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The Nevada Legislature rejected Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn’s plan to privatize the medical service of the state’s 9,800 prison inmates, which could have displaced about 320 state workers.
Bob Gagnier, executive director of the State of Nevada Employees Association/ AFSCME Local 4041, says union members successfully fought the proposal by lobbying individual lawmakers and making a convincing argument before legislative committees.
“We pointed out the problems with the current private medical operation” at the state-run Ely State Prison, which contracts out its medical services, and at the privately run women’s prison in North Las Vegas, he recalls.
For instance, they described how those institutions “had taken their sickest inmates and sent them up here” to be taken care of by the state system, says Gagnier. Such a tactic inflates the state’s costs while making the private operation seem more economical.
Guinn proposed privatizing the state prison’s medical system — which operates at 19 facilities — as a cost-saving move. The system now costs nearly $30 million annually, about 20 percent of the state prison system’s budget.
Guinn claimed his plan would save the state $4.4 million during the next two years. A subcommittee chaired by Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani (D) disputed that assumption.
Despite their victory with medical services, Local 4041 will have to stay vigilant to prevent the Southern Nevada Correctional Center at Jean, near Las Vegas, from being turned into a privately operated prison.
Although the legislature agreed to close the facility until 2004 — and transferring its employees and inmates to a new facility near Indian Springs to save about $15 million — lawmakers decided to give the federal government or other public agency first crack at leasing it. “They’ll only go for a private vendor if no public entity wants it,” says Gagnier.
Even then, the state has imposed conditions that would make a private correctional firm think twice about leasing it, such as requiring the state to classify out-of-state inmates “so that we don’t have the problems they had in Youngstown [Ohio].”
The Tennessee state Senate failed to approve a bill to prevent private prisons from accepting out-of-state prisoners.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Pete Springer (D-Centerville) never got out of the State and Local Government Committee, which rejected it 5-3. Springer plans to refile the bill when the legislature resumes next year so voters at least will know how their representatives stand on the issue.
Springer introduced his measure in response to the escape of a murderer from the medium-security Mason Correctional Facility in Tipton, which is owned by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America. The facility has housed out-of-state inmates since 1990.
Bo Mitchell, a spokesman for Springer, said Tennessee has about 2,000 out-of-state inmates in private prisons.
Local news media reports said the bill was blocked after state Sen. John Wilder (D) asked colleagues to treat private prison companies fairly. The press noted most of the state’s privately run prisons are in Wilder’s west Tennessee district, including a CCA-operated prison.
Under current law, Tennessee cannot reject any out-of-state prisoners who are sent to private prisons, according to Pam Hobbins of the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
Springer also plans to reintroduce other bills designed to make it unprofitable for private prison companies to do business, including one to require that prison companies reimburse state and local governments for the costs associated with escaped inmates.
The New Mexico state Senate’s Courts, Corrections and Criminal Justice Committee plans to conduct an investigation in August of Florida-based Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, which has a $25 million contract to house 1,500 state inmates at its prisons near Hobbs and Santa Rosa.
State Sen. Michael Sanchez (D), who chairs the committee, said the panel was going to look into a troubling string of problems at the Hobbs facility, which opened in May 1998.
Among the troubles at the Hobbs facility:
- three fatal stabbings
- six non-fatal stabbings
- a disturbance in April involving 170 inmates that injured 13 COs
- beatings by guards
- breaches of contract revealed by a state Corrections Department audit.
That February audit found problems with prisoner classification, discipline and education.
Meanwhile, the Center for Public Integrity, a public interest group, issued a report in February that noted state Senate Pres. Manny Aragon had been hired by Wackenhut. Aragon defended himself to the Albuquerque Journal: “Just because I work for Wackenhut doesn’t mean they own me.”
Pennsylvania Corrections Sec. Martin Horn said in July that two private prison companies now building prisons in the state lack authority to incarcerate people. “Purely private entities have not been given the authority to imprison anyone,” Horn said, according to the Associated Press. The Texas-based companies are Cornell Corrections of Houston and Corrections National Corporation of
San Antonio.
Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), a former psychologist at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, made a powerful case against privatizing prisons in a column published June 13 in The Washington Post. Strickland also introduced a bill earlier this year — at AFSCME’s urging — to prohibit privatizing federal prisons, and to deny corrections-related grants to states and localities that operate private prisons and jails.
