# data[].attributes.body
https://www.afsc.org/document/arizona-department-corrections-security-assessment-kingman-prison

# data[].attributes.body
Courts give deference to prison officials' decisions about disciplinary punishment. Punishments that fulfill legitimate penological interests (e.g., rehabilitation and crime prevention) are generally upheld.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CHALLENGING THE NATURE OF THE PUNISHMENT YOU RECEIVED

Courts give deference to prison officials' decisions about disciplinary punishment. Punishments that fulfill legitimate penological interests ( e.g., rehabilitation and crime prevention) are generally upheld. The Supreme Court has provided four factors to decide whether prison regulations violate the Constitution. ¹ These factors are: (1) whether the regulation has a "valid, rational connection" to a legitimate governmental interest; (2) whether alternative means are open to inmates to exercise the asserted right; (3) what impact an accommodation of the right would have on guards and inmates and prison resources; and (4) whether there are "ready alternatives" to the regulation. ²

For example, the Supreme Court has held that a prison administration's decision to restrict visitation for prisoners with two substance abuse violations served the legitimate goal of deterring drug and alcohol use within prison. ³ The Court found that the punishment fulfilled the four evaluation factors listed above although the ban on visits from people other than clergy and attorneys on official business lasted a minimum of two years. ⁴

Monetary restitution for property damage or other offenses that cost the prison money is a permissible form of punishment. ⁵ Because many prisons have various "tiers" or "levels" of discipline, with different punishments for each, prisoners who commit the same violation may receive different punishments. However, disparities in punishment do not necessarily violate constitutional rights unless the challenged punishment can be proven to be arbitrary. ⁶

Although courts would find most punishments with legitmate penological interests constitutional, they have found punishments that involve physical abuse or degrading conditions of punitive confinement unconstitutional. ⁷ Although courts are reluctant to interfere with the administration of prisons, they probably will dislike punishments that are disproportionate, or that offend idealistic concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity and decency. ⁸ However, courts rarely find prison punishments disproportionate. ⁹
1. See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89-91 (1987). 3. Overton v. Bazzetta, 539 U.S. 126 (2003). 5. Longmire v. Guste, 921 F.2d 620, 623-24 (5th Cir. 1991). 6. Phillips v. Gathright, 603 F.2d 219 (4th Cir. 1979). 7. Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571, 579 (8th Cir. 1968) (Eighth Circuit enjoined the use of the strap until proper regulations and safeguards against abuse were implemented). 9. See, e.g., Savage v. Snow, 575 F.Supp. 828, 836 (S.D.N.Y. 1983) (upholding 90 days loss of good time and confinement in segregation for abuse of correspondence).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Prison - Disciplinary Sanctions and Punishment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CHALLENGING THE NATURE OF THE PUNISHMENT YOU RECEIVED Courts give deference to prison officials' decisions about disciplinary punishment. Punishments that fulfill legitimate penological interests ( e.g., rehabilitation and crime prevention) are generally upheld. The Supreme Court has provided four factors to decide whether prison regulations violate the Constitution.

# data[].attributes.body
Time in solitary confinement (The Hole)

Removal of accumulated "good behavior" time

Transfer to a less desirable prison job

Confiscation of items

Transfer to another, higher-security prison

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While in prison, cons are subject to the rules set by prison officials. If a con commits an infraction, he gets a hearing before the warden or some lower ranking officials. If the committee finds the prisoner guilty of the infraction, penalties can be issued. Some examples of punishment:

Time in solitary confinement (The Hole)

Removal of accumulated "good behavior" time

Transfer to a less desirable prison job

Confiscation of items

Transfer to another, higher-security prison

Relatively minor infractions result in "shots." A shot is a mark against the prisoner, placed on his prison file. When the prisoner comes up for parole or requests permission for some kind of additional privilege (like a better prison job or a work release program), the number of shots on his record will be considered.

There are more informal punishments as well. Guards can mete out discipline without any hearing in many circumstances. A common tactic is to ransack the prisoner's cell searching for contraband, possibly damaging some of the inmate's possessions. If any contraband is found, the inmate will be in even more trouble. Guards can also use physical force on inmates who disobey direct orders. It is not uncommon for guards to fire shotguns at prisoners whenever they see any commotion.

Serious crimes that occur in prison, such as murder or assault, can result in charges being pressed and a full trial.

Not everyone in a prison is a psychopathic murderer, but in maximum security prisons, a larger percentage of the inmates are violent offenders -- people who are willing to use violence to get what they want. Prisoners often maintain a "might makes right" philosophy. Inmates who show cowardice or fail to stand up to threats are quickly marked as pushovers and forced to run errands and provide contraband for other prisoners. They may also be beaten or abused.

When a beating or even a murder happens in prison, there are rarely any witnesses. Cons have a strict rule against "snitching," so even a murder in a crowded prison yard can go unsolved. This rule isn't upheld by any sense of honor -- snitches are repaid by swift, violent retribution. Other inmates often learn quickly to keep their mouths shut, no matter what they saw.

Prisoners outnumber guards in prisons. If the prisoners rise up violently, they may gain control of sections of the prison (or even the whole prison), take guards hostage and capture weapons. Many inmates take advantage of the momentary lawlessness to commit violence against other prisoners. In some cases, the prisoners have a genuine grievance because of poor conditions in the prison.

The most notorious prison riot in U.S. history is the Attica Riot of 1971. Inmates complained of deplorable conditions at Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, but were ignored. They assaulted a guard and took over most of the prison, attempting to negotiate for better conditions. Eventually, state and local police stormed the prison. In the riot and the retaking of the prison, 39 guards and prisoners were killed.

In 1980, the New Mexico State Penitentiary near Santa Fe was the scene of a brutal uprising. While no guards were killed, seven were severely beaten and 33 inmates were killed. Some of the inmate killings were reportedly the result of torture.

We'll look at some more of the controversies associated with prisons in the next section.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While in prison, cons are subject to the rules set by prison officials. If a con commits an infraction, he gets a hearing before the warden or some lower ranking officials. If the committee finds the prisoner guilty of the infraction, penalties can be issued.

# data[].attributes.body
Also called For-profit prisons meaning they are a business that makes money off of the incarceration of prisoners.

# data[].attributes.body
Since it is a For-Profit business, they can cut some services to save money. Although cutting cleaning makes them more money, it produces unhealthy living conditions for the prisoners.

# data[].attributes.body
Research the punishments at the prisons because I think these are handled by the prisons and are not regulated by the gov

Also look into solitary confinement and its effects on mental health

# data[].attributes.body
Stipend: stipend is a predetermined amount of money provided periodically to help with expenses

# data[].attributes.body
They receive stipend from the government which is most often paid based off of how many prisoners that are imprisoned. For example if it costs $100 per day to house a prisoner, and there are 1000 inmates then the PP can offer their services to the government in exchange for $150 per prisoner. If it is less then what the public prison is using than they most likely will agree.

# data[].attributes.headline
It is also known as a For- Profit Prison

# data[].attributes.subject
It is also known as a For- Profit Prison

# data[].attributes.body
Amanda: Focusing on economics of private prisons. How they appear beneficial for taxpayers, but it can really lead to higher violence in prisons, less paid employees, and corruption

# data[].attributes.body
Crowded conditions, understaffing, inmate deaths from untreated illnesses and four prison riots, all related to complaints about medical care.

the Bureau of Prisons decided that they would use these facilities - these private separate facilities - to hold noncitizens convicted of federal crimes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Last week, the Justice Department announced it would start to phase out the use of private for-profit prisons to hold federal inmates.

Our guest today may have had something to do with that. Seth Freed Wessler is an investigative reporter who spent much of the past four years looking into conditions at the 13 privately operated prisons in the federal corrections system.

Wessler sought records under the Freedom of Information Act from the Bureau of Prisons, which finally released them after Wessler sued and got a court order. The resulting 9,000 pages of medical records and 20,000 pages of monitoring reports paint a troubling picture, particularly in the area of medical care for inmates.

Wessler wrote a series of stories which told of crowded conditions, understaffing, inmate deaths from untreated illnesses and four prison riots, all related to complaints about medical care. Seth Freed Wessler is an independent reporter working for The Investigative Fund. His series on conditions at the 13 privately run federal prisons appeared in The Nation.

Well, Seth Wessler, welcome to FRESH AIR. How long has the Federal Bureau of Prisons been using private correctional facilities?

SETH FREED WESSLER: The Bureau of Prisons in the mid-and-late '90s began a process of privatizing a subset of the federal prisons that it manages. In the '90s, the size of the federal prison population was growing massively.

And the federal BOP decided that to house some of this population of prisoners, they would start contracting with private corrections companies. And very soon, the Bureau of Prisons decided that they would use these facilities - these private separate facilities - to hold noncitizens convicted of federal crimes.

And the logic was that noncitizens, because they'll later be transferred to immigration officials and deported, are an ideal group of people to hold in these sort of explicitly stripped down federal prisons because unlike citizens who the federal government says need to be provided re-entry services to return to their communities, noncitizens will be deported and so don't have to be provided those same services.

DAVIES: Right - even though the sentences are pretty long - right? - in some cases.

WESSLER: Yeah. Yeah. People spend years in these prisons. Usually, the last few years of their sentences - and are then transferred to immigration authorities and deported. So men I talked to who had been held in these facilities for three, four, five years - really languishing there, often just sort of waiting out their time with little access to programs or services before, later, they'll be deported.

DAVIES: Just to be clear here, these are not - we're not talking about immigration detention facilities that the immigrations customs enforcement folks do. These are people who have committed crimes and are in federal custody, right?

WESSLER: That's right. There's a separate immigration detention system operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold people who are waiting for deportation, who are - who may be deported.

These facilities are used only for people who are convicted of federal crimes and are being held by the Federal Bureau of Prisons for those convictions. Many of the people in these facilities are held for a crime called re-entry after deportation. That is returning to the United States after they've been previously deported.

And increasingly over the last 15 years, that act of crossing the border after a deportation has been treated not as a civil violation that's responded to with - just by deportation - but as a crime. And sentences for crossing the border after deportation can be years and years.

The average sentence for illegal re-entry is a couple of years. And so many of the men inside this sort of separate segregated system of federal private prisons are held for just that crime of crossing back over the border.

DAVIES: The logic here was that it was easy enough for people once deported to return that they had to really impose a tough penalty so as to discourage that? Is that the idea there?

WESSLER: That's right. In the mid-2000s, the federal government started prosecuting huge numbers of people - tens of thousands of people a year - criminally for crossing the border in an attempt to deter them from crossing again.

In fact, when federal investigators went looking for evidence that that deterrence worked, they didn't find any. But last year, more than 70,000 people were charged criminally for illegal entry or illegal re-entry. Those prosecutions now make up about half of all federal prosecutions and have helped to grow the size of the federal prison system.

So while the prison system has expanded in significant part because of drug prosecutions - and that gets a lot of attention - in the federal context, these immigration violations that have been criminalized are also helping to expand the size of the population of federal prisoners.

DAVIES: OK. Before the Justice Department made this announcement that it would try and wind down the use of these private prisons, how many prisoners, roughly, are being held in these private correctional facilities?

WESSLER: There are currently 22,000 federal prisoners held in private facilities. Most of those are used only to hold noncitizens. And they make up about an eighth of the federal prison system.

At one point, that number was about 30,000. It's started to fall a bit in the last few years. And the Department of Justice announcement says that the Bureau of Prisons will have to begin diminishing its use of these facilities, closing them over the next few years as the contracts end.

By next year, that number of prisoners in federal private facilities will have dropped to about 14,000. And within five years, the federal BOP is to sort of zero out the number of people held in private facilities altogether.

DAVIES: So you spent a couple of years getting documents, interviewing people. In broad terms, what kinds of problems did your reporting discover?

WESSLER: When I began investigating these prisons, I found that the men held inside were being held in conditions that were incredibly disturbing. And this is especially true in the context of medical care, which I investigated at length.

I found that in case after case, prisoners who were sick with treatable illnesses were not being provided even baseline levels of medical care and were complaining time and again about pain and illness. And those illnesses got worse and worse. And in some cases, without any substantive care at all, men died as a result of substandard care.

I wrote about the case of a man named Claudio Fajardo Saucedo (ph). He was in his early 40s and was held at the Reeves Facility, a GEO Group-run facility in West Texas. And soon after he arrived at that facility, he started to complain of pain - back pain, headaches, other pain. And he complained over and over again.

In fact, he complained 18 times - at least 18 times in two years. And every time he complained of this pain, which was getting worse and worse, he was seen only by low-level medical staff - in this case, licensed vocational nurses who go through training for about a year and are supposed to act as support staff to registered nurses.

Well, those were nearly the only people that Mr. Fajardo Saucedo was seeing when he went to these clinics. He was sent back to his cell only with Ibuprofen or Tylenol until finally, after two years of being held in this facility, he collapsed outright in the facility and was sent to a local hospital, where he immediately tested positive for AIDS and died days later of AIDS-related illnesses.

What's striking about this is not only that he was completely neglected for these two years - that he wasn't provided any substantive care from doctors or more highly trained medical providers. But also, this prison - Bureau of Prison rules require that prisoners who arrive at new facilities be tested for HIV, and he was never tested for HIV, even as he complained of illnesses that would have suggested he might have been HIV positive. Doctors who I asked to review his medical records said that had he been tested and had the facility known that he was HIV positive, he very likely could have been treated and would have been alive today.

DAVIES: Seth Wessler is an investigative journalist who's just completed a two-year series on issues in privately run prisons in the federal corrections system for The Nation. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, we're speaking with Seth Wessler. He's an investigative journalist. He completed a two-year series on conditions in privately run prisons in the federal system. Recently, the Justice Department announced that it would begin backing out of using privately run for-profit prisons.

I want to talk about the conditions in some of these facilities that are - 13 facilities, right - at which non-citizens are kept in and - that who are convicted of federal crime. You described in some detail a prison in Raymondville, Texas, Willacy County. And I was struck by the description of just the housing units, where people slept. How did that work?

WESSLER: The Willacy County facility in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas is a facility that the bureau - the Bureau of Prisons decided to start using several years ago. It's a prison that has had a long history of problems. In fact, the Willacy facility was actually built to be a detention center where people would be held for a pretty short amount of time. And as a result, it's not a regular prison. It's not built out of concrete. There are no real walls in most of the facility. It was actually a facility built entirely out of Kevlar tents. There were rows of these massive Kevlar domes that stretched for a couple of football fields and held in each of them 200 prisoners, men charged with and convicted of federal crimes.

Inside of these tents, men who I talked to who had been held there said that the facilities would get incredibly hot, that it would smell terrible inside, that sometimes the toilets would back up. And they were held in these - in these tents for months and sometimes years at a time. This same facility, the Willacy facility, actually lost a contract with federal immigration authorities years earlier largely because of really terrible conditions inside.

And just months after the immigration agency got out of this contract, ended its contract with the Management and Training Corporation to run this prison, the Bureau of Prisons reopened the facility as a federal prison or prison for federal prisoners contracting again with the Management and Training Corporation to hold its inmates.

DAVIES: And in these big domes where you say 200 inmates would live together, did anybody have private cells or were they just racks of bunks?

WESSLER: No, they were rows of bunk beds, and so men would sleep a couple of feet apart, and they had no privacy whatsoever. They were left largely alone to manage their own affairs, usually with one guard overseeing a whole crowd of prisoners. And from time to time, they'd be let out of the domes and allowed to spend time on a concrete yard. And in the middle of all of these tents, guards would walk back and forth, watching what happened inside of these yards. But by and large, men spent months, sometimes years, held in these Kevlar domes in this - what started to be called the tent city in Willacy.

DAVIES: And was it typical in these private prisons that prisoners stayed in group dwellings as opposed to cells with just one or two inmates?

WESSLER: You know, what's interesting about these private prisons is that they're all very different because they're often built in haphazard ways. There's another facility called Big Spring in another part of Texas that was constructed on the premises of an old Air Force base and in an old hotel in this town of Big Spring. And so some prisoners in that facility were held in cells that where 10 people were sleeping in a room the size of about a normal hotel room. In other places, prisoners were held in much larger areas in other places in several people - in cells that held just several people. There's no real order to how these places are built. The private companies find spaces and then rent these spaces out to the federal government.

DAVIES: Health care is a - was a big issue in - among the inmates and led to riots. I mean, there were - what? - four riots, all of them related to medical care, right?

WESSLER: That's right. You know, it's incredibly unusual in federal prisons for unrest, for protests to turn into riots. But at least four times in these for-profit prisons, prisoner protest turned into massive riots. And at Willacy, the south Texas facility I talked about, that riot, which started as a protest and then as a result of incredible force used by prison guards - rubber bullets, tear gas, these sort of BB-filled exploding grenades that prison officials used to respond to that protest - a riot erupted.

And prisoners actually so decimated this facility, burning holes and - cutting and burning holes in the sides of those Kevlar tents, that in that case the federal government determined that the facility was, quote, "uninhabitable" and closed it down last year.

When I spoke with prisoners who were held in the facility, men who were now locked in other prisons or had not - or who had been deported and I spoke to in Mexico, as well as with prison guards, it became immediately clear that this was a protest that had emerged over issues including, most substantively, bad medical care in this facility.

DAVIES: These privately run prisons in the system are for non-citizens, I mean - very typically people who were arrested - illegal immigrants who were arrested for trying to enter the country after having been deported, and the standards are different, right? How are the requirements and standards different for a regular Bureau of Prisons facility which citizens are housed? How are the standards different for them as opposed to these privately run prisons?

WESSLER: The Federal Bureau of Prisons, when it runs its own facilities, it applies hundreds of rules and standards, these things called program statements to the operation of those facilities. Those program statements guide how everything works from the nitty gritty of medical care to how many guards will be on any given unit to how prisoners are fed and so on. When it began contracting with private companies to hold some federal prisoners, one of the ideas was that these companies could help the Bureau of Prisons save on costs, and in an attempt to help these prison companies do that, the BOP, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, applied fewer rules to these facilities. So only a few dozen of those program statements actually apply to the way these facilities operate. And what that means is that the kinds of programs and services that exist in regular Bureau of Prisons facilities simply don't operate in these facilities.

In the context of medical care, the contracts that the companies sign with the federal government require the companies to follow some of the Bureau of Prisons' own rules. But in other areas, the prisons are allowed to sort of make it up as they go. And that includes the prisons staffing plans, so one of the things that I found in my reporting was that in these for-profit prisons, the companies are using much lower-trained kinds of medical workers, often licensed vocational or licensed practical nurses, who have about a year of training. These LVNs are the sort of front-line workers in this medical system. So when a sick prisoner has a problem, the person that they're talking to is somebody who's really not trained to provide substantive care, and that can be the only person that this - that an inmate sees for months sometimes at a time.

DAVIES: So in that case, you have a, you know - a medical person who typically provides medical support services, and they're the one diagnosing what could be a serious or complicated medical issue.

WESSLER: Well, what ends up happening is that somebody comes in and complains of a headache or of back pain or of another kind of illness, and it's this low-level medical worker who's making decisions about what should happen next. And often that decision is that nothing should happen next or that this person just needs some Tylenol. And so the prisoner will be sent back to their cell with a couple of pills of Ibuprofen, and that's it.

And then again, that same person will come back and complain again of a similar illness and see only one of these low-level nurses. I asked doctors to review the medical files I obtained of prisoners who were held inside of these facilities. And they said over and over again that these low-level licensed vocational nurses were really operating outside of their legal scope of practice, outside of what they've been trained to do.

And then when I got to obtain more records from the Bureau of Prisons, I found that the Bureau of Prisons itself, the monitors that the agency sends into these facilities to check on how these private companies are operating - they found that 10 of these private prisons had actually broken state nursing practice laws by pushing nurses to work outside of their legal scope of practice of what they're trained to do.

DAVIES: Seth Freed Wessler's stories on privately run prisons appeared in The Nation. After a break, he'll tell us about what federal monitors reported on conditions in those prisons and why those reports didn't lead to change. Also, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews two reissues from the late tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards. Kevin says Edwards mixed awesome technique and irresistibly slinky phrases. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. We're speaking with investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler who spent much of the last four years looking into conditions at privately run prisons in the federal corrections system. The Justice Department announced last week it would phase out the use of private prisons. Wessler's stories appeared in The Nation. Let's talk about how this whole financial arrangement works and how it might connect to some of these issues. You know, a lot of the services that government provides aren't provided by public employees. They're done in private contracts.

You know, building roads - I mean, typically, private construction companies competitively bid for work. They complete it. It's inspected. And they're paid. Let's talk about how it works for prisons. How does a contract typically work for a private prison?

It must be a big, expensive thing to build a prison. How long are the contracts? What are the provisions? What are the standards and the methods for making sure that the contractors live up to them?

WESSLER: So the Bureau of Prisons puts out calls for proposals when they want to open a new private prison. And a group of companies - at this point, really, only three companies - Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and a company called Management and Training Corporation bid for these contracts.

The contracts usually last about 10 years. And during that period of time, there are points when the Bureau of Prisons can decide whether to extend the contract further. One of the main reasons that the federal government decided to contract in the first place is that it believed that contractors could save money.

And there are real questions about whether that's actually happened. But even if the prisons cost about the same, which is what research suggests, what's different about private prisons from prisons run by governments is that - let's say you're spending - the government spends a hundred dollars per prisoner.

In a public prison, a prison run by the government, all of that money is going to the management of the facility. But in the context of private prisons, some of that money is profit for these companies. And so there is an incentive to cut down on costs.

And one of the most expensive parts of federal prisons - of prisons in general - is the operation of medical care. What I found in my reporting - interviewing people who worked inside these prisons - is that there was this sort of constant pressure to cut costs, a culture of austerity inside of these facilities.

I talked to an older doctor in his mid-80s, a man named John Farquhar, who worked for several years as the prison doctor in Big Spring Prison, a private facility in West Texas run by the GEO Group.

Just days after he arrived, took the job as the medical director of Big Spring, his corporate bosses arrived to tell him that they felt that they needed to cut down on the number of 911 calls made out of the prison because those calls cost too much money.

DAVIES: Those are cases where they need an ambulance to get someone to a higher level of care?

WESSLER: That's right. You know, I came across this doctor because through Freedom of Information Act request, I obtained thousands of pages of medical records of men who had died in these facilities - 103 men who died inside of these facilities.

And in some of those records, I found notes from nurses or physician's assistants and, in this case, from the physician. And in those notes, it was remarkable because not only was he appearing to provide sort of more care and a higher level of care than most of the other doctors in the facilities that I looked at were providing - that is, in facilities that had doctors at all.

But he left these sort of indignant notes behind about how upset he was about the quality of care that he was able to provide. He said in one note, this prisoner will almost certainly die.

This was in the context of a case where he had been trying to transfer somebody out to get care outside of the prison. And he was told by his corporate bosses that he wouldn't be allowed to do that. In another note, he wrote, I feel badly for the shabby care.

You know, this is a guy who clearly wanted to be providing higher-quality medical care. He'd been a doctor for decades. He'd been a military doctor. He's now a doctor for the Veterans Administration in Texas. And he felt that these pressures to cut costs made that very difficult to do.

DAVIES: You know, I'm sure it's not easy to get highly trained medical personnel to work in a prison system. It's not the kind of environment most medical professionals would imagine working in. They're often in remote places.

So there is going to be a difficulty, I think, in getting good-quality people to do that. And they're probably going to have to pay more. Is that addressed at all when this arrangement was set up?

It's simply going to - you're going to have to spend some money - aren't you? - to take care of literally thousands of people who can have health issues.

WESSLER: That's right. You know, the Bureau of Prisons across the board has struggled to fully staff its medical units. And that's especially a problem in rural areas where it's hard to find doctors to come and work.

But there were facilities in my investigation that for months - nearly a year in some cases - had no medical doctor at all or who significantly understaffed their nursing departments for months and months at a time.

In fact, the Office of Inspector General from the Department of Justice found in a previous investigation that a prison called Reeves in West Texas, another GEO Group-run facility, was systematically understaffing its medical unit.

And only after the investigation did that begin to change. But the fact that it did change after the investigation suggests that it's a problem that could be fixed and that the contractors weren't fixing.

DAVIES: You know, you said that in these private prisons, which are for noncitizens - I mean, typically, illegal immigrants who were caught trying to re-enter the country - they're designed to have fewer services - rehabilitative services, educational program, addiction counseling, mental health services.

But they are supposed to provide some standard of medical care and decent living conditions. And as with all government contracts, there's a monitoring system, right?

Somebody's supposed to come in regularly, examine the conditions, review records and see whether the public is getting what it's paying for to these private companies. You looked at a lot of these monitoring reports. What did they show?

WESSLER: Well - so after the Bureau of Prisons set up this system of private facilities, it also set up what is really a pretty robust system of contract monitoring. So it hires a couple of people for each facility to actually be on-site and watch over what the facilities are doing.

And then every year or every six months, a group of monitors trained very specifically in subject areas go into these facilities to check to see if the prisons are following the terms of the contract. I obtained nearly a decade of these monitoring reports. And the reports show that for years, monitors documented deep and systemic problems in these facilities.

And the monitors would send these reports back to Washington. And what I found is that despite these ongoing problems, officials in Washington - contracting officials in Washington - didn't impose the full fines or use their full enforcement muscle available to them to force changes inside of these facilities.

In fact, the Office of Inspector General report from the Department of Justice that came out recently found that when prisoners died inside of these facilities, and those deaths were connected to medical negligence - that the Bureau of Prisons didn't have an effective way to force the companies to correct those problems. And so prisoners would die. And the problems would go on.

DAVIES: Now the contracts provided for specific monetary penalties, right? I mean, this is the way you build a contract. I mean, if you don't deliver the service, you are penalized. And presumably for-profit providers would pay a lot of attention. As you looked at these records in cases where monitors said things are not working here, people are being endangered, do you have a sense of why financial penalties weren't imposed? What led to those sets of decisions?

WESSLER: I interviewed a number of former Bureau of Prison monitors who were tasked with overseeing the operations and contracts of these facilities. And what I found was that on-the-ground monitors were proposing quite significant fines when things went wrong. So when a facility failed to provide prisoners with infectious disease care or a prisoner died as a result of not receiving the kind of medical care that they needed that the onsite monitors would ask the Bureau of Prisons in Washington to impose significant fines.

But what they said - a number of federal monitors told me this, including fairly high-level people who were tasked with overseeing the contracts - what they said was that those fines were repeatedly either made smaller or refused altogether by federal officials in Washington, that the full fines that could have been imposed for deficiencies, for failures to meet the terms of the contract simply weren't imposed at all. And in some cases, federal contract monitors proposed closing facilities that had repeatedly failed, and they were told by their bosses in Washington that they wouldn't be allowed to close those facilities. Instead, contracts were renewed repeatedly with failing facilities.

DAVIES: Were there ever cases where there were questions about whether some of the for-profit correctional companies might have had influence on decisions in the Bureau of Prisons?

WESSLER: One of these private facilities, the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Miss. It was the site in 2012 of a pretty major riot that left 20 people injured, and a prison guard was killed in this riot. The riot erupted after complaints about poor conditions inside, significantly about medical care and really left a stain on that facility.

After the riot, federal monitors who were tasked with overseeing the operations of this facility proposed to senior bureau administrators that the prison lose its contract, that they shut the facility down. And my sources, former Bureau of Prisons monitors who were tasked with overseeing these contracts, say that they were told by their bosses in Washington that they wouldn't be allowed to close the contract.

The contract with CCA was renewed in 2013 and again in July of 2015. What my sources tell me is that one of the factors that stopped this contract from being closed down were the close ties between present Bureau of Prisons officials and officials in CCA who had formerly worked for the Bureau of Prisons, in particular a man named Harley Lappin, who was the director of the Bureau of Prisons and left in 2011, immediately taking a pretty lucrative contract with the CCA.

DAVIES: That's the private prisons facility or the Corrections Corporation of America.

WESSLER: That's right. So he left his job in government and took a job earning more than a million dollars for Corrections Corporation of America. And my sources tell me that the refusal by senior bureau officials to close the facility down was in part a result of conversations and close ties between Mr. Lappin and existing Bureau of Prisons officials that Mr. Lappin was pressing the Bureau of Prisons not to close the Adams County facility and that the contract was renewed. In 2015, the key Bureau of Prisons official who blocked the termination, the end of the CCA contract to run Adams County, he also left his job at the BOP and has taken a contract with CCA, with Corrections Corporation as a consultant as well.

DAVIES: You tried to reach of the principals involved here as well as the company, Corrections Corporation of America. What does everyone say about this?

WESSLER: Corrections Corporation of America, who responded for itself and for Harley Lappin, said that no ethics laws had been broken. The former Bureau of Prisons official who recently left kicked responsibility for the Adams County contract to other people in the Bureau of Prisons and said that no wrongdoing had happened. But the facility in Adams County remains open. Its contract was renewed a year ago. And what I found in my reporting is that federal monitors, just after the contract was renewed following the riot, found that five people had died in that very facility in the wake of clearly substandard medical care. And yet the contract was renewed again after that.

DAVIES: Seth Wessler is an investigative journalist who has just completed a two-year investigation of the operations of private prisons for The Nation. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Seth Wessler. He's an investigative journalist who just completed a two-year look at the operation of private prisons in the United States for The Nation. The Justice Department has announced it will begin phasing out private correctional facilities.

The Justice Department has said it wants to phase out the use of these private correctional facilities. What will be the immediate impact, and what will happen more long term?

WESSLER: The Justice Department has ordered the Bureau of Prisons to start to shrink and eventually end its use of private facilities. Over the next couple of years, the number will start to fall. And within five years, the number of federal prisoners in private facilities will be zeroed out. The announcement follows a report from the Department of Justice's inspector general that found that after 20 years of operation, the facilities simply don't save meaningfully on costs and significantly diminish the quality of operations inside of the facilities.

There's more violence inside. There's more contraband found inside of these facilities. And they found that the Bureau of Prisons is not meaningfully overseeing and monitoring the medical care provided inside of these contract facilities. What's striking is that the Bureau of Prisons has actually known these things for years.

And in my reporting I found story after story of people who were left to suffer significantly inside of these prisons. I reported on the story of a man named Jesus Enrique Zavala, who was 28 years old when he arrived at the Taft facility in California. He arrived and told nursing staff who interviewed him that he had suffered previously from mental illness, had taken medication for bipolar disorder and anxiety and had previously attempted suicide. And he was nonetheless provided no substantive mental health care.

And he was left in a solitary cell where after weeks of being basically left alone with any real attention from anyone was found hanging in his cell. He committed suicide there. One of the things that's striking about prisons in general is that prisoners are cut off from their communities. But in these facilities, prisoners are sort of doubly cut off because not only are they behind prison bars, their families, often the first-line advocates for them, are often over borders.

And so in this case, this man's family actually didn't learn that he had died for a whole year after his death. And they didn't know why he had died. That is, they didn't know he had killed himself until I was able to call them and tell them what I had found in this medical file.

DAVIES: Do the three companies that run the federal private prisons also operate state and local prisons?

WESSLER: Yeah, Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation are the biggest players in private incarceration around the country. They have contracts with states and with the Department of Homeland Security to operate detention centers.

And they're starting to get into other areas as well. So in addition to managing prisons, private corrections companies also manage transportation for prisoners. They're getting contracts for mental health care, and they manage post-release surveillance. So there's many other ways that private prison companies are making money on the criminal justice system.

In the scheme of their business, this is a relatively small part, but it sends a big message. The Department of Justice sees this as a message to states and to other federal agencies as well that private prisons just don't provide the services that they expect.

DAVIES: And do we have any idea how much money these firms make in this business?

WESSLER: It varies firm to firm. Federal contracts make up about half of Correction Corporation of America's business. But that includes the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. These federal prison contracts make up between about 5 and 15 percent of business for the companies that run them.

DAVIES: And do they make tens of millions, billions?

WESSLER: Yeah, the contracts are for tens of millions of dollars a year. Those are major losses for each of these companies. So as these facilities close over the next several years, these companies will be looking for new ways to make profit.

DAVIES: Seth Wessler, thank you so much for speaking with us.

WESSLER: Thanks very much for having me.

DAVIES: Seth Freed Wessler is an independent reporter working for The Investigative Fund. His series about conditions in privately-run prisons appeared in The Nation. Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews two reissues of the late tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards. This is FRESH AIR.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Investigation Into Private Prisons Reveals Crowding, Under-Staffing And Inmate Deaths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week. Last week, the Justice Department announced it would start to phase out the use of private for-profit prisons to hold federal inmates. Our guest today may have had something to do with that.

# data[].attributes.body
Look at this to see how they make money

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerated approximately 2.1 million people in 2018. These people are incarcerated for a multitude of different crimes ranging from drug possession and petty larceny to grand theft auto and murder. In order to adequately house incarcerated individuals in the future, should numbers increase, facilities must be ready.

The Difference Between a Private Prison and a Public Prison

The private prison system raises a lot of questions. One that many people wonder about is how can a private company legally incarcerate people? Isn't that the government's job? The answer is yes, but the government does contract out quite a bit of their work.

A public prison is one that is completely owned by the government. This means that they have to provide the prison building, staff the guards and administration, and oversee all of the incarcerated individuals and everything that happens inside the prison. Even with a public prison, some of the services are outsourced to private contractors such as the food service, cleaning service, and maintenance.

With a private prison, many of the burdens are taken off the government and put onto a private company. Instead of all the business that goes along with running a prison, the government is responsible for sentencing, classifying, and assigning inmates to a prison and providing oversight. Now that begs the question of how a for-profit prison makes money.

How a Private Prison Makes Money

A public prison is not a profit-generating entity. The end goal is to house incarcerated individuals in an attempt to rehabilitate them or remove them from the streets. A private prison, on the other hand, is run by a corporation. That corporation's end goal is to profit from anything they deal in.

In order to make money as a private prison, the corporation enters into a contract with the government. This contract should state the basis for payment to the corporation. It can be based on the size of the prison, based on a monthly or yearly set amount, or in most cases, it is paid based on the number of inmates that the prison houses.

Let's suppose that it costs $100 per day to incarcerated someone (assuming full capacity, including all administration costs), and the prison building can hold 1,000 inmates. A private prison can offer their services to the government and charge $150 per day per inmate. Generally speaking, the government will agree to these terms if the $150 is less than if the prison was publicly run. That difference is where the private prison makes its money.

As in any business, saving money wherever possible increases the bottom line. Expanding also allows the business to bring in more money, but it needs capital to do that.

Why Would a Private Prison Need to Be Publicly Traded?

As a business grows it can make the choice to go public. Essentially, this does a few things for the company that it can't do as a privately held business.

With most businesses, exposure is the key to growth. The more people that know about the company, the more sales they can do. However, with a private prison, exposure isn't something they really need. Instead, they need capital boosts for two other reasons.

If a private prison can "mark up" the cost of caring for an incarcerated individual by $50 per day, that means their prison can theoretically earn $50,000 per day on a prison that houses 1,000 inmates. If they can land another contract with the government to build a prison in the neighboring state, they could start earning an additional $50,000 per day by maxing out that prison. By going public, they can see a sudden influx of money that would allow them to build that second prison.

Still, there is a another reason to go public for a private prison. In order to stay in business, these prisons need a constant stream of inmates coming in to replace those that have served their sentence. This means that laws have to be enforced, contracts renewed, and in some cases, laws more strictly enforced. Corporations may lobby lawmakers for their support or otherwise advocate for stronger enforcement of laws.

The Problem With Private Prisons

On the surface, a private prison seems like a great idea. If it costs the government $200 per day to incarcerate someone, and a private company comes along and says they can do it for $150 per day, then why not save the government money while allowing a corporation to profit? The problem lies in the economics behind prisoners.

One of the goals of the prison system is to rehabilitate people. Based on a U.S. Department of Justice study in which data from 30 states measured state recidivism rates from 2005 through 2014, the recidivism rate was 83%, possibly putting that goal in doubt. Besides that point, if prison was 100% effective, the private prisons would be working themselves out of business. This makes one wonder: is prison supposed to rehabilitate the individual, or is it supposed to earn money? If the goal is to earn money, then a high prison population is the end goal.

Another problem that arises is the fact that these are for-profit businesses. This means that if they can cut staff pay or benefits or services from their list, then they save money. Suppose a prison cuts out the cleaning services and the cost per inmate drops to $90 per day. They instantly earn an additional $10 per day; a number that can add up quickly if there are 1,000 inmates in the facility. Cutting cleaning makes the company more money but provides unhealthy and inhumane living conditions for the inmates. Cutting costs ultimately affects the people incarcerated and diminishes the quality of their living quarters.

Finally, the law needs to be structured in such a way that it allows a steady stream of new inmates. This ties back to that lobbying aspect: stricter laws mean more people in the system. More people in the system means more money for the prison. Many have argued that this is the entire reason that the war on drugs was started: another set of laws that could incarcerate thousands of people every single year.

The Bottom Line

As of 2019, there are approximately 116,000 people incarcerated in private prisons, which represents 8% of the total federal and state prison population. Many of these prisons save the government money, but some actually cost more per inmate than a public facility would cost.

The capitalist mindset says any time an industry can be run privately it is better for the economy. The socialist mindset says that the government should be supplying those services. The realist says that the prison system is overcrowded as it is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerated approximately 2.1 million people in 2018. These people are incarcerated for a multitude of different crimes ranging from drug possession and petty larceny to grand theft auto and murder. In order to adequately house incarcerated individuals in the future, should numbers increase, facilities must be ready.

# data[].attributes.body
"Slavery and involuntary servitude abolished by the 13th Amendment except as punishment for crime

Virginia Supreme Court declared that prisoners were "slaves of the state"

Percent of able-bodied sentenced federal prisoners required to work in the prison509: 100%"

# data[].attributes.headline
problems with private prisons (economically)

# data[].attributes.subject
problems with private prisons (economically)

# data[].attributes.body
Workers for the prisons are essentially earning less money which is causing to a decrease in staff. With a decrease in staff, that leads to more violence in the prisons because less people are there to help manage it and keep it steady.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Federal and state officials are increasingly contracting private companies to run prisons and immigration detention centers.

Critics have long questioned the quality of private prisons and the promises of economic benefits where they are built. But proponents say private prisons not only save taxpayers money, but they also generate income for the surrounding community.

In 2004, officials in Hardin, Mont., agreed to a deal for a private prison to be built in town. The idea was that the county would pay for the prison and the state or federal government would fill it. Hardin would get tax revenues, new jobs and economic benefits while a private prison company would run the place and get a cut of the profits.

The Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility, a 464-bed $27 million private prison, was completed in 2007. Since then, the facility has remained empty and unused because the builder never landed a contract with the state or federal government for inmates.

In 2009, the facility made national news when, in an attempt to recoup the money it had spent on the facility, the town offered to do something almost no other town in America was willing to do - house prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

That didn't happen, but it's a testament to how desperate Hardin is to fill the prison, get it up and running, and create jobs for the town.
Another Town, A Different Prison
About 1,500 miles south of Hardin in Karnes County, Texas, you find a very different story.

Last year, the county agreed to let a private prison company build a new 600-bed immigrant detention center there. It wasn't a tough vote because the company, GEO Group, already had one facility in Karnes County it built in 1998.

"They have been tremendous corporate partners with the county and the people here in Karnes County," former Karnes County Judge Alger Kendall says.

Each year, Kendall says, GEO Group gives the county $4,000 for school scholarships and $6,000 for maintenance and upkeep of the city's courthouse.

GEO Group also gives money to the local Rotary Club, Toys for Tots, the Little League, Relay for Life and other local organizations and events, he says. And the people who work at the facility also help feed the local economy.

"I mean, that employment translates into other money being spent in the county," he says.

When the detention center is complete, Karnes County is banking on 140 new jobs and $150,000 in tax revenue.
The Economics Of Private Prisons
David Shapiro says that promise of jobs and tax revenue is eerily similar to what some officials in Hardin said back in 2004.

Shapiro, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, is the author of a new ACLU report that's critical of the private prison industry.

Shapiro says it's possible a town could reap some small economic benefits from a private prison, but it may not bring the larger economic boost the county is hoping for.

"That's what the empirical evidence has shown ... and there are various theories for why that may be the case," Shapiro tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan.

The presence of a prison might actually squeeze out other businesses that could bring greater benefits than the prison itself, he says. Also, many of the jobs created by a private prison don't actually go to people in the community.

The bigger problem, he says, is that state and federal taxpayers - who in the end are paying for these prisons - aren't getting the most value for their money.

To cite just one example, he says, last year the Arizona auditor general found that it actually might be more expensive to hold Arizona prisoners in private, for-profit facilities than in public ones.

Despite these findings, the state has plans to award contracts for 5,000 more private prison beds.

The safety and security of private prisons is another concern. Shapiro says some studies have found that the level of violence is actually higher in private prisons.

"Private prisons have incentives to make money [and] to cut costs," he says. "One of the ways they do that is by slashing pay for staff, which leads to much higher rates of turnover."

That high rate of turnover and guards who lack the experience to properly respond to situations like escape attempts is dangerous, Shapiro says.

The savings from those cost cuts do not get passed on to the state, he says.

Shapiro's report criticizes both GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America, the two biggest private prison corporations in the country.

GEO Group declined to comment, but the Corrections Corporation of America said in a statement from spokesman Steve Owen that the report "does not enter the realm of credible discussion."

In the statement, he called the report "an exceedingly thin, old mix of dated news, willful bias and unfounded opinion. It's being advanced by a familiar cast of industry critics and is blind to our industry's many benefits."
The Prison Business
Despite the criticism private prisons face, as an industry they do very well. They make money, a little for some of the towns where they're built and a lot for shareholders and investors.

"This is an investment that we talk with investors about on a regular basis as a good idea," investment analyst Tobey Sommer tells Sullivan.

Sommer, director of equity research at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in Tennessee, says both CCA and Geo Group made more than $1 billion each last year and their CEOs took home multimillion-dollar bonuses.

The recession could actually make them more money, Sommer says. With budgets stretched thin, states might look to private prisons to house and secure even more inmates. Only 10 percent of all inmates in the U.S. are housed in private prisons, he says, so that other 90 percent could be seen as an opportunity for growth.

But not everyone sees opportunities for long-term growth.

"Crime rates are declining, the prison population is declining, and many states, in large part motivated by the economic downturn, are realizing that they can't keep building their way out of the problem," says Michele Deitch, who teaches criminal justice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Deitch says the new growth market for prison companies is immigrant detention, like the facility in Karnes County. New prisons, possibly for state inmates, like the one in Hardin, Mont., are on the decline.

The continuing flow of prisoners from the state isn't what it used to be, Deitch says, because of new treatment models and other alternatives to prison.

But Sommer says, while an empty prison just off Main Street could be a problem for Hardin or any other town, it's not a problem for the private prison industry, especially for companies hoping to fill those beds with immigration detainees.

"That enables kind of last-minute purchasing by their customers," he says, "so as a need arises, from a state or federal customer, Corrections Corporation can say 'I've got a facility with 1,000 beds available for you.'"

And right now, it has one ready. It just has to turn the lights on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Federal and state officials are increasingly contracting private companies to run prisons and immigration detention centers. Critics have long questioned the quality of private prisons and the promises of economic benefits where they are built. But proponents say private prisons not only save taxpayers money, but they also generate income for the surrounding community.

# data[].attributes.headline
Benefits of a private Prison (economically)

# data[].attributes.subject
Benefits of a private Prison (economically)

# data[].attributes.body
Ever since the War on Drugs, more people have been put in prisons creating more money for the prison.

# data[].attributes.body
They fund election campaigns. But is that really a good idea? With their increasing power, they are becoming a greater superiority in government affairs.

# data[].attributes.body
"A private prison, on the other hand, is run by a corporation. That corporation’s end goal is to profit from anything they deal in.

In order to make money as a private prison, they receive a stipend from the government. This money from the government can be paid in a multitude of different ways. It can be based on the size of the prison, based on a monthly or yearly set amount, or in most cases it is paid based on the number of prisoners that the prison houses."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerated approximately 2.1 million people in 2018. These people are incarcerated for a multitude of different crimes ranging from drug possession and petty larceny to grand theft auto and murder. In order to adequately house incarcerated individuals in the future, should numbers increase, facilities must be ready.

The Difference Between a Private Prison and a Public Prison

The private prison system raises a lot of questions. One that many people wonder about is how can a private company legally incarcerate people? Isn't that the government's job? The answer is yes, but the government does contract out quite a bit of their work.

A public prison is one that is completely owned by the government. This means that they have to provide the prison building, staff the guards and administration, and oversee all of the incarcerated individuals and everything that happens inside the prison. Even with a public prison, some of the services are outsourced to private contractors such as the food service, cleaning service, and maintenance.

With a private prison, many of the burdens are taken off the government and put onto a private company. Instead of all the business that goes along with running a prison, the government is responsible for sentencing, classifying, and assigning inmates to a prison and providing oversight. Now that begs the question of how a for-profit prison makes money.

How a Private Prison Makes Money

A public prison is not a profit-generating entity. The end goal is to house incarcerated individuals in an attempt to rehabilitate them or remove them from the streets. A private prison, on the other hand, is run by a corporation. That corporation's end goal is to profit from anything they deal in.

In order to make money as a private prison, the corporation enters into a contract with the government. This contract should state the basis for payment to the corporation. It can be based on the size of the prison, based on a monthly or yearly set amount, or in most cases, it is paid based on the number of inmates that the prison houses.

Let's suppose that it costs $100 per day to incarcerated someone (assuming full capacity, including all administration costs), and the prison building can hold 1,000 inmates. A private prison can offer their services to the government and charge $150 per day per inmate. Generally speaking, the government will agree to these terms if the $150 is less than if the prison was publicly run. That difference is where the private prison makes its money.

As in any business, saving money wherever possible increases the bottom line. Expanding also allows the business to bring in more money, but it needs capital to do that.

Why Would a Private Prison Need to Be Publicly Traded?

As a business grows it can make the choice to go public. Essentially, this does a few things for the company that it can't do as a privately held business.

With most businesses, exposure is the key to growth. The more people that know about the company, the more sales they can do. However, with a private prison, exposure isn't something they really need. Instead, they need capital boosts for two other reasons.

If a private prison can "mark up" the cost of caring for an incarcerated individual by $50 per day, that means their prison can theoretically earn $50,000 per day on a prison that houses 1,000 inmates. If they can land another contract with the government to build a prison in the neighboring state, they could start earning an additional $50,000 per day by maxing out that prison. By going public, they can see a sudden influx of money that would allow them to build that second prison.

Still, there is a another reason to go public for a private prison. In order to stay in business, these prisons need a constant stream of inmates coming in to replace those that have served their sentence. This means that laws have to be enforced, contracts renewed, and in some cases, laws more strictly enforced. Corporations may lobby lawmakers for their support or otherwise advocate for stronger enforcement of laws.

The Problem With Private Prisons

On the surface, a private prison seems like a great idea. If it costs the government $200 per day to incarcerate someone, and a private company comes along and says they can do it for $150 per day, then why not save the government money while allowing a corporation to profit? The problem lies in the economics behind prisoners.

One of the goals of the prison system is to rehabilitate people. Based on a U.S. Department of Justice study in which data from 30 states measured state recidivism rates from 2005 through 2014, the recidivism rate was 83%, possibly putting that goal in doubt. Besides that point, if prison was 100% effective, the private prisons would be working themselves out of business. This makes one wonder: is prison supposed to rehabilitate the individual, or is it supposed to earn money? If the goal is to earn money, then a high prison population is the end goal.

Another problem that arises is the fact that these are for-profit businesses. This means that if they can cut staff pay or benefits or services from their list, then they save money. Suppose a prison cuts out the cleaning services and the cost per inmate drops to $90 per day. They instantly earn an additional $10 per day; a number that can add up quickly if there are 1,000 inmates in the facility. Cutting cleaning makes the company more money but provides unhealthy and inhumane living conditions for the inmates. Cutting costs ultimately affects the people incarcerated and diminishes the quality of their living quarters.

Finally, the law needs to be structured in such a way that it allows a steady stream of new inmates. This ties back to that lobbying aspect: stricter laws mean more people in the system. More people in the system means more money for the prison. Many have argued that this is the entire reason that the war on drugs was started: another set of laws that could incarcerate thousands of people every single year.

The Bottom Line

As of 2019, there are approximately 116,000 people incarcerated in private prisons, which represents 8% of the total federal and state prison population. Many of these prisons save the government money, but some actually cost more per inmate than a public facility would cost.

The capitalist mindset says any time an industry can be run privately it is better for the economy. The socialist mindset says that the government should be supplying those services. The realist says that the prison system is overcrowded as it is.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerated approximately 2.1 million people in 2018. These people are incarcerated for a multitude of different crimes ranging from drug possession and petty larceny to grand theft auto and murder. In order to adequately house incarcerated individuals in the future, should numbers increase, facilities must be ready.

# data[].attributes.headline
Private Prisons. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics

# data[].attributes.subject
Private Prisons. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics

# data[].attributes.body
"For-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal prisoners in 2015 (the most recent numbers currently available)."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for-profit companies were responsible for approximately 7 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal prisoners in 2015 (the most recent numbers currently available). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that in 2016, private prisons held nearly three-quarters of federal immigration detainees.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has contracted prisons out to private companies to relieve overcrowding and costly expenses in public prisons. The biggest private prison corporation, CCA (with The GEO Group and Management and Training Corp as 2nd and 3rd), has increased power from owning private prisons. Leads to lobbying (form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has contracted prisons out to private companies to relieve overcrowding and costly expenses in public prisons. The biggest private prison corporation, CCA (with The GEO Group and Management and Training Corp as 2nd and 3rd), has increased power from owning private prisons. Leads to lobbying (form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government)

# data[].attributes.body
Between 2003 and 2010, Corrections Corporation of America spent over $14 million on lobbying in over 30 states

# data[].attributes.headline
"PRIVATE PRISONS ULTIMATELY POSE A GREAT THREAT SINCE 'THEY EXIST SOLELY TO MAKE A PROFIT OFF OF INCARCERATED INDIVIDUALS.'"

# data[].attributes.subject
"PRIVATE PRISONS ULTIMATELY POSE A GREAT THREAT SINCE 'THEY EXIST SOLELY TO MAKE A PROFIT OFF OF INCARCERATED INDIVIDUALS.'"

# data[].attributes.body
AKA For-profit prisons or contract prisons. MAYBE RESEARCH Corrections Corporation of America

# data[].attributes.headline
"PRIVATE PRISONS SEEK THE LEAST EXPENSIVE PRISONER TO GENERATE THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE PROFIT."

# data[].attributes.subject
"PRIVATE PRISONS SEEK THE LEAST EXPENSIVE PRISONER TO GENERATE THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE PROFIT."

# data[].attributes.headline
"CLEARLY RELIES ON THE INCARCERATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINO PEOPLE FOR ITS SURVIVAL."

# data[].attributes.subject
"CLEARLY RELIES ON THE INCARCERATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND LATINO PEOPLE FOR ITS SURVIVAL."

# data[].attributes.headline
"A SYSTEM DESIGNED BY THE RICH AND FOR THE RICH."

# data[].attributes.subject
"A SYSTEM DESIGNED BY THE RICH AND FOR THE RICH."

# data[].attributes.body
They claim it is to save taxpayer dollars, but it doesn't mean that private prisons aren't harming others in the process.

# data[].attributes.body
President Richard Nixon declared the national "War on Drugs" in the 1970s, causing American prison population to skyrocket.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Attorney General Eric Holder unveiled new policies on Monday to address the low-level, nonviolent offenses that he argued keep too many Americans locked away "for no truly good law enforcement reason." Drug laws and mandatory minimums have driven a 700% spike in the prison population over the past few decades, leading many states to literally run out of jails. The result is an unusual problem with a controversial solution.

With far more prisoners than prison cells, states are turning to corporations to pick up the slack-with profound implications for criminal justice reform.
In the 1980s, for-profit prisons began winning contracts to operate entire jails for the first time. Politicians in both parties responded to prison crowding with private prisons: The industry grew by 1,600% over a 20-year period ending in 2009. Today, one out of six federal prisoners is in a for-profit facility, according to ACLU data.
Industry executives argue their prisons are efficient and necessary.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, imprisons about 80,000 inmates across 16 states. The company says it combines "the cost savings and innovation of business with the strict guidelines and consistent oversight of government."

Many independent analysts disagree. After reviewing a battery of studies on cost and effectiveness in the industry, researchers from the University of Utah concluded in a 2007 report that any cost savings "appear minimal."

Cutting more than costs
Whatever the savings, the public does not necessarily benefit when private prisons are run on the cheap.
In May, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU filed a suit alleging that a Mississippi private prison is systematically mistreating mentally ill patients, (including denying them adequate food and medical care).

Florida, which recently rejected a plan to transfer over 20 state prisons to private companies, has found that some private prisons cut health care services by as much as 50%, raising concerns about safety and mistreatment.

After surveying those kind of tradeoffs, magazine concluded last month that "as bad as state-run prisons can be, private prisons ultimately pose a greater threat," since "they exist solely to make a profit off of incarcerated individuals."

That profit motive could also impact the renewed national debate about sentencing reform.

Selling punishment
In many states, private prisons have grown into a powerful employer and business lobby. Between 2003 and 2010, Corrections Corporation of America spent over $14 million on lobbying in over 30 states. For years, the company has also worked with ALEC, the conservative advocacy group, which backed legislation for harsh sentencing and mandatory minimums at the state level. As the Washington Monthly recently noted, ALEC has "probably contributed more to the spread of mandatory minimum legislation in the states than just about any other single source." (And CCA is not alone; the top three prison companies have spent $45 million on campaign donations and lobbying over the past decade.) ALEC has recently softened its support on mandatory minimums somewhat.

Despite the lobbying activity, CCA argues that it does not actually have a stance on the wisdom of more or less prison as a policy matter.

"We do not take a position on or in any way promote policies that determine the basis for an individual's incarceration," says Steve Owen, a CCA spokesman. "Because our customer is government, lobbying is the way we educate them about the services we provide," he told msnbc, adding, "We never lobby on policies."

Yet in documents the company is required to file under securities law, Corrections Corporation of America has told investors that its business may be hurt if new policies advance "leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices." And in a 2010 report, CCA declared that "any changes" to harsh drug sentences could stem the flow of new prisoners in the U.S., reducing "demand for correctional facilities to house them."

Many criminal justice experts say that a business built on incarceration can't help but support incarceration.
A 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute, " Gaming The System, " documents how private prison companies, including CCA, have sought to advance "pro-incarceration" policies at the state and federal level. "Private prison companies have had either influence over, or helped to draft, model legislation such as three-strikes‛ and truth-in-sentencing‛ laws," the report explains, "which have driven up incarceration rates."

Others point to the industry's reliance on the so-called "war on drugs."

"For-profit prisons are making contracts with states, saying, 'Guarantee that our prisons will be filled. Guarantee we'll make a profit,'" says Michael Skolnik, a filmmaker who visited over 100 prisons while researching Lockdown, USA, a documentary about reforming jail sentences for drug offenses. "And how do you guarantee that? You create drug laws," Skolnik told msnbc. He argues that private prisons reinforce drug sentencing policies that have constituted "a war against black and brown America."

As the Obama administration aims to push federal prosecutors and state officials to find alternatives to lengthy prison sentences, it's clear the challenge extends beyond the politics of fear and deficits. In many parts of the country, it will include counteracting a powerful set of companies that need a stream of strict sentences to continue their operations. It's a system that presumes guilt as a business model-and recidivism as a bonus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Presumed guilty: How prisons profit off the 'war on drugs'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Attorney General Eric Holder unveiled new policies on Monday to address the low-level, nonviolent offenses that he argued keep too many Americans locked away "for no truly good law enforcement reason." Drug laws and mandatory minimums have driven a 700% spike in the prison population over the past few decades, leading many states to literally run out of jails.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Color of Corporate Corrections (Using in Riley's Abib)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Color of Corporate Corrections (Using in Riley's Abib)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Color of Corporate Corrections, Part II: Contractual Exemptions and the Overrepresentation of People of Color in Private Prisons | Petrella | Radical Criminology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Color of Corporate Corrections, Part II: Contractual Exemptions and the Overrepresentation of People of Color in Private Prisons

# data[].attributes.headline
Racism in Private prisons (Using in Riley's Abib)

# data[].attributes.subject
Racism in Private prisons (Using in Riley's Abib)

# data[].attributes.body
Race is a significant factor of incarcerated people, but also the age of these prisoners matter too. There are more white prisoners that are over than 50 than any of the other races, but they are harder to manage due to costs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than 60 percent of prison inmates in the U.S. identify as African American or Latino despite making up only 30 percent of the population. A recent study by Christopher Petrella, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Berkeley, finds that the majority of these inmates are more likely to serve time in a private prison than their white counterparts. Why? Because private prisons seek the least expensive prisoner to generate the highest possible profit.

Speaking to Billmoyers.com, Petrella explains why this is significant to black and Latino prisoners. "Based on historical sentencing patterns, if you are a prisoner today, and you are over 50 years old, there is a greater likelihood that you are white," says Petrella. "If you are under 50 years old -- particularly if you're closer to 30 years old -- you're more likely to be a person of color." He references a 2012 ACLU report which found that it costs $68,270 to support a prisoner age 50 or older compared with $34,135 per year to house a non-geriatric prisoner.

Essentially, the younger the prisoner, the cheaper they are to manage. Petrella explains that, "up until the mid-1960s or so, two-thirds of the U.S. prison population was what the Census Bureau would consider non-Hispanic white." White prisoners therefore account for much of today's aging prison population and its increasing health care costs. Housing a medically expensive inmate decreases a private prisons' return on investment. Private prisons account for this snag by contractually exempting themselves from housing costlier inmates. By default, this contractual policy enables them to deliberately avoid housing older white prisoners because they are more expensive to manage.

Private prisons receive carte blanche, picking and choosing the most desirable prisoner. In this case, they are more likely to chose African American and Latino prisoners; the prisoners of plenty. The shift in the incarceration rate among people of color has been well documented with overwhelming evidence suggesting the War on Drugs has had a disparate impact on people of color. Harsh drug policies have become an asset to private prison companies. With far more prisoners than prison cells, private prisons can count on ample amounts of offenders, mostly black and Latino, to fill their beds. More prisoners equal more profits.

Petrella looked at nine states and found that in four of them -- California, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas -- people of color are represented in private prisons at least ten percentage points greater than in state-run facilities. Because jailing individuals is a public cost, it is no surprise that U.S. and state governments have chosen to outsource in response to prison overcrowding. But this study brings up another point. Cutting costs and generating revenue at the expense of people of color is a tradition deeply woven in the fabric of American history.

"One of the reasons I think the study's important," Petrella said, "is that it continues to show how laws -- and even contractual stipulations -- that are, on the surface, race-neutral, continue to have a disproportionate and negative impact on communities of color." In other words, the inadvertent expression of racism in our nations drug policies and within public-private partnerships develops and sustains full-service systems of racism. And when laws allow the expression of implicit bias they also permit racial inequity.

Where does this leave us? Private prisons have been marketed as the necessary supplement to save taxpayer dollars. It is a system designed by the rich and for the rich. A system that clearly relies on the incarceration of African American and Latino people for its survival. Much like the way the U.S. was designed. Considering the way implicit racism operates in everyday decisions and actions, it seems the only thing to do is to attempt to fix it. Several analysis tools (see here and here) have been developed to support decision-making approaches and self-checking strategies that alleviate the impact of implicit bias. Policies that support the racist private prison business model are an ideal place to start. The challenge is to create a political space where it is possible, if not mandatory, to employ measures that will allow laws and policies to achieve racially equitable outcomes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study: More People of Color Sentenced to Private Prisons Than Whites

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 60 percent of prison inmates in the U.S. identify as African American or Latino despite making up only 30 percent of the population. A recent study by Christopher Petrella, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Berkeley, finds that the majority of these inmates are more likely to serve time in a private prison than their white counterparts.

# data[].attributes.body
Private vs Public Prisons in the topics of...
Overcrowding
Violence levels
Race disparities in the prison's population
Lengthened sentences
Possible Corruption

# data[].attributes.body
Social/Cultural through the prisoners POV and lifestyle.

Perspectives are how the prisoners are treated in jail, they different race of people are put in and treated in these prisons and the many race disparities.

# data[].attributes.body
Elaine: A little social/cultural but focusing solely on the prisoners' POV and lifestyle. You're analyzing the perspective inside jails, whereas Riley is looking at the social aspects outside of jails, like how the private prison overseers are controlling.

# data[].attributes.body
Riley: Social/cultural outside of prisons and historical/political. Focusing on racism and the bias of private corporations handling these prisons.

# data[].attributes.body
How has the increasing privatization of prisons impacted the lives of incarcerated prisoners and the rest of American citizens?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When someone decides to break the law and is found guilty of their actions, what should their consequence be? For many years, the solution has been imprisonment that is overseen by some level of government. In the United States, prisons may be overseen by local, regional, state, or national authorities.

The problem with a prison is that it can be very costly to run. In the United States, more than $80 billion is spent annually to support a general population incarceration rate of about 1%. Numerous solutions have been suggested, including the idea of having the government get out of the business of incarceration.

The advantages and disadvantages of private prisons often look at managing costs while improving rehabilitation opportunities. Here are some of the key points to consider in this debate.

What Are the Advantages of Private Prisons?

1. Private prisons are potentially cheaper for taxpayers.
Private businesses can leverage pricing controls for resources with greater flexibility than a government provider. A private business can act quickly to search for best practices, improve operation efficiencies, and implement cost-savings measures. It also reduces the size of government because operational responsibilities shift to a private institution, which further reduces taxpayer costs.

2. There is an economic benefit to the local community.
Communities that have private prisons operating within their oversight often receive new tax revenues, have new jobs to provide local workers, and this creates more spending for the support businesses.

3. Prisoner population levels are appropriately maintained.
Many public prison systems are operating at a capacity that is much higher than originally intended. In California, the public prison system was operating at 137.5% of capacity before the Supreme Court required the state to begin reducing overcrowding. Private prisons can better control population levels by transporting prisoners to specific locations where there are greater needs. This lessens the threat of overcrowding on local systems while still allowing for profitability.

4. Private prisons can lower the rates of reoffending.
A study of a private prison in Arkansas tracked over 650 women who were released after they completed a re-entry program. After 5 years, only 1 in 5 of the women being tracked had committed another criminal offense. This means that private prisons have the potential to lower the rates of reoffending by up to 50% in some regions.

5. Facilities can be used for various purposes.
Many private prisons are today being used for immigration housing and detention purposes. They can also be retrofitted to serve a variety of community needs if the need for a prison goes away. This allows for the investments that a community provides to not be in vain should prisoner levels not be as high as anticipated.

6. Governments have contracted prisoners out to third-parties for several years.
Specific services for the public prison system have been contracted out to private businesses for more than a century. This includes inmate transportation, food preparation, medical services, and even vocational training. These structures easily transition over to the management and operations of the entire prison. Private prisons have been in place with the modern US criminal justice system since 1984, when Corrections Corporation of America was awarded their first operational contract.

What Are the Disadvantages of Private Prisons?

1. Prisoners tend to serve longer sentences in private prisons.
Studies from the University of Wisconsin system have shown that prisoners who are being held in private prisons may serve sentences that are up to 7% longer than prisoners who are in public prisons serving a similar sentence. This is directly correlated to the profit-potential that each prisoner provides the organization that is overseeing the incarceration.

2. Many private prisons do not house costly prisoners.
Many private prisons are given the opportunity to pick and choose which prisoners they house. High-risk prisoners tend to be costlier to supervise, which means they have a higher cost to the business. These costly prisoners are shipped back to public prisons, sticking taxpayers with the cost while the private prison profits off the "easier" prisoners. A study by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics found that Arizona public facilities were 7 times more likely to house a violent offender a 3 times more likely to house an inmate convicted of a serious offense compared to private prisons in the area.

3. Private prisons can leave communities with costly facilities that are empty.
Private prisons are operated on a contractual basis. The community is often responsible for the facility, while the private prison is responsible for filling the beds. If the private prison sees no profit in continuing the operation, they can close their doors and stick a community with an empty facility, no jobs, and the bills that remain for the initial construction.

4. Private prisons tend to be more violent because of low staffing levels.
Private prisons see up to 50% more violence when compared to public prisons with regards to inmate-on-officer assaults. For-profit facilities also see over 60% more inmate-on-inmate assaults. This is often due to low officer staffing levels that are in private facilities. Some officer-to-prisoner ratios in private prisons can exceed 1 officer to every 120 prisoners.

5. Prisoners can be thousands of miles away from their family.
Prisoner exchange programs can cause inmate transfers that may be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from their family. This removes the prisoner from their network of support, forcing them to rely on internal systems to meet their needs. This creates more barriers to rehabilitation, making the private prison more about housing prisoners and less about bringing them back into society as a productive member.

6. It creates the foundation for corruption.
Because prisoners are required for a private prison to be profitable, their budgets are never 100% certain. To solve this problem, there are several instances of corporations working with local systems of justice to extend sentences to longer lengths or charge with higher-level crimes for longer sentences.

7. Employee wages are often lower and there are often fewer benefits.
One of the ways that the private prison system saves money is by providing employees with lower wages and fewer benefits than employees in the public prison system. Correctional officers in the public system can earn up to $75,000 per year. In comparison, many correctional officers in the private system may earn as little as $14 per hour.

8. There may be zero cost-savings advantages.
Comparisons of private vs public prisons that are of similar size and house similar inmates show that both systems face similar cost-per-day rates, despite the fact that private institutions often pay lower wages and employ fewer workers.

The advantages and disadvantages of private prisons involve cost, efficiency, and effectiveness. When a private prison is operating with best practices and focused on rehabilitation, it can be a beneficial addition to a community. Unfortunately, many corporations have a reputation of focusing on profits over purpose, which can create numerous hardships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
14 Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Prisons

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When someone decides to break the law and is found guilty of their actions, what should their consequence be? For many years, the solution has been imprisonment that is overseen by some level of government. In the United States, prisons may be overseen by local, regional, state, or national authorities.

# data[].attributes.body
"Petrella looked at nine states and found that in four of them — California, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas — people of color are represented in private prisons at least ten percentage points greater than in state-run facilities. Because jailing individuals is a public cost, it is no surprise that U.S. and state governments have chosen to outsource in response to prison overcrowding. But this study brings up another point. Cutting costs and generating revenue at the expense of people of color is a tradition deeply woven in the fabric of American history."

# data[].attributes.body
Because of this spectrum of costs among prisoners of different ages and races, private prisons have the freedom to choose the types of prisoners they want to house. And because these companies want profit, they choose criminals that will be cheap to handle. The War on Drugs has played a large part in the private prisons' selection process, as it has made a shift towards incarcerating colored people significantly more frequently than whites. Private prisons also use the War on Drugs as an excuse to cage more disproportionately poorer people and colored people, which is threatening America's employment, housing, and stability.

# data[].attributes.body
The "unforgiving lock-'em-up drug war policies led to an easing of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, and President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of some federal prisoners who had been given what were viewed as disproportionately lengthy terms"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Private Prisons: Public Safety v. Profit Motive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Private Prisons: Public Safety v. Profit Motive