Prison audit reveals poor management, overcharges - MILLIONS
PapitasFritas
Prison audit reveals poor management, overcharges
CHRISTOPHER WITKOWSKY , Staff Writer
An audit of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' prisoner work
program revealed the program overcharged customers for items produced
by prisoners, creating a $32 million stockpile of cash.
The three prisons responsible for about 75 percent of the profit
involved in the creation of the stockpile were SCI Graterford, SCI
Huntingdon and SCI Pittsburgh, according to the audit report.
Auditor General Jack Wagner said in a press release that the $32
million belongs to taxpayers and should be returned to the state if it
is not needed by the Pennsylvania Correctional Industries, the
Department of Corrections' bureau that runs the prisoner work
program.
"In difficult economic times, when state and local governments are
struggling to reduce spending and balance their budgets, it's
imperative that every taxpayer dollar be spent effectively and
efficiently," Wagner said in the press release.
The audit, a follow-up to an audit performed on the work program 10
years ago, examined financials from July 1, 2000, through Feb.
18, 2005, according to Ivan Anderson, spokesman for the Auditor
General's office.
The audit revealed that PCI was ineffectively managed, used an
irregular accounting method to provide a $2 million rebate to the
Department of Corrections during a budget shortfall and routinely
overcharged state agencies for its products, which include license
plates and routine items for prison operations like shampoo, prison
uniforms, T-shirts and bar soap, the press release states.
Anderson said the audit compared other states' prisoner work program
prices with PCI's, and determined PCI's to be much higher.
"We did a sample of 18 products for a number of other states compared
with PCI, PCI almost always overcharged," Anderson said.
Anderson said PCI and the Department of Corrections set the prices for
the products made by prisoners.
According to the audit report, the overcharging allowed PCI to show
an annual profit, even though 14 of the 23 PCI-operated plants lost
money during the audit period.
Money from the cash stockpile would be used to help fund prisoner-work
operations that were losing money, Anderson said.
Money from the cash stockpile also was used to provide the Department
of Corrections with a $2.3 million rebate for items the DOC
purchased, the report states.
PCI granted DOC the rebate because the department was in a budget
shortfall, the report states.
According to the report, the point of the prisoner work program,
created in 1984, was to allow soon-to-be released prisoners to gain
responsibilities and prepare for life outside prison.
Prisoners produce items that are sold at competitive prices to other
state agencies, the report states, and the prisoners themselves
make .59 cents an hour.
According to the report, many of the coveted prisoner jobs were given
to life inmates and the number of employed prisoners declined by 230
prisoners during the four-year audit period.
PCI failed to track and monitor former employed inmates once they
re-entered the community and did not attempt to determine the
program's impact on reducing the rate of released inmates committing
a crime, the report states.
The report makes 21 recommendations for how to improve the program,
including evaluating the pricing structure to considering ways to offer
benefits to customers and coordinate with other offices in the DOC to
provide job placement assistance and post-release employment
monitoring.
Anderson said the auditor general can only make recommendations and has
no power to enforce. He said he was not sure which agency had the power
to mandate enforcement of the recommendations.
A call to the state attorney general's office was not returned
Wednesday.