Supervisors to Consider Privately Run Jails

Searching for new ways to cut the costs of local jails, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday took preliminary steps toward creating a privately run minimum-security detention facility.

With proponents arguing that the “privatization” of jails could save the county money, even as opponents warned that those savings might come at the expense of security risks, the supervisors voted unanimously to examine the legal and financial feasibility of setting up a local pilot project in which the day-to-day management of a local jail would be turned over to a private company. The purpose of such a project, county officials said, would be to determine whether the private sector can operate jails more efficiently than government.

Now being used on a limited basis in other places, privately run jails represent a radical departure from the centuries-old axiom that the enforcement of society’s laws and the punishment of violators should be carried out by government employees, with criminals traditionally being housed in jails built, staffed and operated by government.

Innovative Solution?

But the supervisors, pointedly emphasizing that they were determined not to have their options limited by hidebound tradition--or by the strong opposition of Sheriff John Duffy--said that privatization may be the kind of innovative approach needed to help solve the county’s longstanding jail overcrowding crisis.

“I’m not willing to throw anything out,” Supervisor Susan Golding said in pressing for a possible pilot project. “On most occasions, when you try to make a real change . . . there will be resistance to that change and cries that you’ll wreck the whole system. We have an obligation to turn over every leaf . . . to see what might work.”

In a related development, the county grand jury on Tuesday proposed that a former Navy building in Balboa Park--a structure now owned by the city--be used as a temporary detention facility to alleviate the crowding in county jails, where the average inmate population in recent months has been roughly double the jails’ official capacities of 1,700.

City officials, however, gave the proposal a chilly reception. Dismissing the plan as impractical, Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s press secretary, Paul Downey, said: “The short answer is I don’t think the council’s going to take the suggestion seriously.”

Tuesday’s debate on the pros and cons of privatization was only a preliminary move in that direction, because the county currently does not have the legal authority to contract with private firms for the overall operation of jails or honor camps. Indeed, from one perspective, Tuesday’s board action represented little more than a decision to further study an existing study on something that the county cannot legally do now but possibly might want to do in the future.

Way of the Future?

However, the supervisors’ comments on Tuesday made it clear that, assuming that the state Legislature grants the necessary legal permission, jails run by private firms, whether in whole or part, could eventually become a major component of the county’s future detention network--at least for minimum-security facilities such as honor camps. Even privatization supporters expressed skepticism about the feasibility and wisdom of allowing private firms to operate maximum-security jails.

“It’s very rare that a monopoly in the long run is the most cost-effective way of providing a service, inside or outside of the private sector,” Supervisor Brian Bilbray said. “Human nature being what it is, competition makes us strive to be better.” The prospect of privately run jails, Bilbray added, could act as a “sparring partner . . . to make (government) excel.”

No timetable for the possible experimental privately run jail was specified, but several county officials suggested that the needed legislative approval was unlikely until at least next year.

During Tuesday’s debate, county administrators and several national experts on the subject told the supervisors that privatization of jails could be applied on three levels, including:

- The use of inmate labor to perform work for private companies, thereby giving prisoners more “real world” experience as well as making prison industries more economically viable. In Minnesota, for example, prisoners manufacture disc drives for a computer firm, while in Arizona, 30 inmates in a women’s detention facility make nationwide reservations for the Best Western hotel chain on computers installed by the company.

Most such work, however, is performed in state institutions where inmates are incarcerated for relatively long periods. With the average stay in the local county jails only 38 days, that approach may have limited application here, Rich Robinson, director of the county’s Special Projects Office, told the supervisors.

- The financing and building of government-run jails by private companies, which could substantially expedite construction in comparison to the normal public-bid process. The City of San Diego’s new police headquarters was built using that approach, and the county is following the same method to construct a new jail in the East Mesa area.

- The actual management and operation of jails by private firms, the most sweeping and controversial application of the privatization concept.

In a report to the supervisors, Robinson noted that officials from five counties across the nation that have privately run jails or honor camps are generally pleased with the results, which have included reduced public costs and increased efficiency of the facilities. The per day costs at the facilities--in Florida, New Mexico, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Tennessee--range from $21 to $40, compared to the $38 cost in San Diego jails. However, Robinson cautioned that regional wage differences and other factors could skew the cost comparisons.

Philosophic Question

The major objection to allowing private firms to operate jails, however, stems from the philosophic question of whether a government legally could--or morally should--delegate such an important public function to the private sector.

“Successfully operating jails is not simply a matter of who can do it the cheapest,” Assistant Sheriff Ken Wigginton told the supervisors.

Sheriff John Duffy, who made a video appearance before the board in a tape dealing with privatization, added that, from his perspective, the notion of having inmates jailed in privately run facilities makes no more sense than allowing private individuals to take the place of courts in trying and sentencing accused criminals. (While insisting that his department maintain overall control of jails, Duffy has said previously that he would not be opposed to possibly contracting out jail support services, such as food preparation and laundry, to private firms.)

Opponents also argued Tuesday that private firms might cut security corners--reducing the number of guards, for example--in an attempt to increase profits, and questioned how the companies’ performance could be monitored to ensure both that prisoners’ rights are protected and that public safety concerns are addressed.

With the privatization concept being relatively new--most of the private facilities elsewhere have been in operation for only several years--the lack of a lengthy track record generates other concerns, among them, what would happen if a company operating a jail went bankrupt?

“Governments don’t go broke, but private companies do go broke,” Duffy noted in the videotape. If that were to happen, the sheriff added, the county could face major logistical problems and substantial start-up costs to take over a privately run jail.

Concerns Called Solvable

Several supervisors and other proponents, however, characterized those concerns as solvable ones. The county could ensure that no security shortcuts were taken in private jails by spelling out specific standards in the contract. Similarly, county law-enforcement personnel could monitor the private staff’s performance, they said.

Much of the Sheriff’s Department opposition to jail privatization, Supervisor George Bailey suggested, may simply be the result of Duffy’s natural disinclination to see part of his “kingdom . . . torn down.”

“But what we’re into now is too complicated to look strictly at (who’s going to be) the king of the mountain,” Bailey concluded.

Meanwhile, the grand jury’s suggestion that the county jails’ overcrowding problem could be eased temporarily by housing prisoners in the former Navy Hospital buildings in Balboa Park appears unlikely to receive serious attention from the city. The city gained ownership of that and other buildings from the Navy as part of a land-swap deal related to construction of a new Naval Hospital in Florida Canyon in the early 1980s.

The city’s current plans call for the structure--Building 36, now being used as a psychiatric ward--to be razed along with a number of other nearby buildings, with the area then being returned to its natural state. And the grand jury’s suggestion, mayoral press secretary Downey said, is unlikely to change those plans.

“At the time of the land swap, the people made it clear that they wanted this land to become public park land,” Downey said. “People certainly don’t want jails in the middle of Balboa Park. While some people might want something else done with that land, a jail isn’t one of those things.”