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Private Prisons: Report from The Nation Magazine by Eric Bates

According to an article in 'The Nation Magazine' by Eric Bates, not everyone in the USA are enthusiastic about the selling of human beings like so many pieces of meat. "By privatizing prisons, government essentially auctions off inmates - many of them young black men - to the highest bidder. Opponents ranging from the America Civil Liberties Union to the National Sheriffs Association have argued that justice should not be for sale at any price". Ira Robbins, who wrote a statement for the American Bar Association opposing private corrections said "Do we want our justice system to be operated by private interests? This is not like privatizing the post office or waste management". But such moral concerns have gone largely unheeded in all the excitement over how much money the boys might save taxpayers. There's only one problem : The evidence suggests that the savings reaped from nearly 15 years of privatizing prisons are more elusive than an Oregan convict in a Texas warehouse.

In 1996 the General Accounting Office examined the few available reports comparing costs at private and public prisons. Its conclusion "These studies do not offer substantial evidence that savings have occurred". The most reliable study cited by the G.A.O. found that a CCAm run prison in Tennessee cost only 1 percent less to operate than two comparable state-run prisons. The track record also suggests that private prisons invite political corruption and do little to improve quality, exacerbating the conditions that lead to abuse and violence.

Although private prisons have failed to save much money for taxpayers, they generate enormous profits for the companies that own and operate them. Corrections Corporation ranks among the top five performing companies in the New York Stock Exchange over the past three years. The value of its shares has soared from $50 million when it went public in 1986 to more than $3.5 billion at its peak last October. By carefully selecting the most lucrative prison contracts, slashing labor costs and sticking taxpayers with the bill for expenses like prisoner escapes, CCAm has richly confirmed the title of a recent stock analysis by Paine Webber: "Crime pays".

Corrections Corporation is far and away the biggest company in the corrections business, controlling more than half of all inmates in private prisons nationwide. CCAm, now operates the sixth-largest prison system in the country - and is moving aggressively to expand into the global market with prisons in England, Australia and Puerto Rico. CCAm started taking reservations during the Reagan Administration, when Beasley founded the firm in Nashville with a former classmate from West Point. Their model was the Hospital Corporation of America, then the nation's largest owner of private hospitals. "This is the home of H.C.A." Beasley thought at the time. "The synergies are the same".

From the start, those synergies included close ties to politicians who could grant the company lucrative contracts. As former chairman of the state G.O.P., Beasley was a good friend of then-Governor Lamar Alexander. In 1985 Alexander backed a plan to hand over the entire state prison system to the fledging company for $200 million. Among CCAm's stockholders at the time were the Governor's wife, Honey, and Ned McWherter, the influential Speaker of the State House, who succeeded Alexander as governor.

CCAm won its first bid to run a prison by offering to operate the Silverdale Work Farm near Chattanooga for $21 per inmate per day. When the contract came up for renewal in 1986, county commissioners voted to stick with CCAm. Several enjoyed business ties with the company. One commissioner had a pest-control contract with the firm, and later went to work for CCA as a lobbyist. Another did landscaping at the prison, and a third ran the moving company that settled the warden into his new home. CCA also put the son of the county employee responsible for monitoring the Silverdale contract on the payroll at its Nashville headquarters. The following year, the US Justice Department published a research report warning abut such conflicts of interest in on-site monitoring - the only mechanism for insuring that prison operators abide by the contract, In addition to being a hidden and costly expense of private prisons, the report cautioned, government monitors could "be co-opted by the contractor's staff. Becoming friendly or even beholden to contract personnel could lead to the State receiving misleading reports".

But even when problems have been reported, officials often downplay them. The Justice Department noted "substantial staff turnover problems" at the Chattanooga prison, for instance, but added that "this apparently did not result in major reductions in service quality".

The same year that federal officials were crediting CCAm with "a good job" at the undermanned facility, Rosalind Bradford, a 23 year old woman being held at Silverdale, died from an undiagnosed complication during pregnancy. A shift supervisor who later sued the company testified that Bradford suffered in agony for at least 12 hours before CCAm officials allowed her to be taken to a hospital. "Rosalind Bradford died out there, in my opinion, of criminal neglect". the supervisor said in a deposition.

... Lawmakers didn't have to look far to see how wrong things can go. South Carolina decided last February (1996) not to renew a one-year contract with CCAm for a juvenile detention centre in the state capital. Child advocates reported hearing about horrific abuses at the facility, where some boys say they were hogtied and shackled together. "The bottom line is the staff there were inexperienced ... they were not trained properly".

Once again , though, such stark realities proved less influential than the political connections enjoyed by CCAm. The chief lobbyist for the company in the Tennessee legislature is married to the Speaker of the State House. Top CCAm executives, board members and their spouses have contributed at least $110,000 to state candidates since 1993, including $1,350 to Senator Kyle. And five state officials - including the governor, the House Speaker and the sponsor of the privatisation bill - are partners with CCAm co-founder Thomas Beasley in several Red Hot & Blue barbecue restaurants in Tennessee.

Extracts from an article by Eric Bates, staff writer with The Independent in Curham, North Carolina. Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund of The National Institute