Private Prisons May Be Nicer but Cost Savings Are in Doubt

For the last 10 years, states and cities have been experimenting with private prisons to see if they might ease the growing pressures of cost and overcrowding.

The trend is growing, but, so far, the results are inconclusive, experts say. There is no clear evidence that private companies can run prisons with less cost, although there are some indications that they may provide better services and programs.

BACKGROUND: The idea was tried and abandoned in the 19th Century after owners of Southern plantations and Northern factories made virtual slaves of prisoners put in their charge. “There were incredible abuses,” said Paul Brounstein, a private consultant on crime. “You’d go to jail for a misdemeanor and you’d end up working in the fields for nothing.”

But local and state officials began to reconsider the idea in the 1980s, when being squeezed between a wave of court orders to eliminate prison overcrowding and a lack of resources.

Private companies “don’t have to wait for bond issues. They don’t have to vie with competing priorities in the state government,” Brounstein said.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service led the way when it began contracting with private firms, such as Corrections Corp. of America, to provide short-term detention for suspected illegal immigrants.

Most states have now tried the idea in one form or another, but it has generally been limited to lower-security facilities.

In California, for example, private companies own and operate five of the state’s 16 facilities for people who have violated parole. With the state’s prisons already operating at 185% of capacity, “it’s better not to take up valuable prison bed space with those kinds of inmates,” said Tip Kindel, spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

In addition to owning facilities outright, private contractors may manage government-owned prisons or provide some services, such as medical care.

Governments, made wary by past abuses, say they have implemented systems under which they can closely supervise the private operations.

Nonetheless, the trend has drawn criticism from civil libertarians, who say that correction and detention are two of the most basic functions of government. The American Bar Assn. in 1986 urged that states exercise “great care and forethought” and warned against regarding privatization as “an easy means for dealing with the difficult problem of prison overcrowding.”

In some states, private prisons claim a clear cost advantage.

Keon Chi, senior research fellow with the Council of State Governments, noted that Texas’ four private 500-bed prisons are required to be 10% less costly than government operations.

“How can you deny that they are saving money?” Chi asked. “It’s an option that people ought to look at and experiment with. It’s a viable option.”

Two years ago, in one of the most detailed studies to date, the Urban Institute compared public and private facilities in Massachusetts and Kentucky. It found little difference in costs.

MIXED RESULTS: “Generally speaking, the PR you hear from the private companies is (that) we’ll save a lot of money. When you come right down to it, that tends not to be the case,” said Robert B. Levinson, special projects manager of the American Correctional Assn. and a contributor to the study.

At the same time, however, private facilities fared better on assessments of their quality. “By and large, both staff and inmates gave better ratings to services and programs at privately operated facilities,” the researchers wrote. “Escape rates were lower; there were fewer disturbances by inmates; and in general, staff and offenders felt more comfortable . . . .”

In California, Kindel said, private facilities have not demonstrated that they can operate less expensively. Most recently, he added, municipal governments--not private companies--have most eagerly vied to win state community correctional facility contracts.

As a result, Kindel noted, there has been no groundswell to expand the idea: “In this state, at least, it really hasn’t turned out to be that profitable.”