Bay County's Experience With CCA

Just a quick link here to an article from a few weeks ago that recalls Bay County, FL's experience in having CCA manage their jail.  In the words of the Sheriff, the facility was "a horrible, nasty, unbelievable mess," and shortly after the county signed its contract with CCA, CCA began to jack up the price the county would pay per prisoner.  For what clearly amounted to high-quality services.  After the county resumed operations of the facility, they were able to save millions of dollars compared to CCA, even after performing extensive maintenance that CCA had neglected, since they eliminated the profit motive from the equation.

This came out during the whole commotion about the state legislature's boneheaded plan to privatize half the prison system, but serves as a great cautionary tale of the risks of privatizing any prison.

Lawmakers Call for Investigation of CCA Facility

Legislators in Montana have called for an investigation of the Crossroads Correctional Center, a private prison in Shelby, operated by CCA.  They have heard allegations of numerous failures of CCA to live up to its contractual obligations, including:

holding prisoners beyond their parole dates to continue to receive payments for them
limiting prisoners to 2 rolls of toilet paper and telling them to "use their hands" if they run out
forcing prisoners to sleep in the gym, in defiance of ACA standards
charging the state for vacant staff positions
failing to provide psychiatric services and accommodations for some disabled prisoners

Rarely do we get to see all these failures to provide adequate and humane care together in one facility.

Florida's Misguided Privatization Push

Florida is one of a few states that is seeing a wave of pro-privatization, anti-government rhetoric wreak havoc on employee unions and public services after electing a super conservative governor.  This same governor has also, with the help of longtime privatization advocate and state budget chair JD Alexander, pushed for Florida to embark on the most ambitious prison privatization scheme in history.  The state is currently in the process of privatizating the correctional services of 18 counties, covering nearly 30 facilities.  Thousands of state employees will lose their jobs as an inherently governmental function is turned over to a profit-driven private industry with a long history of human rights abuses and failure to deliver on promised cost-savings.  However, conservatives never seem to concerned with how much their bogus strategies wind up costing the state, as is evidenced by Scott's mandatory drug-testing program for welfare recipients that has already wound up costing taxpayers far more than its anticipated savings.  Hopefully though the state legislature will come to realize that privatization is an experiment that has consistently failed, and they need look no further than their own state to see just how poorly the industry has performed, and how undeserving it is of being rewarded for its failures

But it's not just the headlong dive into privatization that's got me concerned.  In addition to giving this blatant handout to an industry that donated $1,000,000 in the last election cycle, the state Legislature has just gutted the agency charged with overseeing medical care for the state's prisoners.  JD Alexander, who has been arguably the biggest proponent of privatizing the states' prisons since he tried to ram through a last-minute budget amendment last year forcing the state to send more prisoners to private facilities, is the Chairman of the Budget Committee that failed to appropriate funds for the agency.  So not only is the state handing over operations of prisons to private companies, it also failed to fund an agency that would have some oversight over an industry notorious for being able to evade it.

Making matters worse, Governor Scott's office just pressured state DOC officials to cancel a contract with a separate monitor who was set to oversee the state's planned privatization of even more prisoner health care.  Just to make it clear, the state is also looking to privatize medical care for thousands of prisoners, in addition to privatizing much of the state system; this lady would have overseen that medical care.  But as with all conservative political maneuverings designed to steer power and taxpayer dollars away from government and into private hands, the powers that be decided having any sort of effective oversight that could produce some accountability would be bad for business' bottom lines, so they eliminated the threat.  Granted, she probably would not have been a great or even unbiased monitor, because her husband works for the ACA, but some oversight has to be better than nothing.

So - Florida is going to privatize correctional services for thousands of prisoners, costing thousands of state jobs and millions of dollars that taxpayers must foot the bill for.  The same politicians who were bought off with $1 million worth of campaign contributions have stripped oversight agencies and individuals of power so that these new prisons can abuse people without scrutiny.  But what about the contracts to be awarded?  Surely, the state wouldn't turn over all these services to one single company, which would totally undermine the conservative argument of competition increasing the viability of the marketplace, right?  Wrong.  The state wants to give all the contracts to one company.  So now one company will now be in control of several hundred million dollars worth of state contracts.

If this strikes you as rather bizarre, foolish, and seemingly corrupt, you're not alone.  It turns out the FBI concurs with us.  They have launched an investigation into the overt corruption that has plagued this deal since before it was even hatched.  See, the former Speaker of the House, Ray Sansom, is currently serving time in federal prison for corruption and bribery charges after he, as Budget Chairman (JD Alexander's current role) tried to force through a last-minute budget amendment forcing the state to fund a private prison (sound familiar?), which ended up costing the state $140 million.  This came after he had taken a "personal" trip to Boca Raton, home of the GEO Group, which donated more than $800,000 in this past election and was awarded the contract for the prison Sansom got built.  Sansom claims he met with legislators on that trip and it wasn't related to the $140 million facility he got funded, but he can't remember which legislators.

Thankfully, the FBI seems to be seriously investigating this absurd situation.  Unfortunately though for Ed Buss, secretary of the state's DOC, their intervention did not come soon enough.  Buss was forced to resign last week because he was not supportive enough of Governor Scott's and JD Alexander's push to privatize half of his system.  Buss had warned the Governor and Budget Chairman of the $25 million that taxpayer would be on the hook for if the privatization plan moved ahead, and basically lost his job because he, as the head of the department of corrections, thought it would be a bad idea to privatize correctional services.  He has already been defended by State Senator Paula Dockery, who questions the privatization push and the message Buss' ouster will send to other members of the Scott administration.  She properly points out that the privatization effort is about more than "saving money," as JD Alexander would say.  "'It’s not only not going to save money, it’s going to affect public safety,' she said. 'It’s more than just money. It’s a complete change in policy.'"

I just hope Governor Scott keeps that in mind and stays true to his word, because he recently remarked that "If [the privatization plan] does not save money, then we won't do it."  Well Mr. Scott, let me be the first to tell you you will not save money, and you are taking a very risky gamble on public safety and the integrity of your state's government in this process.  I sincerely hope you reconsider this misguided push to privatize your prisons.

You be the Judge

In an attempt to be slightly less partial, I've just got a quick link to an article regarding the recent escapes in Kingman, AZ.  It features two positions, one taken by CCA spokesman (read: "professional blasphemer") Steve Owen; the other by Frank Smith of the Private Corrections Working Group.  Mr. Owen touts all the "great" reasons governments should privatize their prisons, but fails to tell the entire story behind many of his claims.  In particular, he says CCA never directly or indirectly lobbied Jan Brewer regarding the immigration law (except 3 of CCA's lobbyists have been connected to the office), that they don't lobby on any criminal law (because they funnel a bunch of money to ALEC to have them lobby on criminal laws), that most of their facilities are accredited (but they still get sued all the time and courts have held that ACA accreditation doesn't even guarantee they meet minimum Constitutional standards), and that their number-one priority is security (but most of their facilities are understaffed and they don't train their guards as much as government-run prisons).  But don't just take it from me; Frank Smith roundly crushes Steve Owen in the article, basing his argument, that Arizona should re-evaluate its relationships with private prison contractors, on things like facts and evidence.

OK so I guess I failed at the impartiality thing.  But go ahead and read both opinions for yourself, and you be the judge as to whether private prisons are a good idea.

(Apologies for being like 2 weeks late on this)

An Awesome Article You Should Go Read

So I know I'm a few days late on getting this up, and for that, I apologize.  I've been looking over this article, written by Alex Friedmann of Private Corrections Institute (go to their site; there's a link on the left) for a few days, trying to figure out how I could best summarize all his fantastic knowledge of the financial manipulation CCA engages in with the American Correctional Association to get many of its facilities accredited (I wrote pretty recently about a few of their prisons that had been accredited).  Then I realized I couldn't possibly describe what he says in any meaningful way, so I'm not going to try.  I will just implore you to take 5 minutes and read his analysis of why getting ACA accreditation at a prison isn't all it's cracked up to be.

A Bad Return on Hawaii's Investment

Following the deaths of two Hawaiian inmates at the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Arizona, which is run by CCA, the state's contract with the company and CCA's execution thereof have come under much greater scrutiny from the public and the press.  The author of the article learned from an anonymous prisoner that the facility is severely understaffed according to the contract the state has with CCA.  But this doesn't dampen Honolulu Attorney Peter Carlisle's enthusiasm for sending Hawaiian prisoners to be assaulted in Arizona; because the prison is accredited by the American Correctional Association (which is easier to come by than he'd like to imagine, when CCA helps fund their conferences), apparently it's just peachy.

Biased Information

Ken Kopczysnki, of the Private Corrections Institute, a fantastic nonprofit watchdog of the private prison industry (go to their site - there's a link to the left!), has called into question the neutrality and accuracy of the information contained in a recent report by the Reason Foundation and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA) that called for increased privatization of California prisons.  CCA has contributed heavily to the campaign of a politican supported by the HJTA, and hundreds of thousands more to California politicians and PACs.  Additionally, CCA and GEO give tons of money to the American Correctional Association, a private entity that accredits prisons and jails, which provided information on how much California pays to house its prisoners.  Mr. Kopczynski then goes on to detail a ton of misleading "findings" from the report, including issues such as the costs associated with housing prisoners, medical care costs, and comparisons between public and private prisons.  The Reason study is based partially on information known to be erroneous or biased, including a report performed by a professor found to have been paid more than $3 million by CCA, and notably excludes prominent research on how private prisons can be more expensive to operate, and information on the abuses and violations that take place within private facilities.

Basically, my point is; be careful of your sources of information.  An author for a financial magazine recently wrote a huge article espousing all the great aspects of privatization, based largely on this report (found here), and many others have already cited this report in discussing how privatization can benefit their communities.  Please, take this report with more than a grain of salt (as you should with most things in life), and consider the source whenever you hear someone spout off about how great private prisons are.

Why I Hate CCA Today

The Hawaii legislature recently passed a bill calling for an independent audit of the contract the state has with CCA to house prisoners in Arizona.  Apparently, CCA is intentionally holding Hawaiian prisoners well past their release dates (because they continue to earn money as long as they're in CCA custody).  However, HI's Director of Public Safety is confident no audit is needed because it's already ACA accredited and inspected on a regular basis.  Well apparently he doesn't read much of Why I Hate CCA, because if he did, he'd know that the CCA facility in Hernando County, FL which was ACA accredited and passed all its inspections, was recently determined to need millions of dollars worth of maintenance repairs.  But the real issue is that the audits consist of only a checklist of mostly structural issues, and don't involve any review of the lengths of stay of the prisoners in the facility, which is a big deal considering HI stands to lose about $2,000 per month on every prisoner held past his release date.

The Blame Game

The Hernando County Jail's myriad maintenance issues are apparently no one's fault, and everyone's. The jail had been inspected by numerous agencies over the past few years, none of which found major maintenance issues (even though it is now estimated that it will cost $2 million to repair). Even the Amercian Correctional Association, an "independent" jail/prison accreditation agency, found them to be in 100% compliance with their mandatory standards (and more than 97% compliance with the non-mandatory ones). But the fact remains that the facility is a conditions lawsuit waiting to happen. I note the ACA here because they inspect and then accredit a lot of private prisons, and people seem to think that means the facility is being operated in a humane fashion. Well it appears from this case, and the holdings of numerous courts around the country, that accreditation by ACA is not equivalent to providing constitutionally-acceptable living conditions.

For more on how everyone is passing the buck: http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2010/apr/14/warden-county-knew-about-jail-defects-least-one-ye/