Despite failures, states rely on private prisons
Facilities have outsize influence in certain places, including New Mexico
In Arizona in 2015, a riot broke out in a private prison where previously three inmates had escaped and murdered a vacationing couple. After order was restored, the state revoked the contract of Management & Training Corp. and hired another private prison firm, the GEO Group.
Three years earlier, the GEO Group had surrendered its contract to run a Mississippi prison after a federal judge ruled inmates had not been protected from gang violence. The replacement: Management & Training Corp.
The staying power of the two companies shows how private prisons maintain their hold on the nation’s criminal justice system despite largescale failures. The field is dominated by a handful of companies who have swallowed the competition and entrenched their positions through aggressive lawyering, intricate financial arrangements and in some cases, according to lawsuits by the Mississippi attorney general, bribery and kickbacks.
Though a federal review found private prisons are more dangerous than government-run prisons for both guards and inmates, the Trump administration indicated earlier this year it will expand their use.
Private prison companies can be found at every level of government, housing 9 percent of the nation’s prisoners. They emerged in the 1980s, when the number of inmates was quickly outstripping capacity, and they have an outsize influence in certain states, including New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii and Mississippi.
Despite hundreds of lawsuits, findings that private prisons save taxpayers little to no money, and evidence of repeated constitutional violations, the number of privately housed inmates has risen faster since 2000 than the overall number of prisoners. In 2016, the number rose by about 1.5 percent, according to Justice Department figures.
Last week, Frank Shaw, a warden for Management & Training, or MTC, at the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, was called to testify in a federal trial claiming the prison routinely failed to shield inmates from beatings and left them so desperate for medical attention that they lit fires in their cells. Shaw had also been the warden in Arizona during the riot.
Even states that have sworn off private prisons, or tried to cut back on their use, have found it difficult to extricate themselves. After the prisoners escaped in Arizona, the state tried to reduce the number of inmates held in that prison. But MTC claimed the state was violating its contract, which guaranteed a certain number of beds would be filled. Arizona had to pay the company $3 million. MTC still operates a facility in the state.
States that use private prisons can find themselves limited to a few big players. The largest are GEO Group, based in Florida; CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), based in Tennessee; and MTC, based in Utah. Two of the past four directors of the Federal Bureau of Prisons were later hired by CoreCivic.
The companies employ a variety of strategies, including hiring former corrections officials in high-level positions and giving what are sometimes enormous campaign contributions. GEO Group and CoreCivic gave close to half a million dollars to support Trump’s candidacy and inauguration. After he was elected, their stock prices soared.
Industry officials say they provide cost-effective ways to house inmates, and that they continue to expand into rehabilitation programs as more states seek alternatives to prison. CoreCivic says about 10,000 people in its facilities have obtained high school equivalency diplomas in the past five years, reflecting the company’s efforts to improve the ability of inmates to re-enter society.
But some lawmakers say the claims of cost savings and other benefits do not check out. “There is no convincing argument of why we should have private prisons,” said Mike Fasano, a former Republican state senator from Pasco County in Florida, who voted against a 2012 measure to privatize much of Florida’s prison system.
GEO Group, which did not respond to a request for comment, gave more than $1 million to state candidates and parties in Florida in the two years leading up to the vote, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. But the proposal was narrowly defeated, Fasano said, over fears about jeopardizing public safety and hurting public corrections workers, as well as concerns that the promised cost savings would not materialize.
In Mississippi, the state’s three private prisons were once operated by GEO Group and are now run by MTC.
A fourth, Walnut Grove, was closed in 2016, four years after a federal judge wrote that the prison “paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world,” and placed the prison under federal oversight.