The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Despite the state’s growing reliance on private prisons, Department of Corrections officials still have deep concerns about the projects, and numerous issues remain that could derail them — including two companies’ insistence their cells be filled before those in state-run prisons.

If the strategy doesn’t work, Colorado faces severe problems: state prisons overflowing, inmates being left in already crowded county jails for long periods, and others released onto the streets for lack of beds.

If it does work, critics say Colorado will have adopted a justice system that doesn’t look at cutting sentences or reducing recidivism, but merely locking people up. Colorado is one of a few states increasing its investment in private prisons.

“I don’t believe they’re cheaper in general,” said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat and opponent of private prisons. “As long as you have stockholders wanting more bodies and cells, there’s no incentive for that company to reduce the number of people in prison.”

Contracts have been awarded for one new prison and two prison expansions for men, and one new prison for women. Implementation agreements must still be worked out.

Neither company building or expanding the male prisons — the bulk of the planned new work — has an impressive track record in Colorado. But the DOC, with only one staterun prison in the construction pipeline, says it has no choice to meet the immediate crisis.

“They (private-prison firms) kind of know they’ve got us over the barrel,” said Dave Schouweiler, purchasing manager for the DOC. “If we don’t use them, we’ve got to ship people out of state.”

Colorado’s prison crisis — state budget analysts estimate a shortfall of 1,428 beds by the 2007-2008 fiscal year — is the result of longer sentences and growth in the state’s court caseload, with judges sentencing about 1,000 people a year to prison.

At the same time, legislators coping with a recession and a tight budget slashed DOC funding requests for 2,061 beds from 2000 to 2004. The only new state-run prison planned is the 948-bed expansion of the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, to open in 2009.

Colorado faced a similar situation in the late 1990s, and private prison companies rode to the rescue, opening four prisons in small towns in eastern Colorado from 1996 to 1998, built on speculation the DOC would need them.

Times have changed. The bottom has fallen out of the private-prison industry nationwide because of overbuilding that left profit-generating cells empty.

“In the ’90s, it was like the roaring ’90s and then everybody was investing in private prisons,” Schouweiler said. “Now they’re much more cautious about building.”

Five companies submitted proposals for the three planned new private prisons, but three of those firms were dismissed by an evaluation committee of DOC officials because they didn’t meet their basic requirements of a privately run medium-security prison with two-person cells and locking cell doors, Schouweiler said. One company proposed a dormitory-style, pre-release facility. Another offered to build a prison and turn it over to the state to run. Another design had 16-person cells lined with bunk beds.

“I think our evaluation committee sort of reluctantly conceded those were the only two real prison designs we got,” Schouweiler said of proposals from Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group. of Boca Raton, Fla.

Several key issues still must be worked out in both projects.

Corrections Corporation of America was awarded contracts for 720-bed expansions at its prisons in Las Animas and Burlington.

At the Kit Carson Correctional Facility, the company’s original proposal called for employing just 59 guards, later revised to 64, for an expanded inmate population of 1,562, a ratio of 1 to 24.

Similarly, at the Bent County Correctional Facility, the company proposed to have 61 guards — later increased to 66 — for an expanded population of 1,457, a ratio of 1 to 22.

The officer-to-inmate ratio in the state prison system is 1 to 4.6, according to the DOC.

Alison Morgan, head of the DOC’s private prison monitoring unit, said she is confident her office and CCA can reach a consensus on staffing before an implementation agreement is signed.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen on Friday declined to elaborate on the negotiations, but he said the company feels its original proposal provided for adequate staffing.

It isn’t the first time staffing at a CCA prison in Colorado has been a concern.

In 2004, a riot broke out at the company’s Crowley County Correctional Facility, and an audit put much of the blame on low staffing levels. CCA signed new contracts with the DOC, allowing officials to issue fines for staffing deficiencies.

CCA was recently fined $103,743 for leaving 701 mandatory shifts vacant from Nov. 1 to Jan. 10 at the Kit Carson prison, Morgan said. The company was fined $23,000 for 157 unfilled shifts at the Crowley County prison and $2,651 for 18 vacancies at the Bent County prison.

Private prisons pay less than state prisons, and critics say most have high turnover.

Despite the fines, Morgan said CCA is making an effort to correct the staffing deficiencies.

“They had a problem two years ago, and they owned up to the problem and they increased staffing in the prison,” Morgan said.

For the other proposed facility for men, a new 1,500-bed prison in Ault, officials aren’t concerned about staffing but whether it will be built by winning bidder GEO.

The company was awarded a contract in 2003 to build a 500-bed pre-release, parole-revocation facility in Pueblo, but the project was held up by a location change, then a design change, and has not been built.

The DOC has dropped the facility from its bed-space plan and, according to a report of the Colorado General Assembly Joint Budget Committee, “The Department has expressed concern that it may not ever be built.”

McFadyen has doubts about the company’s ability to finance a new prison.

“If the Department of Corrections was that concerned about space, they would have forced GEO to fulfill its 2003 contract,” McFadyen said.

Morgan, though, said the company has the ability to build the prison.

“They provided a very strong bid. We awarded based on that bid, and we expect them to live up to it,” Morgan said.

Said McFadyen: “We’re choosing between a company that has a history of failing on an RFP (request for proposals) and another company that has been fined $120,000 for lack of compliance with the state. Those aren’t good choices.”

The new women’s prison is less controversial. Only two companies submitted bids, and the DOC awarded a contract to Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. to build an 832-bed prison in Hudson. The firm’s only Colorado facility is the Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center, a 160-bed adolescent facility in Cañon City.

Another point of contention: CCA and GEO demand to have first claim to every person sentenced to state prison.

It’s a condition Schouweiler said DOC officials are not comfortable granting. But the fact the companies made it a condition of their proposals — at least so far — shows how the climate has changed since the 1990s.

“To a large extent, we can’t dictate to them like we did in the ’90s,” he said. “They would like to see us in crisis when they open their doors.”

Morgan, who is negotiating the implementation agreements, declined to comment on the first-rights issue.

Said CCA spokesman Owen, “It’s normal and I think perfectly understandable we would try to reach in some way some assurances that what we bring on-line will be utilized.”

McFadyen has asked the General Assembly’s Legislative Audit Committee to look into the selection of both bids. According to the state auditor’s office, it will be discussed at the committee’s Aug. 21 meeting.

Although the state appears to save money — paying private firms $51.91 per inmate per day compared with the DOC’s daily cost of $67.73 for medium-security inmates — she sees “hidden costs” for communities and law enforcement.

Plus, McFayden worries there will be little motivation to look at reducing recidivism and cutting sentences when corporations depend on bodies in cells to make a profit.

A study released in May by The Institute on Money in State Politics found the private prison industry, in states with those facilities, spent $3.3 million in 2002-2004 supporting longer sentences and tough-oncrime candidates.

In Colorado, one of 10 states the institute examined, private prison firms and lobbyists contributed $81,525 to candidates and campaigns, and they helped to kill legislation that would have prohibited them from taking out-of-state inmates.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE PRISON COSTS
- Daily rate the state will pay private-prison operators: $51.91
- Annual rate: $18,947 per inmate
- Average daily cost to house an inmate in a medium-security state-run prison: $67.73
- Annual rate: $24,722 per inmate

COLORADO’S PRIVATE PRISON POPULATION
- June 30: 4,299 inmates, one in five Colorado Department of Corrections inmates
- DOC population: 22,012
- August 2008, projected privateprison population: 8,075, one in three DOC inmates
- Projected DOC population: 24,000