Sending ’em a Message
AFSCME hammers home its opposition to privatization
AFSCME was well represented at a prison-privatization forum sponsored by the Congressional Corrections Officers Caucus. Held at the nation’s Capitol, the event was one of several that brought attention to National Correctional Officers and Employees Week, May 7 to 13.
Several members of ACU’s national steering committee attended the forum to hear testimony from AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee and Council 17’s Ricco DiPietro, a CO. They were prominent among the advocates who spoke out against the proliferation of for-profit prisons.
Speakers portrayed a backlash against prison privatization, including rapidly rising prison and jail populations, which are approaching 2 million; and for-profit business people who have found a way to generate big bucks by building and operating correctional facilities.
Subsequent reports show no hard evidence of cost savings, which is what private firms preach to federal, state and local lawmakers. AFSCME has closely monitored the track record of for-profit prison firms since they came into existence, and has found that the profit motives compromise the safety of inmates, staff and surrounding communities.
McEntee raised pivotal issues: “For-profit prisons have no incentive to reduce overcrowding, especially if the company is paid on a per diem basis; no incentive to consider alternatives to incarceration; and no incentive to deal with the broader questions of criminal justice. These can all cut into their revenue stream.
“On the other hand — with the companies obligated to their shareholders and the financial bottom line — cost-cutting becomes a primary objective, often at the expense of public safety, the quality of life in the community, the humane treatment of inmates and the well-being of prison employees.”
DiPietro, who worked in Louisiana’s Tallulah Correctional Juvenile Facility, asked rhetorically: “After what Wackenhut did in the name of profit in Louisiana, why would the federal government give a contract to that same company to build and operate a federal facility in North Carolina?”
Tallulah was built and operated by Trans-American Associates before being subcontracted to Correctional Services Corporation of Florida. DiPietro said the problems encountered there mirrored those of other for-profit prisons: physical and mental abuse of inmates, constant turnover of staff and the cost-cutting measures of management. All of them, he said, endangered the safety of staff and inmates.
Alex Friedmann, a former inmate of both profit and non-profit prisons, described major distinctions in the day-to-day operations of the two types of facilities: “There’s a significant difference in knowing that the officers watching over you are thinking about their stock options. [A] few private guards with low pay, few benefits and no pension plan will risk their lives to help you if another prisoner attacks you. In privately operated prisons, convicts are little more than commodities, and guards give them little more respect than ranchers give cattle being herded to the market.”
The Congressional Corrections Officers Caucus was established in 1999 by Reps. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), Tim Holden (D-Pa.), Steve Horn (R-Calif.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.). Its a bipartisan group of congressional members who work to raise the visibility of corrections issues.
