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In 1997, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) opened a private prison in Youngstown, Ohio. The Northeast Ohio Correctional Center was to hold out of state prisoners with the promise of profits and tax revenue for Youngstown, a largely industrial city southeast of Cleveland that had struggled economically since its steel industry went downhill in the 1970s and ’80s. Within a year, 20 prisoners were stabbed and two were murdered. Six escaped.

Public outrage came fast. Citizens in Youngstown demanded the prison be shut down. Local and national media outlets picked up the story. Mother Jones, a respected, independent investigative news magazine, reported that George McKelvey, then mayor of Youngstown, told reporters, “Knowing what I know now, I would never have allowed CCA to build a prison here.” The city sued CCA to get the prison to abide by safety standards. Two years later Mother Jones ran an editorial against private prisons using the Youngstown prison as the prime example against privatization. Even the conservative Heartland Institute ran a press statement noting that CCA had made serious mistakes preparing to oversee convicted felons. (The institute later insisted that changes made to the prison in response to the crisis were adequate.)

CCA eventually shut down its Youngstown prison because having to abide by new standards the same standards the Heartland Institute said were adequate made it no longer profitable. The prison remained closed for a few years and then opened under a new model as a holding center for people waiting for federal court hearings.

Today, the Youngstown example seems long forgotten. Last year Ohio became the first state http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ Order to sell a state owned prison to a private company. This deal, which was fully supported by Gov. John Kasich and the Republican controlled Ohio legislature, sold the Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Ashtabula County to CCA, the same company that couldn’t handle running a prison in 1997. Republican state officials proudly touted the sale for its potential taxpayer savings. An executive at CCA even called Ohio a “trailblazer” in its November 2011 earnings call.

The deal is truly a first. In the past, private prison companies built their own prisons, and at times state governments have asked private prison companies to manage state owned prisons. But this is the first time in history a state prison has been sold to a private company, which will house the state’s prisoners for at least 20 years.

Ohio had actually planned to sell five prisons as part of its 2011 12 budget, but the state government was only able to complete the one CCA deal because none of the other sales saved enough money.

CCA didn’t return multiple phone calls and emails from CityBeat seeking comment for this story.

Critics of prison privatization are not happy with the sale or the precedent it sets. Mike Brickner, a researcher at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Ohio, remembers the lessons of Youngstown and wants Ohio to remember the security and public policy risks behind private prisons. Policy Matters Ohio, a left leaning research organization, suggests that private prisons might not end up saving money anyway. These concerns, along with the research backing them, paint a grim picture of Ohio’s public and budget health as the state moves to monetize prison inmates.

The primary concern over the private prison model is the possibility of a fundamental conflict of interest. America’s main private prison companies mainly CCA, Management and Training Corporation (MTC) and the GEO Group make more money when more people are incarcerated. But it’s largely believed to be in the public and state interest to imprison as few people as possible and rehabilitate prisoners to be functional citizens. This presents a fundamental contradiction for policymakers. They want to hire private prison operators, but then private prison operators, which gain a substantial amount of power by virtue of owning and running prisons, push against policies the public wants and needs.

“The companies get paid a per diem for the number of people that are in their prison, so it’s in their interest to keep those prisons as full as possible,” Brickner says.

MTC refused to grant CityBeat an interview for this story, instead offering the same written statement that CityBeat had already received from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. (See “Lockdown at the ODRC” below.)

Brickner says it’s also in the interest of private prison companies to keep the nonviolent, low risk criminal offenders in jail, even if it might not be in the public interest to overcrowd prisons with such criminals: “One, they lose their numbers, and they make money off that. Two, they’re the easiest prisoners to handle. Private prison companies don’t want to take care of the really high security, dangerous, violent offenders because those cost a lot more money.”

When private prisons take high security prisoners, they’re forced to pay for more security and specialized health care, which Brickner says hurts the bottom line. If they don’t adopt those services, situations like the one in Youngstown can pop up when inadequate security oversees dangerous criminals.

The conflict between costs and adequate safety measures presents real life, statistical consequences. A study at George Washington University found private prisons have a 50 percent higher rate of inmate on staff assault and a 66 percent higher rate of inmate on inmate assault than publicly owned and managed prisons. Another study, in the Federal Probation Journal in 2004, had similar results it found that, compared to public prisons, private prisons have a 50 percent higher rate of inmate on staff assault and inmate on inmate assault.

These examples suggest making prisons profitable by cutting costs might not be sustainable. The report noted high staff turnover rates at private prisons, which see a turnover rate of 53 percent compared to 16 percent at public prisons. According to the ACLU, the high turnover rate creates a vicious cycle involving private prisons consistently shuffling less experienced, poorly trained staff to replace former staff.

The bottom line also presents problems for rehabilitative programs. The ACLU report found the two private facilities in Ohio have fewer rehabilitative programs than prisons managed and owned by the state. The Lake Erie Correctional Institute and North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility, in particular, “have no trauma recovery programs, no contract or grant funded job training programs and no programs addressing mental illness, disease management, general health or sex offender issues,” according to the report.

Brickner says this makes sense from a profit perspective: “It doesn’t make any difference to them whether or not a person eventually integrates back into society. Looking from a cynical approach, it actually helps them if that person (is convicted again) because they come back into their prison and they get money off them again.”

Brickner also cautions that inviting private prisons into a state tends to lead to an expansion of the prison system. He cites the example of Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer accepted campaign donations from private prisons a year before passing the controversial illegal immigration law in the state. Brickner says it’s a “dirty little secret” that private prison companies make massive profits from detaining illegal immigrants. Since it is such a lucrative business, Brickner says private prison operators had a direct interest in getting the illegal immigration law passed in the state, and lobbying from private prisons is one reason why public officials passed the law. Brickner fears a similar series of events could play out in Ohio as private prison companies become more and more powerful.

“A lot of that goes to a private prison company wanting policies in place that are going to have more people in prison,” Brickner says. “And being a public company, they can lobby public officials to implement those changes.”

The Arizona timeline given by Brickner echoes the findings of the ACLU report. The report found that private prisons benefit from more prisoners and prisoners staying in prison longer and being locked up more often. A study by the Journal of Law and Economics in 2005 found private prisons increase costs to state governments and profits for themselves by encouraging recidivism, which is when former criminal offenders end up back in prison after being released.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections manages Ohio’s state prisons. It was in charge of securing the sale of the Lake Erie facility, and it has placed private prison companies in charge of operating other state owned facilities. When contacted by CityBeat, ODRC first denied the interview request based on “scheduling conflicts,” then offered a statement CityBeat would later receive from private prison company MTC and then stated that the department doesn’t discuss issues that are pending litigation. (See “Lockdown at the ODRC” below.)

There is also the issue of accountability. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against anyone seeking public records from private entities doing public work. The court instead said private facilities specifically a nonprofit community corrections organization in the case of Oriana House, Inc. v. Montgomery does not fall under public records laws.

Brickner claims the ACLU has still been able to get some records from private prisons, even though it typically takes longer. But he’s worried the details behind the CCA deal will make it more difficult to get public records. Brickner says Kasich’s proposal is unlike past proposals because it is not just leasing state prisons and letting private companies operate and manage them. Instead, the state sold the land and prison to a private company.

“Because they own the land and facility, it adds another layer of privatization,” he says. “It’s still unclear because it’s still so new how well we’re going to be able to get those public records.”

Brickner is also worried private ownership of buy pills Buy Buy seroflo 250 cost buy pills online the prison will make it more difficult for the state to take back the prison from CCA if something goes seriously wrong. Unlike past cases, the state no longer owns the prison. It might not have the jurisdiction to seize private property if the contract isn’t demonstrably broken.

But practicality is not the only reason for opposition and criticism of private prisons. The ACLU also opposes the private prison model from a philosophical standpoint.

“The model of prison privatization is that they earn their money off of incarcerating people, and we believe that incarceration is one of the greatest deprivations of liberty that the government can dole out to a person,” Brickner says. “We should not be in the business that private corporations earn money off the deprivation of liberty.”

One of the more surprising assertions made by critics of private prisons is that privatization does not save money. If supporters of private prisons have one thing on their side, it’s that private prisons are supposed to be more efficient because they worry about the bottom line to run a profit. While these companies certainly enjoy profits CCA posted $162.5 million in net income for 2011 it turns out those profits might not come at the benefit of the taxpayer.

That was the conclusion of reports released by Policy Matters Ohio in 2011. The reports did not conclusively find that private prisons cost more than public prisons, but they did find that the state is using some fairly shady math to get its savings numbers.
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