Matthew Treat died of a fentanyl overdose on his bunk at Oklahoma’s last remaining private prison. When guards found his body, he had been dead for “a while,” and a foul odor had begun to waft out of the cell, a prison staffer later told an investigator.
Treat is one of three prisoner deaths in 2023 at the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility where guards were later found to have skipped security checks and falsified records.
For-profit prison operator The Geo Group tried to negotiate a $3-million pay increase to run the Lawton prison earlier this year. The company was battling wage inflations and staffing shortages and a lack of additional funding would “exacerbate our significant challenges,” The Geo Group said in a news release.
While the company was asking for a raise, it struggled to meet security standards in Lawton, records show. The Geo Group violated its contract with the state by failing to lock prisoners in their cells, conduct security checks, and leaving prisoners alone in pods without staff supervision, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said in a letter it sent the company in April. In May, the company responded and admitted that staff had falsified records in the three deaths, but they had fired the employees. The company said it was working to upgrade a prison camera system.