Feds end deal with NYC’s only private jail contractor
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The federal government has declined to renew a contract with prison contractor GEO Group to operate the Queens Detention Facility, New York City’s lone private jail. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File
By David Brand
The federal government has declined to renew its agreement with a controversial contractor running New York City’s only private jail, as state investigators probe the firm’s various COVID-19 failures first reported by the Eagle last year.
GEO Group, the country’s second-largest private prison corporation, has operated the 222-bed Queens Detention Facility in Springfield Gardens since 1997 but will be forced to leave by March 31 without a new deal, the company said
In a letter to Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Tuesday, GEO Group said it is preparing for “complete closure” of the jail and will lay off or transfer every employee, including about 30 who live in Queens.
GEO Group “will cease to contractually operate the Queens Detention Center located at 182-22 130th Avenue, Jamaica, New York effective March 31, 2021,” the corporation wrote in the letter required by the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
GEO Group said in a statement that it “expects to market the Queens Detention Facility to other government agencies” if it does not get a new deal. The facility once held immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and awaiting deportation.
The company now contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service to detain cooperating witnesses as they await trial or sentencing in federal court.
Staff and detainees only found out about the decision to end the contract Monday, according to one detainee who spoke with the Eagle and asked to remain anonymous.
Guards and other employees began receiving their formal termination notices and telling detainees today, he said.
Meanwhile, he said, many inmates are “shell shocked” because they are cooperating witnesses who worry about getting attacked or killed if they enter the general population at another lockup.
“A lot of inmates are shaken because this was a safe haven,” he said. “There are people who have never been to jail before, never experienced violence and they’re scared.”
The detainee said the abrupt news stunned him and others in the facility.
“Nobody informed us. No heads up. It was the same with COVID,” he said.
The jail garnered rare attention in March when a federal judge freed its most famous inmate, Brooklyn rapper Tekashi 69, due to concerns about the rampant spread of the coronavirus.
Detainees sleep in bunk beds in the jail’s seven open dormitories, a setting that fueled a major outbreak of COVID-19 first reported by the Eagle last year.
Extensive coverage by the Eagle and the Daily News spurred a formal investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James, who sued GEO Group in federal court in December to obtain records related to their pandemic response at the Queens jail.
In addition to James’ probe, Richards and Rep. Gregory Meeks had pressured GEO Group to release information about its response to the COVID outbreak at the jail.
Richards praised the decision to end the contract with GEO Group as “a victory for the Southeast Queens community and our borough.”
“This for-profit facility, managed by GEO Group, had a troubling track record — from housing ICE detainees and exposing the incarcerated to COVID-19,” Richards said. “Thanks to the swift action and partnership with our Attorney General Letitia James and Congressman Gregory Meeks and the Queens Daily Eagle's reporting on this, Queens residents can breathe a sigh of relief with the non-renewal of this facility.”
During the pandemic’s springtime peak, the percentage of inmates with COVID-19 at the private lockup nearly doubled the rate of infection at Rikers Island jails. Overall, at least 39 inmates and 32 staff members have tested positive for coronavirus, according to court mandated reports published weekly by GEO Group.
Multiple detainees, their loved ones and their defense attorneys contacted the Eagle in March, April and May to describe how COVID-sick detainees were sharing bunk beds and dorms with non-symptomatic inmates.
An eight-cell solitary confinement unit initially used to quarantine sick detainees soon filled up and staff and inmates lacked personal protective equipment. At one point, so many guards had called out sick that a lone officer was forced to patrol multiple units at the same time, detainees said.
“Everyone’s coughing, sneezing on top of each other,” one man told the Eagle April 3. “We’re not practicing social distancing because you cannot do social distancing in this jail because everyone is so on top of each other.”
A handful of inmates filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, which they later pulled, reportedly because they feared losing favorable deals from federal prosecutors.
After President Joe Biden signed an executive order in January directing the Department of Justice not to renew private detention contracts, the Eagle reached out to the DOJ for information about the Queens jail contract.
The terms of the contract shared by the DOJ indicate that GEO Group can operate the jail until March 2029.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to questions about why the agency was terminating the contract.
