Former Rep. Vic Kohring says he still supports private prisons even as his enthusiasm clashes with his own observations from inside one, where he said equipment went unrepaired, meals lacked fresh produce and prisoner welfare appeared to take a back seat to saving money.
"That's the downside of the private-run facility," said Kohring, two days after he left the privately run Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, Calif. "There was a certain amount of indifference there."
Kohring spent about 10 months at the low-security camp at Taft following his conviction on federal corruption charges in 2007. He and former House Speaker Pete Kott were freed last week while they argue that their bribery convictions should be overturned because prosecutors failed to give them favorable evidence uncovered by the FBI.
Their first court hearing will be Wednesday, though it will mainly deal with their conditions for release, not the substance of their arguments.
Kott was held in a prison camp owned and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons at Sheridan, Ore. Kott hasn't responded to interview requests.
Kohring was in the process of transferring from Taft to Sheridan when release orders were issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge John Sedwick of Anchorage. On Friday, after reporting to probation officers in Anchorage, Kohring spoke extensively with a reporter about his year inside the federal corrections system.
Taft is a federally owned facility in the California desert. It opened in 1997 as a demonstration project to test how private companies could operate a federal prison. Wackenhut Corrections and Geo Group Inc. held contracts there. In 2007, Management & Training Corp., a privately held company based in Centerville, Utah, took over operations under a four-year, $144 million contract.
"It seemed pretty apparent they were cutting -- they were trying to be ultra-efficient, cutting back as much as they could," Kohring said. "If things would break down, they'd stay broken down for a long time -- exercise equipment, telephones."
Meals were loaded with carbohydrates, "too many processed foods, not enough fresh produce," he said. "There was a lot of complaints that the food there wasn't up to par, at least not in comparison to, say, Sheridan."
Kohring also said that medical care was inadequate.
"I witnessed some pretty bad injuries when I was in Taft there. Guys falling over, one guy broke his femur, another broke his hip, one guy was punched in the face and he had glass embedded in his eye and it took him about a day before they finally took him to the doctor, at Bakersfield, in the hospital. It was horrid."
His own pre-existing back and neck injury, from a car accident, got him neither sympathy nor care, he said.
"My back didn't get any kind of attention at all, other than ibuprofen. I was told by the director of medical to shut up ... They said no to everything." He was warned that if he kept complaining, he'd wind up cleaning the kitchen, he said.
Carl Stuart, communication director for Management & Training Corp., said Saturday that his company does what's required under its federal contracts. Bureau of Prisons officials regularly inspect its operations, and some contract prisons have full-time, on-site government monitors, though he didn't know if that was the case in Taft.
Management & Training operates county, state and federal facilities in five states.
Kohring said that his experiences in Taft haven't shaken his belief in private prisons and said inmates' needs can be met in a profit-making environment. "They certainly have a moral obligation, perhaps even a legal obligation, to meet the basic needs in terms of health and welfare," he said.
And Kohring, who backed private prisons as a legislator, insisted he may play a political role again in the debate and be in a position to advance his ideas.
"One of the priorities for me, if I were ever able someday to be lucky enough to get in the Legislature in some elected capacity, would be to engage in prison reform," he said. "I'd like to conduct some investigations to determine exactly what the needs are in these facilities."
Kohring, a Republican, was first elected to the House from Wasilla in 1994 and was serving there when efforts to build a private prison began embroiling the state two years later. House Republicans first won passage of a private prison bill in 1996, but the effort was opposed by Democrats, including then-Gov. Tony Knowles, and also by local communities targeted for the facility -- at different times South Anchorage, Delta Junction, Kenai and Whittier, among others.
The issue stuck around for years, with backers shifting from community to community and keeping up pressure from the Legislature. Several of the promoters would become familiar names in the federal corruption investigation that surfaced in 2006. Though that investigation came to focus mainly on bribes and extortion related to oil-tax and gas-pipeline measures, it started out in 2004 as "Operation Polar Pen," looking at corruption in the private-prison effort.
While Veco Corp. and its chief executive, Bill Allen, mainly operated in the oil fields, for a time they were partners in the consortium seeking to build the private prison. So was Bill Weimar, the Anchorage businessman who owned a string of private halfway houses. Lobbyist Bill Bobrick and former State Corrections Commissioner Frank Prewitt were also part of the team.
Ultimately, Weimar and Bobrick pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to the prison effort and have completed their prison terms -- Bobrick at Taft. Former Rep. Tom Anderson, R-Anchorage, was convicted of taking bribes to advance the private prison and is serving five years in Sheridan. Allen has pleaded guilty to paying bribes, but in the legislative effort to hold down oil taxes. He's awaiting sentencing. Prewitt assisted the FBI in its investigation.
Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.
By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com