Will McHenry County Jail Have Competition for Federal Illegal Immigrant Money?

Shift change time at the ICE floor of the McHenry County Jail.

The crown jewel in McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren’s crown is the top floor of the McHenry County Jail.

Constructed by a County Board that thought McHenry County’s criminal population would grow, it was not built out until Nygren came into office.

He cut a deal with Federal immigration authorities to house illegal immigrants there.

That floor has been a cash cow ever since.

Now word comes word via an article by Marc Wiley in Illinois Review that Crete, Illinois, officials are negotiating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for another place to put illegal aliens.

The $60 million facility would be privately financed, run by Corrections Corporation of America and would be on the tax rolls, village officials think.

Sounds like competition for McHenry County, maybe a way to drive ICE costs down.


Comments

Will McHenry County Jail Have Competition for Federal Illegal Immigrant Money? — 2 Comments

  1. Privatization is not quite the cash saving maneuver it’s been purported to be.

    I recommend research and careful consideration-there are significant and latent downsides to the idea.

    There are serious questions about training, authority, responsibility and the constitutionality of having a for-profit enterprise handling publicly sanctioned “inmates”: (http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/article1194507.ece).

    Even the the Federal Government expresses some pretty heavy reservations about the misconception that the public saves money through privatization: (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf).

    And there are other myths about such programs that have shown privatization to be a poor choice (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:G82QeuBwpyoJ:www.njspba.com/Documents/The%2520Myth%2520of%2520Prison%2520Privatization%2520Cost%2520Savings.doc+corrections+privatization+problems+MIchigan&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgiQHiYoshoHSEfE03GK8MWuXIxJEQPeQQu8CPKZdRDeYj5FABO6weR5msqgfHdIrYvl3SBtEY7VowunwI8UiC9JeQ96OlZEbJ2O0UmUjwjcjLFc-2OsajyOxmrv8UF1oS68IBM&sig=AHIEtbRO2I3b-e9Ix_h8v_SyQ6gy8v66Xg).

    All said and done, I would hope ICE takes a careful and calculated look before leaping to privatization…

  2. Can someone compare the cost/income/etc of
    A) keeping the “cash cow”, and
    B) the cost of keeping the floor empty with NO income, but more using it for local/other county prisoners(income too).

    You’d have to factor in the savings of laying off additional jailers used to house/monitor the ICE detainees.

    I fail to see where loosing the ICE holds would be an advantage; is the one I don’t see?

    I thought that it was a pretty good idea of Nygrens, and the county board.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *