March 27, 2006

Dear Editor:

Mr. Frank Smith, in his 3/24 article "Keep private prisons out of Kansas," seems to believe that using inflammatory language and hyperbole to describe public-private correctional partnerships will be enough to convince Kansans that private prisons are not an option.

The Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations disagrees with Mr. Smith and suggests that Kansans instead rely on the facts. We offer the following for consideration.

• Our trade association does not lobby for increased penalties for crime. That is a matter best left to the legislature and the people.
• The Allegheny Institute found that Delaware County, Pennsylvania, saved more than $64 million over seven years by using a private operator to build and manage its county prison. They also found inmate-on-inmate violence was down, and that inmate satisfaction with the food service was up. The jail was rated "excellent" by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
• A study funded by the U.S Department of Justice, of the privately-managed Taft Correctional Institution, found operating costs 6-10% less than the cost of government operation at comparable facilities.
• Two Vanderbilt University professors found that having at least 20% of a state's prison beds managed by private contractors slows the rate of increase in the state's cost to operate the other 80% by almost 10% over five years.

Our association believes that Senate Majority Leader Schmidt is on that right track and that if Kansas needs more low- or medium-security beds, public-private correctional partnerships should be an available option.

Sincerely,
 

 
Paul Doucette
Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations
www.apcto.org

BYLINE: FRANK SMITH

With an appalling display of lobbyist strength, special interest legislation meant to solely enrich the out-of-state for-profit prison industry was recently forced through a Kansas House committee. Then Wednesday, a bill authorizing privately owned and operated prisons cleared the full Senate.

The ostensible rationale for bringing nonliving wages to Kansas corrections is alleged taxpayer savings. But repeated legitimate research fails to demonstrate any such thrift. And there's no guarantee the proposed private prisons would ever hold a single Kansas inmate.

For-profit operator GEO Group enlisted economically depressed Woodson County in eastern Kansas to strengthen its ploy to enable proliferation of its "Rent-a-Pens." Studies conducted by professors from five universities and an independent think tank, however, conclusively demonstrate that even public prisons, where wages are sometimes twice as high, do not improve faltering rural economies. Prisons dissuade safer and better-paying industries from locating in host counties. No economic feasibility assessment has ever been done in Woodson County, which simply couldn't recruit sufficient low-paid employees.

A survey comparing similar-sized populations of a public prison system with national for-profits indicated the privates had 30 times as many escapes. Liability damage language has rarely protected any hosting state.

And might for-profits bring corruption? Prosecutors accused former Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie of taking $284,000 to privatize his jail.

To test the efficacy of the services provided, look no further than the GEO Group's Jena, La., prison and the Cornell Companies' New Morgan Academy in Morgantown, Pa. Both have been closed for years after horrendous abuse of scores of juveniles. Management and Training Corp. closed its prison in Eagle Mountain, Calif., after rioting and murders.

I've visited Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona following such riots. It took law enforcement from four states to quell the previous riot at the Crowley County, Colo., prison.