Yesterday, the state legislature approved a compromise budget they negotiated with the Governor. 

The budget agreement would:

• Fund 500 state-run maximum security prison beds we don’t need
• Fund 1,000 private prison beds we don’t need
• Pay for these prison beds by stealing $50 million from a mortgage settlement that was intended to provide relief for victims of the foreclosure crisis
• Remove the requirement to study the quality and cost of public vs. private prisons

In his defense of her “don’t bother me with the facts” decision, spokesman Matt Benson said the Governor believes the cost comparison and quality review is, “of little utility to us.”  Our Governor has just publicly stated that she has no use for facts if the facts stand in the way of her corporate backers’ agenda.

There could be no clearer proof that the legislature is putting the interests of their private prison pals ahead of kids, victims of the housing crisis, and the 99%. 

Consider the following: 

House Speaker Andy Tobin took in $5,990 in campaign contributions from individuals or groups associated with 6 different private prison corporations in 2009-2010 alone.  Keep in mind, the maximum individual contribution in Arizona in 2010 was $410 (this year it went up to $430).  The biggest spender was clearly GEO Group, whose lobbyists made 16 contributions worth $3,860.  He also got a hefty donation (the maximum allowed) by the MTC Political Action Committee.  MTC, you may recall, was responsible for the most spectacular prison break in recent memory, resulting in a two week multistate manhunt and the deaths of two people.   

John Kavanagh, Chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee (which basically drafts the budget), is also on the take.  In the 2010 election cycle, he took in campaign donations from six different individuals associated with private prison lobbying firms, most of them representing GEO Group.  For more information, see our previous post on Kavanagh’s private prison “appropriations.” 

And then there’s our Governor, who has distinguished the state of Arizona in so many ways, including her famous “senior moment” during a televised debate, wagging her bony finger at the President of the United States, and being the puppet of the private prison industry.  As Beau Hodai reported for In These Times, the Governor’s campaign manager is Chuck Coughlin, whose consulting firm Highground lobbies for Corrections Corporation of America.  Her previous Chief of Staff was Paul Senseman, himself a lobbyist for CCA before and after his stint in the Governor’s office.  His wife is also a CCA lobbyist, and was actively lobbying for them while her husband was working for the Gov.  The Arizona Republic has reported on the gobs of cash that CCA threw at the Governor and her pet projects during the 2010 election cycle.

Once you know who’s actually running the state government, it helps to explain the completely irrational behavior of the people who are supposed to be in charge.  Why else would they choose to build prisons we don’t need instead of helping to restore funding for critical state functions that people depend on, like education, health care, and social services?

The Department of Corrections, State Auditor General, and even the Governor have admitted that our prison population is declining.  In 2010 and 2011 we saw the lowest growth rates on record, and the trend is projected to continue.  In other words, we don’t need more prisons.  But private prison corporations need more contracts in order to pay their CEO’s, keep their shareholders happy, fund their lobbyists martinis, and reward their government stooges with fat campaign contributions.

Only catch is, our teeny-tiny surplus doesn’t quite cover the $60 million price tag for more prisons.  Solution?:  Steal the money from victims of the mortgage crisis!  That’s right, the legislature is going to raid the money from the mortgage settlement and put it in the General Fund to pay for prison beds, even though the money is supposed to be used for “state foreclosure prevention programs, Attorney General Office costs and fees, and to remediate the effects of the foreclosure and housing crisis in Arizona.” 

I suppose this applies if you consider one of the “effects of the foreclosure and housing crisis” is that the lobbyists for homebuilders have less cash to spend on legislators than the private prison lobbyists.  Plus, more jobs for the prison construction firms and people who lost their homes can get ‘three hots and a cot’ in a private prison! 

See, it all makes perfect sense once you understand where their priorities truly lie.

This week The Nation features an editorial focused on the folly of private prisons in our infamous state of Arizona.  Sasha Abramsky, who has written extensively on criminal justice and prison privatization issues, exposes the hypocrisy of our legislators:  They say they want to save money and keep the public safe, but when faced with overwhelming evidence that our private prisons do neither of these things, their response is to eliminate the evidence.  Once again, Arizona is a national embarrassment and an example of wasteful and capricious government hubris.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“One might think that, faced with evidence that the state isn’t getting enough bang for its buck, Arizona legislators would rethink their commitment to putting ever more prisoners into private facilities. Instead, in a move Orwellian even by the gutter standards of Arizona politics, they’ve simply tried to bar the state from collecting the evidence. On February 27 the legislature proposed a budget bill eliminating the requirement for a cost and quality review of private prison contracts. According to the AFSC, “The move would ensure that the public would have no way of knowing whether the state’s private prisons are saving money, rehabilitating prisoners, or ensuring public safety.”

That’s right, the state legislature has just said, “We don’t care.”  They don’t care if these prisons are safe and they don’t care if they are wasting millions of dollars of your money.  BUT YOU SHOULD CARE.

Recent reports have revealed that private prisons in Arizona cost more overall than equivalent state-operated prison units.   Safety inspection data has revealed widespread safety problems, including malfunctioning cameras and alarms—the same kinds of problems that led to the escapes from Kingman in 2010.  The people of this state simply can’t afford the legislature’s willful ignorance on this issue.

Besides, why wouldn’t they want to know if private prisons are actually saving money?

Why wouldn’t they want to know if these facilities are safe?

Why wouldn’t they want to know if people are being rehabilitated?

We sincerely hope that the voters and taxpayers of Arizona will let the legislators who drafted this “Don’t Bother Me with the Facts” Budget know how they feel about it.

In an unprecedented move, the American Friends Service Committee has filed a protest with the State Procurement Office over the Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by the Department of Corrections for 2,000 private, for-profit prison beds.

The AFSC was joined by the NAACP of Maricopa County in filing the protest.

The protest letter, sent to the Department of Corrections’ Chief Procurement Officer as well as the head of the Arizona State Procurement Office, argues that the state of Arizona does not need and cannot afford more prison beds, and that the existing prison contracts violate state statutes requiring  private prisons to cost less and provide the same or better quality of service as state prisons.

 The groups cite Arizona Department of Corrections cost studies that show that some private prisons are more expensive than equivalent state units.  They also point to a host of security inspections, Auditor General Investigations, and other published data that reveal that private prisons have inferior safety standards, including faulty alarms.

The group also argues that the private, for-profit prison corporations are in violation of their contracts with Arizona.  They specifically cite Uniform Contract Terms and Conditions that require the private prisons have adequate staffing levels. 

The state has fined both Management and Training Corporation (which operates prisons in Kingman and Marana) and GEO Group (which runs Florence West, Phoenix West, and the Central Arizona Correctional Facility) for failing to fill staff vacancies quickly enough.  The state’s Biennial Comparison Review, completed in December of 2011, also showed that all the state-contracted private prisons have high staff vacancy and turnover rates. 

The current prison contract terms also specifically cite recidivism rates as an “outcome measure,” yet none of the private, for-profit prison corporations even measure recidivism. 

Caroline Isaacs, the Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Arizona office, says that the group’s research clearly shows that private prisons are not making good on the promises they made to state taxpayers.  “They do not save money, they are not safe, and they are not rehabilitating prisoners.  If those were the justifications for privatization, it’s clear this experiment has been a failure.”  She cites a 100-page report on private prisons in Arizona the group released in February. 

The groups are asking the State Procurement Office to immediately halt the prison RFP process while the SPO Administrator reviews the protest.  They then have requested that the state formally and permanently cancel the RFP and award no contracts for new private prisons.

 In the midst of a statewide controversy over private prisons, the Arizona State Legislature’s budget bill released last week eliminates the requirement for a cost and quality review of private prison contracts.  The move would ensure that the public would have no way of knowing whether the state’s private prisons are saving money, rehabilitating prisoners, or ensuring public safety.

The state recently came under fire for not complying with state statute requiring a quality comparison review of the state’s public and private prisons.  After battling a lawsuit over the issue and taking heat from the press, the Arizona Department of Corrections finally issued the first such review in December of 2011.

Cost comparison reviews, also required by statute, have been done every year since 2005 and consistently showed that overall, the state is paying more for private prisons.  A report issued in February by the American Friends Service Committee revealed that the state overpaid for private prisons by more than $10 million between 2008 and 2010.

The report also revealed widespread safety problems in private prisons, including malfunctioning cameras and alarms, holes under fences, and staff who were unable or unwilling to follow procedures.

“It is utterly shocking that when faced with overwhelming evidence of the failure of these prisons, our elected representatives chose not to address the problem, but to eliminate the evidence,” said Caroline Isaacs, Program Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Arizona office and author of the report.  “It is a disgraceful abdication of their responsibility to safeguard Arizona communities and be good stewards of our tax dollars.”

The move raises further questions about the influence of the private prison industry on Arizona’s elected officials.  Recent investigations, including the one released by AFSC last week, revealed that private prison corporations spend millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to federal and state officials.

For example, Rep. John Kavanagh, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, has accepted numerous contributions from people associated with GEO Group, which operates three prisons in Arizona and was bidding on the 5,000 bed prison RFP.  Kavanagh is also a member of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which came under fire recently for its connection to private prison corporations and its role in SB1070.   Kavanagh reported gifts from ALEC over $500 to the Secretary Of State in 2011 (the exact amount was not specified).

Stay tuned to Cell Out AZ for more dirt on campaign contributions from private prisons to the legislators deciding the budget.

Isaacs offered that this “pay to play” system is the most likely explanation of the legislature’s actions.  “They’ve just said to the people of Arizona, ‘we don’t care if you are safe and we don’t care if we waste your money.’”

Yesterday, the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that has been advocating against prison privatization in Arizona, released an extensive report reviewing the safety, quality, and cost of private prisons in Arizona—including 6 prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America that do not contract with the state.  The report, Private Prisons:  The Public’s Problem,  is the first of its kind to be completed in Arizona, and reveals widespread and persistent problems in private facilities.

The report cites data showing that the private prisons under contract with the state cost more than equivalent units operated by the Department of Corrections.  The group estimates that in 2009 and 2010, Arizona overpaid for these units by as much as $7 million. If the state adds 2,000 medium-security private beds, Arizonans could be losing over $10 million every year on private prisons.

The report also reveals that all private prisons in Arizona for which security assessment information was available had serious security flaws:

• The Arizona Auditor General found a total of 157 security failures in the 5 private prisons under contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections, including malfunctioning cameras, doors, and alarms; holes under fences; broken perimeter lights and cameras; and inefficient or outright inept security practices across the board by state and private corrections officers and managers.
• California’s Inspector General found serious security flaws and improper treatment of California inmates held in three CCA prisons in Arizona.  Inspectors found flaws with the incident alarm-response systems at the three prisons because there was no audible alarm, and two were found to have malfunctioning and out-of-focus security cameras.
• AFSC found evidence of at least 28 riots in private prisons since 2009.  The number of riots is likely underreported.  AFSC also found evidence of as many as 33 other serious disturbances involving groups of prisoners classified under “refusal to obey,” “tampering with state property,” and “obstructing an officer.”  Some of these incidents involved as many as 10, 20 and even 50 prisoners.
• There were at least 6 escapes from inside Arizona private prisons in the past 10 years

AFSC is open-sourcing the supporting data used in the report.  Both the report and the documentation are available at:  http://afsc.org/arizona-prison-report.

You can see some of the coverage from yesterday’s press conferences here:

An excellent piece by Luis Carrion on Arizona Illustrated

Another great article by Bob Ortega at the Arizona Republic

By Guest Blogger Penny Pestle, ppestle@cox.net

Years and sometimes decades after ignoring safe and cost-effective sentencing reform in states across the country, Arizona’s politicians and prosecutors are afraid…very afraid.  They fear changes they should have made a long time ago.

Last year, Judiciary chairs Rep. Farnworth and Sen. Gould out-and-out refused to allow any sentencing reform bills to be heard in their committees. It’s the legislative equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, “LA-LA, CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

And just a couple of weeks ago, Arizona criminal prosecutors published a 514-page hysterical rant about how everybody in prison in Arizona is dangerous and the system is working just fine, thank you.  Oh, and our harsh sentencing laws are responsible for the drop in crime rates.  Sure.  Right.

A little background–

Starting in the late 70s, drug offenses were criminalized like never before and prisons across the country, including Arizona, began to grow…and grow.

In the 1990s, in their infinite wisdom, criminal justice policy-makers in Arizona became even tougher on crime. The Arizona legislature implemented mandatory sentencing, requiring that judges follow specific guidelines.  They also put into place truth-in-sentencing, better called “you must serve at least 85% of your sentence, regardless of good behavior, advanced age, incurable disease or other common-sense reasons for reducing sentences.”

Not surprisingly, in the 30 years from 1980 to 2010, Arizona’s population doubled; during that same time, our prisons grew ten-fold.  Our costs to incarcerate nearly 40,000 people have increased dramatically.  This growth has  encouraged ever more rapacious private prison companies to put the pressure on politicians, whose campaigns they help fund, to support more private prisons.

Fast forward to FY 2012.
Prison costs represent 11% of Arizona’s general fund expenditures.  The Department of Corrections is the only state department to increase their budget. All this while children’s health care, K-12 education, higher education and a myriad of social programs are slashed.

The handwriting is on the wall…something’s gotta give and that something is the cost of corrections and the number of people on prison.  So, in the 2011 session, Arizona’s legislators hit on the idea of cost-shifting to the counties, by passing a law that all prisoners with less than a year will serve their time in county jails.  Only the notorious Sheriffs Arpaio of Maricopa County and Babeu of Pinal County like this idea…because it increases their power. Pretty much all other county officials hate the idea and it looks like the law will be revoked.

What can right-minded policy-makers do?  They can follow the lead of “Right on Crime”, the unlikely sentencing reform movement of conservative luminaries.  Their ranks include Grover Norquist, William Bennett, Jeb Bush and the ever-popular Newt Gingrich.  These men are simply following the lead of numerous red states that have followed the lead of progressive states who have wised up to sensible sentencing reform.

So back to why politicians and prosecutors are afraid of sentencing reform?

They are afraid to admit that highly-touted policies aren’t working.  They are afraid that constituents will think they are soft-on-crime, even though sensible reform has succeeded in conservative states and is producing documented results. They fear losing power.  Under our current structure, the prosecutors hold all the chips and call the shots.  They don’t want to give back power back to judges–the judiciary is not popular among conservative legislators and their cronies.

Hard evidence of this fear includes the massive report commissioned by APAAC, the professional association and mouthpiece for prosecutors. This report is a rehash of a shorter and equally misleading report APAAC commissioned last year which uses hundreds of pages of analyses, graphs, statistics, and trend lines to reinforce the idea that prisons hold many people who are prone to violence and that the status quo is dandy.

To paraphrase Shakespeare:  the prosecutors doth protest too much.

As for the legislature, so far it appears that  Ron Gould, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his counterpart in the State House,  Eddie Farnsworth, are assuming the same stance as last year, refusing to hear sentencing reform bills.  If they don’t like a bill, they don’t have to vote for it.  But keeping it from being heard is nothing more than cowardly political bullying.  These legislators are elected to act in the best interest of the people of Arizona, not special interest groups like prosecutors or private prison corporations.

Let’s hope that our state moves into the 21st century and its criminal justice leadership–prosecutors and legislators–wise up to what they should be doing!  A number of sentencing reform bills have been introduced in this session; we’ll be writing more about them in the future:  stay tuned.

It’s been a hot summer in Arizona, but there were a lot of private prison corporate executives whose pants were on fire over the past two weeks.  On the plus side, our crop yields will set records this year due to the amount of b.s. that we just got showered with. 

Over the past two weeks, the Arizona Dept. of Corrections (ADC) conducted public hearings on proposed private prisons in 5 Arizona towns:  Eloy, Goodyear, Winslow, San Luis/Yuma, and Coolidge.  At each hearing, the ADC gave a presentation on the bidding process, the Corporation gave a (sometimes quite lengthy) presentation on how awesome they think they are, and members of the public got 5 minutes apiece to raise concerns, ask questions, or, in many cases, beg them for jobs.

In their efforts to win a multi-million dollar contract, the corporations—CCA, GEO Group, MTC, and LaSalle—told some real whoppers.  Here are our favorites, plus the truth that they are trying to hide.

Lie # 10:  “No immigrant prisoners have died in CCA’s Eloy Detention Center.”

When asked about an ACLU investigation that revealed the Eloy Detention Center had the most inmate deaths of any detention center in the US, CCA’s talking head said it just never happened. 

But records from the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement prove that nine immigrants have died while in custody at Eloy since 2003, two more than reported at any other facility.  The deaths were only discovered because of an ACLU lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act asking for a comprehensive list of deaths in 2007. In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a list of 90 individuals who died while in custody.

Just because CCA tried to cover the deaths up doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. 

Lie # 9:  “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”

At all the hearings, the sales pitch was the same:  This prison will create umpteen construction jobs and kazillions of guard jobs.  The corporations are manipulating the financial distress of rural Arizona towns to get themselves a multi-million dollar contract.  So, what will the people of the next Arizona Prison Town get?

Well, they’ll get a few jobs, but not nearly the number they were promised.  Here’s why:

• Private prison corporations are based in other states.  They are huge companies and bring in their own architects and construction companies.  They usually have relationships with distributors, and because buying in bulk is cheaper, they will go with those companies over local ones.  They will tell you that they will “try” to use as many local vendors “as possible,” but then they will determine that those local vendors are not competitive in their pricing or cannot handle the volume and they will go with the ones that they usually use. 
• These towns are tapped out.  Every one of them already has at least one prison or a prison nearby.  Eloy has several.  Pinal County, where Eloy and Coolidge are located, has 6 CCA prisons, two entire state prison complexes (with about 5 units each), a few federal detention centers, and a county jail that also rents out space to CCA. 
• The private prisons can’t keep people in the jobs they have now.  The Arizona Republic has reported that, “This year, through the end of June, the state has withheld about $844,000 from Kingman, $54,000 from Marana (also operated by MTC) and about $6,000 from Geo Group’s Phoenix West and Florence West prisons for failing to fill vacant positions quickly enough.”

Obviously, working in a prison isn’t for everyone.  These are difficult jobs, with long hours, and stressful conditions.  One corrections officer described it as “long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.”  Not every unemployed person in this town is going to want to work in the prison.  Or they will get a job there and quit shortly after.

Oh, and here’s another interesting twist:  The Yuma Sun recently reported that Bullhead City has reached a deal with the Arizona Department of Corrections and Management and Training Corporation for inmates from the Arizona State Prison in Kingman to perform park and street maintenance work in the city.  That’s right:  Instead of creating jobs, they are tossing Bullhead City residents out of these low wage jobs and replacing them with prison labor.  How many jobs will be lost there?  How many other towns will follow suit?

Lie #8:  “The prison will bring economic development to your town.”

Decades worth of research proves that prisons are not good economic growth for towns.

• In states with at least one private prison as of 1990, prisons have been shown to reduce the number of jobs overall in a community.  You might get prison jobs, but you won’t get other kinds of jobs that pay better.
• Private prisons pay less, which means that state prisons have to compete, driving wages down for everyone.
• As mentioned previously, relatively few corrections officers live in the same town as the prison where they work, which means they spend their money somewhere else.   One study estimates that up to two-thirds of potential tax revenues and other economic benefits leave the host community in this way.
• Having a prison nearby is not a draw for other kinds of businesses, and in many cases will scare them away.  Who wants to build a housing development or school near a prison?  Many Arizona towns are cultivating tourism due to historic landmarks and buildings, natural beauty, or scenery—what happens when you plop a huge prison with hundreds of feet of razor wire down in the middle of a historic area or pristine natural landscape?

One need go no further than Florence, AZ to see the true economic impacts of being a prison town.  You can bet they heard the exact same sales pitch when those prisons were proposed.  Where is the economic boom they were promised?  Where are the stores?  The industry?  The housing developments?  If prisons are so great for local economies, why doesn’t Florence have a thriving downtown? 

The bottom line is, once you have prisons, all you will ever have is prisons.

One final note:  Several residents noted during the hearings that Arizona is in a very sorry state when the only type of economic development offered to people is from an industry that is so harmful to our communities in so many ways.  One retired firefighter at the Goodyear hearing put it this way:  “Our fire station budget was cut and many firefighters were laid off.  But we don’t go around saying, ‘we need more fires.’”

Lie #7:  “We’ve learned from our mistakes.”

You gotta hand it to them—it takes some serious moxie to tell people that, because of your company’s gross negligence resulting in two deaths, your prisons are now the safest in the state.  Especially when we know that MTC dragged its feet on fixing the problems at Kingman and only got its act together when the state stopped paying them.

A security audit of Arizona’s private prisons completed after the escapes reveals that the problems at Kingman are endemic to all private prisons in the state.  Here’s what it found:

“At the three Geo prisons – Florence West, Phoenix West and the Central Arizona Correctional Facility – Corrections Department inspectors found such issues as inmates having access to a control panel that could open emergency exits; an alarm system that didn’t ring properly when doors were opened or left ajar; and that staff didn’t carry out such basic security practices as searching commissary trucks and drivers, among many other failures.

At MTC’s Marana prison, there were broken monitors, a control-room panel that didn’t work, missing perimeter lights, missing razor wire, missing visitor passes. Marana’s swamp coolers – in August, in Arizona – weren’t working, making it hotter inside the prison buildings than outside.”

You can read the full report, obtained through a public records request by Arizona Republic reporter Bob Ortega, on the Republic website.

Not only did MTC resist making the necessary fixes to Kingman demanded by the Department of Corrections, they threatened to sue us for attempting to hold them accountable.  When ADC pulled our prisoners out after the escapes and refused to pay MTC until the security problems were fixed, MTC threatened to sue us for $10 million.  Because they have better lawyers and more money than God, we rolled over.  We paid this corporation $3 million for empty beds—beds that were empty due to their gross negligence, which resulted in two deaths. 

Clearly, this is not a corporation that “learns from its mistakes.  It’s a company that is wholly unaccountable for its mistakes. 

Lie #6:  GEO Group’s contract to run the Cook County juvenile detention center was cancelled because the state wanted to move the facilities from rural to urban areas, NOT because of the rampant abuse of children by GEO’s guards.

Baloney.  The New York Times reported that “Juvenile detainees as young as 13 years old slept on filthy mats in dormitories with broken, overflowing toilets and feces smeared on the walls. Denied outside recreation for weeks at a time, they ate bug-infested food, did school work that consisted of little more than crossword puzzles and defecated in bags.”

In response, Texas “has transferred the 197 offenders in Bronte to other institutions, fired seven monitoring officials and canceled an $8 million contract with the GEO Corporation, the prison company in Boca Raton, Fla., that managed the center. The state has also opened a criminal investigation and a review of the adult prisons run by GEO.” 

Lie #5:  “Our security system is state-of-the-art”

I would bet a large sum of money that this exact same pitch was made to the people of Kingman when that prison was built.  They might have fancy technology, but does it work?  And if it stops working, will they fix it?  See the security audit referenced under Lie #5—broken monitors, control-room panels that don’t work, alarms that don’t ring properly, malfunctioning security cameras.  These problems were found in all our private prisons.

Technology is only as good as the people using it.  We consistently hear after a riot or escape that a for-profit prison was having “staffing issues.”  That pay was low, there was a lack of training, and the guards were inexperienced.  Clearly, ADC has gotten wise and is requiring contractors to provide the same training as the state—it’s written into the RFP.  But that doesn’t address the turnover problem.  Those folks might get trained, but they won’t stick around.  That means that a large percentage of the staff is inexperienced and unlikely to know how to handle a dangerous situation.  One report stated that 80% of the guards at Kingman were recent hires.

At Kingman, the guards were propping those state-of-the-art security doors open with rocks.  They ignored those high-tech alarms when they went off.  The ADC monitor was either asleep at the switch or being blown off by Central office.  As they say, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Lie #4:  “The town is not taking any risks in the financing scheme for the prison”

Prison construction for private facilities is almost always financed through lease revenue bonds.  They generally create an “Industrial Development Authority” or “Public Facilities Corporation,” which is essentially a paper tiger created through the city or county.  The reason they fund through this mechanism is because they don’t want to take the risk, carry the paper, nor pay the interest. 

When industrial revenue bonds are issued, the public is often told that neither the local government nor the taxpayers will be obligated or negatively affected in any way if the project fails.  While it’s true that revenue bonds are not a general obligation of the issuer, it is not true that governments and taxpayers will be unaffected by the risks of the project. 

The debt is paid off with the money received as per-diem payments for each inmate housed.  This looks great on paper, but what happens when there are no inmates?

The savvy businessperson approaches any financing project asking “where is the market?”  In this case, the financing for these prisons is dependent on a guaranteed occupancy of state prisoners.  Yet the Arizona Auditor General reports that our prison population grew by only 65 prisoners in 2010.  And there’s a movement afoot in the state legislature to reduce our prison population as 25+other states have done through sensible reforms to criminal sentencing laws favoring cheaper alternatives like probation, drug treatment, and house arrest.

If there’s no market, then these projects are doomed to fail.  And what will happen to the town then?  What if the corporation gets a better offer somewhere else and decides to pull out of the contract?  What if Arizona’s prison population goes down?

Don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s what the Director of the Oklahoma DOC said after Arizona pulled its inmates out of a private prison there:  He said the private prison industry is a speculative market.  “It is not immune to recession and trends in sentencing and crime,” Jones said. “A lot of states have gone back and applied research to their sentencing practices, which results in sentences that are more evidence-based, and that obviously affects a market that relies upon incarceration.”

There are numerous cautionary examples of towns facing default struggling to pay the debt on an empty prison:  Hardin, MT is one of the most notable.  The town there got so desperate that they actually asked the state to send them sex offenders and lobbied the Obama administration to send Guantanamo detainees.  A few weeks ago, the town of Littlefield, TX had to hold a public auction to sell a prison there so that they could pay the debt on the facility after GEO group cancelled its contract and left the town holding the bag. 

Even if the town isn’t directly responsible for paying the debt on the prison, a default on the bond can affect the town’s credit rating (kinda like S&P just did to the United States).  That can make it difficult for the town to borrow money for other needed projects like new schools or a hospital.  Some towns have taken desperate measures to try to pay the debt on a prison in an effort to avoid default, including raising taxes and cutting other critical city budgets.  A bond default can also make a city the target of costly litigation, further draining the town’s coffers. 

Lie #3:  “It’s impossible to measure recidivism from our prisons, because the prisoners may be housed in several different facilities during their incarceration.”—Terry Stewart, former Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections and now consultant for MTC

We asked every one of the companies what their recidivism rate was, and none of them had an answer.  Isn’t that convenient?  These companies can make claims about how they supposedly are “changing lives” and rehabilitating people, and they don’t even have to prove it. 

Probation departments, social service providers and re-entry programs all measure recidivism.  They don’t say, “well, this guy is also getting services at the VA and the food bank, so there’s no way to measure the impact of our programs.” 

Let’s face it–these corporations know that their recidivism rate won’t be any better than the state’s and probably worse. 

What’s more, the Arizona Department of Corrections has all this data, they just won’t go to the trouble to analyze it.  They could easily do a comparison between state prisoners who have been housed in private prisons at any point in their incarceration, and those who have only been in state facilities. 

Lie #2:  “What lawsuits?”

When directly asked whether the company had settled lawsuits over abusive conditions in its juvenile prisons in Michigan and Louisiana, GEO Group representatives hemmed and hawed and refused to answer the question.  We consider this the same as lying.

As reported in the Dallas Morning News, GEO not only faced lawsuits over bad conditions, but they actually lost contracts due to their abuses. 

The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2000, when it was known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., alleging that juveniles at the company’s Louisiana facility were subjected to excessive abuse and neglect. Wackenhut agreed to a settlement that provided for sweeping changes to Louisiana’s juvenile justice system and required the company to move all juveniles from its facility. The former security chief pleaded guilty in 2001 to beating a 17-year-old handcuffed inmate with a mop handle. In October 2005, Michigan closed the state’s private youth prison run by GEO after an advocacy group sued the prison over inadequate inmate care. 

And, rather than accepting responsibility for its actions, the company turned around and sued the state of Michigan for wrongful termination of contract.  How’s that for being a “good corporate citizen”?     

And the #1 Lie told at the Arizona Hearings:  “I’m accountable to you”—George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group

Waaah! Ha! Ha!  Good one, George!  About 30 seconds after uttering this whopper, Zoley proceeded to tell the crowd that GEO does not even bother to measure recidivism and then refused to disclose how much money he makes.  Accountability, indeed.

Fortunately, Frank Smith of Private Corrections Working Group was in attendance and informed the crowd that Zoley made $16 million last year.  Zoley’s pay, he pointed out, is a matter of public record.  As a follow up, Frank provided us with the exact figures.  Zoley’s salary, per companypay.com, was $3,825,433.  He made $23 million in stock trades in the last 18 months. 

Just a note to the boys at GEO corporate—don’t send Zoley to these things.  He creeps people out.

The Arizona Department of Corrections has given a green light to four private, for-profit correctional management corporations for the construction and management of an additional 5,000 state prison beds.

The Department of Corrections will be holding public hearings in each of the towns under consideration for a new prison or prisons.  The public is encouraged to attend and voice their concerns about having a private prison as a neighbor. 

Here is the schedule of the hearings:

1.   Eloy:  Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has proposed two prisons for Eloy—1,500 beds and 3,000 beds. 

The Eloy public hearing will be held Tuesday, August 9^th, 6-8pm at the Curiel Annex School, 304 West Alsdorf Rd., Eloy. 

2.   Goodyear:  GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) has proposed a prison that could be anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 beds. 

The Goodyear public hearing will be held Wednesday, August 10^th, 6-8 pm at the Desert Edge High School Auditorium, 15778 West Yuma Rd., Goodyear.

3.   Winslow:  LaSalle/Southwest Corrections has proposed a 1,000-bed prison for Winslow. 

The Winslow public hearing will be held Thursday, August 11^th, 6-8pm at the Winslow High School Performing Arts Center, 600 E. Cherry St., Winslow.

4.   San Luis (Yuma):  There are two proposed prisons for Yuma.  Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has proposed to build a 3,000-bed prison and GEO Group seeks to build one with 2,000-3,000 beds. 

The San Luis public hearing  for both proposed prisons will be held Tuesday, August 16^th, 6-10pm at the San Luis City Council Chambers, 1090 East Union St., San Luis.

5.   Coolidge:  Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has proposed a prison of 3,000 or 5,000 beds. 

The Coolidge public hearing will be held Thursday, August 18^th, 6-8pm at the Coolidge City Council Chambers, 911 S. Arizona Blvd., Coolidge.

This will be the one and only opportunity that the public will have to give input on these proposed prisons.  Thus far, the only publicity for them has been a statutorily-required posting in the “legal notices” section of the local papers. 

If you know anyone who lives in these communities, please encourage them to attend the hearings.  AFSC will be organizing carpools from Tucson.  Please contact us at:  cisaacs@afsc.org.

Much has been made of Governor Brewer’s intimate ties to Corrections Corporation of America.  Her Chief of Staff, Paul Senseman, is a former CCA lobbyist, and his wife is currently a lobbyist for the company.  Brewer’s campaign manager and senior policy advisor, Chuck Coughlin, runs a consulting firm that also lobbies for CCA in Arizona.  Brewer accepted a total of $60,000 in contributions from people associated with CCA for her campaign and the tax increase initiative that she was pushing last year.  The scandal made waves after the passage of SB1070, raising questions about CCA’s role in drafting legislation that would potentially provide the company with millions more in contracts for immigrant detention facilities in Arizona. 

But Brewer is hardly the only powerful politician in Arizona with ties to this influential industry.  A Cell-Out Arizona investigation has revealed that John Kavanagh (R-8), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has accepted numerous campaign contributions from lobbyists and others associated with Geo Group, the nation’s second largest private prison company and one of the bidders for a contract to build and manage 5,000 new prison beds in Arizona. 

Now we know why Kavanagh is such a staunch supporter of private prisons.  He appeared last week on Phoenix Channel 8’s public affairs program, Horizon, debating the issue with Rep. Cecil Ash.  

In the 2010 election cycle, Kavanagh accepted at least 6 donations from lobbyists associated with Geo Group.  According to Beau Hodai’s investigation for In These Times,

“Geo Group employs consulting firm Public Policy Partners…While Public Policy Partners (PPP), an Arizona-based firm, has more than 30 Arizona clients, it only has two clients at the federal level: Geo Group (based in Florida) and Ron Sachs Communications, a Florida-based public-relations firm that, promotes prison privatization. PPP, as a firm, also appears to be an advocate for expanded use of private prisons. Federal lobbying records show PPP owner, John Kaites, lobbying on behalf of the firm on issues of “private correctional detention management.” 

Kavanagh’s campaign finance reports show that he accepted money from John Kaites as well as Ann Peralta Kaites, John’s lovely wife.  He received his-and-hers matching donations from another husband and wife team, Ken and Laurie Quartermain.  Ken is a lobbyist for Public Policy Partners.  Several other donations came from lobbyists with PPP.

It’s a shrewd move for Geo Group.  Since CCA has bought the Governor’s office, the best way to get those lucrative contracts is to buy off the guy in charge of releasing the money for them—the Chair of Appropriations and outgoing Chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

The Arizona Department of Corrections has given a green light to four private, for-profit correctional management corporations for the construction and management of an additional 5,000 state prison beds.

The American Friends Service Committee condemns this action as unnecessary and deeply irresponsible given the state’s economic crisis and the dismal safety records of all four of the corporations involved.

Arizona’s Auditor General estimates this expansion will cost us over $640 million by 2017.  Yet our prison population only grew by only 65 inmates in 2010.

This year, our corrections budget is over $1 billion, consuming 11% of the state general fund.  The Department of Corrections was the only state agency whose budget saw an increase this year.

The New York Times reported recently that data from Arizona and elsewhere show that private prisons do not save money, even though they often selectively house only the cheapest prisoners.

Even after the horrific escapes from a private prison in Kingman last summer, the state Department of Corrections has yet to complete a full comparison of the safety, effectiveness, and security of all its private prisons, despite the fact that such a review is required by Arizona Revised Statute 41-1609.01.

But even a cursory review reveals that each of the competing corporations have histories of mismanagement, prisoner abuse and neglect, escapes, riots, staff misconduct, and other scandals.  Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) found a significantly higher rate of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in private prisons (66% more) than in public prisons.  Inmate-on-staff assaults were 49% higher in the for-profits.  Consider the following:

• GEO Group has had at least 27 escapes in the last 7 years
• In addition to the infamous Kingman escapes, Management and Training Corporation in two separate instances has been ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor to repay a total of more than $650,000 in back wages to officers from whom it withheld overtime pay in Texas and four other states

• CCA’s Saguaro Correctional Center here in Arizona has been plagued by violence, including an incident in which a prisoner strangled his cellmate while the prison was in lockdown in June 2010.  That same year, a prison employee suffered a broken nose and cheekbones as well as eye socket damage during a 30-inmate riot over an Xbox.  Saguaro was also the site of the stabbing death by two inmates who now face the death penalty.
• La Salle has had eight escapes in the past six years

These and other problems were revealed by Robert Ortega in a recent series of articles in the Arizona Republic.  Ortega submitted public records requests to the Department of Corrections for the results of security reviews of Arizona’s public and private prisons after the Kingman escapes.  The results are deeply disturbing–major security flaws were found in all the state’s prisons.

In these difficult economic times, when the Governor and Legislature are making devastating cuts to health care, education, and social services, it is absolutely outrageous that we would waste scarce tax dollars on private prisons that generate no savings and are not keeping the public safe.