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CCA and Private Prisons -- Commentary fron The Nation

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John V. Wilmerding

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Jan 10, 1998, 3:00:00 AM1/10/98

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This very important article from The Nation magazine was reproduced Fri, 9
Jan 1998 on the CRIMNET criminal justice news list. CRIMNET is based in
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Private Prison Watch News - 28 December 1997
*********************************************************************

The Nation Magazine

PRIVATE PRISONS

Over the next 5 years analysts expect the private share of the
prison "market" to more than double.

By Eric Bates
-------------------
A few hours after midnight one August evening last year, Walter
Hazelwood and Richard Wilson climbed a fence topped with razor
wire at the Houston Processing Center, a warehouse built to hold
undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation. Once outside, the
two prisoners assaulted a guard, stole his car and headed for
Dallas.

When prison officials notified the Houston police that the men had
escaped, local authorities were shocked. Sure, immigrants had fled
the minimum-security facility near the airport a few times before.
But Hazelwood and Wilson were not being detained for lacking the
papers to prove their citizenship. One was serving time for sexual
abuse; the other was convicted of beating and raping an
88-year-old woman. Both men, it turned out, were among some 240
sex offenders from Oregon who had been shipped to the Texas
detention center months earlier--and local authorities didn't even
know they were there.

The immigration center is owned and operated by Corrections
Corporation of America, which manages more private prisons than
any other company worldwide. While C.C.A. made nearly $14,000 a
day on the out-of-state inmates, the company was quick to point
out that it had no legal obligation to tell the Houston police or
county sheriff about their new neighbors from Oregon. "We designed
and built the institution," explained Susan Hart, a company
spokeswoman. "It is ours."

Yet like a well-to-do rancher who discovers a couple of valuable
head of cattle missing, C.C.A. expected Texas rangers to herd the
wayward animals back behind the company's fence. "It's not our
function to capture them," Hart told reporters.

Catching the prisoners proved easier, however, than charging them
with a crime. When authorities finally apprehended them after
eleven days, they discovered they could no more punish the men for
escaping than they could lock up a worker for walking off the job.
Even in Texas, it seemed, it was not yet a crime to flee a private
corporation.

"They have not committed the offense of escape under Texas law,"
said district attorney John Holmes. "The only reason at all that
they're subject to being arrested and were arrested was because
during their leaving the facility, they assaulted a guard and took
his motor vehicle. That we can charge them with, and have."

The state moved quickly to pass legislation making such escapes
illegal. But the Texas breakout underscores how the rapid spread
of private prisons has created considerable confusion about just
what the rules are when a for-profit company like Corrections
Corporation seeks to cash in on incarceration. Founded in 1983
with backing from the investors behind Kentucky Fried Chicken,
C.C.A. was one of the first companies to push the privatization of
public services. The selling point was simple: Private companies
could build and run prisons cheaper than the government. Business,
after all, would be free of red tape--those inefficient procedures
that waste tax dollars on things like open bidding on state
contracts and job security for public employees. Unfettered
American capitalism would produce a better fetter, saving
cash-strapped counties and states millions of dollars each year.

Sooner or later, people realize that "the government can't do
anything very well," Thomas Beasley, a co-founder of C.C.A. and a
former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party, said near the
start of prison privatization. "At that point, you just sell it
like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers."

Not everyone is quite so enthusiastic about the prospect of
selling 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
American Civil Liberties Union to the National Sheriffs
Association have argued that justice should not be for sale at any
price. "The bottom line is a moral one," says Ira Robbins, who
wrote a statement for the American Bar Association opposing
private corrections. "Do we want our justice system to be operated
by private interests? This is not like privatizing the post office
or waste management to provide services to the community. There's
something meaningful lost when an inmate looks at a guard's
uniform and instead of seeing an emblem that reads 'Federal Bureau
of Prisons' or 'State Department of Corrections,' he sees one that
says 'Acme Prison Corporation.'"

But such moral concerns have gone largely unheeded in all the
excitement over how much money the boys at Acme might save
taxpayers. There's only one problem: The evidence suggests that
the savings reaped from nearly fifteen years of privatizing
prisons are more elusive than an Oregon 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 C.C.A.-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 on 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, C.C.A. has richly
confirmed the title of a recent stock analysis by PaineWebber:
"Crime pays."

"It's easier for private firms to innovate," says Russell Boraas,
who oversees private prisons for the Virginia Department of
Corrections. As he inspects a medium-security facility being built
by C.C.A. outside the small town of Lawrenceville, Boraas notes
that the prison has no guard towers--an "innovation" that saves
the company $2.5 million in construction costs and eliminates
twenty-five full-time positions. "Think about it," Boraas says. "A
state corrections director who eliminates guard towers will lose
his job if a prisoner escapes and molests a little old lady. The
president of the company won't lose his job, as long as he's
making a profit."

Although corrections officials like Boraas initially viewed the
drive to privatize prisons with skepticism, many quickly became
converts. The crime rate nationwide remains well below what it was
twenty-five years ago, but harsher sentencing has packed prisons
and jails to the bursting point. There are now 1.8 million
Americans behind bars--more than twice as many as a decade
ago--and the "get tough" stance has sapped public resources and
sparked court orders to improve conditions.

With their promise of big savings, private prisons seemed to offer
a solution. Corporate lockups can now hold an estimated 77,500
prisoners, most of them state inmates. Over the next five years,
analysts expect the private share of the prison "market" to more
than double.

Corrections Corporation is far and away the biggest company in the
corrections business, controlling more than half of all inmates in
private prisons nationwide. C.C.A. 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. That's good news for investors. The Cabot Market
Letter compares the company to a "a hotel that's always at 100 %
occupancy...and booked to the end of the century." C.C.A. 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 fledgling company
for $200 million. Among C.C.A.'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.

Although the state legislature eventually rejected the plan as too
risky, C.C.A. had established itself as a major player. It had
also discovered that knowing the right people can be more
important than actually saving taxpayers money. The company won
its first bid to run a prison by offering to operate the
Silverdale Work Farm near Chattanooga for $21 per inmate per day.
At $3 less than the county was spending, it seemed like a good
deal--until a crackdown on drunk drivers flooded the work farm
with new inmates. Because fixed expenses were unaffected by the
surge, each new prisoner cost C.C.A. about $5. But the county,
stuck with a contract that required it to pay the company $21 a
head, found itself $200,000 over budget. "The work farm became a
gold mine," noted John Donahue, a public policy professor at
Harvard University.

When the contract came up for renewal in 1986, however, county
commissioners voted to stick with Corrections Corporation. Several
enjoyed business ties with the company. One commissioner had a
pest-control contract with the firm, and later went to work for
C.C.A. as a lobbyist. Another did landscaping at the prison, and a
third ran the moving company that settled the warden into his new
home. C.C.A. 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 U.S. Justice
Department published a research report warning about 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 reason? "This special effort to do a good
job," the report concluded, "is probably due to the private
organizations finding themselves in the national limelight, and
their desire to expand the market."

The same year that federal officials were crediting C.C.A. 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 twelve hours before C.C.A. 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.

Inspectors from the British Prison Officers Association who
visited the prison that year were similarly shocked by what they
witnessed. "We saw evidence of inmates being cruelly treated," the
inspectors reported. "Indeed, the warden admitted that noisy and
truculent prisoners are gagged with sticky tape, but this had
caused a problem when an inmate almost choked to death."

The inspectors were even more blunt when they visited the
C.C.A.-run immigration center in Houston, where they found inmates
confined to warehouselike dormitories for twenty-three hours a
day. The private facility, inspectors concluded, demonstrated
"possibly the worst conditions we have ever witnessed in terms of
inmate care and supervision."

Reports of inhumane treatment of prisoners, while deeply
disturbing, do not by themselves indicate that private prisons are
worse than public ones. After all, state and federal lockups have
never been known for their considerate attitude toward the people
under their watch. Indeed, C.C.A. and other company prisons have
drawn many of their wardens and guards from the ranks of public
corrections officers. The guards videotaped earlier this year
assaulting prisoners with stun guns at a C.C.A. competitor in
Texas had been hired despite records of similar abuse when they
worked for the state.

Susan Hart, the C.C.A. spokeswoman, insisted that her company
would never put such people on the payroll--well, almost never.
"It would be inappropriate, for certain positions, [to hire]
someone who said, 'Yes, I beat a prisoner to death,'" she told The
Houston Chronicle. "That would be a red flag for us." She did not
specify for which positions the company considers murder an
appropriate job qualification.

In fact, C.C.A. employs at least two wardens in Texas who were
disciplined for beating prisoners while employed by the state. And
David Myers, the president of the company, supervised an assault
on inmates who took a guard hostage while Myers was serving as
warden of a Texas prison in 1984. Fourteen guards were later found
to have used "excessive force," beating subdued and handcuffed
prisoners with riot batons.

The real danger of privatization is not some innate inhumanity on
the part of its practitioners but rather the added financial
incentives that reward inhumanity. The same economic logic that
motivates companies to run prisons more efficiently also
encourages them to cut corners at the expense of workers,
prisoners and the public. Private prisons essentially mirror the
cost-cutting practices of health maintenance organizations:
Companies receive a guaranteed fee for each prisoner, regardless
of the actual costs. Every dime they don't spend on food or
medical care or training for guards is a dime they can pocket.

As in most industries, the biggest place to cut prison expenses is
personnel. "The bulk of the cost savings enjoyed by C.C.A. is the
result of lower labor costs," PaineWebber assures investors. Labor
accounts for roughly 70 percent of all prison expenses, and C.C.A.
prides itself on getting more from fewer employees. "With only a
36 percent increase in personnel," boasts the latest annual
report, "revenues grew 41 percent, operating income grew 98
percent, and net income grew 115 percent."

Like other companies, C.C.A. prefers to design and build its own
prisons so it can replace guards right from the start with video
cameras and clustered cellblocks that are cheaper to monitor. "The
secret to low-cost operations is having the minimum number of
officers watching the maximum number of inmates," explains Russell
Boraas, the private prison administrator for Virginia. "You can
afford to pay damn near anything for construction if it will get
you an efficient prison."

At the C.C.A. prison under construction in Lawrenceville, Boraas
indicates how the design of the "control room" will enable a guard
to simultaneously watch three "pods" of 250 prisoners each.
Windows in the elevated room afford an unobstructed view of each
cellblock below, and "vision blocks" in the floor are positioned
over each entranceway so guards can visually identify anyone being
admitted. The high-tech panel at the center of the room can open
any door at the flick of a switch. When the prison opens next
year, C.C.A. will employ five guards to supervise 750 prisoners
during the day, and two guards at night.

Another way to save money on personnel is to leave positions
unfilled when they come open. Speaking before a legislative panel
in Tennessee in October, Boraas noted that some private prisons in
Texas have made up for the low reimbursement rates they receive
from the state "by leaving positions vacant a little longer than
they should." Some C.C.A. employees admit privately that the
company leaves positions open to boost profits. "We're always
short," says one guard who asked not to be identified. "They do
staff fewer positions--that's one way they save money." The
company is growing so quickly, another guard explains, that "we
have more slots than we have people to fill them. When they
transfer officers to new facilities, we're left with skeletons."

At first glance, visitors to the South Central Correctional Center
could be forgiven for mistaking the medium-security prison for a
college campus. The main driveway rolls through wooded hills on
the outskirts of Clifton, Tennessee, past picnic benches, a
fitness track and a horse barn. But just inside the front door, a
prominent bulletin board makes clear that the prison means
business. At the top are the words "C.C.A. Excellence in
Corrections." At the bottom is "Yesterday's Stock Closing,"
followed by a price.

In addition to employing fewer guards, C.C.A. saves money on labor
by replacing the guaranteed pensions earned by workers at
state-run prisons with a cheaper--and riskier--stock-ownership
plan. Employees get a chance to invest in the company, and the
company gets employees devoted to the bottom line. "Being a
stockholder yourself, you monitor things closer," says Mark
Staggs, standing in the segregation unit, where he oversees
prisoners confined for breaking the rules. "You make sure you
don't waste money on things like cleaning products. Because it's
your money you're spending."

Warden Kevin Myers (not related to C.C.A. president David Myers)
also looks for little places to cut costs. "I can save money on
purchasing because there's no bureaucracy," he says. "If I see a
truckload of white potatoes at a bargain, I can buy them. I'm
always negotiating for a lower price."

But what is thriftiness to the warden is just plain miserly to
those forced to eat what he dishes out. "Ooowhee! It's pitiful in
that kitchen," says Antonio McCraw, who was released from South
Central last March after serving three years for armed robbery. "I
just thank God I'm out of there. You might get a good meal once a
month. The rest was instant potatoes, vegetables out of a can and
processed pizzas. C.C.A. don't care whether you eat or not. Sure
they may cut corners and do it for less money, but is it healthy?"

The State of Tennessee hoped to answer that question when it
turned South Central over to C.C.A. in 1992. The prison was built
at roughly the same time as two state-run facilities with similar
designs and inmate populations, giving officials a rare
opportunity to compare daily operating costs--and quality--under
privatization.

The latest state report on violence at the three prisons indicates
that South Central is a much more dangerous place than its public
counterparts. During the past fiscal year, the C.C.A. prison
experienced violent incidents at a rate more than 50 percent
higher than state facilities. The company also posted
significantly worse rates for contraband, drugs and assaults on
staff and prisoners.

"If that doesn't raise some eyebrows and give you some kind of
indication of what the future holds, I guess those of us who are
concerned just need to be quiet," says John Mark Windle, a state
representative who opposes privatization.

Corrections officials note that understaffing can certainly fuel
violence, which winds up costing taxpayers more money. The state
legislature has heard testimony that employee turnover at South
Central is more than twice the level at state prisons, and
prisoners report seeing classes of new recruits every month, many
of them young and inexperienced. "The turnover rate is important
because it shows whether you have experienced guards who stick
around and know the prisoners," says inmate Alex Friedmann, seated
at a bare table in a visitation room. "If you have a high turnover
rate you have less stability. New employees come in; they really
don't know what's going on. That leads to conflicts with inmates."

Internal company documents tell a similar story. According to the
minutes of an August 1995 meeting of shift supervisors at South
Central, chief of security Danny Scott "said we all know that we
have lots of new staff and are constantly in the training mode."
He "added that so many employees were totally lost and had never
worked in corrections."

A few months later, a company survey of staff members at the
prison asked, "What is the reason for the number of people
quitting C.C.A.?" Nearly 20 percent of employees cited "treatment
by supervisors," and 17 percent listed "money."

Out of earshot of their supervisors, some guards also say the
company contributes to violence by skimping on activities for
inmates. "We don't give them anything to do," says one officer.
"We give them the bare minimum we have to."

Ron Lyons agrees. "There's no meaningful programs here," says
Lyons, who served time at state-run prisons before coming to South
Central. "I can't get over how many people are just laying around
in the pod every day. I would have thought C.C.A. would have known
that inmate idleness is one of the biggest problems in
prisons--too much time sitting around doing nothing. You
definitely realize it's commercialized. It's a business. Their
business is to feed you and count you, and that's it."

Given all the penny-pinching, it would seem that C.C.A. should
easily be able to demonstrate significant savings at South
Central. Instead, a study of costs conducted by the state in 1995
found that the company provided almost no savings compared with
its two public rivals. The study--cited by the General Accounting
Office as "the most sound and detailed comparison of operational
costs"--actually showed that the C.C.A. prison cost more to run on
a daily basis. Even after the state factored in its long-term
expenses, C.C.A. still spent $35.38 a day per prisoner--only 38
cents less than the state average.

The study contradicted what is supposed to be the most compelling
rationale for prison privatization: the promise of big savings.
But the industry champion dismissed its defeat by insisting, much
to the amazement of its challengers, that it hadn't tried very
hard to save tax dollars. "When you're in a race and you can win
by a few steps, that's what you do," said Doctor R. Crants, who
co-founded C.C.A. and now serves as chairman and chief executive
officer. "We weren't trying to win by a great deal."

The comment by Crants, as remarkable as it seems, exposes the true
nature of privatization. When it comes to savings, the prison
industry will beat state spending by as narrow a margin as the
state will permit. To a prison company like C.C.A., "savings" are
nothing but the share of profits it is required to hand over to
the government--another expense that cuts into the bottom line and
must therefore be kept to a minimum, like wages or the price of
potatoes. At its heart, privatizing prisons is really about
privatizing tax dollars, about transforming public money into
private profits.

That means companies are actually looking for ways to keep public
spending as high as possible, including charging taxpayers for
questionable expenses. The New Mexico Corrections Department, for
example, has accused C.C.A. of overcharging the state nearly $2
million over the past eight years for operating the women's prison
in Grants. The company fee of $95 a day for each inmate, it turns
out, includes $22 for debt service on the prison.

Last summer, a legislative committee in Tennessee calculated that
state prisons contribute nearly $17.8 million each year to state
agencies that provide central services like printing, payroll
administration and insurance. Since company prisons usually go
elsewhere for such services, states that privatize unwittingly
lose money they once counted on to help pay fixed expenses.

The "chargebacks," as they are known, came to light last spring
when C.C.A. once again proposed taking over the entire Tennessee
prison system. This time the company offered to save $100 million
a year--a staggering sum, considering that the annual budget for
the system is only $270 million.

Like many claims of savings, the C.C.A. offer turned out to be
based on false assumptions. Crants, the company chairman and
C.E.O., said he derived the estimate from comparing the $32 daily
rate the company charges for medium-security prisoners at South
Central with the systemwide average of $54. But the state system
includes maximum-security prisons that cost much more to operate
than South Central. "It's almost like going into a rug store,"
says State Senator James Kyle, who chaired legislative hearings on
privatization. "They're always 20 percent off. But 20 percent off
what?"

Yet the sales pitch, however absurd, had the intended effect of
getting Kyle and other lawmakers into the store to look around.
Once there, the prison companies kept offering them bigger and
better deals. Given an opportunity to submit cost estimates
anonymously, firms offered fantastic savings ranging from 30
percent to 50 percent. Threatened by the competition, even the
state Department of Corrections went bargain basement, offering to
slash its own already low cost by $70 million a year. Despite
opposition from state employees, legislators indicated after the
hearings that they support a move to turn most prisoners over to
private companies--a decision that delighted C.C.A. "I was pretty
pleased," Crants said afterward. The governor and legislators are
wrangling over the details, but both sides have agreed informally
to privatize roughly two-thirds of the Tennessee system. A few
prisons will be left in the hands of the state, just in case
something goes wrong.

Lawmakers didn't have to look far to see how wrong things can go.
South Carolina decided last February not to renew a one-year
contract with C.C.A. for a juvenile detention center 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,"
said Robyn Zimmerman of the South Carolina Department of Juvenile
Justice. "They were not trained properly."

Once again, though, such stark realities proved less influential
than the political connections enjoyed by C.C.A. The chief
lobbyist for the company in the Tennessee legislature is married
to the Speaker of the state House. Top C.C.A. 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 privatization bill--are partners with
C.C.A. co-founder Thomas Beasley in several Red Hot & Blue
barbecue restaurants in Tennessee.

The political clout extends to the national level as well. On the
Republican side, Corrections Corporation employs the services of
J. Michael Quinlan, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons
under George Bush. On the Democratic side, C.C.A. reserves a seat
on its seven-member board for Joseph Johnson, former executive
director of the Rainbow Coalition. The Nashville Tennessean points
to Johnson as evidence that the company "looks like America....
Johnson is African-American," the paper observes, "as are 60 % of
C.C.A.'s prisoners."

Johnson played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role earlier this year,
using his political connections to help C.C.A. swing a deal to buy
a prison from the District of Columbia for $52 million. It was the
first time a government sold a prison to a private company, and
C.C.A. hopes it won't be the last. Earlier this year, with backing
from financial heavyweights like Lehman Brothers and PaineWebber,
the company formed C.C.A. Prison Realty Trust to focus solely on
buying prisons. The initial stock offering raised $388.5 million
from investors to enable C.C.A. to speculate on prisons as real
estate.

Why would cities or states sell their prisons to the C.C.A. trust?
PaineWebber cites the lure of what it calls "free money." Unlike
many public bond initiatives earmarked for specific projects like
schools or sewage systems, the broker explains, "the sale of an
existing prison would generate proceeds that a politician could
then use for initiatives that fit his or her agenda, possibly
improving the chances of re-election." Companies building their
own prisons certainly receive friendly treatment from officials.
Russell Boraas invited companies bidding on a private prison to a
meeting and asked what he could do to help. "I said, 'Guys, I know
quite a bit about running construction projects, but I don't know
much about private prisons. What are you looking for? What can I
do to make this user-friendly for you?' They said it would be nice
if they could use tax-exempt bond issues for construction, just
like the state." So Boraas allowed companies to finance
construction with help from taxpayers, and a local Industrial
Development Authority eventually aided C.C.A. in getting $58
million in financing to build the prison.

Such deals raise concerns that private prisons may wind up costing
taxpayers more in the long run. Although governments remain
legally responsible for inmates guarded by public companies, firms
have little trouble finding ways to skirt public oversight while
pocketing public money. Instead of streamlining the system, hiring
corporations to run prisons actually adds a layer of bureaucracy
that can increase costs and reduce accountability. Prison
companies have been known to jack up prices when their contracts
come up for renewal, and some defer maintenance on prisons since
they aren't responsible for them once their contract expires.

Even more disturbing, private prisons have the financial
incentive--and financial influence--to lobby lawmakers for harsher
prison sentences and other "get tough" measures. In the prison
industry, after all, locking people up is good for business. "If
you really want to save money you can lock prisoners in a box and
feed them a slice of bread each day," says Alex Friedmann, the
prisoner at South Central. "The real question is, Can you run
programs in such a way that people don't commit more crime? That
should be the mark of whether privatization is successful in
prisons--not whether you keep them locked up but whether you keep
them out."

C.C.A. officials dismiss such concerns, confident the current boom
will continue of its own accord. "I don't think we have to worry
about running out of product," says Kevin Myers, the warden at
South Central. "It's unfortunate but true. We don't have to drum
up business."

Perhaps--but Corrections Corporation and other company prisons
already have enormous power to keep their current prisoners behind
bars for longer stretches. Inmates generally lose accumulated
credit for "good time" when they are disciplined by guards, giving
the C.C.A. stockholders who serve as officers an incentive to
crack the whip. A 1992 study by the New Mexico Corrections
Department showed that inmates at the women's prison run by C.C.A.
lost good time at a rate nearly eight times higher than their male
counterparts at a state-run lockup. And every day a prisoner loses
is a day of extra income for the company--and an extra expense for
taxpayers.

Some C.C.A. guards in Tennessee also say privately that they are
encouraged to write up prisoners for minor infractions and place
them in segregation. Inmates in "seg" not only lose their good
time, they also have thirty days added to their sentence--a bonus
of nearly $1,000 for the company at some prisons. "We will put 'em
in seg in a hurry," says a guard who works at the Davidson County
Juvenile Detention Facility in Nashville.

The prison holds 100 youths--"children, really," says the
guard--most of them teenage boys. "They may be young, but they
understand what's going on," he adds. One day, as a 14-year-old
boy was being released after serving his sentence, the guard
offered him some friendly advice.

"Stay out of trouble," he said. "I don't want to see you back
here."

"Why not?" the kid responded. "That's how you make your money." *

Eric Bates is a staff writer with The Independent in Durham, North
Carolina. Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund
of The Nation Institute.
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Gene Hillman

unread,

Jan 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM1/12/98

My main concern is that it gives an economic incentive for firms to lobby
for harsher criminal panalities so as to keep people in prison longer, and
for crimes for which other penalities might be more approperiate. There is
an incentive for those with money to lobby for mandatory prison sentences.

Peace! Gene (Gene Hillman / Box 1732 / Media, Pennsylvania 19063 U.S.A.)
Nottingham Monthly Meeting (Oxford, Pa.), BYM (Quakers)

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