Private prison

A private prison, jail, or detention center is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements with governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in the facility.

Today, the privatization of prisons refers both to the takeover of existing public facilities by private operators and to the building and operation of new and additional prisons by for-profit prison companies.

Private prisons in the United Kingdom

History of private prisons in the United Kingdom

In the modern era, the United Kingdom was the first country in all of Europe to use private prisons to hold its prisoners. Wolds Prison opened as the first privately managed prison in the UK in 1992. Soon private prisons were established under the government's Private Finance Initiative, where contracts are awarded for the entire design, construction, management and finance of a prison.

Criticisms

Not all private prisons in the United Kingdom have been successful. Ashfield Prison opened in 1999 and was the first private prison in the UK to house young offenders. The prison was soon mired in controversy after repeated riots and reports of poor management. Conditions at the prison became so bad in 2003 that the Youth Justice Board withdrew prisoners from Ashfield, and threatened to recommend that the prison should be taken over by the public sector. Conditions at the prison improved however and the jail remained privately managed. Buckley Hall Prison was originally opened as a privately managed prison in 1994, but after a competitive tendering process in 2000, management of the prison was transferred to Her Majesty's Prison Service. Buckley Hall is therefore (so far) the only private prison in the UK to be permanently taken into the public sector.

Private prisons in the United States

Early history of prison privatization in the United States

The privatization movement can be traced to the contracting out of confinement and care of prisoners after the American Revolution. Deprived of the ability to ship criminals and undesirables to the Colonies, Great Britain began placing them on hulks moored in English ports.

The partial transfer of San Quentin prison administration from private to public did not mark the end of privatization. The next phase began with the Reconstruction Period (1865–1876) in the south, after the end of the Civil War. Farmers and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labor force once their slaves had been freed. Beginning in 1868, convict leases were issued to private parties to supplement their workforce. This system remained in place until the early 20th century.

Development of private prisons in the United States

Federal and state government has a long history of contracting out specific services to private firms, including medical services, food preparation, vocational training, and inmate transportation. The 1980s, though, ushered in a new era of prison privatization. With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the War on Drugs and increased use of incarceration, prison overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. In response to this expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, and consequently, private-sector involvement in prisons moved from the simple contracting of services to contracting for the complete management and operation of entire prisons.

The modern private prison business first emerged and established itself publicly in 1984 when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was awarded a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. This marked the first time that any government in the country had contracted out the complete operation of a jail to a private operator. The following year, CCA gained further public attention when it offered to take over the entire state prison system of Tennessee for $200 million. The bid was ultimately defeated due to strong opposition from public employees and the skepticism of the state legislature. Despite that initial defeat, CCA since then has successfully expanded, as have other for-profit prison companies. As of December 2000, there were 153 private correctional facilities (prisons, jails and detention centers) operating in the United States with a capacity of over 119,000.

Private prisons in the United States today

Private companies in the United States operate 264 correctional facilities, housing almost 99,000 adult convicts. Companies operating such facilities include the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, Inc, and Community Education Centers. The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Securities.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has a capacity of more than 80,000 beds in 65 correctional facilities. The GEO Group operates 61 facilities with a capacity of 49,000 offender beds,

Most privately run facilities are located in the southern and western portions of the United States and include both state and federal offenders.

Cost/Benefit analysis

Industry-funded studies often conclude that states can save money by using private prisons. However, state-funded studies have found that private prisons keep only low-cost inmates and send others back to state-run prisons.

Others have suggested that cost savings come at the expense of security. In the wake of the escape of three murderers from the minimum/medium security Kingman Prison, Arizona operated by Management and Training Corporation (MTC) attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard said "I believe a big part of our problem is that the very violent inmates, like the three that escaped, ended up getting reclassified [as a lower risk] quickly and sent to private prisons that were just not up to the job."The private prison had inadequate patrols and prisoner movement, excessive false alarms, a lax culture, and inconsistencies in visitor screening procedures.

One escapee was also involved in a Colorado shootout, where he was captured by a deputy and police in Rifle Colorado. Though he still "owed" Arizona 32 years on his sentence, he was sentenced to sixty years to be served first in Colorado.

The state of Arizona, as well as Dominion, an Edmunds, Oklahoma corporation that spec-built the prison, and MTC that managed it, are being sued for $40 million by the family of Gary and Linda Haas, retirees who were murdered in New Mexico by the fugitives. The remaining two escapees and their accomplice are being held on federal murder charges in New Mexico. The three were first convicted of hijackings, kidnappings and robberies in Arizona and charged with the same in New Mexico. The ringleader and his accomplice also committed a robbery in Arkansas.

Criticisms

Many organizations have called for a moratorium on construction of private prisons, or for their outright abolition. The religious denominations Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and United Methodist Church have also joined the call, as well as the Catholic Bishops of the South organization.

Proponents of privately run prisons contend that cost-savings and efficiency of operation place private prisons at an advantage over public prisons and support the argument for privatization, but some research casts doubt on the validity of these arguments, as evidence has shown that private prisons are neither demonstrably more cost-effective, nor more efficient than public prisons. An evaluation of 24 different studies on cost-effectiveness revealed that, at best, results of the question are inconclusive and, at worst, there is no difference in cost-effectiveness.

A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the cost-savings promised by private prisons “have simply not materialized.” Some research has concluded that for-profit prisons cost more than public prisons. Furthermore, cost estimates from privatization advocates may be misleading, because private facilities often refuse to accept inmates that cost the most to house. A 2001 study concluded that a pattern of sending less expensive inmates to privately-run facilities artificially inflated cost savings. A 2005 study found that Arizona’s public facilities were seven times more likely to house violent offenders and three times more likely to house those convicted of more serious offenses.

Evidence suggests that lower staff levels and training at private facilities may lead to increases in incidences of violence and escapes. A nationwide study found that assaults on guards by inmates were 49 percent more frequent in private prisons than in government-run prisons. The same study revealed that assaults on fellow inmates were 65 percent more frequent in private prisons.

CCA is and formerly The GEO Group have been major contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C. based public policy organization that develops model legislation that advances tough-on-crime legislation and free-market principles such as privatization.

Under their Criminal Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed and helped to successfully implement in many states “tough on crime” initiatives including “Truth in Sentencing” and “Three Strikes” laws. Corporations provide most of the funding for ALEC’s operating budget and influence its political agenda through participation in policy task forces. ALEC’s corporate funders include CCA and The GEO Group. In 1999, CCA made the President’s List for contributions to ALEC’s States and National Policy Summit; Wackenhut (predecessor to GEO Group) also sponsored the conference. Past cochairs of the Criminal Justice Task Force have included Brad Wiggins, then Director of Business Development at CCA and now a Senior Director of Site Acquisition, and John Rees, a former CCA vice president. On November 11th, 2010, GEO's outgoing COO Wayne Calabrese, told a large community gathering at a middle school in Bangor, Pennsylvania, that GEO had withdrawn from ALEC years earlier because of the obvious conflict of interest involved in creating legislation that insured an increased supply of prisoners. CCA and GEO have both engaged in state initiatives to increase sentences for offenders and to create new crimes, including, CCA helping to finance Proposition 6 in California in 2008 and GEO lobbying for Jessica's Law in Kansas in 2006.

By funding and participating in ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Forces, critics argue, private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences. The legal system may also be manipulated more directly: in the Kids for cash scandal, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp, a private prison company was found guilty of paying two judges $2.6m to send 2000 children to their prisons.

Legislation passed with links to private prisons, reported in the media:

Attempts to limit privatization and increase oversight

Some U.S. states have imposed bans, population limits, and strict operational guidelines on private prisons:

• Banning privatization of state and local facilities—Illinois in 1990 (Private Correctional Facility Moratorium Act), and New York in 2000, enacted laws that ban the privatization of prisons, correctional facilities and any services related to their operation. Louisiana enacted a moratorium on private prisons in 2001.
• Banning speculative private prison construction—For-profit prison companies have built new prisons before they were awarded privatization contracts in order to lure state contract approval. In 2001, Wisconsin’s joint budget committee recommended language to ban all future speculative prison construction in the state. Such anticipatory building dates back to at least 1997, when Corrections Corporation of America built a 2,000-bed facility in California at a cost of $80–100 million with no contract from the California Department of Corrections; a CCA official was quoted as saying, "If we build it, they will come".
• Banning exportation and importation of prisoners—To ensure that the state retains control over the quality and security of correctional facilities, North Dakota passed a bill in 2001 that banned the export of Class A and AA felons outside the state. Similarly, Oregon allowed an existing exportation law to sunset in 2001, effectively banning the export of prisoners. Several states have considered banning the importation of prisoners to private facilities.
• Requiring standards comparable to state prisons—New Mexico enacted legislation that transfers supervision of private prisons to the state Secretary of Corrections, ensuring that private prisons meet the same standards as public facilities. In 2001, Nebraska legislation that requires private prisons to meet public prison standards was overwhelmingly approved by the legislature, but pocket-vetoed by the governor. Oklahoma passed a law in 2005 that requires private prisons to have emergency plans in place and mandates state notification of any safety incidents.

Private prisons in Israel

In 2004, the Israeli Knesset passed a law permitting the establishment of private prisons in Israel. The State's motivation was to save money by transferring prisoners to facilities managed by a private firm. The state would pay the franchisee $50 per day for each inmate, sparing itself the cost of building new prisons and expanding the staff of the Israel Prison Service. In 2005, the human rights department of the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the law. The petition relied on two arguments. First, it said, transferring prison powers to private hands would violate the prisoners' fundamental human rights to liberty and dignity. Secondly, a private organization always aims to maximize profit, and would therefore seek to cut costs by, for instance, skimping on prison facilities and paying its guards poorly, thus further undermining the prisoners' rights. As the case awaited decision, the first prison was built by the concessionaire, Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel - a facility near Beersheba planned to accommodate 2,000 prisoners.

In November 2009, an expanded panel of 9 judges of the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that privately run prisons are unconstitutional, finding that for the State to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would severely violate the prisoners' basic human rights to dignity and freedom. Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, wrote that "Israel's basic legal principles hold that the right to use force in general, and the right to enforce criminal law by putting people behind bars in particular, is one of the most fundamental and one of the most invasive powers in the state's jurisdiction. Thus when the power to incarcerate is transferred to a private corporation whose purpose is making money, the act of depriving a person of his liberty loses much of its legitimacy. Because of this loss of legitimacy, the violation of the prisoner's right to liberty goes beyond the violation entailed in the incarceration itself."

In fiction

• Oldboy (Movie, 2003) -- Story of Oh Dae-su, who is locked in a private prison (run by prison manager, Oh Dal-su as Park Cheol-woong) for 15 years. The story is based on a web of conspiracy and violence after his release. See also, Old Boy (manga)
• Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Movie, 1991) -- Set in the future of 2001, when all prison institutions have been privatized.
• Seeing I (Novel) -- Partly set in a private prison called the Oliver Bainbridge Functional Stabilisation Centre, in which corporate spies and those who know too much are held.
• White Triangle (Fictional organization) -- Racist organization in the post-Zero Hour continuity of DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes. Part of the plot involves the release of prisoners of a supermax private prison called Planet Hell.
• Star Wars Star Destroyer (From cinema) -- The Imperial Star Destroyer, which first appears in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), is "the signature vessel of the Imperial fleet".[1] The term "Star Destroyer" also refers to other vessels in the Star Wars universe. Super-class Star Destroyer, the Lusankya, is described in Michael Stackpole's X-Wing novels as Ysanne Isard's private prison.
• Lock-Up (comics) -- Lock-Up (Lyle Bolton) is a DC Comics villain and an enemy of Batman. His first full appearance was in Detective Comics #697-699 (June-Aug 1996), which began with him capturing Two-Face, and taking him to his private prison.

Games

• Prison Tycoon
• Prison Tycoon 2: Maximum Security
• Prison Tycoon 3: Lockdown
• Prison Tycoon 4: Supermax

See also

• Wackenhut Corp.
• Correctional Services Corporation
• GEO Group
• Secret prison

External links

• Privatization Blog A Corporate Perspective of Prison Privatization
• The largely volunteer Private Corrections Institute, a comprehensive source of information on the industry
• Corrections Corporation of America web site
• Steel-Town Lockdown, Mother Jones
• Prison Privatisation Report International (online editions 2001 - 2006)
• Informative article focusing mainly on the privatisation of prisons in the UK from Lasthours.org.uk
• Texas Prison Bid'ness follows private prison developments in Texas.
• Private Prison Watch, a Texas based prison industry watchdog website.
• A Death in Texas: Profits, poverty, and immigration converge