January 4, 2006

Dear Editor:

In “Colorado’s prison space to run out this year”(1/4/06), Ann Imse writes about the increasing overcrowding in Colorado’s prisons. Private prisons can be a reasonable and cost-effective part of the solution. Let’s look at the facts:

• Overcrowded prisons breed inmate-on-inmate violence and afford very little opportunity for effective treatment, education, and rehabilitation of the inmates.
• Failure to provide treatment services means that prisons become on-the-job training for criminals, which leads to the problem of high recidivism rates.
• Criminal behavior is costly to our courts, our government and, most importantly, to the victims of crime

The members of the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations (APCTO) suggest that public-private correctional partnerships can help solve many problems. Such partnerships:

• Construct prison beds faster, sometimes as little as 12-15 months, and about 10-25% cheaper than public correctional services;
• Have operating costs that range from 6% to 12% lower than public correctional services;
• Provide a new source of capital funds so that state resources can be dedicated to schools and other public needs;
• Provide inmate services that are every bit as good or better than those provided by government operation; and
• Serve to reduce the operating costs of the remaining public prisons in the same state, according to a Vanderbilt University study.

Colorado already makes use of private prisons. APCTO urges the Governor and the state legislature to look to public-private corrections partnerships to avoid the dire consequences of prison overcrowding.

Sincerely,
 

 
Executive Director
Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations
www.apcto.org

Colorado's prison space to run out this year
Inmate count rising, lawmakers told

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
January 4, 2006

Colorado has already run out of prison space for its most dangerous inmates and will run out of room for any new prisoners later this year.

That dire warning came in a briefing about the Department of Corrections to the Joint Budget Committee by its staff Tuesday.

"The inmate population is continuing to grow, and we don't have a place to put them," JBC analyst Karl Spiecker said.

The dilemma was confirmed after the hearing by Gary Golder, of the state Department of Corrections. Golder blamed the state's tight budgets of recent years, which caused the legislature to cut planned expansions at three state prisons.

The prison population is at 20,000 and projected to grow by up to 7,000 in the next five years, Spiecker told the committee.

"We're incarcerating a larger percentage of the Colorado population each year," he said.

The state also is keeping them behind bars longer under strict sentencing laws, he said.

Already, the DOC is violating state law by housing 70 of its highest-security prisoners in private prisons, Spiecker said. Private prisons have 25 percent fewer guards than state prisons, he added.

By June, Spiecker expects the state to be short 400 beds for prisoners requiring either high security, or solitary confinement because they were violent while behind bars.

In addition, he projected that the state will run out of room for women prisoners by June and regular male prisoners as early as November.

All four private prisons for men in the state are already full of Colorado inmates, he added. The one private prison for women will be soon.

And Spiecker could offer the shocked legislators no assurance that the Corrections Department has a realistic plan.

"They are relying on private prisons that do not exist," he said. The department has put out a request to the private prison industry for 3,000 new beds in the next three years - but it can easily take two years to build a new private prison, he said.

To handle the crunch, the DOC plans to double-bunk 500 prisoners in the coming year.

Colorado also could ship inmates to private prisons out of state, but it has pulled back all of its prisoners from such facilities due to serious problems. Most recently, Colorado brought 121 of its most dangerous prisoners home from Mississippi after they were involved in two riots in an under-staffed private facility there.

A 2005 state audit found that Colorado had sent leaders of prison gangs involved in six disturbances in Colorado facilities to the Mississippi lock-up. Guards there sparked a riot by opening the cell doors for all the Colorado inmates at once. Rival gangs immediately attacked each other.

Spiecker's colleague, budget staff director John Ziegler, told legislators they have no choice but to find the money to house inmates.

"The state can't just say, 'We're not taking any more inmates.' They just back up in county jails," awaiting transfer, and the state must pay the bill, he explained.

But Denver's jail is already jammed to overflowing. Denver and Jefferson County both require the state to remove its prisoners within three days, Ziegler said.

Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Mesa County, did some rough math, multiplying the inmate population growing at more than 1,000 a year by the cost of new prison construction at $100,000 per bed for maximum security.

"That's $100 million a year in capital construction, per year, as far out as we can see," he said, appalled.

Spiecker said that low-security prisons may cost slightly less, but then the state must add to the budget $20,000 to $30,000 per year, per inmate for operating costs.

"It's going to eat up our entire budget," Buescher said.

"We can't continue at this pace," Spiecker said.

At the back of his 100-page briefing packet, Spiecker pointed out some of the factors driving the phenomenal growth in inmate population. The obvious reasons, including increased criminality, were joined by legislation meant to crack down on crime.

One is a habitual-offender law that triples the maximum sentence on a third felony. The same law doles out life sentences to habitual offenders who commit a violent crime.

Spiecker also suggested increasing community corrections funding. That's because 297 inmates are backed up in the prisons, ready for release to community corrections, but awaiting space.

The state also is paying for another 290 state prisoners who have been approved for diversion from prisons to community corrections, but they are stuck in jails for lack of space, he said.
imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438
Copyright 2006, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.