The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

But the quiet move is raising concerns among various groups in Arizona and California.

While housing of out-of-state inmates is not new to Arizona, the issues raised - public safety, oversight and private profit - remain the same since the practice began in Arizona five years ago. Chief among the worries is that the state will have no oversight of the men because they'll be held at a private prison in Florence that has had serious problems with prison gangs in the recent past.

The convicts' destination is the Florence Correctional Center, a medium-security, private prison owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. The company has four prisons in Arizona: Florence; the Central Arizona Detention Center, also in Florence; and two in Eloy. Another is currently under construction in Eloy. The publicly traded company oversees about 70,000 inmates - men, women and juveniles - in 65 facilities in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

As at any other prison, there have been problems at Florence.

In 2001, Hawaii's Department of Public Safety reported that a gang called the United Samoan Organization had control of the Florence site. Hawaii's then-Department of Public Safety Director Ted Sakai wrote the Corrections Corporation alleging that prison officials depended on gangs to govern the facility.

Two years later, 221 Hawaiian inmates were moved from Florence to Corrections Corporation's Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Okla . Hawaiian DPS reports from 2003 and 2004 cited continued concerns of drug dealing, violence and tension among Hawaiian gang members.

Louise Grant, spokeswoman for Corrections Corporation of America, said those problems have been solved.

"Here it is, almost six years later and we continue to serve Hawaii, even more so than in the past," she said.

New staffers and policies were installed at Florence to address those concerns, Grant said, although she cited no specific example or details.

Others aren't convinced.

"Just about anybody in Arizona should be concerned about who we have here and how they're being handled," said Caroline Isaacs, program director of American Friends Service Committee of Arizona in Tucson, a Quaker group that works for social justice.

Latest transfers last month

The latest transfer began on Dec. 21, when 38 California inmates boarded a bus bound for Florence. With weekly arrivals, 560 are expected to arrive by the beginning of February, said Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Officials from the agency signed contracts worth more than $51.6 million with Corrections Corporation and The GEO Group Inc. to send their inmates to the companies' prisons across the country, beginning with the Corrections Corporation facility in Tennessee, then moving to Arizona.

Both companies have prisons in Arizona that already have been used to hold inmates from other states, including Hawaii, Washington and Alaska, as well as federal detainees.

California inmates will not be released in Arizona, Grant said, because they will be returned to California communities.

The GEO Group has 63 prisons and residential treatment facilities in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. On Dec. 12, it announced the opening of a 1,000-bed Central Arizona Correctional Facility, also in Florence, which will house medium-security sex offenders from Arizona.

Tixoc Munoz, executive president of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, said the union wasn't aware of the new arrivals. Though it won't affect members because they don't work in private prisons, Munoz said the influx will affect many other people.

"We wish this didn't happen," he said. "We've got more than 30,000 inmates in the state. You're adding more inmates to the state and that's more responsibility."

The union opposes the state use of private prison facilities, he said, though seven of Arizona's 17 prisons are private.

"We believe it is the state's responsibility to administer punishment," Munoz said.

Arizona's practice of shipping inmates to private prisons has not been without problems since it began in 2002.

Currently, 1,433 Arizona inmates are at Correction Corporation's Diamondback facility in Oklahoma. It costs $47.65 a day per inmate, said Katie Decker, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Corrections. The state also has contracts with two private prisons run by The GEO Group, Decker said.

Arizona has 5,000 more inmates than the department is budgeted for, Decker explained.

"We just don't have enough beds," she said. "You just can't put felons out on the street."

In 2004, more than 2,000 inmates were sent to two out-of-state facilities. More than half went to Diamondback in Oklahoma. Another 864 were sent to the Reeves County Detention Complex in Pecos, Texas, owned by The GEO Group.

Inmates sent to Texas went on hunger strikes and purposely fought other inmates, hoping to be returned to Arizona.

In July 2004, more than 300 Arizona inmates in Oklahoma returned after a fight involving as many as 475 prisoners, some of whom were armed with baseball bats, fire extinguishers and two-by-fours.

California overcrowding

The transfer of the California inmates is the result of the Prison Overcrowding State of Emergency Proclamation signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Oct. 4.

All 33 of California's prisons are overcrowded. There are approximately 174, 000 inmates in California, Sessa said, at least 25,000 more than the system's capacity. About 20,000 inmates are housed in gyms, day rooms "and other facilities not designed for housing," Sessa said. Fifteen hundred inmates sleep in triple-bunk beds.

The proclamation allowed California corrections officials to immediately contract for out-of-state housing outside the regular bidding process. It also allowed the governor to suspend state law that required inmates' consent for transfer, which means that after those inmates willing to leave are shipped out, others could be forcibly moved.

That could include illegal entrants, inmates paroled outside California, inmates with limited family or support systems in California and "other inmates as deemed appropriate by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary," the proclamation says.

"Right now all of our inmate transfers are voluntary," Sessa said.

Indeed, a survey found that 19,000 California inmates expressed an interest in transferring to an out-of-state prison.

The changes have faced some opposition.

The California Correctional Peace Officers' Association and the Service Employees International Union Local 1000 filed a lawsuit to prevent the transfers.

"We don't believe they have the authority to ship people out involuntarily," said Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, a Northern California-based legal advocacy group.

First for California

Schwarzenegger's proclamation marks the first time California has exported its inmates to other states to serve time.

The first group of inmates - 80 in all - was shipped out Nov. 3, flown to West Tennessee Detention Facility, a Corrections Corporation prison. The trip is the subject of a short video produced by the California corrections officials to persuade other inmates to follow suit.

Citing better weather and less crowded conditions, along with the desire for something different, the wide-eyed and smiling inmates boast of better food, spacious environs, access to educational programs, cable television and exercise equipment.

"You really feel, I wouldn't say equal, but like a human being in here," one inmate says.

There haven't been any problems with the Tennessee group, said Grant, the Corrections Corporations' spokeswoman.

"We have not had any issues whatsoever in West Tennessee," she said. "We've had a lot of positive feedback."

Specter, with the prison law group, said his office got one complaint from the Tennessee group, about dental care.

Isaacs, with the American Friends Service Committee, has monitored the private prison industry in Arizona. She said a for-profit prison can mean cutting corners at the expense of safety. Then, she said, recapturing private prison escapees inevitably involves support from local and state law enforcement agencies, which puts those officers - and the public - at risk.

On May 4, Christopher Breiland, 36, escaped from Florence West, a private prison operated by The GEO Group. He was caught nine days later, after crashing a car into another vehicle in a Phoenix police chase.

Private prisons, Isaacs said, must be a public-safety concern.

"This is only going to continue on all these fronts: out-of-state contracts with private prisons, sending our inmates out of state and taking out-of-state inmates in," she said. "It really would behoove us to take a close look at this."

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