Arizona Seeks to Privatize its Prisons

Arizona officials are planning to seek bids to privatize the state's entire prison system, handing over the keys to nine of the state's 10 prisons -- including death row -- to private company like the Corrections Corporation of America. If this doesn't sound like a bad enough idea, a 'savings-sharing' scheme behind the plan makes it even worse.

This plan has been circulating in Arizona for some time, but I haven't covered it here until now, because I didn't want to sound the alarm for something I thought seemed too insane to ever actually happen. But a front-page story in today's New York Times forced me to pay a bit more attention. (Thanks to reader and activist Camille Tilley for keeping me in the loop as this issue developed over the last few months).

Let's count the reasons this is a bad idea:

• Private prisons, motivated by profit to keep costs at a bare minimum, are terrible at providing prisoner services. Most state prisons are poorly run and underfunded, but private prisons are designed to be coldly efficient, lowest-common-denominator incarceration factories.
• Safety is compromised at private prisons, which are often crowded and run with fewer security guards, many of whom are barely trained.
• Arizona is asking a company to pay $100 million up front for the privilege of running state prisons, and the state and the company will then split any savings delivered by the company. This savings-sharing seems dangerous, because the company will have to cut costs twice as deeply to bring home a profit it likes.
• Studies have shown that private prisons don't actually save the state money in the end -- they just make profit for shareholders. One hedge fund manager recommended private prison stocks just this week.
• Death row has never been managed for profit in this country, and most private prison operators don't have expertise in running maximum-security facilities. It's a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I was a little disappointed as well to see that today's Times story misses one of the biggest arguments against this plan. The state rationalizes the plan because it will save them money in a crunch. Other states are also saving money on corrections, in a more humane and reasonable way: by releasing people who are eligible for parole, by diverting drug offenders to treatment and by releasing non-violent elderly prisoners a few months early. This argument wasn't raised in today's story, but maybe that's because it's such a longshot in the tough-on-crime Arizona desert that Joe Arpaio calls home.

Arizona lawmakers should think again before making this disastrous and short-sighted play.  There are ways to save a few bucks without selling your prisons, and this privatization will be bad for prisoners, guards and taxpayers. Only the corporations will win.

The Times story is here, and the Business of Detention website is a great resource on private prison operators and issues.