Security class medium security Capacity 2,400 | Director William Sherrod | |
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Location 1605 East Main Street, Sayre, Oklahoma Managed by Corrections Corporation of America (1998-2015)
Oklahoma DOC (2016 - ) | ||
North Fork Correctional Facility is a medium-security correctional facility for men located east of Sayre, Beckham County, Oklahoma.
From its opening in 1998 through 2015, the prison was operated by Corrections Corporation of America, and housed prisoners from California state. A year after its closure in 2015 the Oklahoma Department of Corrections announced plans to lease the physical facility from CCA to house inmates.
It is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from downtown Sayre.
History
It was built for $37 million. This prison had 1,440 prisoners and 270 employees as of 2001, and that year Peter T. Kilborn of The New York Times wrote that the prison "is responsible for lifting Sayre's spirits and reigniting its economy."
The facility housed just under 1,000 prisoners from the state of Wisconsin until August 2003, when Wisconsin ended the contract over a dispute about high long-distance telephone rates involving the prison contractor, the town of Sayre, and telecommunications provider AT&T. (The prisoners were transferred to CCA's nearby Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma, which was subsequently closed.)
Richard Bice, was named Chief of Security in 2007. He had previously served as the Chief of Security at Camino Nuevo Correctional Facility in Albuquerque, NM and as a Lieutenant and S.O.R.T Commander at Dawson State Jail in Dallas, TX. Prior to that he served as a Major with the Illinois Department of Corrections. He is retired from the United States Army after a 22 year career.
In October 2011 a riot involving inmates from California state resulted in 46 prisoners hurt, with 16 of those sent to local hospitals. A subsequent prisoners' lawsuit sought to blame the disturbance on poorly trained guards and "reckless understaffing". In March 2014 inmate Todd Bush was found unresponsive in his cell. His death was ruled a homicide, and his cellmate moved to segregated housing pending an investigation.
CCA closed the facility in 2015 and returned its population, about two thousand inmates, back to California via it's private prisons in Mississippi and Arizona with regards to the individual inmates security rating. In 2016 the state struck a deal with CCA that provided for an eighteen-month lease at no cost, and the return of state prisoners under state management as of July 1, 2016. CCA continues to own the facility.