Private Prisons Don't Offer "Improved Experience" for Inmates, Staff: NCCD

"Private prisons do not provide a consistently improved experience for inmates or staff compared to public facilities, and, in many cases, the
experience can be worse," the National Council on Crime and Delinquency contends in a new report. NCCD said its report on private prisons, which hold about 8 percent of the nation's correctional population, was based on conversations with several experts, a review of the academic and legal literature on private prisons, and a media review of newspaper and radio stories. The report was funded by the Public Welfare Foundation.

Do private prisons save money? NCCD said research has produced varied, and that "the verdict is, at best, a draw." Arizona requires the regular and intensive assessment of private prison performance. The state's most recent study found that private prisons resulted in higher costs to the
state compared to public facilities. Other studies have found that privatizing facilities resulted in minimal or no savings. Some studies, including
those by groups affiliated with prison companies or their proponents, found that privatization can yield modest savings.

MS Seeks New Private Operator for Prisons; TX Closes Juvenile Units

Mississippi corrections commissioner Christopher Epps said the GEO Group no longer would operate three private prisons in the state holding 4,000 inmates, reports the Grits for Breakfast blog, quoting NPR. Mississippi is seeking another contractor instead of taking their management in-house or downsizing youth facilities, as Texas has done.

The decision comes after legal setbacks for the company in federal court involving abuse allegations at a juvenile facility, though GEO insisted their departure is unrelated and denied the charges. A judge had cited evidence of youths being kicked, punched, and beaten by staff members. Texas has closed many of its juvenile facilities and may soon close the rest of them, shifting juvenile supervision to the counties and more aggressive community-based programming. Grits for Breakfast says, "It's too bad Mississippi looks like it will continue contracting management of these facilities instead of taking the opportunity to pull them in-house or, better, downsize."

Examining U.S. Corrections Policy

By Ted Gest

 A blue-ribbon panel of national scholars inaugurates a major project to study why U.S. incarceration rates are among the world’s highest.

(States Reject Private Prison Offer Based on Guaranteed Occupancy

Apparently most states, including Texas, are rejecting Corrections Corporation of America's offer to purchase state-owned prisons if the states would guarantee 90 percent occupancy for 20 years, reports the Grits for Breakfast blog. The blog Texas Prison Bidness notes that previous, similar deals between states and the company haven't panned out so well, quoting an ACLU of Ohio assessment that, “While CCA claims it will save Ohioans $3 million per year, a recent report analyzing the state's contract shows that taxpayers will actually lose money over the next 20 years."

The blog also notes the new immigration detention center in Karnes County, TX, reported yesterday in Crime & Justice News, supposedly ia kindler and gentler version of involuntary detention for immigrants and other low-risk detainees awaiting deportation. The facility is the first of what may be a new market for private prison companies in "softer" incarceration venues, though holding people against their will would remain at the heart of their business model. The changes come in response to complaints from advocates. Says Grits writer Scott Henson: "My beef stems from the fact of their long-term incarceration in the first place, even if most of it is supposedly the equivalent of pretrial detention before their case is heard before backlogged federal judges." 

Group Contends AZ Private Prisons Not Cost Effective, Hard to Monitor

Arizona's private prisons are not cost-effective for taxpayers and are more difficult to monitor than state prisons, says a new report by a prison watchdog group that is calling for a moratorium on any new private prisons in the state, says the Arizona Republic. The report examined the five prisons that have contracts to house Arizona prisoners and six private prisons that house federal detainees or inmates from other states, including California and Hawaii.

Based on public-information requests and other data, the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that works on criminal-justice reform, concluded that Arizona paid $10 million more for private prison beds between 2008 and 2010 than it would have for equivalent state beds. Arizona's pending plan to contract for another 2,000 private-prison beds would cost taxpayers at least $38.7 million a year, at least $6 million a year more than incarcerating those inmates in state prisons. Plans to add 500 maximum-security beds in state prisons would add almost $10 million a year. The report questioned whether those beds are needed, since the prison population has declined over the past two years by more than 900 inmates, to 39,854.

Florida Senate Kills Big Prison Privatization Plan

A massive expansion of private prisons in Florida collapsed in the Senate as nine Republicans joined a dozen Democrats in handing a setback to Senate leaders and a victory to state workers, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The state will not undertake what would have been the single greatest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history, affecting 27 prisons and work camps in 18 counties and displacing more than 3,500 correctional officers.

Senate leaders said they would have to cut education and health care programs by $16.5 million, the amount supporters had said privatization would save in the first year. Yesterday's vote was a triumph for a rebellious group of Republicans who rejected supporters' arguments that for-profit prisons would save tax dollars and increase efficiency. All 12 Democrats also voted no, putting the minority party in the unaccustomed role of being on the winning side.

Profiting from Prisons

By Hannah Rappleye

A nationwide campaign to persuade shareholders to stop investing in private prison corporations is gathering steam.

Private Firm Taking Control of Ohio Prison This Weekend

Management & Training Corp. of Utah takes over operation of Ohio's 2,300-inmate North Central Correctional Institution tomorrow, reports the Associated Press. The prison is among five state facilities seeing management or operations changes that night in a consolidation and privatization effort by Republican Gov. John Kasich.

The previously private North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility in Lorain County will be returned to state control and merged into one complex with adjacent Grafton Correctional Institution. Kasich put five state prisons on the block, but only the privately-run Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut was sold. It was bought by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison vendor, for $72.7 million in the first deal of its kind in the nation. The vendor already ran the facility. The sale generated more than enough to close a $50 million prison budget gap that loomed, so other offers were rejected. Savings will be realized even as the state adds 702 beds to its overcrowded 50,200-inmate prison system, said prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo.

The Secret World of For-Profit Immigrant Detention

By Will Matthews

Today, according to some studies, nearly half of the tens of thousands of immigrants in detention every day are locked up in jails and detention systems operated by private prison companies. This explains the private prison industry's deep financial incentive to see the continued expansion of the system, even in the face of myriad abuses.

Private Prison Facilities Not Subject to Much Government Oversight

There is no federally-mandated minimal level of oversight for facilities run by private prisons, says The American Independent. Corrections Corporation of America houses 75,000 inmates at more than 60 facilities in 19 states, and GEO Group follows closely behind with more than 60 facilities in 15 states, as well as a prison health-care arm. Michele Deitch of the University of Texas School of Law notes that private prisons are not subject to the same requirements as are public facilities on open records, “and because they have a contract with the government, not directly with the people, there is a layer of bureaucracy and privacy that is even deeper.”

Twenty-seven have bodies with mandatory inspection duties involving prisons, eight states have a discretionary monitoring authority, three have a statewide voluntary inspection body and five states have a local jail inspection body, says a study by Deitch in Pace Law Review. Seventeen states have no oversight bodies at all. The states with the two fastest-growing prison populations, West Virginia and Indiana, both have little or no regularized oversight, and no independent monitoring agencies.

Private Prison Industry Prospers; CCA Blasts ACLU Report As "Thin"

Federal and state officials increasingly are contracting private companies to run prisons and immigration detention centers, says NPR. Critics question the...

ACLU Takes on Private Prison Industry In New Report

The American Civil Liberties Union is criticizing the private prison industry for profiting at the expense of a growing prison population, reports the Texas Tribune. A new report, “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration," accuses private prison companies of lobbying for laws that result in higher incarceration rates. Higher incarceration rates result in more government contracts, which are the primary source of funding for these companies.

Two leading industry companies, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, got a combined $3 billion in annual revenue in 2010. The report says CCA acknowledged in records submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that current sentencing laws increase the company’s profits. CCA officials could not be reached for comment. The GEO Group declined to comment.

`"Billions Behind Bars"--U.S. Prison Business Investigated by CNBC

CNBC broadcast a special "Billions Behind Bars," which the network billed as an investigation into the multibillion dollar prison business in the United States. There will be a rebroadcast starting at 8 p.m. Friday EDT. As described by the network, "We go inside private prisons and examine an Idaho facility nicknamed the “gladiator school” by inmates and former prison employees for its level of violence. We look at one of the fastest growing sectors of the industry, immigration detention, and tell the story of what happens when a hard hit town in Montana accepts an enticing sales pitch from private prison developers. In Colorado, we profile a little-known but profitable workforce behind bars, and discover that products created by prison labor have seeped into our everyday lives — even some of the food we eat. We also meet a tough-talking judge in the law-and-order state of Texas who’s actually trying to keep felons out of prison and save taxpayer money, through an innovative and apparently successful program."

CNBC says that the prison system in the U.S. employs more than three-quarters of a million workers, more than the auto manufacturing industry. Many small towns are said to be trying to get in on the boom. The special includes a "reform" segment profiling Texas's Community Corrections Continuum of Care Court, which the program says saves money by keeping people out of jail.

Florida Judge Halts Major State Prison Privatization Plan

A Florida judge has ruled that the state legislature improperly used budget language to order prisons to be privatized in 18 South Florida counties...

"Detention-Industrial Complex" Controls Half of U.S. Detention Beds

A handful of multinational security companies have been turning crackdowns on immigration into a growing global industry, reports the New York Times...