© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Kansas Legislative Committee To Review Plan For New Prison

Michael Coghlan
/
flickr Creative Commons
Legislators are weighing whether to build a new prison in Kansas.

A Kansas legislative committee will meet this week to review a plan for building a new state prison in Lansing.

A joint committee on budget issues is scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon for an update from Corrections Secretary Joe Norwood. House Majority Leader Don Hineman says he will wait until after the budget committee's meeting to decide whether he will support the project.

Final approval for the project must come from the governor and legislative leaders by early January.

The Department of Corrections wants to hire CoreCivic, a giant private-prison company, to build a prison in Lansing. It would hold 2,400 inmates and replace the state's oldest and largest prison there.

The state would run the prison but lease it from CoreCivic for 20 years before owning it.

The Associated Press is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, it's a not-for-profit news cooperative owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members.