Mesa's private jail deal is a no-brainer

Don’t blame Mesa for choosing a private company to jail those convicted of misdemeanors. It’s a no-brainer once you step into the city’s shoes. Booking and housing inmates in the county jail costs Mesa $5 million to $6 million annually. Those costs continue to increase, while CoreCivic’s proposal to transport inmates to its Florence facility is estimated to save Mesa $2 million a year. The city needs the money. After years of budget cuts, Mesa is again facing a $17.5 million gap. It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, and in previous years, the need to save cash has led to groundbreaking public-safety ideas, such as dispatching smaller fire crews to nonemergency medical calls.

This time, however, the situation is dire enough that police officers now regularly observe “Phase 1” time, meaning they respond primarily to emergencies and crimes in progress at the expense of anything more proactive.

That’s not good policing, and Mesa knows it. Something needs to change.

It’s also why I don’t buy the criticism that this contract will end up costing the city more in the long run, or that it will lead to Mesa sending more inmates to jail than it otherwise would if they were housed in the county jail.

Given the city’s dire fiscal situation, you can bet its bean counters will be watching this contract closely to ensure it generates the expected savings. The estimates are based on a historically lower number of inmates, thanks to diversion programs that allow people to serve their time outside of jail.

And even if the contract offers cheaper daily rates for more inmates, it won’t be cheaper for the city than not sending inmates at all.

Plus, Mesa can always back out with 60 days' written notice, with no penalty. So, why wouldn’t it take the plunge on privatization?

Some people say Mesa has a duty to stick with the county jail, because removing its inmates will only increase costs for other cities. It’s true — the county has fixed costs of running a jail, and if one city leaves, those costs must be spread among the others that remain.

How much more will that be? We don’t know yet.

In a perfect world, Mesa could give new Sheriff Paul Penzone more time to get costs under control, as he has promised. But the city needs to save now, and it can always come back later if the county offers a better rate.

Then there are those who oppose the contract purely on philosophical grounds. They say it’s immoral to allow a company to profit off incarceration, and they worry that inmates will be mistreated because of previous problems at other private prisons in Arizona.

I understand their concern. But misdemeanor inmates will be housed separately from the rest of the prison population. And anyone who stays longer than two days will be given access to adult education, anger management and other rehabilitative services (roughly half of Mesa’s misdemeanor offenders stay nine days or fewer).

It’s not like they’ll be housed in hot tents with pink underwear and green bologna. And, again, if for some reason the facilities begin to resemble those in an “Orange is the New Black” episode, the city can always cancel the contract.

Frankly, I don’t know how it makes fiscal sense for CoreCivic to drive inmates every day from Mesa to Florence. But the city adequately covered its bases (and taxpayers’ backsides) to conduct this cost-saving experiment.

It’s hard to fault officials for that. Email Allhands at joanna.allhands @arizonarepublic.com.