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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1984)
B Page 6B/The Battalion/Thursday, January 19, 1984 il E First private prison contract Firm to operate prison United Press International JR< iall war :or> isid eke iroj StO! np; :ag eur iar< dal ive am WASHINGTON — Faced with overcrowding and a burgeoning population of in mates convicted of immigration violations, the Bureau of Prisons is making the unprecedented decision of turning to a private contractor for help. The bureau has announced it intends to award a contract to a private Texas-based firm to op erate a 400-600 bed federal H minimum security camp on a section of a 7,500-acre aban doned Army base in Mineral Wells, a town of 16,700 in north central Texas. “It is new for the Bureau of Prisons to contract with a private company for full 24-hour cus tody services,” said Wade Houk, the bureau’s assistant director for administration, “although we have contracted for com munity treatment centers, also known as halfway houses, and with state and local correctional agencies to hold prisons. “The Bureau of Prisons cur rently is 24 percent over crowded. This aspect of con tracting for a minimum security operation in Texas is just one more of many steps that the bureau is taking to deal with its overcrowding,” he said. As of Jan. 3, the federal pris on population was 30,241, even though the bureau’s 43 facilities were designed to hold 24,399 in mates. The bureau, which has other expansion and building prog rams under way, estimates a population between 34,000 and 35,000 by late 1987. Officials say the camp at the former Fort Wolters Army base would house only nonviolent male offenders serving terms of less than six months — approxi mately 85 percent of the illegal aliens convicted in Texas, New The bureau’s decision to consider hiring a private contractor re flects a growing trend for governments to turn to private busi ness to run correction al facilities for them, saving expensive capital outlays. (F MSC Cepheid Variable presents & 1 ‘Unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a motion picture screen...you simply cannot beat ‘Cat People’.” -Rex Reed, New York Daily News 7:30 & 10:00 Thursday, January 19 Rudder Theatre $1.50 Mexico, Arizona and southern California of repeedly trying to enter the country. “We wouldn’t be seriously considering it unless we thought it would be successful,” Houk said. “What it portends for the future, I can’t really comment contracts for up to three years — the same amount of time it would take to get a budget appropration to build a new facility. “Right now, with the influx of people being arrested for im migration violations, we need it,” he said. “That could change in a few years because of any number of things, including changes in immigration laws. “Now they’re being put in regular facilities and we have to send some as far away as Terre Haute in Indiana and Leaven worth in Kansas so this would get away from transportation costs,” said Garrison. “We can do this with a con tract much quicker and if things change in three years, we’re not stuck with a facility we don’t need,” he said. The bureau’s decision to con sider hiring a private contractor reflects a growing trend for gov ernments to turn to private busi ness to run correctional facilities for them, saving expensive capital outlays. Bill Garrision, a regional bureau spokesman in Dallas, told UPI the bureau is autho rized to issue a series of one-year Bureau officials refused to re veal the amount of the winning bid or how many firms were competing for it but said the cost per prisoner will be about the same as at similar bureau facili ties in Texas. Garrison revealed there were 32 queries for more information when the bureau announced last September it was considering a private contracting situation for a facility in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or southern California. AUIDII11.^-3! If IE ID,. 211 - 235 APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE MSC 216 PUL FEB. 3 4$>msc yap ii i > si « m 4r WIMMER! 1981 PULITZER PRIZE N.Y. DRAMA CRITICS’ CIRCLE AWARD CRIMES OF THE HEART Presented by MSC Town Hall/Broadway Texas A&M University Rudder Auditorium February 2 8:00p.m. Tickets $13.00, $12.50, $11.50 MSC Box Office Visa&Mastercard Cali 845-1234 Animals 'Urban Animal' roller skaters prowl around Houston at night United Press International HOUSTON — At first glance, the Urban Animals come on like killer punk rock weirdos, rumbling outHous- ton’s petrochemical mist, ghetto-blasters blaring, look ing eight-feet tall in their rol ler skates and black T-shirts bearing the legend “Skate or Die!” Then you get closer and find you’re talking to architects, businessmen, artists and building contrac tors, and the anxiety starts to drop off rapidly as they ex plain who they are and where they’re coming from. And after awhile they start making a kind of convoluted sense. “There are just some peo ple who need to prowl at night,” says metal sculptor Scott Prescott, who founded the Urban Animals. “I just wanted something to do where I didn’t have to go to the disco and drink. Besides, 1 sweat when I dance, and you’re not supposed to sweat at a disco.” From that beginning, the Animals evolved into a sort of social club. Well, not a club, really, because there are no dues and all you have to do is show up and start skating. More like a gang, but not quite, since the Animals don’t really have a leader. Numbering about 200, with constant turnover around a core of maybe 25 people, the Urban Animals are almost a subculture, which has in common a first rate knack for coping with the pressures of urban life. “Rather than Fighting the urban experience, they take it for what it is and see what they can do with it,” says group anthropologist Karen Ronald, 27. What they’ve done is learned to thrive in the urban landscape, rather than sealing themselves up and pretend ing it’s not out there. Their view of the world is three- dimensional. Places are lo cated by latitude, longitude and altitude. “You don’t have to live in the woods to be creative,” says Ronald. Creativity is the most visi ble thing about the Animals. Even before you see them, you see where they’ve been. And that by itself forces the main stream to confront some basic questions about itself. Take Prescott’s sculpture, “Viking Funeral,” in which he took a junked car, carefully ’The first night I went skating, I had half a pint of vodka and I didn’t know how to stop. I used light poles, fire hydrants. I got a double knee in jury. Nobody ever gets drunk and tries to skate.” — Urban Animal Penny Mor rison and those who like teaii efforts, like the weekly skate hockey games and joustitij tourneys. “The girls are mostly it white collar jobs," she says “The guys tend to be in collar work, artists drivin; nails. The girls don’t mini being laughed at, so theyjump right in. But the guys feel lilt they’re under more pressutt so usually go off by themselves and practice.” 1 “■ Moving as they do in pack the Animals invariably attrac the notice of the law. Nobodi in the Animals seems to too* ^ to 1 also tor why. “That’s just the South, Morrison says. “You real have to kiss ass. The guyshave j nc i a hard lime doing it.” Architect Annie Buford re called one arrest forskatingr the street. She said shewasinJEf t lighted crossing at the time. “I looked like prep dty. the edge of a city park, filled it with beer cans, and laid out a dummy on lop to make a prime commentary on drunk driving. “People kept seeing il and thinking it w f as a real wreck,” Prescott says. “Finally the city put out a sign saying ’This is Art.’ First time I ever saw the government define art.” The Animals are also an athletic lot, constantly work ing out on the pavement. They’ve got the downtown parking garages marked off with ratings on the sidewalks, giving degree of difficulty and number of security guards. The basic sport is taking the elevator up to the top floor and then spiraling down, pick ing up speed along the way, like shooting the rapids, loop ing around the guards and rolling off into the night. “The guards are afraid you’re going to get hurt and sue them,” said commercial artist Penny Morrison. "So they try to tackle you. And hurt you.” “The first night I went skating, I had half a pint of vodka and I didn’t know how to stop. I used light poles, fire hydrants. I got a double knee injury. Nobody ever gets drunk and tries to skate.’ Morrison says the Animals are broken down roughly by those who like solitary sports. did not look like a killer puni inc | wrapped it around a tree at skater,” she says. “1 said, Hot ip posed to gt ■<»! 5’ anH ihism and and this cot 3ea tell else am I su across the street really got off, “He took me downUM and they look my glasses like I’m supposed to killmfjya, self for jay-walking. Orjai skating. And they took m skates and put me in thetam ^ ng with all the drunks in my sod feet. I thought,‘My Ckxl,Ii going to get leprosy Orsons " thing Aside from the threat o arrest, being an Animal meaa a certain disdain for the ck- slant danger of bizarre injun Secretary Mary Hooper red led a night she and Presctt were skating a concrete india and she hit a mass of broke glass at the bottom. “I said I was all right,bu Scotty was like, white, andso looked down and I’m in thi puddle of blood,” she says ' said, ‘I think I better sit down Scotty wouldn’t go out wit me for a month because was afraid people would thin he’d hit me.” For all of that, the Aniid remain citizens. Prescott sai they’ve broken up a couple purse snatchings and imig gings, and for the last l» years they’ve skated the Gai veston marathon, raisin; money for the America! 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