Families of two Idaho inmates who apparently killed themselves in lockups run by private prison company GEO Group Inc., pleaded Thursday with Texas state senators to bar out-of-state prisoners from the Lone Star State.

The Idaho Department of Correction has housed more than 300 prisoners at GEO-run Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas, but recently announced plans to move them to the private North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla.

The move follows allegations that GEO falsified reports and short-staffed the Texas facility where Idaho inmate Randall McCullough, 37, died.

Families of Idaho inmates spoke Thursday at a Texas state Senate hearing in Austin, Texas. The hearing, which dealt with general oversight of the Texas prison system and did not result in specific action, was webcast live over the Internet.

Among those testifying was lawyer Ronald Rodriguez, who represents McCullough's family as well as that of Idaho inmate Scott Noble Payne, 43, who killed himself last year at another GEO-run prison in Dickens, Texas.

"Idaho prisoners need to be in Idaho where they have access to their court ... Where they have access to their families," Rodriguez on Thursday told the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.

Payne's mother, Shirley Noble, spoke to Texas lawmakers last year and again on Thursday.

"It seems that no lessons were learned," Noble said. "If changes had been placed ... Randall would not have been so desperate to take his own life, as my son did."

Texas Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, questioned why the "little" state of Idaho recently decided to pull its prisoners from Geo-run Bill Clayton.

"Should we be following their lead?" he asked.

But a Texas Department of Criminal Justice official told Whitmire that Texas inmates aren't held at Bill Clayton, and warned against painting private prisons in Texas with a broad brush.

Inmate McCullough's sister, Laurie Williams, told Texas senators that they should do a review of all private prisons in their state - including GEO competitor Corrections Corportation of America (CCA).

Idaho prisoners are to be taken to CCA-run North Fork in Oklahoma, where another Idaho inmate, David Drashner, was allegedly murdered in June. IDOC's decision to move prisoners from one privately run lockup to another out-of-state facility concerns Williams, as well as Drashner's wife, Pam Drashner, who have said they want Idaho to stop shipping away its inmates.

Idaho doesn't have enough room for all its prisoners, and sending them out-of-state has been widely unpopular.

Williams also wants to talk to Idaho lawmakers, she said.

"We should be addressing the Idaho Senate," said Williams, after Thursday's hearing in Texas. "This is Idaho sending its inmates out of state - whether it's Texas that takes them or Oklahoma - and that's what we have to have stopped."

GEO made $4.9 million in annual operating revenues off its contract with Idaho to manage prisoners at Bill Clayton. GEO officials said shareholders won't lose out from Idaho's withdrawal because of an expanding contract with the state of Indiana.

Andrea Jackson can be reached at 208-735-3380 or ajackson@magicvalley.com.