The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Corrections officials say the separate deals will help stem its emergency overcrowding crisis, but union officials opposed to the transfers contend they will undermine public accountability and shift responsibility for the tough business of prison administration to profit-driven corporate boardrooms.

Scott Kernan, deputy director of the prison agency's division of adult institutions, said officials eventually hope to transfer as many as 5,000 California inmates on a voluntary basis to private facilities in other states. He said the state will force inmates onto planes for the out-of-state trips if it has to, but that he expects more than enough prisoners to volunteer for the transfers and forestall the likelihood of a lawsuit designed to stop the mandatory movements.

"I'm firmly set in my belief that it's going to catch fire, and we're going to have more inmates wanting to go than we're going to select," Kernan said.

At the Greyhound bus terminal in downtown Sacramento on Friday, Charles Thomas, who had just paroled out of the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, said most of the inmates he's spoken to are not keen on the idea of transferring out of state.

"The state needs to explain to people thoroughly what they're getting into before they sign their life away," said Thomas, 60, who was in on a 90-day parole violation stemming from an underlying petty theft-with-a-prior conviction. "They think it's going to be a piece of cake."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the prison system earlier this month as a result of an overcrowding crisis in which 173,000 inmates are packed into prison space designed for half that number. The emergency declaration followed a failure by the Legislature to take any action during a special session called over the summer by Schwarzenegger to ease the overcrowding situation.

More than 16,000 California prisoners are now sleeping in gyms and day rooms, some of them in triple-tiered bunks. Corrections Secretary Jim Tilton has warned that the state will have to stop accepting inmates next summer if it can't find more bed space in the interim.

Friday's contracts will send 1,260 medium-security inmates to the GEO Group's New Castle Correctional Facility in Indiana and 1,000 more to four CCA prisons -- the Florence Detention Center in Arizona, the North Fork and Diamondback correctional facilities in Oklahoma and the West Tennessee Detention Facility.

GEO, based in Boca Raton, Fla., will be paid $28.7 million a year under the three-year contract. CCA, with headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., will receive $22.9 million a year. The contracts average out to $63 a day per inmate -- not counting the transportation cost -- compared with the $90 average to house a prisoner every day in California.

"They've been in the business a long time, and they're successfully operating prisons throughout the country," Kernan said of GEO and CCA. "We sent staff to do a security inspection and evaluation of all of these facilities, and the response is almost uniformly that they're very well-run prisons.

"They're clean, they're not overcrowded, there are programming activities at all of the prisons, and their cultures are very safe and very positive," Kernan added.

Newspaper reports compiled on a Web site run by the Private Corrections Institute in Florida paint a different picture of the CCA prisons, however. The stories cited riots and inmate drug dealing at Diamondback, more violence and drug issues at Florence, inmate complaints over phone rates at North Fork and the unexplained death of a prisoner at West Tennessee.

Similar reports could also be found every month in California's prisons, said CCA spokeswoman Louise Gilchrist, adding that no state has ever terminated a contract with the company as a result of any of the problems.

"We know that incidents occur at any facility, but we believe that the mark of a strong correctional provider is how you respond to them," Gilchrist said. "We certainly have an excellent record of experience in meeting our customers' needs."

California Correctional Peace Officers Association spokesman Lance Corcoran said all prisons "have their share of calamity," but that the issue comes down to who should ultimately shoulder responsibility for it.

"Do you want the Legislature and the taxpayers standing behind the individuals who are charged with the deprivation of liberty of their fellow citizens, or do you want individuals who represent a corporate board of directors?" Corcoran asked.