Empty Promise 2: Private Prisons Perform a Valuable Public Service
Proponents of private prisons claim that they have a good record when it comes to protecting public safety, and that incarcerating prisoners is a function that private companies can perform competently.
REALITY: Incarceration is an Inherently Governmental Function
- Privatizing the corrections system creates perverse incentives. Since companies are paid on a per diem basis, there are incentives for private operators to increase inmates' sentences and offer fewer services to reduce recidivism.
- The profit motive breeds corruption. In 2006, Alan B. Duffee, once director of Florida's defunct Correctional Privatization Commission (CPC) pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges for embezzlement of $250,000. His predecessor, Mark Hodges, was fined $10,000 for running a private criminal justice consulting business from his state office with the CPC. In 1999, Dr. Charles Thomas, a former consultant for the CPC, was fined $20,000, the largest civil penalty in the Florida Commission on Ethics history, for his financial relationship to the private prison industry while he was evaluating it for the state.
- Also, governments cannot contract out their liability. It's difficult for contracting jurisdictions to adequately monitor contracts, particularly when their prisoners are housed in another state. For example, monitoring reports and inmate accounts from the years Hawaii has been sending inmates to CCA prisons reveal a history of riots, assaults, gang activity, drug trafficking and repeated contract violations. Hawaii attempted to audit CCA's Florence Correctional Facility (Arizona) in April 2001. The monitors found that a gang from Hawaii was running the facility, and inmates and staff feared for their lives. Several monitors were not able to complete the audit because of the dangerous conditions.