TAFT — The Oklahoma Board of Corrections on Wednesday approved a one-year contract extension for the state to continue incarcerating male prisoners at Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility, Oklahoma’s only private prison, which is owned and operated by The GEO Group.
The contract, which will take effect on July 1, calls for 238 prisoners to be transferred out of Lawton to alleviate persistent violence and understaffing. Department of Corrections director Stephen Harpe said the agency plans to remove GEO as the operator in the coming months and offer state employment to current staff.
“We recognize that this facility’s reputation for violence has got to stop,” Harpe said.
He said the Governor’s office and House and Senate leaders were consulted on the plan.
The contract now goes to the Oklahoma Attorney General for further review. Phil Bacharach, the attorney general’s office’s director of communications, said he was not aware of the agreement.
Harpe said the agency also reached an agreement to keep about 2,000 male prisoners at the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton, which the state has leased from The GEO Group and staffed with state employees since May 2023. The Florida-based corrections corporation threatened breach of contract litigation if the state did not pay $3 million for repairs within 30 days.
A string of high-profile violent incidents have plagued the Lawton prison over the past year. In the early morning hours of Oct. 28, 2023, prisoner Raymond Bailey was murdered and stuffed inside a metal trash can, where he lay dead for hours undetected by staff. Three GEO employees were terminated following a state investigation into the incident.
A large-scale fight exacerbated by staff error erupted in a Lawton housing unit on May 10, leaving two dead and several injured. Facility administrator David Cole was placed on leave after the incident pending an investigation, a GEO Group spokesman told Oklahoma Watch this month.
Doubts regarding the future of Oklahoma’s relationship with The GEO Group arose on June 14, when Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed a prisoner per-diem increase that would have cost the state about $3 million annually. Stitt wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he vetoed the bill because operations have not improved and multiple prisoners have died over the past year.
The GEO Group responded with a statement saying the veto would make it difficult for the company to compete with the state for staff and it would stop operating the facility if the state did not agree to more favorable terms.
Lynn Lopez-Brown’s husband is incarcerated at the Great Plains prison in Hinton. She said she’s happy that Oklahoma prisoners won’t be transferred to an out-of-state prison, as had been rumored in recent days but isn’t convinced that a state takeover of the Lawton prison will help curb violence.
Great Plains, which is staffed by state employees, has faced its own string of violent incidents and allegations of staff abuse over the past year.
“There’s too much already going on,” Lopez-Brown said of the violence. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to turn that around.”
Ruby Topalian is a 2024 summer intern at Oklahoma Watch covering general assignments. Contact her at rtopalian@oklahomawatch.org.
Keaton Ross covers democracy and criminal justice for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at (405) 831-9753 or Kross@Oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_KeatonRoss.
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