Apologies for sending you into the weekend on a depressing note, but I didn't want to end the week without delivering on my promise to blog about private prisons. As I noted on Wednesday, one way for California to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Plata would be to transfer inmates to private prisons. Already, California has sent thousands of inmates to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) facilities in Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Michigan since 2007. With an executive order, Gov. Jerry Brown could send thousands more. I haven't seen any indication that Brown is actually considering this option -- for one thing, it would likely anger his supporters in the CCPOA, the powerful California prison guards' union. Publicly, Brown's staffers are still promoting "realignment," or shifting responsibility for low-level offenders down to the county jails, and say they are "not contemplating a plan B." But just in case, it's worth reiterating all the reasons why private prisons would not be a sound "plan B" for California. Most basically, as a commenter pointed out in my post the other day, it's important for prisoners to be able to maintain family ties during their incarceration. It's already bad enough that many of California's prisons are located in far-flung rural areas difficult for many families to visit. Sending more prisoners as far away as Michigan would only be worse. There are also cruder utilitarian reasons to be wary of private prisons. While privatization is often sold as a cost-cutting measure, evidence is now mounting that private prisons may not actually save money. And at a time when California desperately needs to revamp its overall approach to criminal justice, giving more influence in Sacramento to companies like CCA would be counterproductive. Recall that in Arizona, private-prison lobbyists were behind the harsh immigration law SB1070. With California's law-and-order politics already so skewed by the CCPOA and the legacy of thirty years of "tough-on-crime" demagoguery, it's just not a good time to lodge more power in yet another lobby with a vested interest in keeping the incarcerated population high. Finally, assuming that California wants to stay out of any further legal trouble, it's worth noting that several states have faced litigation over violence, sexual abuse, and other issues in private prisons. The experience of Hawaii should be instructive to legislators and policy makers not just in California, but nationwide. Under pressure to alleviate prison overcrowding since an ACLU lawsuit in the 1980s, Hawaii began turning to private prisons in the mid-1990s. At first, Hawaii started sending inmates out-of-state as a short-term fix until the state could build new prisons of its own. But Hawaii never did find the money to build. According to a recent state audit, "What started as a temporary solution to relieve prison overcrowding is today a matter of state policy." Currently, Hawaii outsources about 2,000 prisoners, a third of its total incarcerated population, to private, out-of-state facilities. Hawaii legislators called for the audit after two inmates were murdered at a CCA prison in Arizona last year. The auditor came back with a report highly critical of the Hawaii Department of Public Safety's handling of its CCA contracts, especially the lack of transparency. The auditor found that Hawaii legislators were not being provided full and accurate information about the costs of private prisons; that Hawaii administrators treated CCA as a government agency, enabling it to circumvent Hawaii's normal procurement requirements for private contractors, even though it's a for-profit corporation; and that the head of the department has "ignored his oversight responsibility to administer contracts for the care and custody of inmates housed in out-of-state facilities." On state inspections of Hawaii's CCA facilities in Arizona, state monitors would record whatever the CCA staff told them, without taking steps to verify their claims. Despite all these problems, Hawaii appears likely to renew its CCA contract at the end of the month. Hawaii's relationship with CCA is unique, but it highlights two problems endemic to private prisons: the lack of transparency and the difficulty of meaningful oversight. Already, California houses almost five times as many prisoners as Hawaii does in CCA facilities. Sending more inmates out-of-state, while a short-term fix for overcrowding, could cause untold new problems for California in the long run.
