White House urged to shutter privately run Kansas prison

By ROXANA HEGEMAN and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Associated Press

BELLE PLAINE, Kan. (AP) — Civil rights advocates and federal public defenders have urged the White House to intervene to ensure that a privately run federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, shuts down when its contract expires at the end of this year. The letter emailed Thursday to a White House office and local Leavenworth officials contends that the Leavenworth Detention Center is dangerously understaffed, unsafe and poorly managed. It details stabbings, suicides and a homicide that have happened there this year. The prison’s operator, CoreCivic, says its critics’ claims are “false and defamatory.” The letter was signed by officials from the American Civil Liberties Union’s affiliates in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, and by the heads of several federal public defender offices.