Sun editorial:

No to private prisons

Arizona taking a risk with its plan to privatize nearly the entire state prison system

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Arizona officials, trying to save money, are on the verge of seeking bids from private prison companies, which would share the job of managing the state’s 40,000 inmates.

The state will likely come to regret passing this critical function on to the private sector.

It is a government responsibility to arrest, charge, try and sentence those who are found guilty of crimes. It follows that it should be the government’s responsibility to oversee those persons sentenced to jail or prison.

Trying to dodge accountability to the public for such responsibilities as jail and prison conditions, security, the training of corrections officers and the treatment of prisoners could end up costing the state more money in the long run.

Hiring a less-accountable private company — on the provision that it spend far less money on all of those jobs than the government is spending — incurs high risk. And it does not, in the end, save money, as has been proven.

In 2001, for example, the Justice Department studied the trend toward private prisons, which began in the early 1980s. It discovered that projected savings never materialized.

Additionally, Nevada’s eight-year experiment with allowing a private company to run the women’s prison in North Las Vegas ended miserably. There were security problems — as there are at a lot of private prisons — and the company failed to meet even minimum standards for inmate health care. The state was forced to take over the facility in 2004.

Arizona has several private prisons that take in felons from other states. A state official told The New York Times that “we are very happy” with their performance. Yet The Arizona Republic last year wrote that the private prisons were virtually unregulated and that an escape by two killers had raised security concerns.

The concerns will surely escalate if private prison companies take over the state prison system, including the buildings housing death-row prisoners. That’s not a job for companies that have a mandate to cut costs.

Discussion: 19 comments so far…

By neiman1

10/29/09 at 7:17 a.m.

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Another article prompted by a blind belief that the same employees working for government are somehow superior to those employed by a private firm.

This seems to be more about what union the government employees pay dues to rather than a realistic look at cost or quality of service.

This isn't even about Nevada but the need to stop any privatization before it creeps its arms into the local scene
By KillerB

10/29/09 at 7:40 a.m.

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Good job on this one, Sun. And good call, neiman1.

Anyone else get the feeling governments everywhere doesn't really know what's really going on? Just keep feeding placebo messages to the herd and keep on ruining all of us.
By fosimmons

10/29/09 at 8:09 a.m.

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Fellow Idiots - let us recall Bush giving private bill collectors IRS nonpayers for collection. Poor innocent folks who file every year without a dime having to deal with private companies as IRS collectors. Much of their private and personal information is now all over the web for us to see. Debacle of Bush, again. A debacle just as CriminalBush and his ENTIRE administration was. As read above, this privatization of the Arizona penal system will so be also. They are idiots in that state with the single exception of Sen. Goldwater, who was a winner moving forward, and missed these days, with the proposal of continued use of nuclear weapons which he espoused as a way to win in Viet Nam. Weapons we should have used any number of times by now that would have made our present and daily life and that of other nations, much more pleasant.
The private sector that feeds off government institutions and programs requires a doubling and tripling of oversight, very much UNLIKE that of the FAA and SEC during CriminalBush and his tools of torture and war. CriminalBush also wanted to send our Social Securtiy funds to Wall Street, remember, you Republicans so misinformed and devoid of facts? The country is still in ruins from the idiot and will be so for many, many years and perhaps forever if Iran and Iraq and Syria decide to square things up over what the Criminal did. Prepare a gallows to accomodate the entire BUSH administration, starting with him and then followed quickly by Rove and then any order of the illegal war mongers, torturers and CIA outers - the observers would like watching these criminals swing in the gentle zephers of Texas as our troops are getting blown to pieces and bits in the war they started and lied so much about. Thank You.
By lcdrmandingonamvet

10/29/09 at 8:13 a.m.

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Privatizing prison systems is a great idea. NOT! Black "tea-baggers" should be outraged. This scam is the reason why our prisons are filled and over-flowing. Priviatization of prisons is nothing but another cash-cow for WASP. Corrupt WASP criminal court judges get kickbacks from prison owners and operators.
By POWERPLAY

10/29/09 at 8:49 a.m.

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This is not a good idea' 1st. The government should never be let off the hook for anything. 2st. Private contractors need to make a profit like any other business' Now there is nothing wrong with that' But if things don't go well with your employer you can just quit and go find another job but if you are a prison inmate that is not going to happen' And that allows to much room for prisoner abuse then the state gets sued and you can then forget about any savings at all. This is just trouble down the road that we don't need here in Nevada.
By nevadaappleslices

10/29/09 at 9:19 a.m.

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If it saves money, I'm all for it! I'd be even more for the idea of criminals having to pay for the cost of services to lock them, feed them, and give them health care.
By Patrick_R_Gibbons

10/29/09 at 9:33 a.m.

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Yup, working for the government doesn't make you magically more accountable and magically less selfish. Let's get real Sun.
By rusty57

10/29/09 at 9:33 a.m.

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Privatizing Fire Departments next?
By Patrick_R_Gibbons

10/29/09 at 9:44 a.m.

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Why not, the city of Scottsdale, AZ had a private fire department up until about 2002. The city asked for bids and awarded contracts to private companies to provide free service to Scottsdale residents. The city paid a few to the fire company that was agreed upon as part of the winning bid.

Unionized firefighters ran the private company out of town and costs shot up (not surprisingly) after the private company left. Response times have not significantly improved to warrant the drastic increase in spending.
By Phargo

10/29/09 at 10:40 a.m.

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Anybody see the movie 'Brubaker' with Red Borderfort, er I mean Robert Redford?
By pierre1208

10/29/09 at 11:34 a.m.

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Private sector can only have one approach, Profit and profit. Someone will have to be victimized to feed the greed of a Private owner.

Author of www.thehurdlesofdoctor.com
By boftx

10/29/09 at 12:42 p.m.

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How far away can the privitizing of the court system be?

On a more serious note, having privately run prisions raises interesting legal questions over how much of the Constitution applies to who. One of the cases in Sotomayor's background involved just such a question.

I think the writer brought up a good point that government needs to be responsible for its actions, in this case, if the government is going to convict someone then the government needs to carry out the sentence, not the private sector.
By mred

10/29/09 at 12:50 p.m.

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Acorn should run prisons for dittoheads, have they finished the internment camps yet???, Glenn Beck and Heidi Harass should be the first to be rounded-up, them sherm, vin, etc.

Maybe the Nation of Islam can run a few too.

On a serious note Cornell has one down in Baker and one of the guards told me they had murders there (miss the Bun Boy, now a Big Boy)
By Patrick_R_Gibbons

10/29/09 at 2:47 p.m.

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Pierre, so that means government has only one answer, waste money, waste money, waste money. So that means hordes of people have to be victimized to give someone a government job that provides little satisfaction to the customer?
By KillerB

10/29/09 at 6:07 p.m.

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"How far away can the privitizing [sic] of the court system be?"

boftx -- it's called arbitration. Read any credit card agreement. Then google a look at the National Arbitration Forum.
By gmag39

10/29/09 at 8:25 p.m.

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Have any of you "anti-government everything" folks done any research on FOR PROFIT prisons?
google prison-industrial complex.
google privatizing prisons.
Remember something. The average prisoner spends a couple years behind bars, and then becomes your neighbor, co-worker, brother-in-law, etc.
How they're treated, and rehabilitated, or NOT, will impact YOU.
By KillerB

10/29/09 at 10:29 p.m.

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gmag39 -- I knew a guy who went to prison for a rape he didn't commit. After 8-9 years behind bars he was definitely a criminal after he was released. Now that was a total waste of resources.
By heavunscent

11/2/09 at 1:03 p.m.

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It makes a profit, so it has to be bad, right? How short-sighted.

California has a ton of trouble with its prison system, and according to this story, privatization can actually be a benefit:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/arti...

And don't believe everything you read about private prisons being so bad. From the above article: Careful studies by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice and others indicate that if anything, private prisons are of higher quality than public prisons.

If the quality is comparable or better, and there is cost savings involved, why not?