Disturbance At Texas Private Prison

Tuesday, August 14th 2007, 7:22 am

By: News On 6

MINERAL WELLS, Texas (AP) _ A disturbance broke out among inmates at a private prison facility Monday night when hundreds of inmates briefly refused to leave the recreation yard and return to their housing units, officials said.

Two employees of the Corrections Corp. of America's Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility were treated on site for minor injuries, said Louise Grant, spokesperson for the Nashville, Tenn.-based prison company. There were no reports of injuries to inmates.

After midnight, guards started peacefully moving inmates back into the building, including inmates who earlier had been disruptive, Grant said.

There had been about 400 inmates in the recreation yard late Monday, with about two dozen refusing to cooperate, throwing rocks, breaking glass and trying to destroy property, she said.

``At this time, no indication has been provided for the cause of the participants' actions,'' Grant said.

Prison staff members had used ``approved, non-lethal chemical agents'' in an effort to gain control of the situation, she said.

Mineral Wells police Capt. Mike McAllester said a report came in about 9:15 p.m. of ``out of control inmates'' at the facility, 40 miles west of Fort Worth.

About 30 local officers set up a perimeter outside the prison's gates to secure the area, McAllester said. From the outer gates, he saw fires set within the facility, but they appeared to have burned out, he said.

The all-male, minimum-security facility has 2,100 beds and houses inmates from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, according to Corrections Corp.'s Web site.