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Jail operations company gets new owner

LISBON — The company that operates the Columbiana County Jail has a new owner.

County Commissioner Mike Halleck said he was told by a Community Education Centers (CEC) official on Wednesday the company had been sold for $360 million to GEO Group Inc., a Florida-based company specializing in operating local, state and federal corrections, detention and mental health treatment facilities.

He does not expect any changes with GEO’s taking over responsibility for operating the jail.

“What we have with them is a contract, and their internal personnel decisions are between them and they don’t have to tell us anything. But having said that, they (CEC) have been very transparent with us, and I would expect that to continue,” he said.

It has been nearly two decades since commissioners first contracted with CiviGenics to run the 200-bed county jail starting in 1998, becoming the first and only county jail in Ohio to be privately operated. CiviGenics was sold about 10 years later to CEC, and Halleck said nothing changed then and he does not expect anything to change this time.

“I imagine that the jail will continue to function as it always has,” he said, adding private operation of the jail has saved the county millions of dollars over the year.

CEC owns or operates facilities with 12,000 beds, which will merge with the 86,000 beds operated at facilities by GEO.

In related news, Halleck confirmed that the assistant warden left to take another position elsewhere after only being on the job since November. The assistant warden was a recent retiree from the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and reportedly quit to take a job with the state prison system.

A retiree from the Florida state prison system is expected to take his place.

The jail had three new wardens over a 12-month period that spanned 2015 and 2016, with the first two quitting shortly after taking the job. The latest warden has been on the job since fall.

Halleck dismissed any suggestion the merry-go-round in wardens contributed to an incident that occurred on Oct. 21, when three inmates overdosed on the same batch of heroin smuggled into the jail. “The same thing that goes on in jails throughout Ohio go on here, too,” he said. “You’re not going to stop it.”

Halleck noted the jail is subject to state inspections, and the sheriff’s office and county drug task force perform periodic drug sweeps using drug dogs. Since federal law no longer allows staff to perform body cavity searches of inmates, commissioners are exploring purchasing a full-body X-ray machine that costs about $200,000. Commissioners are also looking at upgrading the jail’s surveillance camera system.

There have also been five incidents since Dec. 17 where corrections officers were allegedly assaulted by inmates, including three this month.

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