Not in Our State

Ohio union members beat down prison privatization.

By Jimmie Turner

The members of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11 really don’t want private prisons in their state, and they’re backing up their feelings with action.

Privatization proponents have been trying to persuade the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) to turn some of its facilities into for-profit operations. Whether the issue is the opening of a private prison or privatizing food and medical services in certain institutions, OCSEA front-line workers have met the challenge at every turn and — in the process — stalled privateers’ plans.

PRIVATIZATION CREEP. The pace of prison privatization has quickened in the last decade. Overcrowding has given companies like Aramark Corporation and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) a foot in the door, as their officials are able to convince some government counterparts that for-profit facilities save money. AFSCME Corrections United (ACU), the nation’s leading opponent of prison privatization, has done its research and concluded that taxpayers have been duped: There is no clear evidence of savings. If anything, private companies pass along hidden costs, forcing even-larger financial burdens on the taxpayer.

AFSCME has always contended that "the imprisonment of human beings should not be driven by the bottom line." Last year, the International published a report, The Evidence is Clear: Crime Shouldn’t Pay. In it, the union establishes that private-prison firms answer to their shareholders and that profit becomes the primary objective when operating correctional facilities.

This leads to understaffed facilities: Security officers are often hired with little experience or training; and the food and other necessities inmates receive are of inferior quality and severely limited. These shortcomings can raise the ire of inmates, which in turn puts the officers’ lives at risk. The prospect of escapes increases, and public safety becomes a concern. (See Alex Friedmann’s first-person story)

Because OCSEA members know these facts cold, they’ll stop at nothing to rid Ohio of private prisons.

FOOD FIGHT. "Aramark was making a killing here, and we went after them and got them." That’s how Jim Nixon, a corrections officer (CO) from Noble Correctional Institute in Caldwell, describes the privateer’s practices in the prison’s food services division. Armed with impressive research, Nixon and his co-workers submitted to the DRC a proposal that stripped Aramark Corporation of the contract and placed the unit back under state control.

The company was awarded a two-year contract in October 1998 as a pilot project to test the efficiency of privatizing food services. Aramark, one of the country’s leading providers of institutional food services, ran the entire operation for Noble’s 2,500 inmates.

The experiment failed. Inmates began complaining about the quality and portions of the food. Ask any CO, and he or she will tell you that when the inmates are hungry, the potential for chaos accelerates. Fearing a riot at Noble, state officials reworked the contract in February 1999, authorizing Aramark to charge higher rates for more and better-tasting food.

‘SWAMP CHICKEN.’ When Nixon, Darich Leister and Darrell Mummey learned that Aramark’s contract was up in September 2000, they moved quickly and drafted a proposal to get the food service contract under OCSEA jurisdiction. With time very short, Nixon and Mummey worked around the clock to prepare a proposal for the DRC — and even then had to revise it.

Finally, department officials agreed to meet with OCSEA staff representatives, and Nixon and Leister joined the meeting to present their case. Not long after that, the food services division was placed back under state control. Now, there are 17 new OCSEA union members working in Noble’s kitchen.

One of the key developments in the negotiations was the COs’ ability to craft a proposal that will save 20 percent per meal. Aramark was billing the DRC on the basis of cooking meals for the entire inmate population, although on average, Nixon says only 60 percent of the inmates actually eat prepared food. "Inmates have a commissary, and they’ll go down there and get everything from cheese to meat to crackers," he explains. "A lot of times they won’t eat in the kitchen.

"Like on hamburger day, we have a big influx of inmates coming to the kitchen," says Nixon. "But when they’re having spinach and ground pork loaf or ‘swamp chicken,’ they don’t show up." He describes swamp chicken as less than a delicacy prepared in the Aramark era: At times, inmates wrung the chicken with their hands, and water came gushing out.

CLUELESS IN GRAFTON. OCSEA activists have defeated another privateer, CiviGenics, at the North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility in Grafton — Ohio’s first state-run private prison. When the company won the DRC contract and opened its gates in February 2000, it had no idea what it had gotten itself into. Moving at what seemed like lightning speed, OCSEA members mobilized strong, vocal community opposition to the undertaking through broad-based media and outreach programs.

Mike Hill, a hard-charging CO who became an OCSEA staff representative and was assigned to help fight the state’s decision to privatize North Coast, says succinctly of their plans: "Our goal is to de-privatize [the facility]. The state paid for it and ought to operate it." In less than a year, he and a number of other well-positioned unionized workers had unearthed serious shortcomings surrounding CiviGenics’ management of the prison.

AN UN-NEIGHBORLY SURPRISE. The 522-bed, minimum-security prison was built to house inmates with felony DUIs and other substance-abuse problems. However, a closer look showed that some of the inmates have records that include felonious assaults, sexual battery, domestic violence and concealed weapons crimes. That’s not what the Grafton community expected when they were informed that a private prison would be erected in their backyard.

Armed with information from OCSEA, local and state politicians have questioned the status of some inmates incarcerated at North Coast. Democratic State Sen. Robert Hagan from Youngstown wrote a letter to the DRC: "It is quite reasonable to assume that [the inmates] all fit the description of the type of inmates that are not to be housed" in Grafton. Tom Smith, president of the Grafton Village Council, expressed the frustration of residents when he told a local newspaper: "First, it was DUI offenders, then it was DUI and substance abuse offenders, and then finally we found out — about four months before it was going to open — that [the facility] was going to include non-violent offenders. But we were never told that there would be violent offenders there."

WAIT, THERE’S MORE. In less than a year of operation, the prison went through four wardens. A note written to OCSEA officials in January by a member of the union’s anti-privatization army reveals that, "We have been without any deputies for a few weeks. ... The newest rumor is that a large number of employees [are] quitting at the end of this month. They are just not gonna show up for work, and therefore be fired. This prison is in constant turmoil and no one knows who will be in charge from one day to the next. I cannot believe that any corporation can run any type of ‘business’ as we are currently being run."

In November, the press reported that the state withheld nearly $75,000 from CiviGenics because the company billed the DRC for North Coast’s alcohol and drug treatment program, which is not fully staffed. The department views the mistake as frivolous. But OCSEA officials, who’ve been closely scrutinizing every detail of the prison’s management, claim otherwise. A union spokesman calls the company’s move a "straightforward attempt to defraud the state. ... These staffing levels are clear-cut requirements, yet it appears that the company prepared invoices for ghost employees for at least seven months."

In May, 50 inmates surrounded the warden in the yard and refused an order to put their shirts back on. When the incident was caught on videotape — and dubbed the "Shirts Rebellion" — Smith told a local newspaper, "The inmates were definitely in control for the whole evening. It raised a lot of questions with me. They were just not going to do what the warden told them to do."

OCSEA won a grievance last year after an arbitrator prohibited the DRC from using state employees to train private workers in procedures such as unarmed self-defense; the training, he ruled, vio-lated a state contract. But the hearing also forced the DRC officials, testifying under oath, to admit to other failings at North Coast. They owned up to not doing drug testing and background checks on staff and inmates; to leaving class-A tools like shovels and lawn mowers scattered around the prison yard; and to having a high turnover rate among security staff.

A MATTER OF TIME? Looking at the job that OCSEA members have done on CiviGenics, it appears that someone in the state may have to capitulate. The activists who have left no stone unturned remain steadfast in their objective to de-privatize North Coast. Union supporters also have held demonstrations in Grafton to show their displeasure.

"What we’re basically doing is hitting them anywhere we can," says Hill. "It’s a full barrage against them."

Activists’ efforts led to a KO of CiviGenics at North Coast. The DRC decided not to renew the company’s $14.8 million contract when it ends on June 30. A series of blunders by the privateer, rather than a particular issue, led to the decision, department officials said.

While the DRC expects another private firm to manage the prison, OCSEA and its supporters are tightening the noose around that idea. Hagan is set to introduce a bill that would prohibit the state from approving any more privately run prisons — as well as contracting with out-of-state companies. He told the Associated Press about North Coast: "I think the state saw the handwriting on the wall and [CiviGenics] proved the point that the state can run prisons better."

GET ON THE BUS. At the privateering Corrections Corporation of America, the bottom line has crumbled, and the stock price has plummeted. Anti-prison advocates from OCSEA have been riding buses to the company’s headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., to protest at shareholder meetings and ensure that the company’s financial woes continue.

In September, OCSEA and members from Maryland Council 92 and Local 2173, Brushy Mountain Tennessee State Prison Employees, combined forces with the Public Safety and Justice Coalition from Charlotte, N.C., to demonstrate at a special shareholders’ meeting called to approve a restructuring aimed at preventing bankruptcy. CCA’s sister company, Prison Realty, had borrowed money to embark on more private facilities and complete others that were still under construction. The company was operating under a real estate investment trust market that failed miserably. As a result, Prison Realty lost $200 million and accrued more than $65 million worth of debt in less than two years.

Shareholders approved the restructuring. CCA’s stock lost 90 percent of its value and plummeted to as little as 34 cents in December 2000. "This is what happens when you take blood money and try to make profit out of it," says CO Tim Shafer, president of OCSEA’s Correction Assembly. "They have taken taxpayers’ money and tried to turn a profit in an industry that should never be profit driven."

KEEP APPLYING PRESSURE. "We’re going to keep the heat on them, keep picketing, keep them in the public view," Shafer said to a Tennessee newspaper after a throng of OCSEA members again journeyed to Nashville to protest at a CCA board meeting.

Not only has the media reported on the demonstrations, but public sentiment has been on the activists’ side. At both events, passers-by stopped and asked questions, as well as drove by and honked their horns in support of the union. Shafer says that CCA officials called the local police when OCSEA picketers arrived in September. But the members had the support of law enforcement. "We went and talked to a lieutenant, who responded: ‘Well, you guys look like you know what you’re doing. Just enjoy yourselves. And if you guys have any problems, don’t hesitate to call us,’" recalls Shafer. "When the police drove by, they honked their horns at us, too."

A REAL EYE-OPENER. When OCSEA takes its road trips, it ensures that "rookie" demonstrators are on the team. One rookie, Lisa Hunt, says she didn’t know how serious things were until she got to Nashville and helped make picket signs while listening to horror stories about how CCA and other privateers plan to build more private prisons.

Upon learning how money is the carrot that leads these companies onward, she thought to herself, "Geez, this could happen at any time. I’m a CO, and that affects me greatly: my pay, my benefits, my health and safety, and the security of the institution."

Hunt, a two-year CO who works at the Pickaway Correctional Institute in Orient, rode with the group in December. That one trip impressed her to such a degree that she now talks as though she’s been fighting privatization her entire life.

"I’m a very security-minded officer, and from what I hear, the private prisons are not really security-minded," she explains. "I don’t want to work in a prison where no one cares about the security of the institution. That puts my life in danger. You really don’t want to come to work when you know that people above you don’t care about these issues, because all they’re out for is profit."

Hunt also now believes firmly in activism and understands the need to increase the number of activists. "I hope that we get more people involved because I don’t want to see our prisons privatized. That would be a disaster," she warns. "Some people just don’t care. But when it’s too late, then everybody will want to do something."