Re-opening of Kit Carson Correctional Facility could be huge for Burlington
The effort by the state of Idaho to move up to 1,200 inmates to the Kit Carson Correctional Facility in Burlington got new life on Feb. 12 when the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a marathon session, made major changes to House Bill 1019.
The bill came out of an interim committee on prison populations last fall, and at the time it was written, the state’s biggest concern was overcrowding at many state prisons. There was also an interest by some of the committee’s lawmakers in ending the use of private prisons, and the bill would start the state down that path.
The circumstances changed Nov. 1, when Gov. Jared Polis submitted his 2020-21 budget request to the Joint Budget Committee. Contained in that request, funding to reopen Centennial South, a shuttered solitary confinement prison in Fremont County that the state closed in 2012. That was due to a change in state policy around the use of solitary confinement.
Polis’ budget request said he wanted to close the Cheyenne Mountain Re-entry Center and move its 650-plus inmates into state prisons. That came as news to the GEO Group, which operates the prison on behalf of the state. On Jan. 7, GEO announced it would close Cheyenne Mountain on March 7, and the state had to quickly find beds for the inmates.
House Bill 1019 as introduced would allow the reopening of Centennial South for maximum security inmates who would be relocated from other state prisons, and tasks the Department of Corrections with conducting a study on how to close private prisons, with the last two located in Bent and Crowley counties.
When the bill went through the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 28, a new wrinkle was added: language that the governor’s office wanted in the bill to block Idaho’s efforts to move inmates to Kit Carson.
An amendment put on the bill said the governor would make the call on whether to accept out-of-state inmates, in consultation with the head of DOC and only under emergency situations. It struck language that said permission to move inmates to Colorado private prisons could not be “unreasonably withheld.” That phrase is important. It has allowed DOC to bring in out-of-state inmates into Colorado for years, including 250 from Idaho to Kit Carson in 2012.
HB 1019 landed in Senate Judiciary on Feb. 12, and that’s where things got interesting.
Rumors of major amendments to the bill, dealing with the study and the Idaho move, were rampant during the day. The committee listened to testimony from dozens of people opposed to the study from Bent and Crowley counties, who cited the devastating impact that closing the prison would have on those local economies, including to their school districts.
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