Capitalist Punishment: Ethics and Private Prisons - Springer Link

Critical Criminology 12: 133–156, 2004. Ó 2004 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands.

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CAPITALIST PUNISHMENT: ETHICS AND PRIVATE PRISONS MARTIN D. SCHWARTZ Ohio University

DANA M. NURGE San Diego State University

Abstract. One of the results of Western capitalism has been the increasing pressure for the privatization of the criminal justice system. Although there has long been private or nonprofit involvement in corrections, a newer response has been to turn entire prisons over to private enterprise, or to pay private prisons to house state or federal inmates. Progressively, then, inmates once completely devalued as social junk are being valued as commodities to be sought after. This paper attempts to discuss a series of issues around private prisons. As we can only look at several issues in one paper, we shall concentrate our attention on construction, operating costs, accountability and broader ethical questions.

I will ... concede that private prisons might provide incarceration facilities that are at least as secure, efficient, well run, and humane as existing public jails and prisons ... that might not be conceding much (Lippke 1997: 27). If nothing else, the private sector has shown that it is as equally capable of mismanaging prisons as the public sector (Austin and Coventry 1999: 59). It was only a few years ago that prisoners were talked about as ‘‘social junk’’ or ‘‘social dynamite,’’ who needed to be locked away at great financial cost, making them serious liabilities to be feared and shunned (Hallinan 2001). More and more today, however, prisoners are being turned into commodities, producers of income to be fought over and welcomed. States with excess prison capacity aggressively bid to accept the overflow of prisoners from other states (Thomas 2001), and private prisons lobby hard and long to increase the number of prisoners and increase the amount of time they serve. Of course, private prisons also lobby to increase the percentage of prisoners sent to private facilities. As

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Hallett (2002: 369) points out, although inmates were once commodified for the profitability of their labor, in today’s new market inmates have become commodities themselves valued ‘‘for their bodily ability to generate per diem payments to their prison keepers.’’ There have been extensive debates in the literature over private prisons for the past 20 years, although Americans seem mainly to be interested in costs, with little concern left over for human rights. Most of the early concerns of analysts have not come to pass, but others remain beyond consideration even with massive mismanagement, scandal and loss of life. Simply put, Americans are far behind other countries in developing and enforcing contracts that require private firms to perform adequately. Without these contracts, all other issues pale in significance.

What Are the Issues? In the past 20 years, American (both state and federal), English, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, Netherland Antilles and South African governments have sold the right to hold prisoners and at times to control discipline and punishment. This trend has been termed ‘‘privatization,’’ but that word covers a wide range of activities (Merlo 1992; Chan 1994). States have long hired private or non-profit firms to provide garbage hauling, drug counseling, food preparation and medical services, with officials generally arguing that hiring outside contractors is easier than hiring and training proficient state employees. The issue becomes more complex when outside for-profit corporations set up branches completely within prison walls. Corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft and Jansport might pay the set-up costs, the prisoners are paid regular inmate pay rates, and a state profit is guaranteed from both fees and by charging the paid inmates for room and board (Parenti 2000). Of course, there are many capable prison industries (Sexton 1995), but handing over inmates to private corporations can be easier. Further, as Lammay (1996) points out approvingly, corporate ownership of prison industry responds to pressures to move factories to countries with cheaper labor costs by providing a local labor pool that receives minimal wages and no benefits. Whatever the history, there is no question that a large number of states have increased the stakes, not only bringing in assembly lines, but allowing corporations to operate an entire prison or even to build and own the prison itself. The number of private prisons has grown dramatically in the past decade both in terms of the number of facilities and

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in the number of beds. Worldwide, there were only 3,100 private beds in 1987 (Austin and Coventry 2001), and 20,687 beds in 1992, but by late 2001 there were 142,521 beds worldwide, with close to 85% of these beds in the U.S. (Thomas 2001). This overwhelming U.S. presence may not be due to a higher willingness by Americans to privatize prisons, but rather to the American rate of incarceration, now the highest in the world (Sentencing Project 2002). For example, as part of the Kennett administration’s scheme to privatize as much of the Australian state of Victoria as possible, half of all prison beds were privatized. The capacity of private prisons throughout Australia is large enough to incarcerate 20% of the entire country’s prison and jail population. Obviously, Australians are not shy about privatizing their prisons. Yet, the raw numbers involved (less than 7,500) are ‘‘a drop in the bucket by USA standards’’ (Harding 1997: 5). Actually, even in the U.S. the capacity of private prisons is a drop in the bucket in many ways, with less than 5% of all prison inmates held in such facilities (Austin and Coventry 2001). Still, as Hallett (2002) points out, with the staggering billions of dollars being spent on corrections today, capturing even a small portion of these funds can be extremely lucrative.

The Ethics of Building New Facilities As many authors have pointed out (Clear 1994; Baldry 1996; Currie 1998), the U.S. and other countries have since 1980 been involved in an extraordinary campaign of incarceration of their populations, with much of the impetus for this incarceration binge coming from politicians interested in increasing political capital to advance their own careers (Tonry 1995; Schwartz and Israel 2000). Often people do not realize the level of what Todd Clear (1994: 40) calls ‘‘this stupendous experiment in punishment.’’ In 1970, state and federal prisons held 196,000 persons (Sentencing Project 2002). By 1980, Schwartz et al. (1980) noted that prison populations had reached an all-time record of 250,000, and cited a wild-eyed ‘‘expert’’ who claimed that some dayprison populations would reach 380,000. Only about two decades later, at the end of 2001, there were 1,962,220 men and women in federal and state prisons and local jails, with the number at 2,100,146 if one includes military prisons territorial prisons and other such facilities (Harrison and Beck 2002). Looking only at federal and state prisons, this amounts to a six-fold increase in only 30 years, one of the most spectacular social experiments in American history (Clear 1994; Sentencing Project 2002).

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This massive incarceration has come in the face of for the most part static or declining adult crime rates (Blumstein and Wallman 2000), and in a period when court commitments have remained essentially flat (up 7.5% since 1990). Much of the increase can be accounted for by a combination of a very dramatic increase in persons returned to prison for parole violation (up 54.4% since 1990) and a trend toward longer sentences. Determinate sentencing, the reduction (or elimination) of parole release, truth in sentencing statutes requiring inmates to serve a larger proportion of their sentence (e.g., 85% in the federal system and many states), reductions in ‘‘good time’’ credits, and increased use of mandatory minimum sentencing all contribute to the inmates’ longer terms (Beck 2000). The end result has been massive prison overcrowding. On occasions and in some places this creates pressure for reduced incarceration, but more often state legislatures have preferred to build new prisons. Still, the U.S. has not been able to build itself out of the politicians’ demand for more people behind bars. Despite an immense building program over many years, at the end of the year 2001 state prisons were operating above capacity. Depending on whether one counts capacity as designed by the architects or the maximum number that could possibly be squeezed in according to prison officials, state prisons were operating at between 101% and 117% of capacity, with federal prisons operating at 31% above capacity. As a whole, state and federal prisons incarcerated 71% more men and women at the end of 2001 than at 1990 (Harrison and Beck 2002). In one sense, this is a problem that is only moral, not logistic. States that wish to increase their incarceration levels simply need to spend the money to pay for new prisons. While this is certainly a widely adopted solution, many politicians have been sensitive to the conviction that the same voters who demand longer sentences are also demanding that taxes not be levied to pay for this incarceration. Thus, at the start of the new century many legislatures were demanding longer sentences, while at the same time cutting back prison budgets and promising voters ever-larger tax cuts. For example, when a combination of tax cuts and a massive budget crisis convinced Kentucky Governor Paul Patton to release inmates a few days before the end of their sentences to save money, the outcry was so loud that the program had to be dropped (Cheves 2003). Bypassing the Law: Creative Financing When put to the test, voters have indeed voted down bond issues to pay for new prisons, while threatening to defeat politicians who fail to build these prisons anyway (Chan 1994). This puts politicians in

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the difficult position of having to point out to taxpayers the difficulty of increasing services while cutting taxes. Those politicians who are not known for political courage have been eagerly seeking solutions to this dilemma. In the U.S., perhaps the most popular solution is creative financing, or ‘‘budget gimmickry’’ (Donahue 1989). For some reason this rarely shows up in the criminology literature as an ethical dilemma. For example, U.S. state constitutions (unlike the federal government) require a budget balanced at the end of each fiscal year, and many require voter approval to borrow money for major construction projects like new prisons. How can one spend more money while bypassing the required voter approval for new debt? Of course, some private prisons are built much like other prisons, through capital bonds. What if the jurisdiction does not wish to try to obtain voter approval, or in fact if the voters refuse to allow new bonds to be sold? Interestingly, the solution is not a secret, or something accomplished behind closed doors. Americans, and especially some of those most in favor of locking up law evaders, are very proud of their own willingness to evade the law. One of the most commonly argued advantages of private prisons in the U.S., although rarely phrased in this manner, is to use a common loophole to bypass constitutionally required citizen participation in decision making (Shichor 1995; Anderson 2000). If private entities can build and then lease prisons to the state, the construction costs of new prisons can be absorbed as current expenditures (rent) rather than capital construction (Robbins 1997). To meet American prejudices, this is invariably termed ‘‘cutting red tape’’ (Greene 1999). For example, Thomas (2001) cites approvingly that private firms can construct prisons faster than government bodies. However, this is often done by avoiding such annoyances as bidding for lowest prices, assuring minority contractors, receiving voter approval, paying prevailing union wages, getting legislative approval, and other things that slow down governmental bodies. Further, private firms may be insulated from political pressures from unhappy neighbors and environmental hassles (Austin and Coventry 2001). Although private prisons are touted as being cheaper, bypassing the law could have the significant by-product of costing the taxpayer significantly more in taxes (Hallett 2002). Further, it helps keep voters ignorant of the costs of policies implemented on their behalf. For example, it is estimated that California taxpayers will eventually pay $800 million extra in debt-service costs for lease-payment bonds which

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were used to fund the construction of several prisons. Voters had refused to approve general-obligation bonds (which carry significantly lower interest rates and less overall risk) for additional prison construction. Little did they know, however, that their vote would prove meaningless. As Dyer (2000: 248) notes: ‘‘Not only are California voters being made to pay for prison construction they refused to authorize at the polls, but they are having to pay much more because of their refusal.’’ Put simply, the greatest advantage of privatization is that it ‘‘allows prisons to be built without the approval of the public’’ when the state constitution absolutely requires that approval (Austin and Coventry 1999: 186). Worse than just expediency, however, is a practice found only in the U.S. A private company builds at its own expense a ‘‘spec prison’’ without any customers or contract. It builds it to any design or specification it wishes. Then, it makes it known that it can take prisoners from any location across the nation, at any classification level, for a per diem fee (Greene 1999). With no contract involved, there may be no government agency to monitor these prisons, giving them more free rein than any other private prison in the world. Richard Harding, one of the stronger voices in support of privatization, has termed American spec prisons ‘‘anathema,’’ and ‘‘the ugly face of the industry,’’ while suggesting that it would be impossible to build such prisons in other Western industrialized countries (1999: 112). Another interesting way to bypass the law comes from New Mexico, where most parties seem to agree that private prisons are costing the state less money than public prisons. However, the state Legislative Finance Committee argues that this is because a federal court decree has prevented overcrowding in state prisons. The ruling did not apply to private prisons, which were allowed to soak up the excess and ‘‘double-cell,’’ thus driving down their housing costs (Clark 2001). Thus, the state is able to brag that it has been able to find a way to bypass the federal court’s interpretation of minimal prisoner rights. Interestingly, all of these developments designed to bypass the law and ethical controls have come at a time when many politicians are finding it to their advantage to run for office on platforms of values and ethics. One would have to be extremely cynical not to find it extraordinary that the same politicians often find that they can justify for no other reason than to save money bypassing laws and constitutional requirements set up to protect ethics and values.

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Would It Matter if Private Prisons were Cheaper to Operate? One of the problems in the debate over private prisons has been highflown rhetoric on all sides. It is an article of faith of American capitalism that private enterprise is always cheaper and better run than public enterprise (Crants 1991; Benson 1999). The nature of the competition and the desire for profit provides the motivation to seek cheaper methods to deliver the product. Certainly the U.S. has seen numerous examples of the truth of this claim, ranging from Enron to WorldCom. Within the prison literature, this claim of the inherent efficiency of private enterprise has become the argument that private prisons are cheaper to operate. In fact, within the U.S. literature that seems to be just about the only justification for private prisons (Harding 1999), and it certainly is the basis behind most evaluation reports (e.g., Shicnor 1995; Archambeault and Deis 1996; General Accounting Office 1996; Logan 1996; Koch Crime Commission 1997; Kyle 1998). Of course, most such studies do not take into account the massive funds funneled to the majority of private companies in the form of economic development funds (Good Jobs First 2001). More interesting is that cost is not quite as important an argument in the rest of the world. Sarre (1998: 205), for example, exemplified the Australian point of view that ‘‘although a by-product of this process may be some worthwhile reduction in outlays, privatisation does not stand or fall simply on the expectation of it being cheaper.’’ One wonders why such a high percentage of all private businesses are economic failures if they are inherently well run. There is not the slightest reason why public employees cannot perform as well as private employees (Bottomley and James 1997). Interestingly, as more and more studies have shown that public prisons are often as cost efficient as private ones (Austin and Coventry 2001; Hallinan 2001), the battleground has begun to shift in several states. Private prisons are now being praised for providing competition, and thus being responsible for the excellent performance by public agencies (Harding 1998). In fact, some now claim that the entire benefit of private prisons might be to provide this competition (Moyle 1998; Austin and Coventry 2001). Of course, there are others who claim that the competition is providing incentive to public officials to cut corners such as providing worse food for inmates (Hallinan 2001), and this is exactly what has been worrying people. Still, if American ethics have been reduced to the question of whether private prisons are cheaper to operate, then it is useful to examine that question. Some authors insist that all private prisons both turn a profit

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and save the state at least 10–20% of the equivalent cost of running their own facilities (Moore 1998; Thomas 2001). This is disputed by Austin and Coventry (2001), who claim the figure is nearer to 1%, and that this is only achieved by providing lower pay and benefits to employees. Camp and Gaes (2002), who incidentally are strong supporters of maintaining private prisons, have conducted the best study to date showing that private prisons fall behind U.S. Bureau of Prisons facilities on a number of outcome measures. One of the problems of research in this area is that there is more political pressure to implement a policy than there is pressure to gather competent information. Shichor (1995: 229) points out that ‘‘there is no major public and government interest in spending time to devise an elaborate preprogram evaluation scheme that may delay construction and/or operation of a facility by a private company.’’ In an ideal controlled experiment, a state might build three public prisons and contract for three identical private prisons, and then randomly assign inmates. The prisons would be required to use identical accounting schemes, to allow for an accurate comparative cost comparison. No one has tried to do this yet, and researchers are therefore forced to compare differing institutions. For example, few prisoners in private institutions are in maximum, high or close security, which has led some to try to compare institutions coping with differing levels of security. Differing architecture, prevailing wage scales, institution sizes, inmate needs, and perhaps most important of all, accounting techniques have hampered comparative researchers. In other cases, researchers have been forced to draw conclusions in the face of a great deal of missing data, or in the absence of equivalent data. Still, the best studies that have been done have concluded that there is no reason to believe that private prisons can or are saving money as compared to public prisons (Sechrest and Shichor 1993; McDonald et al. 1998; Pratt and Maahs 1999; Austin and Coventry 2001). The same is true of juvenile detention, which has a longer privatization history (Baldry 1996). Another question that covers both ethics and cost deals with the data that are the most difficult to ascertain. Only a few jurisdictions have implemented monitoring or regulatory agencies that are properly staffed. If such costs were added in, would a state still be saving money (Beiser 2000)? For example, Youngstown, Ohio, an economically devastated area anxious for jobs, gave away valuable land and offered major tax breaks so that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) could build a 2,106-bed ‘‘spec prison’’ (Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (NOCC)) with little to no state or local monitoring.

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When the prison opened, it had no inmates and therefore no form of income. Very shortly its first official step was to violate its minimal contract. Conspiring with Washington D.C. officials to bypass the competitive bidding process, the NOCC was awarded a contract at inflated prices, with few compliance mechanisms, to immediately take 1,700 medium security inmates (Mobley and Geis 2001). However, Washington needed to close down Lorton Penitentiary quickly, so the high-risk inmates imprisoned there were sent to Ohio anyway, where they were reclassified as ‘‘high medium’’ (Hallinan 2001). Within 14 months of its 1997 opening, NOCC experienced a number of stabbings and assaults (two fatal), a rash of escapes, and a highly publicized escape by convicted murderers in broad daylight facilitated by understaffting (Bates 2000). Experts agreed that the cause of the CCA’s problems were understaffing, inexperienced staff, collusion to misclassify prisoners and overall a brutal atmosphere ‘‘where guards were instructed by management to engage in violent, degrading treatment of inmates ... [which] is typical of any prison, public or private, that is out of control’’ (Mobley and Geis 2001: 213). Not only was there no monitoring in this prison, and a refusal by prison officials to notify police even of felony crimes, which was part of their contract, but also when state legislators came for a personal inspection after the bad publicity they were refused admission to the facility. The legislators had never asked for a clause to allow monitoring in the contract they negotiated. Of course, there was some monitoring. The American Correctional Association gave ‘‘near perfect’’ ratings to the prison despite all the stabbings and deaths. Finally, as part of a lawsuit by the City of Youngstown, the CCA agreed to a monitor (Hallinan 2001), but by then Washington had removed its inmates and no one else would use the facility. The prison sits empty, while the local newspaper and some politicians clamor for it to be turned into a regional jail (Vindicator 2002). Interestingly, most of the growth in private prisons has come in the atmosphere of uncertainty discussed above as to whether they are in fact cheaper to operate than public prisons. As researchers become more and more sure that such cost savings are illusory, the use of private prisons has not decreased. How can that happen? Are politicians refusing to face the facts? Or are the facts irrelevant? The most likely answer is the latter. The most pressing problem in criminal justice for most American states has been the dramatic overcrowding of prisons. Under pressure to relieve overcrowding, states can either reduce the number of people locked up or build more prisons. In

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the American feeding frenzy where politicians proclaim loudly that the world’s highest incarceration rates are merely a slap on the wrist (Clear 1994), and where steadily declining crime rates call for higher incarceration rates (Currie 1998), few politicians are willing to stake their careers on a call for fewer people in prison. As Texas political writer Molly Ivins (1993) points out in her ‘‘Bubba’’ theory of crime policy, saying intelligent things about crime control seems to be a sure way in some states (like Texas) to get defeated at the next election. For most politicians, then, that leaves building more prisons. The truth is that in many states the cost of private prisons is irrelevant.

Accountability Issues One of the more important ethical issues in private prisons is assuring that private firms live up to minimal standards. Not only is this an expense that must be added into any calculus of the cost of private prisons, but it is also an essential element in dealing with a variety of ethical issues. As the Victorian (Australia) Department of Treasury and Finance recently pointed out, while competition provides a strong incentive for efficient service provision, it cannot be relied upon to protect the interests of society in the absence of a strong regulatory structure. Since the primary or sole purpose of a private prison is to maximize shareholder profit, there must be a process to assure attention to responsibility regarding inmates and taxpayers (Naylor 2003). Unfortunately, American politicians do not seem particularly anxious to provide performance monitors and guarantees, at least as compared to their counterparts in other English-speaking countries. Extreme problems like the one in Youngstown seem to be an American phenomenon. Ohio not only did not have a complex regulatory structure, but the single legislative oversight panel that looked into the massive problems at Youngstown has since been eliminated (Johnson 2001a). This is not, of course, to suggest that the problem of inadequate supervision and monitoring has been completely solved outside the U.S. (Zalar 1999). Interestingly, although it has not been a central part of the privatization debate, it would be hard to imagine a more important issue. Harding (1998: 318) presents the case thus: ... the most important single issue about privatisation remains what it has always been: namely, how to ensure full accountability and

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effective regulation, so that the private sector will not fall short of acceptable standards but rather will contribute to the improvement of the prison system as a whole. Freiberg (1999) raises the question at the interface of ethics and accountability. Is there a difference in the government interest in the expenditure of private funds and that of public funds? For example, although private firms may be legally protected from revealing many aspects of their financial dealings, should those firms that spend taxpayer money be required to make information public like their public counterparts? His argument is that questions of the operation of private prisons will be easier to answer if the information is readily available, while government secrecy stymies accountability. As an example of this, the State of Ohio, as mentioned above, came in for particular attack after the contract with the CCA to run the prison in Youngstown was revealed to provide for virtually no oversight by the state. Today, the private prisons in Ohio are required to have a monitor, but all that they examine is whether the state saves money, and there is no requirement that officials reveal anything the monitors uncover, even to state legislators (Johnson 2001b). Harding (1999) agrees with this assessment and calls for strong contracts that spell out outcomes and contract requirements, with substantial performance fee losses for a failure to provide the agreed upon services. For example, New Mexico has had one serious problem after another with its private prisons, and there has been much discussion in the state legislature about whether Wackenhut Corrections Corporation owes the state a refund (Associated Press 1999a), although little more than discussion has taken place. In England and Australia, such refunds are typically spelled out, and easily collected in many jurisdictions. As Harding points out, the best contracts are worthless without compliance mechanisms, and this is the area where U.S. contracts have been traditionally weak. New Mexico’s legislature did pass a law extending the state’s oversight responsibility over private prisons, but it was vetoed by the governor (Clark 2001). Of course, the U.S. is a complex web of numerous jurisdictions, and some are concerned about this issue. After a series of rapes and beatings in Wackenhut juvenile facilities in Louisiana, for example, the state took over two institutions (Anderson 2000). North Carolina cancelled its contracts with the CCA, and Arkansas has taken back two prisons from Wackenhut (Cheung 2002). The CCA’s web site reports by early 2004 that Alabama and Virginia are taking back facilities from the

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CCA, although they simultaneously report new contracts with Texas and Vermont. Another form of accountability comes from the informal monitoring of activists, journalists and others soliciting information about the facility. Private prison agencies need not comply with the Freedom of Information Act and typically refuse access to their records, files or even bids to state agencies (Hallett and Lee 2001). Given this lack of mandatory disclosure, private prisons truly operate behind closed doors. Joel Dyer (2000), a journalist and author, was the first to uncover the extensive abuses at a private correctional facility in Texas which was leasing its beds to the state of Colorado. Inmates were housed in an old warehouse which had been crudely converted to a prison. There was no apparent classification system to ensure the separation of violent and non-violent inmates and each makeshift cell housed 26 inmates of varying security levels. Inmates were confined in their cells, where temperatures regularly rose above 100°, for 23 hours per day. Each cell had only one toilet, which apparently became dysfunctional shortly after the inmates’ arrival. As such, inmates slept, ate and spent virtually their entire day among feces and urine. Dyer’s news articles depicting the deplorable conditions of this facility prompted an investigation. If the Colorado inmates had been housed in a private prison within Colorado, they would have been protected by a Colorado statute requiring in-state private facilities to provide equal or better conditions than state institutions (and access to the same programs). These statutes are not applicable beyond state lines, thereby providing incentive for private companies to shift inmates around from state to state in order to circumvent laws like Colorado’s that would reduce their likelihood of turning a profit (Dyer 2000). Although there was no process for Colorado to monitor the inmates it sent to Texas, an independent inspection agency assessed the Texas facility and corroborated Dyer’s findings. Colorado subsequently terminated its contract with the Texas facility. As well as bypassing any in-state monitoring, interstate trafficking of inmates poses additional problems, such as inmate classification. Proper classification of an inmate’s risk/dangerousness (and to a lesser extent his needs/problem areas) is considered essential to the effective operation of a correctional system and the safety of its inmates and staff. Private facilities are widely criticized for lacking or ignoring classification procedures, combining inmates of varying risk levels, and/or housing inmates of a higher security designation than the facility is equipped to handle. So, a first time, low risk check-bouncer who ought

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to be in a minimum or medium security facility, might be housed with a murderer or rapist who belongs in a maximum security institution. Certainly, this was cited by many critics as the cause of problems of the CCA’s prison in Youngstown. Such practices are even more likely to occur (and remain undetected) when a facility houses inmates from multiple states. The interstate shipment of inmates presents challenges for the correctional shippers and receivers to keep track of their human cargo. States which transfer inmates to private facilities elsewhere may lose track of those inmates while the out-of-state jurisdiction in which those inmates are being confined typically knows little about these non-resident inmates. For example, a CCA facility in Texas, which was supposed to serve as a detention center for illegal aliens, was instead housing 200 sex offenders from Oregon. This fact remained unknown to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice until two inmates (with violent histories of rape, robbery and assault) escaped from the prison (Dyer 2000).

Reaching a Comfort Level with our Ethics In the earlier days of the modern privatization movement, there were a variety of issues debated in the literature, although decision-makers ignored virtually all of them. Some warnings have not yet materialized, including the worries that private prison officials would turn out to be more corrupt than public ones, or that there would be state crises when companies would walk away from money-losing prisons. Many persons have long feared that powerful private companies would use their might to lobby legislatures for longer sentences or fewer parole releases in order to fill up their prisons (Merlo 1992; Chan 1994). In fact, this is exactly what has happened, except that most of this lobbying has been quiet and behind the scenes. Both the CCA and Wackenhut have been active financiers, and members of effective committees that wrote model legislation pushing for longer sentences (Biewen 2002). As members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), to which virtually every conservative state legislator in America belongs, two different CCA officials have served as co-chairs of the Criminal Justice Task Force, the powerful committee that recommends harsh sentencing laws (Cheung 2002). The financial support of private prisons for ALEC has gone on for many years, and has been widely applauded by state legislators. In other

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arenas, the CCA has bragged of its efforts to promote privatization and its use of Washington lobbyists (Donziger 1996). Some of that support includes making donations directly to candidates. The National Institute on Money in State Politics (2002) has issued a report arguing that in the southern U.S. states alone private prison companies donated $1.1 million to powerful incumbents, and were paid back immediately with legislation from which they directly profited. Hallinan (2001) argues that having lost the battle of being able to prove that private prisons are cheaper to operate, companies such as the CCA have had to donate very large amounts of money to political campaigns to win the contracts they need. Still, the ethical low point so far may be the New Mexico case of Wackenhut, which has a $20 million-a-year contract that is constantly under debate in the state senate over accusations of violations. Wackenhut dealt with this by hiring Manny Aragon, the leader of the state senate, as a paid consultant to work for Wackenhut without resigning his post as senate president pro tem (Associated Press 1999b). Cash donations to politicians are not the only form of influence peddling. Another is to subsidize or pay supposedly neutral researchers, who may then be under some pressure to come up with friendly findings. In fields like the pharmaceuticals such accusations are commonplace, but it seems rare in criminal justice. Private prisons provided a major case, however, when the University of Florida professor Charles W. Thomas was fined $20,000 by the Florida state ethics board for making millions of undisclosed dollars advising the CCA while continuing to publish articles claiming the superiority of private prisons. As Geis et al. (1999) point out, it isn’t that proof exists that the CCA influenced Thomas and his colleagues to bend the truth, but rather that superficial conflicts of interest reduce the credibility of the journal that publishes the findings and the university that sponsored the research. Of course, many scientists argue that they can separate their funding source from their ability to draw conclusions from their data (Lanza-Kaduce et al. 2000). One of the most important, and least discussed, issues in private prisons deals with the core ethical issue of whether or not the state can turn over its responsibility to the lowest bidder. To say ‘‘least discussed’’ is not necessarily to say ‘‘least often mentioned.’’ Typical of the literature might be Chan (1994), who points out that the ethical consequences of privatization are a major concern. However, she goes on to suggest that there are no problems if standards are in place for turning over this responsibility. Moyle (1999), similarly, has modified his anti-privatization stance now to argue that if the state maintains control then private

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firms can take over simple administrative tasks (like running prisons). Virtually all writers and actors on private prisons have given up dealing with the ethical issue of whether the state should be delegating punishment functions to for-profit firms. Crane (1998) for example, admits that there once was a lot of concern about the constitutionality of such delegation. This concern, he feels, went away when a ‘‘comfort level’’ was reached. While we have ended the discussion on whether the state should engage in privatization, we have not yet begun to deal with the ethical issue of how far the state can go in privatization. Some people (e.g., Benson 1999) suggest that most state functions can be hired out. Interestingly, there are few places where the state has not already turned over to private enterprise some aspect of the justice system. Private security has become an integral part of American policing, including private consulting to evaluate evidence. Certainly legal aid for the indigent is commonly accomplished by hiring private law firms. Such firms, particularly outside the U.S., have provided prosecution services. American prosecutors typically turn to private or non-profit organizations to provide victim services, and often even for pre-sentence investigation and sentence recommendations. The then-president of the American Probation and Parole Association (Paparozzi 1998: 3) characterized the field of community corrections as ‘‘aggressive government contracting for services such as offender assessments, drug testing, electronic monitoring, and halfway houses ... even some probation field service and pretrial release functions have recently been shifted to the private sector.’’ Are there more things imaginable? Most states have justified private prisons mainly on the grounds that prisons are uncontrollably overcrowded. Yet, courts in these same states are often even more heavily backlogged. Constitutionally protected rights such as an initial arraignment often takes place in an atmosphere so busy that the right is meaningless. Judge Steve Russell (2001) points out that for similar reasons civil courts allow a ‘‘rent-a-judge’’ to ‘‘hide-a-crime’’: to adjudicate civil proceedings that can have an effect on criminal cases. Can we imagine the Wackenhut Judicial Corporation being hired to help out with arraignment, and perhaps even sentencing in the misdemeanor court? There are already groups in the public policy arena advocating that private enterprise take over both prosecution and judging (Gilbert 2001). Sometimes it is worthwhile to point out the extreme to make a point: what guidelines do we maintain to decide what is ‘‘too far’’ or ‘‘too much’’? If states can assign a private firm to sentence and imprison an offender, why not allow states to just turn over prisoners to the

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Executions Corporation of America, a group of former Texas officials who have put to death a great many people in the past and have now built on speculation their own execution chamber to which they offer to import death row inmates? Why not’? Turning over to private enterprise the sentencing function of the misdemeanor courts sounds fairly extreme, but in the U.S. private firms may run judicial courts inside prisons that have a major impact on the lived experiences of inmates, from classification to prison assignment to job allocation. They can punish inmates in ways that deprive them of major amounts of freedom, or indeed can expand their sentences to deprive them of specific days of freedom (Anderson 2000). What is the difference between holding a prisoner an extra week, and sentencing a person to a week in jail as a misdemeanor offender? Perhaps, if the state contract specified only bar-qualified lawyers, private firms could take over felony and appellate courts. If the state can assign to a private firm the fight to sentence an offender, why could that firm not indeed execute the offender? What is the difference? What ethical guidelines do we have to draw the line?

Are There Lessons for the U.S. from Other Countries? Private prisons are mainly a phenomenon of the U.S., with perhaps 85% of all beds located there; the first privately run prison outside the U.S. opened in 1990 in Queensland, Australia. Among the American states, there has been a slowing down of interest in private prisons, as scandals, mismanagement and findings that such prisons do not save money have generated some political heat. However, the Bush administration has been ‘a source of salvation for the industry,’ with the U.S. federal government awarding a variety of new contracts. It is not only the Bureau of Prisons filling up empty spec prisons such as the CCA’s McRae Correctional Facility in Georgia, but the CCA has also signed five contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Worldwide, predicting the future of private prisons is a difficult task, with some new governments such as the Labour–Alliance government of New Zealand promising to return many private prison beds to public control (Nathan 2000). On the other hand, governments such as Mexico and Lesotho are considering first entries into the field, while governments in France and Israel are considering mixed public/private facilities (Nathan 2003).

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In general, countries outside the U.S. also have not been successful at finding private prisons that run more cheaply or more effectively than public prisons. Matt Robinson, New Zealand Minister of Corrections, pointed out (Nathan 2000): There has been an experiment overseas–driven by ideology–to introduce private prisons and it hasn’t worked. The ideology driven belief that ... private is better is not suited to our prisons, and this government won’t let New Zealanders become guinea pigs for an experiment here. Similarly, governments in Australia (Queensland, Victoria) are engaged in a lengthy process to study how to reverse a process and to take back some prisons. In some cases, such as several immigration centers and the Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Center in Victoria, prisons have already been returned to public control. In England, the director general of prison services has threatened to take Her Majesty’s Prison and the Young Offender Institution Ashford back into the public sector, calling them the worst prisons in England and Wales (Nathan 2003). In South Africa, the government is having difficulty paying for the private prisons, and the government has expressed some dismay that no financial savings have been realized from privatization (Nathan 2003). These are all negative lessons, showing that private prisons are no magic wand to produce lower costs and better management. There are positive lessons, however. As mentioned earlier, American jurisdictions have too often tended to simply turn over inmates to a private company simply in return for a promise to save money. The debacle at Youngstown, fueled by the extraordinary use of prisons built on speculation with no contractual oversight, may be well known, but if there is one thing American private prisons should be known for it is a lack of contractual oversight. While government may not be able to force private companies to perform well, outside the U.S. they can not only uniformly but easily refuse to pay for bad service, refuse to renew contracts, or just plain step in and take over facilities. For example, in the UK, HM Prison Parc, run by Securicor, has had payments of over £1 million withheld for a wide variety of contract failures (Nathan 2000). Further, these governments know what is happening in private prisons. In England, every private facility has a controller on site to monitor compliance with the terms of the contract. This is not a single person, but an entire staff providing 24-hour dispute resolution and compliance monitoring on each site. Ann Owens, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons,

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monitors all prisons and releases regular public reports on each of them. Scotland has a similar system (BBC 2002).

Discussion In a U.S. context where cost is the main concern, and often the only item on the table for discussion, a wide variety of other ethical issues get short shrift. As suggested above, American politicians seem to get used to compromising ethical values rather easily. Virtually all of the important authors today make the point that privatization is here to stay–that ‘‘prison privatisation is a fact of life’’ (Harding 1999: 109), or as Mays (1996: 10) eloquently puts it: ‘‘To privatize or not to privatize, is not the question’’ (author emphasis). To those who hold such views, too often the issue then becomes technical. Which form of contract is best? Can non-union, lower-paid guards provide supervision equal to that of unionized, higher paid correctional officers? Or should they be compared to the low-paid non-union correctional officers in many states and localities? Which mathematics are best for comparing private to public prisons? The list of concerns can go on for many pages. Durham warns (1989: 132) ‘‘there is an endless list of potential hazards that those wary of privatization can cite.’’ Yet, most of these lists and debates seem to ignore core values and ethics in favor of discussions of obscure possibilities and cost factors. Cost, of course, should not be the central feature in ethical discussions, although it may be relevant. Yet, ‘‘the ideological rhetoric advanced by both sides in the privatization debate has drowned out the asking of a fundamental question: are recidivism and rehabilitative outcomes any different for prisoners in public and private prisons?’’ (Culp 1998: 5). McDonald et al. (1998) point out that American performance contracts state procedural goals, rather than outcome measures. The few studies that have been done on outcomes have been so methodologically flawed that no conclusions can yet be reached on this key question. Interestingly, private companies that long ago convinced American legislators that they could do no wrong have lost some of their appeal as scandal after scandal has rocked the industry. As suggested above, cost may be the most important issue to many legislators, but scandal has the potential to stir up people who vote. Murders at the CCA facilities in Youngstown, New Mexico, and other locations have begun to concern state officials in at least several states to the point of slowing down or

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cutting back on privatization growth. Indeed, state growth has stalled since 2000, although the Bush administration seems to be interested in expanding federal use of private prisons. Worst of all, investigations seem to suggest that the cause of many of these murders, assaults and escapes is ‘‘cutting corners,’’ exactly what American proponents have long claimed would not be the case. While the attention has gone to the major contractors, the field is also flooded with a variety of smaller firms aiming at county jails and spec prisons. Smith (2003) claims that these firms are ‘‘run by hucksters, fast-talking developers, and snake-oil salesmen’’ who are ‘‘undercapitalized, inexperienced, understaffed, and are more likely to fail eventually.’’ The lesson from observing other countries is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated. Contracts without monitoring provisions are generally meaningless. Even with monitoring, there must be some form of enforcement mechanism. If we can tell what kind of country one has by looking at that country’s prisons, then the unique American penchant for selling off prisoners as commodities must stand as its own indictment. Like other commodities, Americans don’t care what happens after a sale is made. What may perhaps be sad about American politicians is to read how cheaply ethics are sold. Votes for money-losing, poorly managed, ethically bankrupt prisons can easily be had for less than the price of a good suit or cocktail dress. Hallinan (2001) and the National Institute on Money in State Politics (2002) list the pattern of campaign donations, and it seems that only a few hundred dollars could gain the support of a politician for a new lucrative prison contract. There are things that citizens can do to either campaign against private prisons or to shed light on their activities. Well-financed groups such as labor unions have commissioned studies or carried out information campaigns in such locations as Ontario and Scotland. In the U.S., student groups organized nationally when they discovered that there were close corporate, connections between the Sodexho Marriott Services, that held contracts for 900 student dining facilities, and Sodexho Alliance, a major investor in the CCA. Organized by the Prison Moratorium Project, the Not With Our Money Campaign run by college students was a boycott of dining halls that attempted to convince college officials to switch their dining contracts to other companies (Gonnerman 2000). Several American campuses ended their contracts with Sodexho, including American, Oberlin and Evergreen. Even though others with major demonstrations, such as

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Ithaca and Earlham did renew their contracts, Sodexho claims to have sold off all interests in private prisons in the U.S., although not in England (Schwartz 2001). Thus, student activists were able to influence Sodexho’s policies substantially. Still, there has to be some irony in the fact that as private prisons treat prisoners as commodities rather than human beings, the most successful campaigns by citizens involve threats to the purchase of other commodities from the same companies. Dr. Ted Strickland (1999), an Ohio member of Congress who worked in a maximum-security prison for a number of years, makes this clear: ‘‘It sickens me to think that individuals sit in corporate boardrooms talking about increasing their bottom line when the commodity they are dealing with is captive human lives.’’ Conclusion Although prisoners were once valued for the commodities they could produce, but more likely were shunned as social junk, today many prisoners are highly valued as commodities themselves; fought over for the per diem payment that they represent. Private corporations claim to be efficient and cheap, but these claims are hard to substantiate anywhere in the world. What sets private prisons apart in the U.S. is that they are virtually unmonitored. Only in America could a corporation build a prison on the hope that some state or the federal government would have extra prisoners and be willing to pay heavily to house them, but without provisions for monitoring or accountability. Only in America could states repeatedly find that they don’t know what prisoners are in their state, where they come from, what their security level is, or what provisions have been made to keep them from escaping. In America, a combination of donations to politicians and American corporate capitalism places coroporate interest in private prisons ahead of government responsibilities to taxpayers, neighbors, inmates or their families. References Anderson, G.M. (2000). Prisons for profit: Some ethical and practical problems. America November 18, 12–16. Archambeault, W.and Deis, D. (1996). Cost Effectiveness Comparisons of Private Versus Public Prisons in Louisiana. Executive Summary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. Associated Press (1999a). Private prison owes state refund, committee members say, (August 13). http://www.afscme.org/acu/ppw9903.htm.

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