Epicenters of Corrections: San Antonio, Texas

In 1984, Rose Simola was struggling, dreaming of becoming a veterinarian, when the Texas Workforce Commission placed her in a secretarial position at Southern Steel.

“I had no idea what this company even did,” she recalls. “I drove up, saw this fence around the place, with everyone walled off behind all this bulletproof glass. I thought, ‘Holy cow!’ When I learned they made prison locks and hardware, my skin started to crawl. But that night my dad gave me some wise advice: ‘As long as there are crooks, you’ll always have a job.’”

As it turned out, Simola, unwittingly, had landed at one of the most legendary detention-industry stalwarts in the country. Southern Steel, founded in 1897 by David F. Youngblood, proved so innovative in metal fabrication and sliding-door locking systems that it was awarded the contract for New York’s Rikers Island Penitentiary, the largest steel-constructed jail in the country.

“The walls at Southern Steel oozed history,” Simola says. “In their vault, they kept every single set of plans they’d ever used, so there was this amazing wealth of archival material.”
Simola tracked work orders and handled weekly bid schedules, and she eventually changed jobs and explored other operations — Steel Door Industries, Adtec — honing her sales, marketing, and administrative skills and becoming a friendly, in-the-know fixture in the Texas correctional scene.

“My duties included corresponding with the industry contractors and architects to find out what was bidding where and when and at the same time making sure our hardware and hollow metal were approved in the specifications,” she says. “So contractors would always call me and ask what was bidding — it just became a habit.”

In 2000, Simola parlayed her contacts into The Rose Report, the go-to lead service for contractors, vendors, and architects.

“We don’t have a fancy database or online plan room, but we save our clients time because we know what they as a contractor and material supplier want to know,” she says. “We know the questions to ask, and as soon as we know, our clients know. It’s like real-time construction reporting.”

Her first “paying client” was Randy DeMent, who grew up in Alabama’s detention corridor and then worked at Southern Steel and the Texas Department of Corrections before launching the detention division at the CCC Group Inc. in 1996.

“In my opinion, the country’s primary epicenters of detention are in Alabama and San Antonio because the industry in both is so deeply rooted by these old, granddaddy companies —Decatur Iron and Steel, where my father worked, and Southern Steel,” he says. “Both have spun off too many other companies to count.”

Adds Simola, “The names and faces in the business stay the same for decades — they just switch companies or start their own.” (One newcomer is the Tindall Corporation, a South Carolina-based design-build, precast company that recently expanded its production of correctional cell modules to San Antonio.)

In 1989, Phelps-Tointon Inc. of Colorado acquired Southern Steel, and 15 years later, those companies merged with Chicago’s Folger Adam Security Inc. to form Southern Folger Detention Equipment Company, still based in San Antonio with around 200 employees.
“One of our strengths today is the comprehensiveness of our full product line, from sliding doors to video visitation equipment,” says president Donald Halloran. “Lately, we’re really focusing on ‘lean manufacturing,’ removing waste and streamlining the processes without compromising quality.”

Sam Youngblood, 55, great-grandson of the company’s founder, grew up riding around Southern Steel on a scooter and painting company fences in the spirit of Tom Sawyer, eventually working as a project manager during his summer breaks from Baylor. “When I graduated, I went to work in the family business, charged with developing a product line equal to Folger Adam, our competitor at the time. I was lucky to have Gene Daugherty as a mentor who took me under his wing and taught me about engineering, and I’ve since worked in pretty much all aspects of this industry.”

In 1983, Youngblood struck out on his own, founding and operating ISI until it was acquired by Argyle in 2006, and now he directs the ISI Security Group, a parent company to several multipurpose enterprises, including ISI, which has installed detention equipment for more than 1,400 facilities, Metroplex Control Systems (MCS), Peterson Detention Inc. (PDI), and Com-Tec Security.

“I’ve been lucky to work in an industry that is always evolving,” he says. “It really started to change in the 1970s with the mandates of the Law Enforcement Agency. The old bar-grille faded away, and we moved away from the tin-can facilities and started treating inmates more like people instead of caged animals, with advances like polycarbonate glass and intercoms in cells, and now the digital revolution. Some decision-makers still do not see the cost-benefit analysis of all of this technology—IP (Internet Protocol)-based cameras which enhance safety for inmates and guards and the digital storage of video, which assists in litigation—but I think we’re ready for it.”

Because of its central location, amenities, and golf-friendly climate, San Antonio serves as the summer and winter headquarters of the American Correctional Association, the oldest and largest umbrella organization of its kind in the world, with more than 20,000 active members who gather for conferences and trade shows estimated to generate around 80 percent of industry sales deals.

The city’s detention scene, Youngblood says, has a “different vibe from other corrections hubs farther west or north. Most of the people come from similar backgrounds and bring a distinctly Southern perspective to it,” he says. “A few transplants, but mostly Southerners.” Youngblood himself is a hunter, with so many exotic animals mounted on his ISI walls that friends joke about his “office of death.”

DeMent occasionally takes visiting associates to the River Walk, but for “more authentic South Texas flavor,” he recommends “juke joints like Guene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas, or the John T. Floore Country store, where Willie Nelson cut his chops.
Halloran enjoys talking shop at Rosario’s, and Youngblood takes clients and cronies to Spurs games.

Meanwhile, The Rose Report sponsors teams for both barbecue and feral hog hunting while claiming “bragging rights and trophies for our chili and salsa,” says Simola, who found an unexpected niche in the corrections industry.

“Detention is like a bug that bites you,” she says, with a laugh. “Once you’re in, you can’t shake it out of your system.” N

CCC Group’s 28-acre headquarters complex in San Antonio, Texas.