New
York Times...
Private Prisons Found
to Offer Little in Savings
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
May 18, 2011
PHOENIX — The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive
more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona
shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that
privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run
prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest
inmates.
State Representative Chad Campbell of Arizona said private prisons
“leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers.”
The state’s experience has particular relevance now, as many
politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state
agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private
prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its
private-inmate population.
The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has
struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates
nationwide has leveled off. But hopes of big taxpayer benefits might
end in disappointment, independent experts say.
“There’s a perception that the private sector is always going to do it
more efficiently and less costly,” said Russ Van Vleet, a former
co-director of the University of Utah Criminal Justice Center. “But
there really isn’t much out there that says that’s correct.”
Such has been the case lately in Arizona. Despite a state law
stipulating that private prisons must create “cost savings,” the
state’s own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as
much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do
in state-run prisons.
The research, by the Arizona Department of Corrections, also reveals a
murky aspect of private prisons that helps them appear less expensive:
They often house only relatively healthy inmates.
“It’s cherry-picking,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, leader
of the House Democrats. “They leave the most expensive prisoners with
taxpayers and take the easy prisoners.”
In the 1980s, soaring violent crime, tougher sentencing and
overcrowding led lawmakers to use private prisons to expand. Then, as
now, privatization advocates argued that corporations were more
efficient. Over time, most states signed contracts, one of the largest
transfers of state functions to private industry.
Nationally, the number of state inmates in private prisons grew by a
third over the past decade to more than 90,000, but it has stagnated,
and some states have reduced total prison populations — shifting
nonviolent offenders to treatment programs while bolstering probation.
Now, Ohio lawmakers want to privatize prisons with 6,000 inmates, and
Florida will transfer institutions with 15,000 inmates to private
management. The Arizona plan would add 5,000 private prison beds.
Matthew Benson, spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican,
did not dispute the state research. But he said officials had a “pretty
wide lens” to interpret the cost-savings mandate, like taking into
account the ability of private companies to recoup hundreds of millions
in construction costs over the life of contracts.
“It is a significant advantage to have a private firm be able to come
in and front the costs,” he said.
Privatization advocates play down the data. Leonard Gilroy, director of
government reform for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research
organization, questioned whether all costs were included and said the
figures were too narrowly drawn, particularly on medium-security
prisons, to prompt conclusions. “It is looking at a limited slice,” Mr.
Gilroy said.
Competing studies — some financed by the prison industry — have argued
over claims of savings. But when a University of Utah team including
Mr. Van Vleet reviewed years of research, it concluded in 2007 that
“cost savings from privatizing prisons are not guaranteed and appear
minimal.”
Steve Owen, spokesman for the largest operator, Corrections Corporation
of America, said: “There is a mixed bag of research out there. It’s not
as black and white and cut and dried as we would like.”
Read the rest of the story at the New York Times
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