Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In the Public Interest (ITPI), which describes itself as “a comprehensive resource center on privatization and responsible contracting,” released a report this month titled CRIMINAL: How Lockup Quotas and “Low-Crime Taxes” Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations. The report provides information about “the prevalence of prison occupancy guarantee provisions in prison privatization contracts.” ITPI said that it had “identified 77 county and state-level private facilities nationwide and collected and analyzed 62 contracts from these facilities.” Of the contracts that ITPI reviewed, 65% contained occupancy requirements that ranged between 80% and 100%–with 90% being the most frequent quota guarantee.
ITPI found that the states of Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Virginia were locked into contracts with the highest occupancy guarantee requirements. All four states had quotas requiring an occupancy rate between 95% and 100%.
Here are some state-specific findings from the report:
Colorado: Though crime has dropped by a third in the past decade, an occupancy requirement covering three for-profit prisons has forced taxpayers to pay an additional $2 million.
Arizona: Three Arizona for-profit prison contracts have a staggering 100% quota, even though a 2012 analysis from Tucson Citizen shows that the company’s per-day charge for each prisoner has increased an average of 13.9% over the life of the contracts.
Ohio: A 20-year deal to privately operate the Lake Erie Correctional Institution includes a 90% quota, and has contributed to cutting corners on safety, including overcrowding, areas without secure doors and an increase in crime both inside the prison and the surrounding community.
What do the occupancy quotas mean for the people who live in the counties and states that enter into these contracts with for-profit prison corporations? The quotas can put tax payers “on the hook” for required payments due the corporations when occupancy levels fall below those agreed upon in the contracts. ITPI refers to these payments as a “low-crime tax.” In other words, taxpayers are—in effect—made responsible for guaranteeing profits for private prison corporations if there are too many empty prison cells.
Let’s look at an example from the state of Arizona:
In July of 2010, three violent inmates escaped from a privately run prison. Their escape led to a multi-state manhunt. “It took more than two weeks for authorities to apprehend two of the escapees, both of whom were subsequently charged in connection with the carjacking and murder of an Oklahoma couple who were driving through New Mexico.”
After that experience, corrections officials in Arizona stopped sending any new inmates to the 3,300-bed facility—which they described as “dysfunctional.” But, less than a year after the escape, Management & Training Corp., which is responsible for running the prison, threatened to sue the state of Arizona. You see, a “line in their contract guaranteed that the prison would remain 97 percent full.” The private prison company claimed that it had lost close to $10 million because of the reduced inmate population in its prison. What did the state do then? Why, officials renegotiated the contract—and ended up paying Management & Training Corp. “$3 million for empty beds as the company continued to address problems” at its prison facility.
Some experts have argued that the contracted quotas “create an incentive for policymakers to focus on filling empty prison beds, as opposed to pursuing long-term policy changes, such as sentencing reform, that could significantly reduce prison populations. In short, many states are effectively obligated to continue to incarcerate people regardless of crime rates and public safety needs, or otherwise hand over taxpayer dollars in order to satisfy private profit-making companies.”
Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer and criminal justice expert at the University of Texas School of Public Affairs and someone who has researched the rise of private prisons, said, “It’s really shortsighted public policy to do anything that ties the hands of the state. If there are these incentives to keep the private prisons full, then it is reducing the likelihood that states will adopt strategies to reduce prison costs by keeping more people out. When the beds are there, you don’t want to leave them empty.”
Is it any wonder that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies in this country, have been involved in pushing for a number of criminal justice policies—including mandatory minimum sentences, California’s three-strikes law, and continuing the War on Drugs—“that increase the number of inmates who enter and stay in prison.” ITPI reported that CCA and GEO Group have also contributed to legislation—“like Arizona Senate Bill 1070, requiring law enforcement to arrest anyone who cannot prove they entered the country legally when asked.” Legislation such as Arizona’s 1070 will most likely help to increase the number of detainees in privately-run federal immigration detention centers.
It appears that the private prison industry is aware that a harsh criminal justice system is beneficial to its business. Following is a statement from CCA’s 2010 annual report:
The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.
In 2006, The Institute for Money in State Politics published a report titled Policy Lockdown: Prison Interests Court Political Players. The report speaks of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a “long-time proponent of privatization and stricter sentences…”–and says the organization “was instrumental in pushing get-tough-on-crime laws.” Model legislation that ALEC provided to legislators included three-strikes bills—as well as “truth-in-sentencing” bills that required convicted criminals to serve a set length of time before being eligible for parole. ITPI said that CCA helped “craft” that legislation “when it was a member of ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force.”
US Private prisons want you
We have been told that privatizing prisons is supposed to save counties and states money. It seems that’s a hard thing to do when elected officials sign contracts with private prison companies that require the counties and states to maintain extremely high inmate occupancy rates.
Who should be responsible for determining what our criminal justice policies should be? For-profit private prison companies. ALEC? What do you think?
SOURCES
This Is How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall (Mother Jones)
CRIMINAL: How Lockup Quotas and “Low-Crime Taxes”Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations (In the Public Interest)
Report says private prison contracts with states guarantee high inmate occupancy (Arizona Daily Star)
Private purchasing of prisons locks in occupancy rates (USA Today)
Prison Quotas Push Lawmakers To Fill Beds, Derail Reform (Huffington Post)
Policy Lockdown: Prison Interests Court Political Players (The Institute on Money in State Politics)
GAMING THE SYSTEM: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies (Justice Policy Institute, 2001)
Cell-Out Arizona Exclusive: Documents Show Arizona Officials Knew Private Prisons Weren’t Saving Money (TusconCitizen.com)
Private Prisons Cost Arizona $3.5 Million More Per Year Than State-Run Prisons (ThinkProgress)
Private Prison Contracts Are Forcing States To Pay For Empty Beds (Business Insider)
Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings (New York Times)
FURTHER READING
The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor: Years after ALEC’s Truth In Sentencing bills became the law of the land, its Prison Industries Act has quietly expanded prison labor across the country. (The Nation)
School-to-Prison Pipeline (ACLU)
Pennsylvania rocked by ‘jailing kids for cash’ scandal (CNN)
Why is the Private Prison Industry in Our Schools? (Occupy.com)
Corrections Corporation of America Used in Drug Sweeps of Public School Students (The Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch)
Florida To Completely Privatize Juvenile Correctional Facilities (Huffington Post)
Orwell and Heller. Their fictional books are about to be moved to the Non-Fiction shelves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Minderbinder
“Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men. He finally gets court-martialed for treason. However, as M&M Enterprises proves to be incredibly profitable, he hires an expensive lawyer who is able to convince the court that it was capitalism which made America great, and is absolved only by disclosing to the congressional committee investigating what the enormous profit he made by dealing with the Germans was.”
… I read Catch 22 in my early twenties, I laughed out loud many times.This was the funniest book I have ever read….
In my early thirties and at a time of personal difficulties, I chose to reread it for a “happy boost”. WHOOPs,…. The absurdities I had found so amusing 10 years earlier, were no longer absurd, I had to stop reading after just a few chapters.
Isn’t it interesting how mass incarceration hasn’t even touched the corporate elite or the class of financial criminals who have driven this country in the ditch. The public-private partnership language now used and overused by politicians seems to be nothing more than a bodies for dollars programs in which corporations use the government as a guaranteed profit center no matter what their so called product is.
How do we energize someone in a position to do something about this? Thanks for a riveting article and to all for the additional resources provided.
OS,
Those private prisons must have their “fair” share of prisoners so new crimes must be invented to fill the prisoner gap!
Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration
ACLU
November 2, 2011
Executive Summary
https://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mass-incarceration
The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one — especially at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to make ends meet and when state governments confront enormous fiscal crises. This report finds, however, that mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for one special interest group — the private prison industry — even as current incarceration levels harm the country as a whole. While the nation’s unprecedented rate of imprisonment deprives individuals of freedom, wrests loved ones from their families, and drains the resources of governments, communities, and taxpayers, the private prison industry reaps lucrative rewards. As the public good suffers from mass incarceration, private prison companies obtain more and more government dollars, and private prison executives at the leading companies rake in enormous compensation packages, in some cases totaling millions of dollars.
Private Prisons Spend $45 Million On Lobbying, Rake In $5.1 Billion For Immigrant Detention Alone
BY AVIVA SHEN
AUGUST 3, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-prisons-spend-45-million-on-lobbying-rake-in-51-billion-for-immigrant-detention-alone/
If citizens are no more than profit centers for both the government and corporate interests it’s reasonable that every aspect of their lives be exploited for profit including incarceration and their privacy.
This trend, especially the mandatory fill rates works in concert with other trends we see and social consequences that are in play, some of them not so obvious in and of themselves such as the criminalization of school children, the school to prison pipeline.
I Googled “prison industries and prison industries items for sale” and the results were enlightening, while federal prison industries are prohibited from selling to non federal agency customers that doesn’t seem to be the case with state prisons, or at least the ones I looked closely at. American workers are competing head to head over a surprisingly large array of manufactured goods and some services. Incarcerated workers make .25 cents to $2.00 an hour. $2.00 an hour does not appear to be the norm, most wages seem to max out at closer to $1.40 an hour.
Everything from office furniture to kitchen cabinets to the cleaning products to put under the sink and the living-room furniture to use them on. You can have the modular building fabricated to put them in and some nice patio furniture to eat your steaks or burgers on, grilled on your prison industry grills and smokers. All produced by a labor force of virtual slaves in direct competition with small business and American workers.
What Robin said. This is a topic worth revisiting again as things develop. I have been seeing news articles about the prison-industrial complex complaining they weren’t getting enough inmates, as if a falling crime rate is a bad thing.
THANK YOU ELAINE
i wondered if anyone would write about this.. i read the school to prison pipeline 2 yrs ago when reading the destruction of american education
is a corporate prison liable for the actions of inmates if they were negligent in allowing the prisoner to escape?
What is the purpose of our private owned prison system? Prison is not supposed to punish, it is supposed to rehabilitate back into society. Does the victims ever receive restitution for their loss? Do the victims ever have a say in the accused sentence? No, its all about money. The prisoners must buy from the prison commissary, everything from toothpaste, stamps, paper to shoes and telephone calls are contracted for through the prison. The food is very little and not the best of choices. Disease runs amuck, CDC has had many complaints. The prison hospital is unsanitary and filthy. So, why has so many of our American people been placed into prison even though many are innocent and 3000 criminals (murderers & rapists) of foreign countries have been turned loose into our population to do more harm?
Private Prison Companies Want You Locked Up
Press Release
Justice Policy Institute
Published: June 22, 2011
http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/2615
Excerpt:
“For-profit companies exercise their political influence to protect their market share, which in the case of corporations like GEO Group and CCA primarily means the number of people locked up behind bars,” said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI. “We need to take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons. That their lobbying and political contributions is funded by taxpayers, through their profits on government contracts, makes it all the more important that people understand the role of private prisons in our political system.”
Paul Ashton, principle author of Gaming the System, noted, “This report is built on concrete examples of the political strategies of private prison companies. From noting campaign donations, $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000, to the proposed plan from Ohio Governor John Kasich to privatize five Ohio prisons followed by the appointment of a former CCA employee to run the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, Gaming the System shows that private prison companies’ interests lie in promoting their business through maintaining political relationships rather than saving taxpayer dollars and effectively ensuring public safety.”…
“Private prison companies have been very successful in their effort to promote harsher sentencing policies and the privatization of correctional systems, and when they win, we all lose,” added Velázquez. “Taxpayers lose when their money is used to generate profits for shareholders and to promote policies that increase incarceration; communities lose when policies proven to be ineffective for public safety are pushed through state legislatures, and people involved in the criminal justice system lose when they are locked up in underfunded and sometimes unsafe facilities.”
Private Prisons Spend Millions On Lobbying To Put More People In Jail
BY ANDREA NILL SANCHEZ
JUNE 23, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251363/cca-geogroup-prison-industry/
Excerpt:
Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.
JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.
It’s a truly riveting piece of fascism, Elaine. I perfectly understand your reaction. It was practically all that me and my unexpected company talked about. It’s so fundamentally wrong that I’d go so far as to say that it should anger anyone with a sense of common decency let alone an understanding of the Constitution. It’s the kind of thing that starts actual rebellions. Every bit of it an injustice.
Daily Kos feature writer Dante Atkins posted a story on this just a few minutes ago. He goes into detail, but I like his closing paragraph. He writes,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/22/1239896/-Prison-privatization-time-to-end-the-nbsp-excesses
Elaine,
This story is amazing. Gene is right that reading it raises the blood pressure.
Gene,
I had a number of other topics that I had been researching for a post this weekend. Then I read the Mother Jones article and the In the Public Interest report about private prisons and lockup quotas. I decided that’s what I had to write about.
Gee, thanks Elaine.
Now I think I’ll grab my jug of vintage Prestone*, pour myself a drink and settle into my easy chair to await the next bit of good news.
*My apologies to CPP.
Elaine,
If I hadn’t been tied up this weekend, this was my topic of choice. Out of all the stories I read this past week, this is the one that made my blood boil. Excellent coverage of a topic that should be on everyone’s radar.
This type of prison model is difficult for me to wrap around in. The entire time I was in LE a few cities had small holding type jails, counties handled incarcerations under 1 year and state prisons over that amount. On occasion sometimes the county jail would do contract housing for other agencies or the federal bureau of prisons to bring in a few dollars. But later the county jail became more and more overcrowded and we had to institute booking restrictions such as only DV arrests or felonies would be bookable.
what had happened historically over the decades was that a new facility was built it was only a five or so years before it was too small. Planners wanted to save money to make the powers to be happy with the budget and it was tightned too much and less beds resulted. . One jail had a bit of insight and constructed many empty dorm type rooms that could be converted when the need arised and used them for other purposes until they were needed for housing.
I haven’t seen much interest in the contract/private model for adult prisons or jails around here, fortunately.
http://prisonlaw.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/new-study-prosecutors-not-police-have-driven-prison-population-growth/
New Study: Prosecutors, Not Police, Have Driven Prison Population Growth
“The United States prison population has exploded over the past 40 years. But why? Have police been making more arrests? Have prosecutors been charging more people with crimes? Have judges been issuing longer sentences? Have parole boards become stricter? (All of the above?) Since many accounts of mass incarceration collapse “the criminal justice system” into a single monolith, it can be hard to know exactly what part of the system has driven the growth in the prison population.
A new empirical study by Fordham law professor John Pfaff aims to provide a more granular explanation of the causes of mass incarceration. Pfaff concludes that only one other relevant number has changed as dramatically as the prison population has: the number of felony case filings per arrest. In other words, police haven’t been arresting more people:….”