For-profit prisons offer privatization lessons

Should the federal government privatize its prisons?

In an attempt to answer that question, Congress is using the Taft Correctional Institute as a test case. Opened in December 1997 in the remote California Central Valley town of Taft, the institute is a five-year experiment that will house 2,000 low- and minimum-security federal inmates under the management of the Wackenhut Corrections Corp. The plan is to use Taft as the test case, to see whether more federal prisons should be privatized. Officials of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons are supervising the project closely.

But as the federal government studies privatization, state and local governments are knee-deep in complaints about for-profit prisons, along with questions about the acccountability and efficacy of jails run by corporations.

In 1997 a videotape surfaced, showing corrections officers in a privately run prison in Brazoria County, Texas, shooting prisoners with stun guns and kicking them once they were prostrate on the floor. It was later revealed that one of the officers had been fired from a government-run prison, for similarly abusing prisoners there.

On April 20 of this year, the largest private-prison company in the world, Corrections Corporation of America, agreed to pay $1.65 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by inmates of the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, a CCA prison that's located in Youngstown but houses inmates mainly from the District of Columbia. The lawsuit complained that, among other things, the prison provided inadequate medical care and that guards were abusive. A Justice Department-commissioned report on the facility described the staff's use of "unnecessarily harsh and humiliating" strip searches of male inmates-searches sometimes performed in the presence of female noncorrectional staffers. The report also cited two stabbing deaths there since 1997 and the escapes of six inmates-four of them murderers-last year.

Such incidents have focused national attention on state and local governments' growing reliance on for-profit prisons. These commercially operated prisons are increasingly the facility of choice for jurisdictions struggling to house the huge number of convicts doing time as a result of get-tough sentencing laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s.

The debate has now reached Congress. The day after CCA settled the Ohio lawsuit, Rep. Ted Strickland, an Ohio Democrat, and Reps. John E. Sweeney and Peter T. King, both Republicans from New York, introduced their bipartisan "Public Safety Act." The bill would effectively halt the growth of private prisons by prohibiting the incarceration of any future federal prisoners in such institutions and by denying federal grants to states and cities that use them. The bill has more than 50 co-sponsors, and Strickland expects that hearings on the proposal will be held this summer. A former prison psychologist, Strickland warns that private facilities are dangerously cutting corners in safety and security, and that what serves the profit motive doesn't always achieve the public functions of imprisonment and rehabilitation.

State governments, too, are beginning to take a second look at private prisons, especially the prisons' practice of importing inmates from other states to fill beds. In New Mexico, where private companies operate four prisons, including one where a riot broke out this month, the state legislature approved a bill that would require better training for private corrections officers and more information on inmates transferred from other states. The measure was vetoed this month by Republican Gov. Gary E. Johnson. In Tennessee, several bills are pending in the state legislature that would limit the importation of out-of-state inmates. In Montana, the state legislature recently passed a bill requiring that only Montana criminals be imprisoned there.

Indeed, the debate about private prisons now covers the spectrum-from practical considerations to philosophical ones. Are private prisons really cheaper than public ones? How much control should state and local governments have over private prisons? What kinds of standards should governments set for the care and feeding of people who are being punished for crimes against society?

More and more people have a vested interest in the answers to such questions. The prison industry is becoming enormous, and includes not only builders, managers, and financiers of private and public prisons, but everyone from the phone companies that vie for lucrative prison contracts; to the publishers of the Corrections Yellow Pages, a directory of sellers of body orifice scanners, razor wire, and padded cells; to the manufacturers who rely on cheap inmate labor to assemble their products. Civil libertarians worry that America is fast building a "prison-industrial complex," complete with powerful lobbyists and special interests, that could overwhelm regulators and lawmakers, and jeopardize the rights of prisoners.

Unquestioned Demand

What is not in question is that, although crime has been declining since 1992 in most parts of the country, the demand for prison cells is higher than ever. No-nonsense crime reforms passed in the 1980s and '90s-longer sentences before parole, three-strikes-and-you're-out, and mandatory minimum sentences-are still increasing prison populations even as crime shrinks. The United States, the Justice Department recently reported, had 1.8 million people behind bars in 1998, more than double the total in 1985 and the world's largest national inmate count, higher even than the 1.4 million in China, whose population is nearly five times that of the United States. The U.S. also ranks high in incarceration rates. At 668 inmates per 100,000 population, it is No. 2 in the world-just behind Russia. The states are spending nearly $30 billion annually to keep people imprisoned-about twice the amount spent a decade ago.

As a result, growth in the private correctional industry has been dramatic. As of last September, at least 26 states had contracts with private prison firms. CCA, based in Nashville, Tenn., now operates 70 prisons worldwide-64 in the United States-and has 10 more in the works. Wackenhut Corrections Corp., based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and the second-largest private-prison company, operates 52 worldwide, 32 of them in the United States. The bed capacity of private prisons in the United States has risen from 44,000 in 1996 to 121,000 today. Private prisons' revenues are up too, from $650 million in 1996 to about $1 billion in 1997. Shackles and stripes have become more than faddish on Wall Street, where Doctor R. Crants, founder and chief executive officer of CCA, was named one of accounting firm Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurs of the Year for 1998. CCA's stock price increased 10-fold from 1994 to the end of 1998.

Patrick Cannan, director of corporate relations for Wackenhut, said private companies have proved they can build prisons faster and better than governments. "We fill a definite need in the country," he said. "There are so many bed shortages. . . . We've built more prisons in the past 10 years than any state. We can build more rapidly than the states."

Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the growth of private prisons is that the industry now is building them "on spec." With no contract in hand from either a state or local government, companies are buying property and simply building new, and empty, prisons, often in rural areas, figuring-correctly so far-that the shortage of prison beds, combined with the demand for rural employment, will sooner or later bring the inmates. CCA recently announced that it will build three new prisons in California, entirely on spec, within the next year. Not surprisingly, CCA has also opened a Sacramento lobbying office to try to persuade California legislators to fill the institutions. One private-prison company executive, echoing the Field of Dreams cliche, said, "If you build it in the right place, the prisoners will come."

Costs and Innovation

Lower costs and more innovation were the original selling points for private prisons. During the 1980s and early '90s, when governments at all levels were strapped for funds and pressed by rising prison populations, private-prison companies presented a cheaper alternative, and many states grabbed at the idea. Yet debate continues about whether private institutions are less expensive. Many studies have been done, and the results are mixed.

The Reason Public Policy Institute, a free-market-oriented research group based in Los Angeles, recently surveyed 14 independent studies on public vs. private prison costs. It said that 12 of the studies found that private institutions were cheaper, costing anywhere from 2 percent to 28 percent less to build and operate than government-run prisons. In contrast, a 1998 survey commissioned by the Justice Department and conducted by Abt Associates Inc., a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass., concluded: "Recent cost studies [do] not resolve the question of whether privately managed prisons are cheaper than publicly managed ones. The evidence is mixed, with the more-detailed studies indicating the smallest cost savings from privatization." Similarly, the General Accounting Office, the watchdog agency of Congress, has studied five private prisons and found no conclusive evidence of significant savings.

Critics assert that private prisons, if they do cut costs, do it by skimping on proper training and by hiring less-qualified corrections officers. One particularly vocal organization has been the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents more than 100,000 public corrections officers and other prison workers. The union obviously has a vested interest in the subject-private-prison workers generally are nonunion. But Rebecca Feaster, an AFSCME spokeswoman, said the union's concerns are not strictly economic, because with so much growth in the prison industry, both public and private, AFSCME is gaining corrections members. The union is more concerned, she said, about inadequate training and safety for corrections officers.

"Being in a correctional facility is very hands-on, and you absolutely need men and women on the front lines who know what's going on," Feaster said. "Private prisons have to cut down on staffing to make a buck. That's good business, but bad corrections business." Feaster says that internal CCA data shows that one of every two newly hired CCA prison security staffers leaves the job within a year.

But Susan Hart, CCA vice president for communications, says the union is misinformed. "What happens in the CCA system is that, because we are very large-15,000 employees and 80-plus facilities-we have a lot of transfers and promotions. Our staff turnover rate is typically lower than in public prisons."

Critics point to the Texas videotape from the privately run Brazoria County Detention Center as a classic example of what can go wrong at prisons where cost-cutting is a high priority. Most of the inmates at Brazoria were sent there from the overloaded Missouri state prison system. The conditions the videotape revealed turned out to be a major embarrassment for Missouri, which is now being sued by the Brazoria prisoners.

Lynn Klement, the lawyer representing the inmates, said, "Private prisons save money by cutting corners. Evidence shows that what inmates got for lunch every day was two slabs of bread with peanut butter or bologna. These inmates had zero to no exercise opportunities. . . . The Sept. 18 [1996] beating was not an isolated incident. The evidence shows that [the guard with a prior criminal record for beating inmates] was routinely violating inmates' civil rights." Klement said that Missouri officials were aware of the problems, and even had stationed a state prison monitor there, a man whom the inmates "raised hell with." But nothing happened, he said, until the video surfaced. Missouri officials declined to comment for this article, citing the pending lawsuit.

Some of the problems occurring may arise because private prisons increasingly are taking on tasks for which they were not originally intended-in particular, watching over greater numbers of maximum-security inmates. Originally, private prisons were sold as ideal for minimum-security prisoners. But now CCA's inmate population, for instance, consists of 15 percent maximum-security prisoners, 70 percent medium-security, and 15 percent minimum-security.

The federal government's Bureau of Prisons has also joined the debate on public vs. private prisons. The bureau was drawn in, partly because Congress charged it with overseeing an experimental federal prison managed by Wackenhut in California, and because during the District of Columbia's recent financial crisis, Congress ordered the BOP to take over the running of D.C.'s prison system. The bureau is moving 2,000 low-security D.C. inmates into private prisons by next year, and is building new government prisons for 5,000 higher-security city inmates. The BOP has used private companies to run halfway houses and other low-security facilities, such as those for juveniles, since the 1960s. Overall, however, the bureau believes that while privatization is OK for low-security inmates, it's not suitable for higher-security offenders. "Our position," says the bureau's chief spokesman, Todd R. Craig, "is that the private sector does not have a demonstrated record of effectively managing medium- and high-security prisoners."

Defenders of private prisons say the media reports of poor conditions and abusive officers are overblown and distorted. Edwin Meese III, a former U.S. Attorney General and a distinguished fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, asks whether these publicized incidents are much different from what goes on in public prisons, where conditions also can be terrible. "There have been problems, but these incidents," Meese said, "are similar to things that go on in public prisons." Morgan Reynolds, the director of the Dallas-based Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit think tank with a conservative, free-market bent, agrees. "I think the fears have proven false," Reynolds said. "Abuse of inmates' rights can come from anyone in authority."

Critics of private prisons argue that corporations save money by skimping on drug treatment and rehabilitation programs. Pauline Sullivan is co-director of CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants), an advocacy group made up of and dedicated to prisoners and their families. She says, "We were . . . hoping that these private prisons would be better. But they say they'll have education and employment programs, and then they just don't do it."

Representatives of private prisons call that nonsense, and say that they administer nationally recognized programs designed to get inmates on their feet before they are released. Hart, of CCA, pointed to one therapeutic program, known as Lifeline in most parts of the country, which she said has an excellent record of reducing recidivism among inmates who successfully complete it. For former inmates of one CCA facility with Lifeline, Hart said, the recidivism rate among those released at least two years previously was only 30 percent, compared with the national average of 60 percent. The rehabilitation program, which focuses on helping inmates assume more responsibility for themselves, is in use at 20 CCA facilities, Hart said.

Cannan, of Wackenhut, bristles when the talk turns to cost-cutting. "We as a private company do not set the agenda at all," Cannan said. "We follow the directives of the states. We propose rehabilitation programs that we have seen work, but ultimately states decide, when setting contracts, how much is offered in terms of rehabilitation."

Morgan Reynolds said CCA and other private prison operations do a good job. "I've visited a few of their facilities, and I think they're good. Private suppliers have lots of enemies in the justice system, but we need these guys, because they'll be more typically entrepreneurial," he said. "They've shown that they can reduce costs." Meese, too, is a believer in privatization. "I think that private prisons have demonstrated throughout the country," he said, "that they can be very effective-in flexibility of personnel procedures, in saving money, and also as innovators in methods of prison operations." Accountability

Perhaps the thorniest of issues emerging around private prisons is accountability. When a private prison in Texas houses Missouri prisoners, how accountable should it be to Texas authorities? Or is it answerable only to Missouri officials? In Youngstown, Ohio, for example, city officials until recently had almost no influence over what went on in the CCA prison within the city limits. It is, after all, a private institution. Indeed, Ohio had no statute-nor do many other states-allowing it to prosecute prisoners who escape from a private institution.

Making private prisons accessible and accountable to the families of inmates, who may live many states away, also is not easy. India Chisley is a good example. Her husband, Bryson Chisley, 23, sentenced in the District of Columbia to serve four to 12 years in prison on drug and weapons charges, was a medium-security prisoner at the Correctional Treatment Facility in Southeast Washington, and was enrolled in a drug treatment program there. But then he was transferred to the CCA prison in Youngstown, with 118 maximum-security prisoners-four of them murderers-from the District's maximum-security prison in Lorton, Va.

Upon arrival in Youngstown, Chisley was beaten repeatedly by one of the higher-security prisoners-one of the convicted murderers-who had arrived with Chisley and was housed with him and the other medium-security inmates. India Chisley embarked on a campaign of letter-writing and phone calls to the D.C. government, urging it to intervene with the CCA prison authorities and get them to separate her husband from his assailant. Her efforts went unheeded. In March of last year, her husband was killed in the Youngstown prison with a shank, a crude homemade knife. One of the D.C. murderers at Youngstown has been charged in the stabbing.

According to a report commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department, Bryson Chisley's death "should never have happened." He and his attacker should have been "official separation cases," says the Justice report. Instead, CCA at Youngstown housed them in the same unit and took them to adjacent recreation cages for exercise. The report found that a search could have turned up the shank, but that searches of inmates and their cells were "almost nonexistent." India Chisley is now suing the Corrections Corporation of America, the District of Columbia's Department of Corrections, and the department's former director, Margaret Moore.

Alphonse Gerhardstein, the lawyer representing inmates in the Youngstown class action suit, said that local governments are no match for large corporations like CCA. "We've turned the private prisons loose on the states, and we're not regulating them at all," he said. "The city of Youngstown was the only entity regulating a multinational prison company." In fact, relations got so bad between the CCA prison officials and the Youngstown authorities after the murders and escapes that Mayor George McKelvey, a Democrat, was quoted in The San Diego Union-Tribune on Oct. 7, 1998, calling CCA "as deceitful and dishonest as any company I've ever dealt with."

The settlement of the inmates' lawsuit is intended to improve relations between CCA and the city. The settlement calls for the use of an independent monitor at the prison, someone paid by CCA but hired by the city. "We're focusing on holding this company accountable," said Gerhardstein. "They market aggressively and write good policies. With this settlement, we're going to make sure this company follows them."

Most experts agree that private prisons have got to be made more clearly accountable to state and local government. "You have to have a clear allocation of responsibility for reporting the public interest," said Meese, "someone the private prisons are accountable to." Hart, of CCA, said the Youngstown facility has indeed been held accountable. Many improvements have been made to heighten security at the medium-security institution, including three new external gun towers, extra razor wire on the perimeter fences, a supervisor present in the recreation yard at all times, and searches of people entering the prison.

Hart expressed some frustration about the constant criticism aimed at private prisons. "And how are public prisons accountable?" she asked. "The private-prison industry is not only held accountable, but also to higher standards. Furthermore, the Youngstown prison is probably the most scrutinized prison in this country, public or private. There are monitors, attorneys, media, advocates, local citizens, and lawmakers who watch every move that prison makes."

Profit Motive

Accountability is not the only issue raised by privatization. What about the moral implications of making a profit from the incarcerated? Like hotels or hospitals, private prisons aim to maximize their income by trying to keep as many beds filled as possible, every day. "It's in their best interests to increase sentencing," says Kara Gotsch of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Their goal isn't necessarily to rehabilitate, but instead to keep as many people as possible in [prison]. That's how they make their money."

Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that advocates alternative sentences, said the pressure on private prisons to fill beds can lead to unintended consequences. In 1996, for example, at a minimum-security CCA prison in Houston originally designed for illegal aliens, CCA decided to fill beds by importing from Oregon 240 sex offenders, some of them rapists. In August of that year, two of the sex offenders beat up a CCA officer, stole his car, and escaped. Texas officials were outraged. They'd had no idea, before the escape, that violent criminals from another state were being housed in the minimum-security facility. The escapees were recaptured, but they could not be prosecuted, because Texas had no law in place for private-prison breakouts.

Mauer says he worries about the long-term effects of privatization. "I find it to be a disturbing movement. . . . We don't know what will happen 10 years from now, if private companies get a substantial portion of inmates." Mauer said state governments could become so dependent on corporations for the care of inmate populations that the governments will lose negotiating power over the companies and be unable to enforce minimum standards.

Adds Jerome G. Miller: "Within the corrections industry, the incentives are in the wrong direction-to keep prisoners as long as possible." Miller is the co-founder and president of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, a nonprofit group that advocates alternatives to traditional penal institutions and traditional sentencing. Miller says he has nothing against privatization per se, but he worries about its long-term consequences.

Miller says that the annual meeting of the American Correctional Association now seems more like a gathering of major defense contractors-complete with lobbyists, financiers, and hospitality suites-rather than an organization looking to manage society's ills. "There are some ominous implications," Miller said. "In the long term, I believe we will have a prison-industrial complex, so that criminal justice policies will be virtually dictated by these companies' lobbyists."

But arrayed against those sentiments are the arguments of the industry: that they can house prisoners for less money, faster, and with more innovative practices.

Charles W. Thomas, a professor of criminology at the University of Florida, says that on balance, private prisons can work, and work well. "Properly structured and properly supervised, private contracts in corrections yield construction-cost savings of 15 percent and operating-cost savings of between 10 percent and 15 percent below government costs," Thomas explained. The director of the Private Corrections Project, a research group that has studied privatization for more than a decade, Thomas added that private prisons have also brought with them a commonly ignored, but important fringe benefit-they have forced public prisons to be more effective and efficient.

Whatever their merits, private prisons show no signs of going away soon.