Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
We have had a lot of discussions here about the ever growing private prison system in the United States, where our country has become the world leader in imprisoning its citizens. Many blogs have been written discussing our world prison leadership and the fact that it stems from the failed “War on Drugs”, which has tended to focus on people in poverty and/or people of color. The for-profit prison industry has had a growth spurt that can be directly traced to that aspect of the conservative movement that has disparaged government services and at the same time pushed for privatization of government services using the false concept that private industry can do it better and cheaper. It is an ideas that to me seems nonsensical on its face because of the absolute need that private industry turns a profit and in today’s economic scheme that profit has to continually rise as time passes. Business strategy, which by definition, must focus on profit has focused on cutting costs as a means of building profit. Cutting costs then devolves into hiring less skilled workers, cutting down on services provided and in a business like private prisons reducing the quality of care. When ot comes to reduction of services and diminishing of quality of care when it comes to the prison industry, I’m sure that the majority of public opinion would approve of even more draconian measures. After all those convicted of a crime are generally scorned and feared. Muscular fundamentalist philosophy has discarded the Jesus of turn the other cheek into a Jesus of vengeance and so there is even in some circles moral approval of treating prison inmates harshly. There is now a widespread use of solitary confinement as a tool of prison punishment and that confinement has stretched from weeks, too months and too years. We are after all, a society that has a majority of Americans for torture in our post 9/11 era.
In 2008 we saw the opening of a scandal in Pennsylvania where it was discovered that juvenile court judges were sentencing youths to prison for minor offenses because they had received money from sources in the private prison industry. Two judges were convicted in this case and it was seen that many youths were adversely affected and are now suing for unlawful imprisonment. It is this profiting on the imprisonment of youth that I would like to address broadly in this blog. For the most part my reference links will appear at its conclusion. This is a very disturbing problem that I think cuts to the heart of what kind of society we want to live in and I would hope that others find this as disturbing as I do.The impetus for this blog is a Huffington Post story titled: “Prisoners of Profit” by Chris Kirkham http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kirkham/
Chris wrote:
“From a glance at his background, one might assume that James F. Slattery would have a difficult time convincing any state in America to entrust him with the supervision of its lawbreaking youth.
Over the past quarter century, Slattery’s for-profit prison enterprises have run afoul of the Justice Department and authorities in New York, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and Texas for alleged offenses ranging from condoning abuse of inmates to plying politicians with undisclosed gifts while seeking to secure state contracts.”
He goes on to give specifics about incidents that have occurred in Slattery’s prisons such as a teen dying in a Texas Boot Camp that went untreated by authorities although the boy was vomiting; a Maryland facility that encouraged kids to fight on Saturday mornings as a method of dispute resolution; and in Florida charges that the company failed to report incidents of riots, assaults and sexual abuse.
“Despite that history, Slattery’s current company, Youth Services International, has retained and even expanded its contracts to operate juvenile prisons in several states. The company has capitalized on budgetary strains across the country as governments embrace privatization in pursuit of cost savings. Nearly 40 percent of the nation’s juvenile delinquents are today committed to private facilities, according to the most recent federal data from 2011, up from about 33 percent twelve years earlier.
Over the past two decades, more than 40,000 boys and girls in 16 states have gone through one of Slattery’s prisons, boot camps or detention centers, according to a Huffington Post analysis of juvenile facility data.”
It all returns to the analysis of whether for-profit prisons for youth provide not only cost savings, but actually are effective in reducing rates of recidivism. Study after study has shown that recidivism rates have actually increased with private prisons and that costs have exceeded prisons maintained by public employees. This large and growing industry though has become an investment opportunity for some and a profit point for others, yet the abuses continue unabated.
“Seventeen-year-old Hillary Transue did what lots of 17-year-olds do: Got into mischief. Hillary’s mischief was composing a MySpace page poking fun at the assistant principal of the high school she attended in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Hillary was an honor student who’d never had any trouble with the law before. And her MySpace page stated clearly that the page was a joke. But despite all that, Hilary found herself charged with harassment. She stood before a judge and heard him sentence her to three months in a juvenile detention facility.
What she expected was perhaps a stern lecture. What she got was a perp walk – being led away in handcuffs as her stunned parents stood by helplessly. Hillary told The New York Times, “I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare. All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”
It wasn’t until two years later that she found out why. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, two judges pleaded guilty to operating a kickback scheme involving juvenile offenders. The judges, Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, took more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from a private prison company to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. Since 2003, Ciaverella had sentenced an estimated 5,000 juveniles. Conahan was accused of setting up the contracts. Many of the youngsters shipped off to the detention centers were first-time offenders.
PA Child Care is a juvenile detention center in Pittston Township, Pennsylvania. It was opened in February 2003. It has a sister company, Western PA Child Care, in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Treatment at both facilities is provided by Mid Atlantic Youth Services. Gregory Zappala took sole ownership of the company when he purchased co-owner Robert Powell’s share in June 2008.
In July 2009, Powell pled guilty to failing to report a felony and being an accessory to tax evasion conspiracy in connection with $770,000 in kickbacks he paid to Ciavarella and Conahan in exchange for facilitating the development of his facilities.
The childcare facilities have also been criticized for their costs, which ranged as high as $315 per child per day. Butler County paid Western PA Child Care about $800,000 in payments between 2005 and 2008. Butler County did not renew Western PA Child Care’s contract after an extension of the contract ran out at the end of 2008.” http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1905:the-corrupt-corporate-incarceration-complex
Now I would be remiss in not saying that there are other studies that laud the use of private prisons, on such is “The Reason Foundation” which is purportedly a libertarian organization. They have a report on private prisons with a conclusion that lauds the private prison industry for providing better services for the prisoners. That report can be found here: http://www.burnetcountytexas.org/docs/6-Segal-Commission-on-PrisonAbuse.pdf Interestingly though the Reason Foundation seems to stretch libertarianism to its breaking point in when it comes to Federal Funding of certain educational tests it supports as shown here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-reason-foundation-a-disgrace/ Finally though comes the fact that the Reason Foundation is one of the front groups funded by the right wing ideologues The Koch Brothers and Sarah Scaife Foundation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_Foundation The family history of both the Koch’s and the Scaifes (Mellon Family) show that much of the wealth garnered came from government and indeed a Mellon was the Treasury Secretary during the Coolidge Administration. Their libertarianism is their philosophy for all but the members of their economic class.
“In Florida, where private contractors have in recent years taken control of all of the state’s 3,300 youth prison beds, YSI now manages more than $100 million in contracts, about 10 percent of the system. Its facilities have generated conspicuously large numbers of claims that guards have assaulted youth, according to a HuffPost compilation of state reports. A YSI facility in Palm Beach County had the highest rate of reported sexual assaults out of 36 facilities reviewed in Florida, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report found.
The state’s sweeping privatization of its juvenile incarceration system has produced some of the worst re-offending rates in the nation. More than 40 percent of youth offenders sent to one of Florida’s juvenile prisons wind up arrested and convicted of another crime within a year of their release, according to state data. In New York state, where historically no youth offenders have been held in private institutions, 25 percent are convicted again within that timeframe.”
In my opinion there are three aspects to the private prison industry that one should ponder upon when judging its efficacy:
- 1. Can a for-profit firm do the job cheaper? In my opinion it is impossible for a private entity to deliver the same level of care as a public entity. Profit is the underlying reason. We must consider that running a prison is in no way similar to manufacturing. In manufacturing the issue is efficiency and economy of scale. In dealing with humans one cannot use economy of scale as a comparison factor since one is not producing widgets. As for efficiency the question is how do you equal performance by increasing efficiency in a prison context. I don’t believe it can be done. Perhaps others might show me good reasons why it can be done.
- 2. In our legal system should we surrender control of custodial care of criminals to private industry? My position is that there are certain functions inherent to any government that needs to be performed solely by government. Among these are military, fire fighters, police and the entire criminal justice system. This is not to say that any of these functions can’t be corrupted if run by government, or that any governmental system cannot be corrupt. Yet in my opinion if government makes the criminal law and if under that law people are incarcerated the ultimate responsibility for the caretaker function of that incarceration should fall to government. We see above that with youth facilities in Pennsylvania run as for-profit institutions a corrupt conspiracy developed to maintain levels of incarcerated youth at a profitable number and due to this judges were bribed and youths sent to jail merely to satisfy the need for profit. Do we really support that in our country, or in our States?
- 3. Should a humane society treat its prisoners inhumanely? This shouldn’t be, but is, a subtle question today. I have little doubt that the majority of Americans believe that whatever happens to people convicted of crimes they deserve. To me that kind of thinking is institutionalized savagery. Yet I anticipate the well worn question of what if something was done to someone I love. The analogy amuses me because it assumes that my beliefs make me merely a passive do-gooder, which is far from the case. If someone I loved were hurt by a criminal I would have little compunction in killing them violently if I had the chance and would gladly accept the punishment for same. The problem is that as a society we almost never know for certain if the supposed guilty party really is guilty, whether if accused by the authorities, or convicted. The police may well accuse someone of murdering a loved one, but there have been too many murder convictions overthrown for a conviction ever to be a certainty. Too many people have been convicted by circumstantial evidence, or by eyewitness accounts proven to be untrue. Because of that uncertainty, my “avenging hand” would be stayed unless the crime occurred before my eyes. Since that is such an extremely rare happenstance the certainly of not killing an innocent is at enough of a level for me not to want to take the chance. By the same token the vagaries of our criminal justice system are such that perhaps 5%, to use a conservative estimate, of criminals are wrongly convicted. That 5% would represent more than 100,000 people and that’s assuming that the legal system gets it right 95% of the time. For those 100,000 innocent people to be brutalized by the system that deprives them of liberty is unacceptable to me. Then again, that’s why I am opposed to the death penalty which to me if it results in the death of one innocent person, has caused one death too many.
I believe that the entire concept of a privatized prison system is an abomination and even more so when we are dealing with the incarceration of youths. What is your opinion?
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/prisoners-of-profit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29142654/#.Umq7zhAeNlI
http://abcnews.go.com/US/mark-ciavarella-pa-juvenile-court-judge-convicted-alleged/story?id=12965182
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Too_Good_to_be_True.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/1905:the-c,orrupt-corporate-incarceration-complex
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/11/26/the-incarceration-of-black-men-in-america/
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/29/obama-and-the-war-on-drugs-hypocrisy-in-action-2/
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/01/19/americas-broken-criminal-justice-system/
Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan should be executed.
Any judge who violates the public trust like that deserves the death penalty
HumpinDog,
I have no idea, but would not be the least surprised. Their tentacles are everywhere. Their enterprises have invaded practically every aspect of our economy and society. It can’t be that they need the money. The Koch brothers are now in their 70s and already have vast wealth, thanks to their rapacious business practices. If the Keystone pipeline goes through, they stand to make at least $100 Billion dollars off of that project alone. Makes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet look like homeless panhandlers by comparison. Since they can’t take it with them, what is the purpose?
Let me guess. Like most psychopaths, it is about power and control, not the money.
Who’s Minding the Kids?: Have Profits Distorted the Mission of Rehabilitating Inmates at Mississippi’s Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility?
3/27/11
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/27/who%E2%80%99s-minding-the-kids-have-profits-distorted-the-mission-of-rehabilitating-inmates-at-mississippi%E2%80%99s-walnut-grove-youth-correctional-facility/
Excerpt:
From NPR: “The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 13 inmates against the prison operator, GEO Group, the prison administration and state officials. The complaint describes rampant contraband brought in by guards, sex between female guards and male inmates, inadequate medical care, prisoners held inhumanely in isolation, guards brutalizing inmates and inmate-on-inmate violence that was so brutal it led to brain damage.”
The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into some of these charges earlier this year. NPR says its own investigation has raised “the fundamental question of whether profits have distorted the mission of rehabilitating young inmates.”
Walnut Grove, the nation’s largest juvenile prison, houses 1,200 boys and young men. It is the only facility that locks up thirteen-year-olds with 22-year-olds. The typical guard-to-inmate ratio is 1 officer to 10 or 12 juvenile prisoners. A state audit of the Walnut Grove facility showed a guard-to-inmate ratio of 1 to 60! Salaries for prison staff are reportedly the largest expenditure of a correctional budget. Evidently, cutting staff is a good way of cutting costs.
The inmates in the Walnut Grove facility outnumber the citizens of the small town by 2 to 1. The prison reportedly pays Walnut Grove $15,000 a month in lieu of taxes. The facility’s payments comprise nearly 15% of the town’s annual budget. The mayor said, “For a small town, that’s a lot of money and it helps us maintain a full-time police department that we wouldn’t be able to afford without that income.”
Mike,
Well done! We’re on the road to privatizing everything–the military/wars, schools, prisons, spying for the NSA, the postal service, parking meters in Chicago…
*****
Do Private Contractors Save the Government Money?
By Erik Kain
9/18/11
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/18/do-private-contractors-save-the-government-money/
I’ve written about faux “privatization” before, which typically entails renting out government work to contractors who are said to be cheaper and more efficient. Private prisons are a major example of this. So are mercenary outfits like Blackwater (the media often just calls these guys “private contractors”).
In any case, there is a time for contractors to do work for the government – short-term, project-based work makes sense, like construction jobs. We don’t expect the government to have a Department of Construction. They can bid the work out. But a lot of faux privatization schemes are not short term – public libraries turning their operations over to private for-profit companies just to name an example.
I’ve always been skeptical that this sort of thing made much sense for governments, and now Kevin Drum points to a new report which suggests that maybe I’ve been right all along:
“The result of POGO’s analysis was shocking. In 94 percent (33 of the 35) of the occupational series POGO analyzed, the average annual contractor billing rate was much more than the average annual full compensation for federal employees: on average, contractors may be billing the government approximately 1.83 times what the government pays federal employees to perform similar work. When the average annual contractor billing rates were compared with the average annual full compensation paid to private sector employees in the open market, POGO found that in all occupational classifications studied, the contractor billing rates were, on average, more than twice the costs incurred by private sector employers for the same services.
“The most egregious example of an outsourced occupational classification that resulted in excessive costs rather than cost savings is claims assistance and examining—administrative support positions that involve examining, reviewing, developing, adjusting, reconsidering, or recommending authorization of claims by or against the federal government. To provide these services, on average, federal employees are fully compensated at $57,292 per year, private sector employees are fully compensated at $75,637 per year, and the average annual contractor billing rate is $276,598 per year.”
Kevin snarks, “Federal labor unions might be tough bargainers, but they’re pikers compared to the suits on mahogany row. Those are the guys who really know how to work the system. If you’re on the lookout for overpaid chair warmers with cushy jobs, that’s your first stop.”
“The for-profit prison industry has had a growth spurt that can be directly traced to that aspect of the conservative movement that has disparaged government services and at the same time pushed for privatization of government services using the false concept that private industry can do it better and cheaper… This is a very disturbing problem that I think cuts to the heart of what kind of society we want to live in and I would hope that others find this as disturbing as I do … I believe that the entire concept of a privatized prison system is an abomination and even more so when we are dealing with the incarceration of youths. What is your opinion? – Mike S
A historian writing in “Reader’s Companion To Military History”, points out the ancient dark ages source for this privatization Mike S points out:
(American Feudalism – 6). The practice Mike S describes, for-profit incarceration, draws some of the most un-American types of criminals one can imagine:
(ibid, “The Cheney” Link). It does not take a degree in rocket science to know that those who love torture, like Cheney and Gonzales, should never come near even a legit prison, much less an illegitimate dark ages type of prison.
Are the Koch Brothers involved? ALEC?
When government is out of control, the private sector, being predatory, jumps in to feed off the same trough. Behind every privatization is a crony deal. The ACA website is a good example. The First Lady’s fellow Princeton classmate got her company 600 million dollars in a no bid contract. Crony capitalism. Hard working Americans pay high taxes. Government employees get great pensions and healthcare for poor performance. Politicians get rich from sweetheart deals. And major corporations wade in the waters of taxpayer money. Working people and small business, well they’re the chumps.
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.
“Cash for Kids”: Firms Behind Juvenile Prison Bribes Reach $2.5 Million Settlement in Civil Suit
“Prisoners of Profit”: Despite Widespread Juvenile Abuse, Private Juvenile Jail Firm Expands Empire
Mike S.,
Interesting. I am wondering if there are examples where private prisons are very successful, and what are the percentage(s) of these ‘misbehaviors’ transpiring in comparison to the public prisons industry? Where do they (private prisons) get their start-up funds from? The states? The feds? What type of business model do private prisons follow? If the private prison ‘fails’, then who takes over the prison? The public sector?
Mike
the rush to warehouse juveniles for sometimes petty crimes is creating a permanent prison population. people who just don’t know how to interact with others without violence because they’ve never been exposed to anything else.
expect the worst from a child and the worst is what you’ll get, for their entire life.
ET,
Important perspective. I totally agree with you analysis.
Great job, Mike. In my years as an ER nurse at our County Hospital, I saw the horrors that were inflicted on prisoners as we were the the place that Sheriff Joe brought his prisoners who ‘slipped in the shower’ or ‘ran into a door’. That was just the County prisoners. I can only imagine the abuses suffered at the hands of private prisons. Now the question is ‘what can we do to stop this?’ Unfortunately I don’t think we have a Charles Dickens in America these days.
I have researched this extensively and it goes back to some years ago, when I warned there was no legal bridge between constitutional (federal) protections and the due process of civil matters. This is a privatization to eliminate oversight and 14th Amendment binds on states by constitutional protections. We see this already in several of the Florida and Texas prisons now using “slave labor” to build products for direct end users monopolizing on such labor–Talapia Farms in Colorado, saddler and leather goods in Texas and cadaver dogs for search and rescue. These prisons get start up capital from companies that receive cheap goods, then mark them up to the public while claiming they sell to prison guards and what not. It’s a lie. Tandy Leather now The Leather Factory in fact supplies discount leather to such prisons in Texas, where they build for sale, gun belts saddles and other leather goods for the State Police. It is a move towards China-like Communism where the rich enslave the poor and pay $.30 cents an hour to inmates–claiming it teaches them a trade which they won’t be able to compete with on the outside, because of the very work they did on the inside. This is the game–slave labor in exchange for donated upstart capital and forward contracting with the donors.
Great job Mike. The bottom line to this privatization of prisons is money. As you noted, you can follow it all the way to some of usual suspects.
Actually, I’ve been wondering a little why Hollywood hasn’t used the abuses the private prison systems engender as grist for the mill. “Brubaker”, although it dealt with abuses at underfunded mismanaged state prisons, was one of Robert Redford’s better films.
Although I haven’t been following this story as long as OS, I have been following it since first learning about Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan. It’s an absolute disgrace that we as a society are not more alarmed and up in arms about the private prison systems and due in no small part to minimal coverage in the MSM (although that seems to be changing for the better in some ways). Good story on an important topic, Mike.
Good story and timely. Great minds and all that, I had been considering a story on this subject. You beat me to it, and did a better job that I could have. Well done.
Mike,
This is a story I have been following for years, literally. I was in Mississippi where I did a lot of consulting for the juvenile court system. That was when Chet Henley was juvenile court judge in Hinds County. The juvenile detention center in Hinds County now bears his name, “Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center.” That is the the county Jackson, the state capitol, is in. There are now about sixteen juvenile facilities scattered around the state. These places have gotten a reputation as being hellholes that probably create more criminals than they save. There have been lawsuits, but it is not clear to me that conditions have improved. The Henley-Young facility has gone through multiple directors who seem to have either resigned under pressure or been fired. That is only one state. Multiply that by fifty.
Here is a brief excerpt from a 2012 report by a court-appointed inspector on the Henley-Young center:
My sources tell me also there has been sexual abuse and exploitation of juvenile inmates by correctional staff. I have no way to confirm that, but given what we do know, I am not surprised in the least. I knew Chet Henley well, and he must be spinning in his grave like a gyroscope.