Private Prison Debate

I. Status Quo: Private prisons are legal with in the United States. Currently thirty states use them. Over the past decade private prisons have seen an unmatched growth in usage from both the federal and state government.

II. Pro Private Prisons: For Legal

A. Capitalization

1. This is America, where everything is monetized

2. Private industry is always an option at least. Look at : Postal services, healthcare, etc

B. Optimization

1. Private prisons were quicker to keep up with the increase demand for inmate space

2. Corrections Corporation of America claimed (in 1983) they also were able to provide the same conditions for inmates for a lower cost of operation

They obtained contracts in Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucy

Ohio in 2000 was saving 1.6 million a year by switching to private prisons

3. Employees can be paid lower salaries and are non-union workers thus reducing costs

about $5,327 less in annual salary for new recruits and $14,901 less in maximum annual salaries

4. States avoid large upfront capital construction cost of public facilities which in Arizona for 4000 bed could be 250 million

5. 2004 California’s inefficient prison system was costing the public twice what Texas, who was using private prisons, per inmate. California was paying roughly 30,000 per inmate per year

6. In a study conducted by James Blumstein, director of the Health Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, the study found that states that used private prisons could save up to $15 million a year.

7. The U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice found that private prisons had a higher quality of services than traditional prisons.

C. Necessary

1. Because of 287(g) around 400,000 immigrants are detained each year. To make sure they do not break laws or disappear they must be held.

2. The Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) has understood 287(g) to mean, “ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton has stated that he interprets this language as mandating not only that he maintain 34,000 beds but that he also fill those beds with detainees on a daily basis.”

3. Without detention there remains little motive for illegal immigrants to obey immigration law without any consequences

4. Operation streamline: requires, “the federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all unlawful border crossers”. In Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona this has led to the skyrocketing needs for detention centers

D. Innovation

1. Because private prisons are free from the bureaucratic restrictions:

They are free to experiment with new ideas that increase flexibility and management structures

E. It works for Britain:

1. The Ministry of Justices report on Prisons:

a) Resource management and operational effectiveness: 12 out of 12 privately managed prisons are better than comparable public sector prisons

b) Decency: 7 out of 12 privately managed prisons are better than comparable public sector prisons

c) Reducing re-offending: 7 out of 12 privately managed prisons are better than comparable public sector prisons.

d) Public protection: 5 out of 12 privately managed prisons are better than comparable public sector prisons

e) 10 out of 12 privately managed prisons have lower reoffending rates among offenders serving 12 months or more than comparable public sector prisons

f) 7 out of 10 privately managed prisons have lower reoffending rates among offenders serving fewer than 12 months, compared to public sector prisons.

F. Local Growth

1. With the building of private prisons comes jobs for locals:

Construction

Security positions

Etc (materials: concrete, bedding; food, servers,)

2. Karnes County, Texas:

a) GEO group gives:

(1) gives the county $4,000 for school scholarships and $6,000 for maintenance and upkeep of the city's courthouse.

(2) money to the local Rotary Club, Toys for Tots, the Little League, Relay for Life and other local organizations and events

(3) 140 new jobs and $150,000 in tax revenue

III. Con: Against Private Prisons

A. Used for Soft Convictions

1. With the war on drugs came harsher minimum sentencing

2. Immigration and Natural Service contracted with private prisons to detain illegal immigrants.

B. Costs

1. CCA faced significant opposition in states due to overrun costs and lost inmates

2. In 2010 the two largest private prison corporations (CCA and the GEO group) had revenues on the border of 3 billion

3. Often the cost benefits are skewed by the fact that private prisons often take on more ‘soft’ convictions and thus do not need the extra security that public prisons provide

4. Prisons are a special industry that lack excess. Very little costs can be cut since the majority of costs come from labor. The more costs are cut the more directly it impacts the quality of containment.

On average, private prison employees also receive 58 hours less training than their publicly employed counterparts

C. Efficiency

1. In 1996 The US General Accounting Office analyzed state and federal studies on the efficiency of private prisons. The conclusion: lack of substantial evidence of increased efficiency in private prisons.

D. Kills Jobs

1. Little field, West Texas: A private prison is too be built. Plagued by riots, mismanagement and inmate suicide the project is cut leaving the corporation 9 million in debt which caused raised taxes, cut services, and job destruction

E. Safety

1. Private Prisons have double the rate of assaults than their public counterparts

2. Specific instances:

“In May 2011, a CCA prison psychiatrist in Florida was accused of asking female inmates to give him lap dances and to expose themselves. It is also alleged that he was offering to trade medication for sex”

“CCA’s Idaho Correctional Center was accused of being run as a “gladiator school” in 2010. Footage from the facility showed guards standing by as one inmate beat another into a coma. It was alleged that staff members used violence and the threat of violence to gain leverage of inmates.”

“In 2009, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle announced plans to bring back all of the state’s 168 female prisoners being held in the CCA-run Otter Creek Correctional Center in Kentucky. The governor made the decision over concerns of sexual abuse. The facility had a disproportionate number of male workers for a female prison and was found to have four times the level of sexual abuse compared to a state-run counterpart in 2007.”

“In February 2007 an African man was left dying on the floor from a head injury for 13 hours at the CCA-run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. At one time officials discussed sending the body back to Guinea in order to deter the man’s widow from traveling to the U.S. and drawing attention to the death.”

3. In 2010 3 men escaped a Arizona private prison due to a door being propped open and the lack of patrolling guards

4. 2010 Idaho, CCA is brought to court and fined 100 per hour for each security position they leave unfilled

F. Lobbying

1. Both CCA and GEO group have supported ALEC or the American Legislative Exchange Council which lobbies for

Mandated minimum sentences

Three Strike Laws

Increased number of people held in immigration detention facilities

2. Independent Lobbying

CCA spends 1.4 million per year since 1999

In the past decade CCA and GEO group have spend 45 million in lobbying at the state and federal level

With large contributions going to those who draft immigration legislation: Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, John McCain, Marco Rubio: the gang of 8

(1) Lamar Alexander is responsible for sponsoring increased detention and incarceration of immigrants and for proposing an expansion of the Operation Streamline

G. Corruption

1. Kids for cash

In PA juvenile court judges got millions in kickbacks for directing defendants towards private prisons

H. Alternatives

1. The ICE has states that Alternatives to Detention is a “very economical alternative to holding low-risk individuals” stating that the daily cost would be $7 instead of $122 for detention

2. Still the bills produced in congress, “ continues to favor the expansion of penal detention, for which funding has increased by 140 percent, from $842.3 million since 2006, to $2.24 billion in this bill”

Works Cited

"Berkeley Law - Operation Streamline." Berkeley Law - Operation Streamline. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov.

2013.

Chavkin, Sasha. "Immigration Reform and Private Prison Cash." Columbia Journalism Review. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.

H.R. Rep. No. 112-091 (2012). Print.

Mason, Cody. Too Good to Be True Private Prisons in America. Washington D.C.: Sentencing Project,

2012. Print.

Staff, NPR. "Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town?" NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 29 Nov.

2013.

Tanner, Will. The Case for Private Prisons. Rep. N.p.: Reform, 2013. Feb. 2013. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.