(1) Agency - The Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
(2) Board - The Texas Board of Criminal Justice.
(3) Facility - A substantially self-contained, permanently constructed correctional facility for housing offenders. This includes prison units, State jails, Substance Abuse Felony Punishment (SAFP) facilities, and transfer facilities, but does not include intermediate sanction facilities, community corrections facilities, as defined in ง509.001, or facilities defined in งง508.118, 508.119, or 508.320, of the Texas Government Code. This also includes additions to existing facilities that add housing capacity or other capacity (such as program capacity) that will increase the payroll of the facility by more than five percent.
(4) Prison unit - Includes a private prison under Texas Government Code, Chapter 495, Subchapter A, a psychiatric unit, or a facility the capacity of which will be determined under, and regulated by Texas Government Code, Chapter 499, Subchapters E (Unit and System Capacity), and B (Population Management).
(5) SAFP facility - A substance abuse felony punishment facility authorized by Texas Government Code, ง493.009.
(6) State jail - A State jail felony facility authorized by Texas Government Code, Chapter 507.
(7) TDCJ - The Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
(8) Transfer facility - A facility authorized by Texas Government Code, Chapter 499, Subchapter G.

(c) Procedures. It is the policy of the Board that the location of any additional facility operated by the TDCJ be carefully considered in accordance with this policy.

(1) The Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council is the State agency responsible for projecting the demand for prison, State jail, SAFP and transfer facility beds. Based on these projections, a plan shall be developed by staff and adopted by the Board that details how any additional bed needs will be met. This plan will be presented to the legislature with a request for appropriations. With respect to facilities requiring siting, the plan adopted by the Board will include:

(A) recommendations for specific types of facilities needed by the TDCJ, the approximate size of each facility, and regional distribution by facility type that is needed;
(B) a description of the mission of the recommended facilities;
(C) a description of the type of offenders to be housed in each facility and the programming requirements for that population; and
(D) any recommendations for redesignation and renovation of existing facilities.

(2) Site selections will be made in accordance with and through a Request for Proposals (RFP) process, published in the Texas Register. The RFP shall be formulated and issued under the direction of the Board beginning immediately after the legislature has completed the appropriations bill. The RFP will be based on the array of facilities authorized and appropriated for by the legislature. For each round of site selections, an RFP will be developed that specifies:

(A) types of facilities needed;
(B) minimum acreage and site characteristics requirements for each facility type;
(C) requirements for geotechnical information based on drilling matrix and site preparation requirements;
(D) requirements for verified documentation of the absence of any environmental problems and historical preservation conditions;
(E) requirements for supporting information such as easement, utility and topographical maps;
(F) requirements for description of land values, transferability of mineral rights, surface leases, easements, title report, warranty deed, aerial photographs and other issues affecting the timely transferability of a site;
(G) transportation and utility requirements; and
(H) the requirements for solicited citizen input and State and local elected official input regarding a specific site.

(3) Staff review will be conducted under the direction of the TDCJ Executive Director. Planning and Programming within the Facilities Division will have the responsibility to coordinate the site selection process for the Executive Director. In accordance with the Board approved criteria and process, staff will be responsible for the development of the RFP, devising and completing scoring instruments and cost analysis for Board review and action. Information presented to the Board shall:

(A) be structured in a uniform format as illustrated in the Facilities Division policies and procedures;
(B) include data from a weighted scoring evaluation system that was developed before any review, and based on the Facilities Division policies and procedures as well as on the requirements as outlined in an RFP, that objectively assesses each site based on the proposal, site visit and support information;
(C) include life-cycle cost calculations for a specific time period for each responsive proposal; and
(D) identify and explain any deviations from the approved process.

(4) Any selection process shall take into consideration the intent of the legislature to locate each facility:

(A) in close proximity to a county with 100,000 or more inhabitants to provide services and other resources provided in such a county;
(B) cost-effectively with respect to its proximity to other facilities in TDCJ;
(C) in close proximity to an area that would facilitate release of offenders or persons to their area of residence;
(D) in close proximity to an area that provides adequate educational opportunities and medical care;
(E) in close proximity to an area that would be capable of providing hospital and specialty clinic medical services, as well as a sufficient pool of medical personnel from which to recruit and contract; and
(F) on State-owned or donated land.

(5) The Board is responsible for site selection, but may request that the staff provide a short list of recommended sites or a preference ranking of sites with an explanation for the recommendation or ranking. Staff recommendations shall be based on scoring of the information contained in each submitted proposal based on RFP requirements, actual site assessment, and information obtained from external and internal sources for each site.