The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

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May 28, 2010

Private prison in Watonga closes

Associated Press

WATONGA, Okla. — This Blaine County city wants its criminals back.

Not back on the streets, but back in the private prison that until Thursday was Watonga’s biggest employer.

Now it’s empty.

The Diamondback Correctional Facility shipped its last prisoners away Thursday and shut down, leaving a hole in the city economy and more than 300 corrections workers jobless or transferred to private prisons elsewhere.

“It hurts,” Mayor Dale Green said.

The prison housed about 2,000 inmates from Arizona, but officials there recently opted not to renew contracts with out-of-state prisons housing Arizona prisoners, Diamondback spokeswoman Sandy Clark said.

“It was a budget decision,” Clark said. “They had some new beds there, and so they chose to utilize those rather than keep these inmates out of state.”

The prison’s owner, Corrections Corp. of America, has been searching for a new client for the Diamondback Correctional Facility, which has been open since 1998 and had a payroll of about $11 million, Clark said.

“We are going to continue to actively market that facility,” said Steve Owen, a spokesman for Corrections Corp. of America.

“They’ve done an outstanding, professional job under all the contracts we’ve worked with in the past.”

Green said: “Hopefully, in the next six months, we can get some new prisoners in there.”

Some former Diamondback workers have transferred to other Corrections Corp. of America prisons, some in Oklahoma.

Others, such as Clark, worked their last day Thursday.

“I’m from here, so I’m not moving,” Clark said. “We’re hoping to secure a contract, so I’m just going to wait and see what happens, and hopefully, we’ll be back to work soon.”

Green said the prison bought about $400,000 of water and sewer services from Watonga, which has a population of about 5,600 and a city budget of about $2.4 million next fiscal year.

The Watonga Chamber of Commerce is bracing for a hit to the city’s economy.

“It’s going to have an effect on our housing market and just our total population count,” said Mary Larson, the chamber’s administrative director.

“It’s hard to figure the trickle down. The employees who lose their income will have less spending dollars, which will affect the sales tax in the community. It’s going to be a bit of a snowball.”

Sales taxes on prisoner commissary purchases in the prison will also be lost, Larson said.

But city officials remain confident that prisoners will return to help keep the city’s economy afloat.

“Unfortunately, that’s not something that goes away, is the need to house prisoners,” Larson said.

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