The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

About 21,000 people live in this desert town along the Gila River. Nearly 70 percent of them are doing time in one of eight prisons. Some inmates are shipped in from as far away as Hawaii and Washington state.

Starting next month, 440 more convicts will be bused in – this time from California.

“Good,” says the mayor, grinning. The more prisoners his town houses, the more Arizona tax revenue it receives based on population. “We have no problem with it at all.”

Faced with packed prisons, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is transferring inmates to out-of-state facilities for the first time. About 2,200 inmates, all volunteers, will be moved to private, medium-security prisons in four states, including the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona.

The Schwarzenegger administration recently signed three-year contracts with the nation's two biggest, publicly traded private prison operators: Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group.

The contracts' projected cost to California taxpayers: at least $155 million, or $63 per inmate, per day. That's cheaper than the average cost of imprisonment in California.

Three lawsuits have been filed to stop the transfers, so far.

Critics say the exporting of inmates underscores the governor's failure to reform the state prison system, where 173,000 convicts are crowded into 33 adult facilities designed to hold 81,000.

“Housing inmates is a government responsibility,” argues state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles. “I don't believe in incarceration for profit.”

While debate continues, California convicts will soon land in Florence, about 60 miles southeast of Phoenix.

Walking its fluorescent-lighted halls, it's unlikely anyone would confuse it with a California lockup.

For one thing, the Florence facility isn't a fixer-upper. Short of money, many California prisons have peeling paint, bad wiring and antiquated plumbing.

For another, the mood in the Florence lockup seems mellow, as prisons go. In California prison yards, there's a tension that comes, in part, from packing too many hard-core convicts into too small a space.

The Florence prison has 1,824 beds and 1,300 inmates. They spend most of their time in 7-by-14-foot cells, boxed in by concrete and razor wire.

At some California prisons, including the Donovan facility in Otay Mesa, space is so tight that hundreds of inmates sleep in gyms and former classrooms. “I think people forget how dire the situation is,” said John Dovey, director of the department's adult prisons division.

William Shinyama has been inside Florence Correctional for six years. The Hawaiian convict is allowed to have a small TV and an Xbox video-game system in his two-man cell.

He even has a cat, a black lump of fur named Anela. The prison let him keep it after an animal-behavior program at the facility closed.

Anela curls up on Shinyama's metal bunk bed.

“This place is beautiful,” he said. “Where else are you going to get an Xbox and a TV?”

Inmate Todd Raines has a different take.

The convicted murderer and former Escondido resident believes Florence's operators frequently cut corners with food and medical care to bolster the bottom line.

“That's a myth,” responded Louise Grant, a Corrections Corp. vice president. “If that were true, our customers would not do business with us.” She said her firm was contractually obligated to provide adequate medical care and nutrition, and that even the caloric intake of each inmate was regulated.

The outfit runs more than 60 correctional facilities across the nation, including a 1,200-bed federal prison in Otay Mesa. It has contracts with three federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and 20 states.

Grant said public agencies monitored each facility. “The accountability we have is typically much higher than the state puts on itself,” she said.

California prison officials say the transfers will provide some relief for a correctional system beset by problems.

Many facilities are short-staffed, due partly to the low pay for some jobs. The level of medical care is considered grossly inadequate. And 2 out of 3 paroled California convicts are in prison again within two years, one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation.

Corrections authorities say the severe crowding undercuts efforts to address these issues.

Critics, however, say California should lower its population of inmates through key reforms, instead of shipping them out of the state.

Romero said she would continue to push for more funding for rehabilitation programs, along with an easing of state parole and sentencing rules.

“I'm not talking about opening the gates and letting everybody go. Public safety is paramount,” she said. But, she added, “we've got to look at alternatives.”

Prison expert Sharon Dolovich, a UCLA law professor, agreed. “The assumption of this move is that there's nothing else California can do,” she said. “But in fact we have a lot of people incarcerated who shouldn't be incarcerated.”

Like Romero and other critics, Dolovich believes California's parole and sentencing policies are overly stringent.

Dolovich studies both private and public prisons. She says one type is not necessarily better than the other, and that both operate under financial pressures and often lack adequate oversight.

California prison officials say they plan to make frequent visits to the out-of-state lockups to ensure that each lives up to its contract.

The state will pay Corrections Corp. and GEO nearly $23,000 a year for each inmate. The average annual cost of housing an inmate in California is $34,000. That figure includes the costs of caring for tens of thousands of inmates with chronic medical and mental health problems.

Under its California contract, Corrections Corp. will house up to 1,000 inmates in four prisons: two in Oklahoma, one in Tennessee and the lockdown in Florence.

GEO will house 1,260 California inmates at a facility in Indiana. Repeated attempts to talk with GEO executives for this story were unsuccessful.

Wall Street likes the companies' prospects. Corrections Corp. has seen its stock rise more than 50 percent since the start of the year, to $46 a share last week. The price of Florida-based GEO Group's stock has more than doubled over the same period, closing at $38 Friday.

An executive with the 34,000-member state prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, says the contracts are a bad deal for taxpayers.

“They were hastily thrown together and were certainly weighted to the advantage of the privateers,” said spokesman Lance Corcoran. “(The state) just gave away the farm.”

He said, for example, that the $63-per-day rate for each inmate was high compared with what some public agencies pay private operators.

Corrections Corp. charges other agencies an average of $53 per inmate. Executives with the firm emphasize, however, that this average figure includes a wide range of facilities, including county jails with fewer operating costs.

The guards union recently filed a lawsuit over the transfers, arguing that the contracts violate state civil service rules and contracting procedures.

State officials say the agreements are legally sound. They emphasize that if California had done nothing, the prisons would have run out of room by next June.

Under the contracts, the policies and procedures at each private prison will mirror those found in California.

Told about the cat inside William Shinyama's cell in Florence, California officials said their inmates would not be allowed to have pets. There'll be no Xboxes either, they said.

Florence has been a prison hub for several decades, and is the home of one of the West's oldest penitentiaries – the Arizona State Prison.

Mayor Rankin wants outsiders to know his town isn't just a giant lockup. Merchants are working to revive a downtown historic district. Thousands of homes in planned suburbs are being built, attracting young families and Phoenix commuters.

And probably California transplants as well, Rankin said.

He complains that many Californians try to push their more liberal, free-thinking values when they move in.

The mayor, smiling, said that's why he prefers them behind razor wire.

“Give me the inmates anytime.”

CALIFORNIA PRISONS

Population: California has 33 adult prisons, housing 173,000 inmates. The prisons were designed to hold 81,000.

Capacity: The state expects to run out of room for new prisoners by June.

Budget: The corrections budget for 2006-07 is $8.75 billion. That is 8.6 percent of the state's $101 billion general fund budget.

Cost: The state spends an average of $34,000 per year to incarcerate a single adult prisoner. Medical and mental health problems may increase the cost of housing some prisoners.

Employees: The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has 56,500 workers, 34,000 of whom are represented by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.

Medical care: Alarmed by the poor level of medical care for inmates, a federal judge earlier this year appointed a receiver to overhaul the prison medical system.

SOURCES: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the state Department of Finance. Eight separate prisons – five public, three private – crowd the east side of the town, employing some 4,100 people. Arizona's death row is here, next to a desert wash. So is a federal prison for illegal immigrants. Nashville-based Corrections Corp. opened its medium-security Florence Correctional Center in 1999.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20061119-9999-1n19ariz.html