The ‘Evidence’ Favors Non-profit Prisons

AFSCME Corrections United has released a report proving that the profit motive doesn’t improve the operation of prisons. Nor does it save taxpayers money.

“The Evidence is Clear: Crime Shouldn’t Pay,” is AFSCME’s second document on the growing for-profit prison industry. The report reviews the most recent national record on private prisons and analyzes their cost-saving issues, quality of service and threats to public safety.

Problems with for-profit prisons include low wages and benefits that attract unqualified workers; prison staff members who abuse inmates; increasing numbers of escapes; and inmates who kill or seriously injure staff.

“Not only are for-profit prisons not delivering services, the public agrees that the incarceration of inmates is a function of the government,” says Glen Middleton, chair of the ACU Advisory Board and an International vice president. “According to a Lake Snell Perry & Associates poll, a majority of the public is opposed to privatizing prisons. Fifty-one percent opposed the idea, while 34 percent strongly opposed it. This new report gives even greater support to the concerns of the general public.”

There are currently more than 110 co-sponsors of H.R. 979, the Public Safety Act, which prohibits private federal prisons and would deny grants for correctional facilities to states and localities that operate their own private prisons.

To get a copy of the report, call AFSCME’s Department of Research and Collective Bargaining Services at (202) 429-1215 or send an e-mail to our research department.

• Full text of “The Evidence is Clear: Crime Shouldn’t Pay”