PHOENIX — The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates
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“Unlike the private contractors,” the analysis said, the state “is required to provide medical and mental health services to inmates regardless of the severity of their condition.” Medical costs averaged up to $2.44 a day more for state inmates, a third higher than private prisons.
In Arizona, minimum-security state inmates cost 2.6 percent — or $1.39 per day — more than those in private prisons, before accounting for extra costs borne by the state. But after eliminating these, state prisoners cost only three cents more per day, the analysis found.
And state medium-security inmates cost 4.4 percent less before adjustments and 8.7 percent less afterward. That is more than $2 million annually at one prison, or $1,679 per inmate. Using 2009 corrections data, state auditors calculated the difference at up to $2,834 per inmate.
Charles L. Ryan, the Arizona corrections director, said private prisons “often negotiate restrictions on the type of inmates” and limit “inmates with medical conditions to a specific cost level.”
So essentially, the entire prison privatization model centers around accepting only healthy or low-maintenance prisoners and then skimping on the level of basic care provided. Sounds strikingly similar to the health insurance industry.
And this next part of the article is disgusting, and a perfect illustration of why some things in America should not be allowed to turn a profit:
The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates nationwide has leveled off.
Heckuva job, NYT - way to blithely state that locking up more people would be a much needed boon for the poor, beleaguered prison industry. Clearly what we need is to throw even more people behind bar (you know, despite already having the highest incarceration rate of the developed world) so that we can generate some more profits for the destitute prison industry. The shareholders demand a reasonable return on their investment!
If ever there were an argument to be made for a role of government, operating prisons/corrections should be paramount among them. There are just some industries/functions that should not be handled by private industry. It should be patently obvious to anyone with a pulse that profiting off of incarceration is wrong and produces horrible incentives. Take for instance another shining example of the ever-revolving door between private industry and public office: a number of Gov. Jan Brewer's top advisers are heavily connected to the private prison industry. And I suppose that we should probably just accept that their pervasive connection, material support, and assistance in drafting Arizona's anti-immigrant bill, SB1070, was purely an innocent coincidence. These titans of the prison industry just love justice and protecting our borders.
If you want cost savings in the department of corrections, I have a revolutionary idea: don't incarcerate innumerate sums of people for stupid, trivial offenses. Crazy, I know. Abolish mandatory, minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, decriminalize marijuana possession (a needed step in the eventual overall direction of the eventual legalization and taxation of the substance) and maybe your prisons won't be bursting at the seams. Overall violent crime rates continue to decline, yet prison populations remain flat or continue to rise, and again, are the highest in the world. There's something to be said about the relationship between those two figures.
And fuck it - while I'm on the topic, I'll briefly note again the sheer alacrity with which we throw people in jail for smoking a joint, but we're perfectly fine with looking the other way on warrantless wiretaps, torture, indefinite detention, and the wholesale destruction and looting of the US economy by the banksters. It's a sad statement on our country's purported love of "liberty and justice for all."
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