing purposes, is in excess of $100,000. The 61-year-old state inmate and his Evergreen attorney, Ron Beeks, are suing the operators of a controversial private prison in Colorado Springs that's supposed to help prepare prisoners for the difficult journey back to society.

The Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center encourages its clients to take responsibility for their actions and confront misbehavior by others. That's what Schuett thought he was doing in 2008 when he reported another resident for punching holes in the wal l– an act that might be considered snitching in a more traditional correctional facility. An employee left Schuett's report where the other prisoner could see it, and Schuett was attacked in a unit that he claims lacked any supervision. He suffered various facial injuries, including a contact smashed in one eye, and spent three months in segregation after the attack for his own protection…

State Rep. Glenn Vaad said he was stunned when he learned that the Colorado Department of Corrections planned to leave a new, $208 million maximum-security prison empty because of the state's budget crisis.

"That's unconscionable in my mind. We invested $208 million of the taxpayers' money and because of the economic downturn, we can't afford to open it," he said. "Let's sell it."

Vaad, R-Mead, said the state would have to change state law to allow a private prison to buy or lease the prison because state law bars private companies from housing maximum security prisoners. If lawmakers reject that option, Vaad said it should be sold off and run privately as a medium security prison allowed under current law…

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…

Huerfano County Correctional Center will soon transfer all of its Colorado inmates to other state facilities to make room for nearly 752 Arizona inmates, corrections officials said Monday.

According to Allan Cramer, public information officer at the Corrections Corporation of America-run facility, Colorado inmates will be moved from Huerfano to three of the organization's other facilities in Colorado.

"We are going to take the little more than 600 inmates that we have here and put them in facilities in Crowley, Bent and Kit Carson counties. We will then backfill the Colorado inmates with Arizona inmates," Cramer said…

Some inmates at the Crowley County Correctional Facility won a new trial last week.

The 234 inmates had sued the owners of the private prison, Corrections Corporation of America, following the 2004 riot at the Olney Springs lockup, charging that they were punished unfairly for that event even though they said they were not involved.

The inmates sued the prison in two cases filed in Crowley County district court in 2005 and 2006, but saw both cases dismissed by District Judge Michael Schiferl on grounds that they hadn't fully exhausted all their administrative appeals through the Colorado Department of Corrections…

Plans for a $72 million expansion of a privately owned and operated illegal immigrant detention facility can proceed after Aurora City Council members said they weren't deciding federal immigration policy.

Anthony Paradiso, a property owner near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract facility, filed an objection over the planned expansion from 400 beds to 1,500 beds. He recently withdrew his objection and the council voted Monday to cancel it's review of the Planning Commission's approval of the plan.

About 20 people spoke in opposition, mainly on humanitarian grounds…

Protesters taking over the Aurora Municipal Building Monday evening. They came to protest the city's expansion plans for the current immigrant and custom's enforcement holding center at 30th and Peoria. Many protesting say the center violates the rights of immigrants being held there.

"It's inhumane to the people that's working there", said Scott Kwasny of Jobs for Justice. Protesters say the company looking to build and run the ice facility the GEO group is an international company that doesn't help the local economy. "In the United States, GEO is very aggressive at keeping labor unions out", said Kwasny…

The Colorado Department of Corrections is returning 120 prisoners who have been at an Oklahoma prison to Colorado prisons today, authorities say.

Many of the inmates had been housed at a private prison in Sayre, Okla., since January 2007 because of a shortage of bed space at Colorado prisons, said Ari Zavaras, executive director of the DOC.

The prisoners will be taken mostly to two private prisons run by Corrections Corporation of America, which also runs the Oklahoma prison.

"There are two ways to solve the issue of the prison-bed shortage: reduce demand and increase capacity," Zavaras said…

AURORA, Colo. (Map, News) - A privately run immigrant detention center in suburban Denver that serves several Western states is looking to expand - anticipating a greater demand for beds as the federal government cracks down on illegal immigration amid concerns that local jails can't handle the burden.

The GEO Group wants to invest $72 million to expand its Aurora detention center from 400 beds to 1,500, even without a new operating contract from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

GEO stated in October it was expanding to meet federal agencies' need for detention space. At 90 percent capacity, GEO estimates the Aurora center - which houses undocumented immigrants from Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming - would generate about $30 million annually in operating revenue…

A Florida-based property owner has stalled the $72 million expansion of a privately run detention center with a written appeal.

Anthony Paradiso, who owns a 10,000-square-foot building at 1010 Oakland St. in Aurora, sent a letter to the city's planning department protesting the recent decision to allow the extension of the current GEO Group detention facility by about 68,500 square feet and 1,100 in added capacity.

Paradiso, citing the negative impacts of such an expansion on local businesses and pointing to the lack of a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the expansion, formally protested the April 10 decision of the Planning Commission to approve GEO's plans in his letter dated April 18…

FLORENCE, Colo. (MyFOXColorado.com) - An inmate fight linked to nazi racism at a federal prison in Colorado has led to the deaths of two people and injuries to at least five others.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said authorities believe the fight started when white supremacist inmates targeted minorities on Adolf Hitler's birthday.

The violence broke out Sunday afternoon in the recreation yard of the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence. The inmates' names were not immediately released. Five were taken to hospitals with undisclosed injuries…

A legislative committee has approved a proposal that would provide financial incentives for private prisons to develop innovative security programs, or provide education.

The House Judiciary Committee approved House Bill 1363, and sent it to the full House for debate…

Prisoners are a lot like corn. Like corn, prisoners are a commodity government pays for. That's why Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter wants more prisons, right away. Caught in a public-private entanglement, he serves a ravenous beast that feeds on criminal flesh and gets hungrier by the day. The state needs the beast; the beast needs the state.

When the Bush administration created massive subsidies for private enterprise to make fuel out of crops, the ethanol industry built plants and demanded corn. No corn, no government checks. As a result, we have a nation awash in corn - more corn than anyone ever dreamed we could need. Thousands of farmers, who once produced a variety of foods consumers wanted and needed, now produce only corn. Loads and loads of excess corn that serve no purpose other than satiating an artificial venture which will never stand on its own because it serves no genuine need.

Likewise, when states began paying private enterprise to house prisoners in the 1980s, a new industry built prisons and demanded flesh. No prisoners, no government check. The inmate population grew by leaps and bounds, a surplus generated by the war on drugs and bizarre new sentencing laws that keep non-violent offenders in prison for years. Today, more than one in 100 Americans live behind bars and the United States has more prisoners than any country in the world. Attach government checks to corn, and corn will be grown to fill an artificial demand. Attach government checks to prisoners, and the system will deliver them in droves…

Roughly 22 percent of the state's inmates are contracted to be in private prisons, a figure that Zavaras predicts could rise to 40 percent in the next few years if the state does not build more beds. But Corrections Corporation of America, which holds 90 percent of the state's private prisoners in its facilities, has requested at least a 4.25 percent increase in its per-day prisoner fees, while the state wants to give no more than 3 percent.

If the state can resolve the dispute and use expected expansions at two CCA prisons and another facility, it can use private prisons to hedge its bets on the success of the recidivism reduction measures, said Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat and member of the Joint Budget Committee.

On the other hand, adding space in state facilities would allow Colorado to move its prisoners out of private facilities and bring them back under state control. That would free the state from fee increase demands, Pommer added.

The Colorado Department of Corrections on Tuesday outlined a massive five-year, $800 million plan to add state prisons, including expanding the Trinidad prison and building a mega-facility somewhere else in the state.

DOC Executive Director Ari Zavaras said that despite aggressive efforts to reduce recidivism, an increase in parolees and any changes in sentencing requirements the Legislature might approve, Colorado still will need more prison beds as soon as it can get them. Zavaras, who was DOC director when former Gov. Bill Owens put the kibosh on state prison construction in 2000 in favor of contracting with private companies, said he warned lawmakers then not to allow the private/state prison ratio to surpass 20 percent.

As of this year, it's reached 22 percent, and without any new state beds coming online, will hit 40 percent by 2012, he said.

A private prison firm's threat to stop housing Colorado inmates in one of its facilities could hurt Mesa State College's chances of having all of its capital construction projects funded next year. Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, told the Capital Development Committee on Tuesday the state should start expanding its public prison space to head off any leverage Corrections Corporation of America might have over the state budgeting process. "We are in trouble with our bed space," McFadyen said.

Corrections Corporation of America, which houses 20 percent of the state's more than 19,000 prison inmates, during recent budget hearings demanded a 5 percent increase in its per diem rate to hold Colorado prisoners. The company, according to Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, has threatened to stop accepting Colorado inmates at one of its Colorado prisons. A cadre of Joint Budget Committee members earlier this year likened the firm's negotiation tactics to extortion…

The issue surfaced late last year after Corrections Corporation of America requested a 5 percent increase in daily per-prisoner payments from the state for each year of the next decade. The company operates five private prisons in Colorado and has said it will have to clear inmates out of one of them if it does not receive more money. With Colorado's 23 publicly owned prisons filled almost to capacity - three of them with doublebunked beds in many cells - and with CCA housing 19.4 percent of Colorado inmates, legislators find themselves in a bind…

Colorado should begin serious talks about expanding some of its state-owned prisons, the head of the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee said Tuesday. Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, is upset that private prison companies operating in the state incarcerate about 20 percent of all state inmates. He says with one company running four of the five private prisons here, they have too great a negotiating position and can dictate terms to the Legislature…

A private prison company is threatening to move all Colorado inmates out of one of its facilities if it doesn't get an increase in what the state pays to house them. Corrections Corporation of America, which operates four of the state's five private prisons, including three in Southern Colorado, is demanding that the Colorado Legislature give it a 5 percent hike in the per diem it receives to house about 4,000 state inmates, Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said Tuesday…

In just two months, two executives of the nation's largest prison business gave $2,400 to various campaigns in Colorado, nearly triple the total amount contributed a year before. According to records from the Secretary of State's office, high-ranking officials with Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America went on a spending spree during the last two months of 2007, contributing money to the candidate committees of seven state legislators, usually in $400 increments, the highest legal amount…

The American Federation of Government Employees' (AFGE) Local 1302 President Barb Batulis appeared Sunday, Oct. 14 in a "60 Minutes" piece that deals with the dangerous working conditions at the ADX Supermax prison facility in Florence, Colo. Batulis discussed her role as a female federal correctional officer, and the challenges associated with her job…