FLORENCE, Ariz. — It is a dangerous place to patrol, and Arizona spends $4.7 million each year to house inmates such as Hausner in a super-maximum-security prison. But in a first in the criminal-justice world, the state’s death-row inmates could become the responsibility of a private company. State officials soon will seek bids from private companies for nine of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 on death row. It is the first attempt by a state to put its entire prison system under private control. The privatization effort, in its breadth and aggressive financial goals, demonstrates what states — broke, desperate and often overburdened with prisoners and their associated costs — are willing to do to balance the books. Arizona officials hope the effort will put a $100 million dent in the state’s roughly $2 billion budget shortfall.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” said Andy Biggs, a Republican in the state Legislature who supports private prisons. “If we were not in this economic environment, I don’t think we’d be talking about this with the same sense of urgency.”
Private prison companies generally build facilities for a state and charge per prisoner to run them. But under the Arizona legislation, a vendor would pay $100 million upfront to operate one or more prison complexes. Assuming the company could operate the prisons more cheaply or efficiently than the state, any savings would be equally divided between the state and the firm. The privatization move has raised questions about the ability of the private sector to handle the state’s most hardened criminals. While executions would be performed by the state, officials said, the Department of Corrections would relinquish all other day-to-day operations to the private operator and pay a per-diem fee for each prisoner.
The federal government, with a surge of new immigrant inmates, also contracts with firms. The number of federal prisoners in private prisons in the U.S. has more than doubled, to 32,712 in 2008 from 15,524 in 2000. The number of state prisoners in privately run prisons has increased to 93,500 from 75,000 in that time.
We are one step closer to a Death Row Reality Show.
Interested in cutting down on prison costs?: Build the border fence immediately! Extra savings can be realized by promoting hero Joe Arpaio.
Sell tickets!
It is getting to inconvenient for the State to kill. That’s why Hussein Obama har 250.000 mercenaries in Afghanistan as well.
These criminal scum should be put to good use. Send them to Iraq and let them catch some bullets; for freedom, of course.
Let me see if I understand this. Private companies will cost the state less, even with a profit built in?
What will they do – starve the prisoners? – make them sleep on the floor with no expensive blankets? – withhold luxuries like soap and medicine? – eliminate expensive services like electric lighting, etc.? Of course, labor costs would be kept down by hiring the cheapest available employees – foreigners alwways work cheap.
I imagine that, right about now, some of you are saying, “Sounds like a good plan”. My sense of humor makes me want to agree. However, all those techniques are illegal, and rightly so.
You remember Saddam Hussein, and what we correctly said about him? We would be acting just like him and every other brutal, filthy dictator. No difference whatsoever, even though WE ARE AMURRICANS.
The real solution is much better.
Get rid of the bought and paid for politicians who promote corporate sponsored giveaways like this, and hire some good managers to run the system. Then let them run it.
#5 Get Real-
The biggest savings is in not having to use union labor, support government style pensions, health care or automagic pay increases.
The average government employee in the US makes $75,000 annually+a healthy benefits package. Offer half that to an undereducated high school graduate looking for full time work and see how long the line is.
The sad/scary thing about these private prisons is that they have no motivation to keep recidivism under control, so most people who go into prison end up back in a few years or less. No prisoners=no prisons, so make sure they make lifelong connections to organized crime.
http://www.correctionscorp.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Corrections Corp. is the largest private prison company in the world. Here’s a little press release that touts just how wonderful a company they are to have around.
I suppose they’re just capitalism filling a need, but the whole idea seems like the fall of the Roman Empire or bad 1980s science fiction movie.
when you privatise something, you instantly create a vested interest in that something for the owners/investors.
now there are people that have a financial incentive to increase the number of people headed for death row in this state. not good. privatisation of any aspect of the criminal justice system is fucked up.
Here’s my plan. Since Mexico loves sending us their poor people to take advantage of our system, make Mexico house and feed all of the prisoners in the border states. At least then, we would be getting something for the millions and millions of dollars the criminal border crossers cost us.
And, crooks might not want to go to jail.
No picture from Running Man even though Ben Richards is the CA governor?
I figure if the gov truly wanted to save some money on prisons, they’d stop putting so damned many non-violent offenders in jail! I suggest electronic monitoring and home confinement where the family has to take care of feeding ‘em. Day passes for volunteer work – nothing that generates income: again, let their family take care of them or only if that income is 100% assigned to their victims as restitution.
How about housing them in Cindy McCain’s 17 houses? Or is it 13?
Prison for profit is highly questionable. Officers of a publicly traded corporation are legally bound to increase business. Relatively small political contributions are well known to return large outflows from government.
The US has more people imprisoned, per capita, than anywhere else outside of thoroughgoing authoritarian regimes(like North Korea). Is this something we really need to increase?
chris said,
“Prison for profit is highly questionable. Officers of a publicly traded corporation are legally bound to increase business. Relatively small political contributions are well known to return large outflows from government.”
.
Very true. Unfortunetly prison unions also have a very big incentive to increase prison populations. And they spend union member money to make sure that things stay that way. California is probably the worst example of this. They spend almost twice per prisoner than many other states yet they are on the verge of a court ordered takeover because of overcrowding and other violations of federal law.
So exacty what is the difference between public and private prison systems again?
This is just like “Escape from New York”. In AZ prisons have been a growth industry. Prison for profit, never was right never will be. Maybe we need to get rid of manditory minimums. Possesing pot shouldn’t get you 5 months. Pissing in public shouldn’t get you 2 days. This state is nuts. Next week I bet there will be a law againt trashing the bible. It’ll get you 6 months.
Some things do not belong in the hands of a for profit corporation. The profit motive invites corruption.
http://mahalo.com/michael-conahan
http://mahalo.com/mark-ciavarella
Scary, I saw one mention of ‘Running Man’, could just as easy be the world of Robocop or some John Carpenter film. It should be obvious as to why this is a bad idea. The fact that a republican is pushing this crap is not that surprising, the fact that he found any support at all is. It seems to me this should be a last ditch effort – so things in arizona are really that desperate? What’s worse is, if this becomes a tendency, other countries/states are likely to imitate this. I certainly prefer not to live in a country so poor it has to have private prisons, private schools, and private medicine, hell I wouldn’t even call a place like that a country.
It’s still not to late to emigrate – (I did and consider myself very lucky).
Maybe it’s time to realize Adams idea about the Death Row reality show.
Where have I heard this before… oh, right: “Putting health care in the hands of for-profit companies will reduce the cost!”
Same old song, same old result. Any money saved from efficiencies will go directly to the profits of the private corporations, and there will be NO savings to the taxpayers.
A republican run state doesn’t want to exercise state control. .. It gets in the way of making money from taxpayers.
Better idea for you Mexico adherents. .Lets just move the Mexican border north a bit, like include Arizona, Texas, all the southern states who are still fighting the civil war and let the rest of us get on with life as it could be without the obstructionist.