Prologue
Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Perhaps it's the
lilting quality
of the beast; perhaps it's part of the natural sense of peace we humans
feel after the
heady flows of the summer sun have finally found their ebb. In any case
the autumn
months have always seemed to me like a wonderful calm after the storm,
almost like the
end of a horrid heat stroke or a terrible madness.
I found myself driving one day during those first, red-leaved
flashes of
October and eased my motorcycle around a tight corner. My eyes caught a
glimpse of a
small blue-and-white one-storey building, a grey rectangular place with
a large blue roof.
It's not the kind of thing you're sure to miss.
That's when I first saw the prisoners. They were out in the front
yard of this
small minimum-security prison, their blue-and-white uniforms eerily
matching the coats
of paint found on the little prison behind them. A few of the guards -
almost all southern
white males to a man - were about and closely watching the all-black
crowd, just in case.
But, dear readers, you don't know the meaning of the word
uncomfortable until you have several inmates' eyes bearing down
upon you -
even the eyes of low-level, non-violent inmates like these - and each
bearing that hungry
look that begs to be free, to feel the wind on his face as he barrels
down the highway . . .
to have what you have.
An hour later my work on the privatization of prisons - and the
factors that
led up to it - began in earnest.
"The Cold War of the 90's"
The Wall Street Journal knows a good thing when it sees it.
As
early as 1994 that respected bastion of tradition trumpeted what would
surely be a gold
mine for the hungry entrepreneur; America's greatest source of revenue
during the 80's -
its mighty military/industrial complex built at the height of the Cold
War - was being
privatized by the Clinton Administration and used to fight the enemy
within.
On May12th of that year it published, "Making Crime Pay: The Cold
War of
the 90's", informing its readers that the administration was making good
on three of its
campaign promises in a single throw. Firstly, it was accelerating the
closing of military
bases and the whittling of gov't contracts with arms builders that had
begun under
President Bush after the fall of the Soviet "Evil Empire"; secondly, it
was making good
on its promise to "clean up America's streets" by putting 100,000 new
police on the beat
and, taking a cue from Republicans, 'getting tough with criminals'.
But it was the fulfillment of the third promise that had the
Journal
muttering words of praise. The administration would keep its promise to
create
employment in those areas hit by military base and plant closings by
turning the empty
bases and large industrial plants into thriving, privatized prisons -
which is a very
big business, especially to small American towns that had depended
almost entirely on
the old military/industrial structure for its revenue and jobs.
It was a good sell. The Journal quoted a poll it had taken
with NBC
showing that, "more than 70% of those surveyed support longer prison
terms for violent
offenders", even though the most reliable statistics that year had shown
that violent crime
was declining sharply for the first time in years; but it is also a
virtual truism that no
candidate for an American office has ever lost votes by being hard on
criminals. Waxing
poetic, the article breathlessly stated that:
"Americans' fear of crime is creating a new version of the old
military-industrial complex, an infrastructure born amid political
rhetoric and a shower
of federal, state and local dollars. As they did in the Eisenhower era,
politicians are trying
to outdo each other in standing up to the common enemy; communities pin
their
economic hopes on jobs related to the buildup; and large and small
businesses scramble
for a slice of the bounty. These mutually reinforcing interests are
forging a formidable
new 'iron triangle' similar to the triangle that arms makers, military
services and
lawmakers formed three decades ago."
Of course even paradise comes with a bad apple now and again. The
Journal felt it right to regretfully add the findings of a
Justice Department study
taken that year showing that, "[many] federal prisoners are guilty of
low-level,
nonviolent offenses - such as possession of small quantities of illegal
drugs - but are
serving lengthy sentences under mandatory minimums set by Congress."
These
'mandatory minimums' were enacted by the then-Democratic Congress and
quickly
signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in the mid-80's as a
finishing touch to his
"War on Drugs" (though how involved 'the Gipper' really was in this
'war' is hard to
say; only six months after the war had been officially declared by he
and wife Nancy in a
rare dual televised address to the nation in 1984, he quietly slashed
much of the war's
budget in half, fueling speculation that whatever he did after that
moment was little more
than a glorified photo-relations opportunity).
In any case, the Journal said, the writing was on the wall;
prisons are
big business, and privatization was the wave to catch. "Parts of the
defense
establishment are cashing in, too, sensing a logical new line of
business to help them
offset military cutbacks", the Journal continued. "Westinghouse
Electric Corp.,
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., GDE Systems Inc. (a division of
the old
General Dynamics) and Alliant Techsystems Inc., for instance, are
pushing
crime-fighting equipment and have created special divisions to retool
their defense
technology for America's streets . . . Many lesser-known companies
already are doing
well fighting crime. Esmore Correctional Services Inc., the biggest U.S.
maker of police
electronics, recently was taken public by Janny Montgomery Scott."
Don't be mistaken; the private prison business had started back in
the
mid-80's, and by '94 rolled around it was already a huge, fledgling
business with about
30-35,000 prisoners in its care by the time this new development showed
its head; still,
this is the moment many consider the defining one for the new,
money-laden industry; it
was officially being seen as the next powerhouse for American defense
dollars. The
'iron triangle' had landed straight into the private prison lap.
This new 'iron triangle' wasn't lost on several in the loop. Many
of
America's largest monied firms, such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch,
Prudential, and
Smith Barney Shearson were each fighting for a piece of the pie. They
were at the
vanguard of this attack on America's newest menace, competing savagely
to underwrite
prison construction where it could with private, tax-exempt bonds -
thereby bypassing a
public vote on the matter (prisons usually need public approval for
gov't bonds to be
issued covering costs), just in case. Failing that, these businesses
could easily - and
legally - build a prison and lease it out to their parent company, a
move which kept much
of the actual costs off its books - and hence made them very attractive
to investors. For
their trouble the private investors usually won big, netting for
themselves a significantly
higher rate of interest on their investments than the public bonds state
& federal
governments provide.
Brad Sprague, an investment banker with the Columbus, OH office of
A.G.
Edwards Company, summed it up well when he bluntly told reporters,
"[Private] prison
bonds are a good investment; I put my own kid's money in them. You get
individual
investors, bank trust departments, mutual funds, insurance companies -
they all know
[America] isn't going to go out of the prison business anytime soon."
And it wasn't just gov't officials and the best & brightest in the
economic
sphere who were on to what was happening; one open-eyed academic was
quoted in the
Journal piece as saying, "With the population in private prisons
growing at four
times the rate of the general prisoner population, growth for the
private-prison industry is
virtually guaranteed. If you were in the hotel industry, you'd think
you died and gone to
heaven."
And 'heaven' continued; in 1995 "Prisonfest" - a convention held
annually by
the American Correctional Association (ACA) to further the profits to be
made by both
states and private investors in the fast-growing prison industry - hit
Cincinnati, OH.
Nearly 5,000 prison guards, halfway house operators, administrators,
educators, and
probation and parole officers flowed into that fine city to throw the
jailhouse bash of the
year. Attorney General Janet Reno was kind enough to take time from her
strange
personal vendetta against right-wing nuts & Cuban children to speak at
the convention, &
presumably to speak for the Clinton Administration as well. In her
keynote address, she
told those there that, "You see the meanest, most vicious among us, and
you protect us
from them . . .well, I'm here today to tell you how much this nation
owes you."
And, if those selling everything at the convention from "razor wire
. . . and
restraint beds to inmate phone services and modular cells that can be
assembled like
Lego blocks" (as one local reporter put it) continue in their ways, the
nation will come to
owe quite a pretty penny indeed.
"Business is great," gushed Cathy Perry, an account manager from
Access
Catalog of St. Louis. The catalog sells clothing, television sets,
stereos and other
personal items to inmates by mail order. Typical of those who sell
their goods or
services to the mighty prison beast, Access pulled in roughly $5 million
in sales during
'94 alone.
But then again, it's not too hard for a private industry to make
quite a pile of
money from selling to prisoners; as one gung-ho businessman recently put
it to me, "It's
not like . . . they're [really] going anywhere too soon", so it's pretty
hard for them to shop
around for items. If you're an inmate you deal with what vendors the
prisons provide,
and if you don't you go without.
But going with the structure can be a very expensive endeavor for
the
prisoner. For instance, in some states like California, phone companies
such as MCI and
AT&T have been selling phone time to prisoners often at three times the
market rate;
and, since prisoners must call collect in order to place any
call, this ensures a
tidy little bundle for them as well as for the prisons, to which MCI
will often give a cut of
the profits made by this price gouging in exchange for giving the
lucrative prison contract
to the happy phone company. How much they, like anyone else selling
goods or services
in prisons, can actually charge depends entirely on what the state or
federal regulators
will let them get away with.
The Journal did report that not everyone on the outside is
jumping
for joy at this surge in prisons, or their privatization. Niki Schwartz
is a Cleveland
attorney who pointed out that in 1982 Ohio spent only one-sixth of what
it spent on
higher education to build & maintain its prisons; by 1993, the budget
had bloated to a full
third. "Soon", Schwartz exclaims, "we'll be spending more on
corrections than on higher
education, and that's crazy".
Indeed. Now prison spending not only outstrips education (money is
now
commonly diverted from education and welfare spending to fund our need
for prisons,
like former NY Governor Cuomo's raiding of his state's welfare funds to
fuel the
building of prisons some years ago; according to the Atlantic
Monthly, he now
calls that move 'stupid'); it has also risen three times as fast as our
military spending over
the last 20 years.
"The juiciest pork in the barrel"
Politicians are an amazing breed. They usually achieve precious
little &
seem absolutely incapable of doing anything else but pontificate on
subjects most of
them know nothing about, all the while parroting solutions most would
never really fight
for if given the honest chance; & yet they have somehow convinced each
and every one
of us that we simply can't do without them.
"If you carefully examine the members of Congress and the
executive branch, you will discover that precious few of them have ever
run a business,
made a payroll, grown corn, or engaged in any activity where profit [or
the good of
others] was paramount.
This means that our country has found a way to keep our
less-than-able
occupied. Who is to say that these ungifted people might not have
fallen by the wayside -
or worse, descended into a life of crime?
I believe our treatment of our president . . . and representatives
is proof
positive that this is a compassionate and Christian nation."
Rita Mae Brown
It is also virtually a truism in journalistic circles that
you can always
count on certain politicians to say precisely the wrong thing at
precisely the wrong time -
which is, of course, precisely why we reporters so love to cover them.
Dan Feldman, New York City assemblyman & chairman of its
criminal-justice committee, couldn't help but gleefully admit to
WSJ just as it
was investigating the whole privatization business that prisons were
becoming "the
juiciest pork in the barrel", as far as he was concerned.
And, like all properly-timed political mistakes, it couldn't be more
illuminating as to what is really going on in the prison business.
The Crunch
To an extent undreamed of in most economic circles, the need for
prisons is
growing at an alarming rate. In 1980, there were only about 50,000
inmates behind bars;
but by year-end 1999, thanks in large part to the 'war on drugs',
mandatory minimum
sentencing, and the 'truth in sentencing' laws that ensure prisoners
serve at least 80% of
their sentence before they are even considered fit for parole, there
were over 200,000
overcrowding America's prisons, jails, and detention centers, making for
more than a
300% increase of incarcerations in the last 20 years, according to
Department of Justice
statistics. Most of this surge in the rate of incarceration has
occurred in the last ten years
alone - an increase of over 60% in the last decade. To borrow a dab of
capitalistic lingo,
demand is now easily outstripping supply - state prisons are working at
a rate of 1-17%
above top capacity, while the federal cells are operating at a
dangerously high 34%
beyond maximum capacity.
For all its extra work America started the new century with almost 1
out of
every 140 of its citizens locked away in its jails, prisons, and
correctional facilities. But
the work comes with a very hefty price. States find themselves forced
to spend nine out
of every ten dollars of their prison budgets on the upkeep of the
prisons they already
have, and the federal prisons have long ago been forced to figure out
ways to make their
dollars stretch as far as they can. Prisoners are continuing to fly
into our nation's prisons
- and staying there - but, because of the crunch, there is less and less
money to be found
for such essentials as drug treatment, education, violence prevention
and job training, as
well as putting a terrible squeeze on the federal and state hopes to
build the new prisons
that are needed to deal with the flow of prisoners.
As for the inmates themselves, since many need at least one of these
programs to help them back on their way once they put in their time, the
lack of proper
funding for programs virtually guarantees a large number of inmates a
ticket back to the
'big house' after they're released.
As to who is being arrested, the numbers are telling. For
instance,
there was a 75% increase in the number of males seeing the inside of a
prison or jail cell
in the last ten years, but the number of women being crushed into the
system is even
greater - women's prisons and corrections facilities now hold a full
104% more females
than they did in 1990. According to the DOJ stats, by Dec. '99
one out of every
110 US men filled prison cells, & about 1 in every 1,700 women - but,
with women now
the fastest growing group fueling our ever-expanding prison industry (a
104% increase in
ten years is a big increase in anyone's book), that number is sure to
grow closer to the
males' stats in the coming years.
Meanwhile, the disparities found in the racial and ethnic makeup of
prisoners
have become so disturbing that several on both sides of the ideological
aisle are calling
for investigation & action. By 1999, 2 out of every 3 prisoners in our
prison-industrial
complex were non-white, with black males shouldering a
disproportionately high amount
of the burden. In the roughest numbers, 3% of men in prison were
Asian/American
Indian/pacific islanders, 18% were Hispanic, 33% were white, and 46%
were black.
But it's when the numbers for each race are seen in the frame of
individual
age groups that the numbers really become unsettling. While 1% of the
total white male
population aged 30-34 found itself behind bars (the only age group among
white men to
break the 1% mark) and about 2-3% of Hispanic men in the age groups
spanning 20 to 44
years of age were in the nation's prisons, over 7-9% of the entire black
male population
between the ages of 20-40 found itself looking at prison walls. Those
in the 25-29 age
bracket were hit hardest, with almost one out of every ten
serving hard time. By
comparison, black men of this age group were three times as likely to be
behind bars as
Hispanics of the same age, and over 10 times as likely as whites.
Black women hardly fared any better: 46% of the total female prison
population as of Dec. 31 1999 was black, as opposed to 33% of white, 17%
of Hispanic
& 4% Asian/pacific islander/American Indian - almost the exact overall
numbers as one
finds for the males.
The principal mechanism behind all these numbers appears to be
something
that criminologists Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have coined the
prisoner
"bait-and-switch"; according to them, it is a game played by
politicians, the
media, & private financiers who wish to exploit the American public's
paranoid fear of
violent criminals. It works just like the 'bait-and-switch' maneuver
used by a business
desperate for interested shoppers: the business offers a service or
product sure to get the
customer interested in what the business is selling, only to offer some
other product or
service at the last second - hence the 'bait-and-switch'.
The media, eager to sell papers, tend to report on the most extreme
(read
most brutal, violent, & shocking) drug & criminal cases, Zimring &
Hawkins insist,
re-enforcing in our collective puritan mind that we need a strong,
authoritative hand to
beat us into submission, or as Republican Barry Goldwater
euphemistically put it during
his 1964 presidential campaign, 'restore law & order'. Politicians,
eager for public
approval, step over each other to prove to a whipped-up public that
they're more
stringent & uncompromising than anyone else when it comes to putting
behind bars those
who have 'terrorized our streets' & 'put our nation in jeopardy', such
as Richard Nixon
declared in the 1968 presidential race when he claimed to speak for the
"great, silent
majority"; only these same politicians tend to pass & accept legislation
that often
punishes non-violent offenders more than violent ones, forcing lesser
criminals to spend
more time behind bars due to the mandatory minimums, the 'three strikes
& you're out'
pledge and the 'truth-in-sentencing' laws brought on by the 'drug war'
and our own
misinformation about who sits in those cells day after day.
But it will be hard to change minds; these are popular laws, however
over-reaching they may be. Like the 'Star Wars' initiative, just
because something has
been proven not to work doesn't mean that it won't continue to receive
great support.
Like 'Star Wars', the truth of the matter is that the real appeal of
such things is often
economic; nuclear missiles were big business for several reasons, and
prisons are usually
no different. For instance, people know full well that property values
in towns or areas
around a prison often rise, and that the prison often brings not only
good jobs, but extra
benefits to the city's finances. What is almost never discussed is how
those 'finances'
often find their way into the town's pocket in the first place.
Prisons are almost always set up in rural, poor communities even
though most
of their inmates come from the city; so much so that demographers have
been quoted as
saying that this buildup has created a seismic shift in population.
Census figures show
that 5% of the increase for the total rural population from 1980 to 1990
is the direct
result of the prisoners being pushed into these rural neighborhoods.
But there's another implication to all this, according to the
newsletter I've
written for called The Washington Spectator; those from the city
are usually
black, while the rural neighborhoods, though poor, tend to be white.
This is not just a
point of picking at color, because the census helps determine by
population what parts of
our country will receive money for roads, education . . . and what parts
will not.
But a prisoner is never counted as living where he did before he was
a
prisoner (often in a black, or if not, at least a very poor city
neighborhood); he is instead
counted as living among the population where the prison is located.
Money that would
have been sent to entire city neighborhoods is being quietly funneled to
other regions -
rural towns and the like - because the prisons falsely inflate that
area's numbers; hence
many of the extra benefits and the real reason for much of the extra
money.
As for the prisons themselves, there are three major types of
correctional
facilities in the American complex:
- The town jails are among the most common, & tend to house those
imprisoned by the city, or the state for less than a year, & sometimes
those whose cases
are pending trial;
- The state prisons, which house the bulk of US prisoners, & tend
to house
those who have broken state laws and are currently serving sentences of
over a year or
more;
- The Federal prisons, which keep those who have broken federal
laws.
There is no time limit for those in federal prison; whether the sentence
is a month or 10
years, a violator of federal law will spend his/her time here.
Politicians fought hard - & continue to do so - in their effort to
give no rest to
the wicked. Prisoners of all persuasions are now often denied parole
until they serve at
least 80-85% of their original, or 'true', sentences (hence,
'truth-in-sentencing'). In 1990
37% of those on the inside could expect an early release; by 1997, that
number had fallen
to about 31%. Even those convicted of a 'first-time' offense are
expected to pay a bigger
share to the fiddler, with their average time in prison climbing from 22
months in 1990 to
28 months by 1998 - or an extra half-year for the same offense. Any
reasonable hope of
being paroled in 6 months for a first offense has virtually disappeared,
with a paltry rate
of 15.2 % by 1998 only a little more than half of the 26.5% chance
first-timers had eight
years before.
Those languishing in our prisons & jails, however, are often not the
violent
horrors politicians & the media make them out to be. In the local
jails, 2 out of every 3
are in fact non-violent offenders, with about half awaiting trial. In
the mighty state
complex, a full 52% were convicted of non-violent crimes; & in the
federal pens, an
amazing 88% of those in the total prison population are servicing
longer, tougher
sentences for non-violent crimes, exactly the opposite of who are
supposed to be most
effected by the mighty prison buildup in the first place. Those in
federal prisons for drug
offenses alone - usually the single largest contributor to the prisons
among all facilities -
outnumbered those in the feds' prisons for all property offenses
by about 7-to-1,
and all violent offenses (the ones all the extra sentencing & loss of
parole was supposed
to punish in the first place) by almost 5-to-1. From 1990-1998 those
convicted of drug
offenses accounted for over 62% of the massive growth in federal prisons
alone.
The principal flaws bringing us to this point? One is a little
flourish President
Reagan gave to Republican House members in 1986 a week before election
day as a
'proof' he and the Republican honchos were serious about stopping drug
abuse and its
violence-related problems after the slashing of the 'drug war' budget I
mentioned earlier.
Called the "Anti-Drug Abuse Act", it is the signature piece of
legislation that signed into
law many of those pesky mandatory minimum sentences now in place.
The other is a lesser-known law which found support by both
Reaganites &
'Drug Tzar' William Bennett under Presidents Reagan & George Bush two
years later
called the "Omnibus Anti-Drug Act". Also signed into law by Reagan, it
gave 'drug
conspiracy' laws the teeth to put anyone associated with those convicted
of breaking
illegal drug laws into jail, even if they themselves are found innocent
of any drug
crime(s).
These laws, while perhaps fairly intending to stop the violent and
dangerous
few, have been 'switched' too often, and become to many in the
departments of Justice
and Corrections so harsh and overreaching as to be considered
ridiculous. The National
Criminal Justice Commission - an independent, non-profit organization of
law, justice,
and corrections professionals - says that many in these professions have
become so
outraged by the wide scope of these laws that they have quietly staged a
mini-revolution.
As early as 1996, the Commission reports, judges such as Judge Whitman
Knapp of
Manhattan and Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Brooklyn have refused to hear
another single
drug case until the severity of the laws are corrected; Judge Alan
Nevis, himself
appointed under President Reagan, told USA Today bluntly that
these laws are
the "unfairest things I've ever had to impose;" and no less a
conservative judiciary than
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist - hardly known for
his
compassion for the downtrodden - has said that the minimums go too far.
The Justice
Commission further states that "90% of federal Judges and 75% of state
judges think
mandatory minimums are unsound."
And they aren't the only ones who expressed their displeasure
throughout the
90's. The New York Times has reported that organizations as
varied as the
National Association of Veteran Police Officers, the United States
Sentencing
Commission, and The American Bar Association have all asked for a change
in how
these laws are applied.
The Criminal Justice Commission itself, in its excellent book The
Real
War on Crime, writes that the sentences these laws force onto so
many low-level,
non-violent offenders are abuses of the system, calling the undue
mandatory minimums
and drug conspiracy laws an "injustice and a waste of tax dollars".
To illustrate its point, it cited the case of a 20-year-old Alabama
woman
named Nicole Richardson, whose boyfriend had been a small-time drug
dealer working
out of a local bar in the area. An undercover cop busted Richardson's
boyfriend after
asking her (presumably at the bar) where he could buy a hit or two, and
being told about
her man's sideline by Richardson.
Her boyfriend actually fared well under current laws; facing a
decade-long
stretch in the pen, he turned snitch for the court, giving damning
testimony on other
dealers in the area and receiving a reduced sentence of five years for a
job well done. As
for Richardson, her single statement to that undercover cop provided all
the system
needed to send her to jail for 10 years without the possibility of
parole.
Or consider some of these examples I've discovered on my own:
* In New York, holding two ounces of coke can get you life in
prison.
* In one of several raids throughout that city (which, as in the
rest of the
nation, now often occur without a search warrant), NY police busted in
on what they
were told by informants was a hideout for pot dealers. Gung-ho cops
ripped down the
door only to find a 15-year-old girl and her very pregnant sister (8
months), who literally
pissed herself as police raced in & turned their home upside down. The
young pregnant
woman told police repeatedly of her condition, and even of what she'd
done, but she was
handcuffed and forced to sit in her own piss for two solid hours until
the cops were
finished. No drugs were found, and no charges by the police were ever
filed.
And if that doesn't turn your crank, consider this story from the
Atlantic
Monthly:
"In May of 1991 Mark Young was arrested at his Indianapolis
[Indiana] home
for brokering the sale of 700 pounds of marijuana grown on a farm . . .
He had never
before been charged with drug trafficking. He had no history of violent
crime. His two
prior felony convictions - one for attempting to fill a false
prescription, the other for
possession of a few Quaaludes and amphetamines - were more than a decade
old. Young
. . . never handled either the marijuana or the money [for the sale].
He had simply
introduced two partners of a marijuana farm, Claude Atkinson and Ernest
Montgomery,
to a couple of men from Florida who were acting on behalf of a New York
buyer. Under
federal law Young was charged with "conspiracy to manufacture" marijuana
and was
held liable for the cultivation of all 12,500 marijuana plants grown on
the Morgan
County farm [. . .] No confiscated marijuana, money, or physical
evidence of any kind
linked Young to the crime. He was convicted solely on the testimony of
co-conspirators
who were now cooperating with the government.
On February 8, 1992, Mark Young was sentenced by Judge Sarah Evans
Barker to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole."
It concludes:
"One of every six inmates in the federal prison system . . . has
been
incarcerated primarily for a marijuana offense . . . Mark Young's
sentence, though
unusual, is by no means unique. A dozen or more marijuana offenders may
now be
serving life sentences in federal penitentiaries without hope of parole;
if one includes
middle-aged inmates with sentences of twenty [to] forty years, the
number condemned to
die in prison may reach into the hundreds. Other inmates - no one knows
how many - are
serving life sentences in state correctional facilities across the
country for growing,
selling, or even possessing marijuana."
It also softly reminds us that to reduce overcrowding, the most
crowded
prisons sometimes parole the most violent in order to make room for
those caught up in
the 'war on drugs' frenzy.
And what does Mark Young have to say about all this? In a follow-up
to their
story, the Monthly quoted Young as saying, "What they're doing,
they're
destroying these families and passing out life sentences, taking
people's lives, putting
children on the street - I mean horrendous acts . . . I don't know of
anyone that would do
anything that malicious for a salary." Young says that he may not
understand who's
really behind all this, but he knows that the guards themselves are
somehow just like him
and caught up in it all, too; just people trying to get along, trying
make a little something
for themselves as they work among the big squeeze. "I wouldn't take
their job for nothing
in the world," he says softly.
No Devil's Workshop
"What they should really do", the young woman cutting my hair
briskly says
as the cold scissors in her hand just brush the side of my right ear,
"is stop testing
products and these dangerous new drugs on animals - why bother them? -
and test it all
on these prisoners we have locked away, y'know? I mean, I guess that's
why a lot of
them are there anyway, right? - Takin' whatever . . . I mean, at least
then we don't hurt
any animals if something goes wrong"
This type of thinking is par for the course when you mention to
anyone
nowadays that you're a reporter working on a story - any story, I
suspect - that
deals with prisons. Many, not having been in prison themselves or known
anyone close
to them who has done a stretch of prison time - at least not yet - have
bought into the
"bait-and-switch" completely, and are so certain that we must "lock them
all up and
throw away the key", that these otherwise sensible people aren't about
to let little things
like facts get in the way of their thinking.
The politicians in this country don't much like to remind their
constituents
that America once had another such prison buildup in its history;
lasting from about the
last part of the 19th into the first quarter of the 20th century, the
average American held
much of the same blanket contempt for those behind bars, and damned the
reasons for
their being there. The amount of prisoners - and prisons being built -
skyrocketed. The
condition began to wear on prison budgets everywhere, so a few
enterprising people
came up a novel solution; they could offset the skyrocketing costs by
putting the
prisoners to work for profit.
By the turn of the 20th Century America was going "whole hog" for
prisons,
& the country was building them as quickly as it could. Chain-gangs
were the point of
order in the fun-loving southern states, while others had their own
horrid inmates
engaging in back-breaking labor even the starving working children who
crammed many
of America's factories had refused to do. It was also a rather nice way
of breaking
unions and keeping overall wages low.
"Living" conditions for the inmates were hopeless. Overcrowding
became
rampant as politicians fell over each other to give proof to the
predominately white male
voting public (women did not yet have the right to vote) that they were
harder on
criminals than their opponents, as were ready to use any means necessary
to get & keep
cheap labor behind bars.
It was working rather well - until the prisons exploded almost at
once in an
orgy of violence & blood. The prisoners - or, as some of the more
progressive
newspapers openly called them, 'slaves' - revolted against their
'masters'.
The bloodbath was so drastic that even now, those working in public
corrections remember the lesson. Danny Thompson, an official for the NC
Dept. of
Corrections, needed no prodding by me on the subject. In fact, when my
memory of the
story began to fail me during my interview with him, he quickly picked
up the stride.
"Yeah, it was - it was bad", he said during a telephone interview.
"We [in
corrections] really learned a few things from that. It all came back in
their faces, the way
prisoners were being used. We can't let that kind of thing happen
again."
There are measures still well in force to prevent just such a
fallout in public
facilities; at the federal level, the Bureau of Prisons has a provision
expressly forbidding
any warden or high-ranking federal prison official from directly
profiting by the hands of
inmates - and, though states' measures often depend upon who is in
charge, Thompson
assures me that, "there are safeguards against that kind of thing
happening again in North
Carolina." When asked about Governor Jim Hunt's expressed belief that
"every
able-bodied prisoner ought to be working, and working hard", Thompson
admitted that
prisoners are being used to make products and provide services that are
then sold for a
fee, but added that "they are only allowed to work for government or
non-profit,
tax-exempt clients".
This is true - the state of North Carolina (to use as an example)
can only work
on projects that serve "tax-supported" entities, as NC law puts it,
either in NC or for
another state. They have done well - North Carolina's prison-industrial
program,
"Correction Enterprises", netted over $58 million in sales and a final
profit of over $4
million per year by the mid-90's, according to the state's own very
informative website
(www.doc.state.nc.us/dop/prisons/welcome.htm) In 1994 Correction
Enterprises "was
the nation's fifth largest in sales and third in inmate productivity
among large states".
The principal reason given by both Thompson and the Enterprises
webpage
for the program is as simple and, in many ways, as necessary as any can
be; it gives the
inmates something to do. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, and if
you're locked away
doing nothing but staring at four bare walls 18 or 20 hours a day, the
devil can set up
pretty quickly. Besides, some - like Danny Thompson - insist that
Enterprise's programs
are "teaching a valuable trade" to the prisoners it utilizes.
But some question whether the types of work prisoners are often
trained to do
by many states - a great part of Correctional Enterprises' energies are
directed to offering
goods and services in such things as farming, laundry services, raw
manpower and
canning goods for the prison population - are really that marketable in
a modern,
tech-laden economy. One warden in the Midwest, when pressed on this
kind of issue by
a Prison News Service correspondent, admitted that the work
prisoners are
usually trained for probably won't be much help in getting them a job in
the workaday
world.
Which isn't to say that all this 'busy work' has no other purpose.
Some
services do in fact offer good training for inmates willing to learn -
Correction
Enterprises also trains prisoners in chemical manufacturing, packaging
and distribution,
printing and duplicating, and optical lens repair (working on glasses).
The federal prison
bureau's "Unicor" service is a program that teaches prisoners
potentially marketable
skills in such fields as electronics, web design and computer
technology.
Inmates working for the state is hardly new - Federal Bureau of
Prisons chief
Kathleen Hawk Sawyer mentioned in a statement to bureau chiefs earlier
this year
regarding the privatization of prisons that "inmates have been making
license plates since
the 20's", and very few in this modern world believe such work to be an
evil omen.
Provided the prisoners themselves are not treated unfairly or taken
advantage of by the
prisons, there should no problem with the inmates helping to earn their
keep.
It's more necessary than it may sound. Remember, already crowded
prisons
have been gaining prisoners at a horridly increasing rate every year for
the last twenty
years; and, though they have been given extra funds for their newfound
troubles, the
money becomes more scarce every year. The Justice Department's point
that 9 out of
every 10 dollars in prison money to states is now used for the upkeep of
prisons already
built sticks a pin into the prison budget balloon, leaving precious
little for anything else.
If the state does try to build another prison or two without the funds
needed to pay for
costs once the bills come due, there can be problems. About four years
ago one new jail
in South Carolina sat vacant after it was completed because the state
found it didn't have
the expected funds to run it once it was finished, according to reports
cited by the Justice
Commission.
So how to pay for the increase of prisoners?
* A raising of taxes may be in order; public bonds could be
issued, but
would of course need a positive vote from a populace that's more and
more militant
against paying more to the government for anything; hence politicians
usually aren't
going to vote in this day & age to put such things on the ballot.
* Prisoners could be shipped across state lines to other,
less crowded
prisons in other states, or the local jails can be used to help take the
overflow; but that's a
temporary solution at best.
* The inmates can be put to work by the state, working to help
offset the
escalating costs. This is the other, less discussed reason for states
using prison labor in a
limited government & non-profit market. It is used in many states now,
and is of course
one of the principal reasons for the inmate/workers in the NC prisons;
their own website
euphemistically states as much:
"In 1995, Correction Enterprises returned 5% of its net profits to
the Crime
Victims Compensation Fund of North Carolina (to offset the costs of
those hurt in crime),
in addition to paying for incentive wages for all inmate jobs in North
Carolina prisons
and industrial expansion costs (the building of more prisons and
more cells for
existing prisons)."
But even this can only go so far in covering the spiraling costs of
the modern
prison society. It simply isn't enough to sustain the continued
onslaught of new inmates
year after year, while letting fewer and fewer go.
The only other option is to increase the privatization of prisons -
which is
exactly what many states have begun to do.
Raw Material
The US isn't the only industrialized country concerned about the
privatization
of its prisons and how it is effecting prison population; noted
Norwegian criminologist
Nils Christie felt compelled to write Crime Control as Industry
to explain the
implications of such a move. Christie, using the dry, straightforward
logic of the
economist, asks why private companies would even wish to become involved
in
prison-making and prison-running in the first place. Like any other
move by business in
which an initial investment is made, there is the expected hope of a
profit from its
investment. And, as in any business, it is the free access, flow, and
use of its most basic
raw material or materials that is the basis for the continued soundness
of the investment.
This is so obvious when one is dealing with the theory of economic
stability as to be a
virtual truism, says Christie.
Then, without the displays of emotion that often characterize both
sides of
any prison debate, he applies economic logic and theory to prisons and
comes up with an
inevitable conclusion: if prisons are taken over by private business,
the logic of the
business world will be used in the prison industry as it's used in any
business run for
profit. Therefore the business world will do what it can to continue -
and often, to
increase - the flow and use of its most essential, raw material, the one
material or
component upon which its very investment is founded - the
prisoners.
It hardly even matters whether or not the business in charge is
'outsourcing'
the inmates to private companies for work or not; prisoners still boil
down to the one
essential ingredient needed to invest in and fund a prison. This
obvious conflict of
interest stands at the crux of the privatization debate; whether it is
right for the raw
business mentality to be used for the purpose of allowing some people to
profit from
another's confinement, or to allow a business entity such absolute,
total control of its
charges.
And, in the US, the question is even more essential than in most
places - this
country does, after all, have the dubious distinction of throwing more
of its own people
behind prison walls than any country in the industrialized world, except
for Russia. The
prison-industrial complex, as it stands now, employs more people than
any Fortune 500
company with the possible exception of General Motors - and that is
based on USA
Today figures that are over six years old.
"Investors predict a recession-proof future for these gated
communities", a 1998 ABC News report on prison privatization states.
"Stock in the
nation's largest prison company, Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA), rocketed
tenfold on the New York Stock Exchange over the last four years.
Shareholders in other
publicly traded prison firms have enjoyed similar results."
And it continued after that; an article in the Fall edition of the
magazine
Colorlines that year made a point in saying that the giant CCA
had almost
55,000 beds in 68 private prisons in the US, the UK, Puerto Rico, and
Australia either in
operation or being created. The second biggest private prison business,
Wackenhut
Corrections, "claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in
North America,
U.K., and Australia."
"I don't know of any other industry growing this quickly," Sun Trust
Equitable Securities rep Brian Ruttenbur told ABC News. "CCA grew by 30
percent in
1997 and will continue that growth for the next three to five years."
And of course, ABC
News reports, the privatizing boys & girls were singing all the way to
the bank, from
what it made in its first facilities in 1984 (the same time the 'War on
Drugs' started,
incidentally) to running 6% of all US prisons 14 years later in 1998.
Most states still seem to be testing the waters of privatization,
turning only
one to about seven facilities over to private hands; they still remember
what happened the
last time private companies were this involved in the prison complex,
and would rather
wait and let someone else make the Big Mistake first; to do otherwise
would be madness.
Only two states have thrown caution to the wind - California (24
private
prisons), which has always jumped onto the latest craze with a
determination bordering
on madness; and Texas (48 private facilities - a full four to five times
the national
average), which refuses to be outdone by anyone where judicial &
correctional madness
is concerned.
But perhaps it was the promise of cutting costs by 15-20% that
turned Gov.
(&, by the time you read this, possibly President) George 'Dubya' Bush's
head.
Sold on these promises, Texas & California seem committed - and, if the
current rate of
incarceration continues, that will be literally true soon enough.
Not everyone is ready to make "McPrisons" anytime soon; the ACU
News Service, a newswire for unionized correctional staff, insists
that, though
pro-privatizing gurus make assurances their solution will create
financial saving and a
more efficient prison system through competition, there is precious
little 'competition' in
the real world. CCA (52.3%) and Wackenhut (25.11%) constitute over
two-thirds of the
total privatizing business, which makes for very little real competition
indeed; most of
what is left belongs to US Corrections Corporation . If one thing is
certain, it's that
where these three go, privatization goes.
Some legislators are worried as well. Oklahoma State Senator Cal
Hobson
has been quoted as saying that the more states and the feds buy solely
from, say, CCA or
Wackenhut, "the more advantage you give them at negotiation time".
There's no real reason to worry about any imagined problems, Susan
Hart of
CCA says. As vice president of that corporation's communications when
ABC News did
its investigation, she's sure its private advantage helps the company
remain 'flexible' to
new challenges. "If you apply proven business principles to a
correctional center, the
result is going to be cost savings," she says.
The influx of money from interested investors has allowed several
private
prisons to cut back drastically on staff, using 'high-tech' gadgets like
infrared security
systems, video cameras, a wired, computerized gating system, and other
toys normally
associated these days with Big Brother. But no one seems to have
wondered what would
happen if some real shit goes done; a heavy fight between gangs, or a
stabbing. It might
become important to the industry eventually . . .
That's not all; in what ABC News called "an innovative
twist", these private
prison companies have been playing a bit of 'bait-and-switch'
themselves, using
communities' desire for those big prison bucks to get wild deals for the
property,
location, and the bypassing of laws that would not normally be allowed -
like a
tax-exemption status for at least five years, for instance, which allows
them to 'buy low' -
only to turn around and immediately sell the property to its Real Estate
Investment Trust
(REIT), which can then sell it to interested companies for several times
the initial price
of the prison, leaving towns without any real knowledge of who's going
to be running the
place in the future; but 'selling high' can make the private companies
very rich indeed.
Besides, with the REIT holding the property (CCA's REIT, for instance,
is the Prison
Realty Trust, Inc.; it is CCA's parent company), it no longer shows up
on the companies'
normal books, thereby freeing up precious capital in the process. Don't
worry if you're
confused by all this (it took me some time, too); just understand that
this little 'switch'
allows the companies to play with their books in some very fun
ways.
The ABC report also stated that all this money was making the
private-prison
boys more hungry still; not content with their piece of the pie, they
were pushing to take
over entire state correction systems in New Jersey, Illinois,
Michigan, and Ohio;
and for about 15 years CCA has been trying take over Tennessee's prison
complex.
[The private prison stocks] are volatile, but very
powerful
performers and have huge potential, even compared to high tech stocks."
Gary Boston, Paine Webber
research analyst - ABC News, '98
"Every month I see another prison going up around the
country
as part of an economic development program . . . Assuming we are going
to
imprison people, I believe in giving the taxpayer the same quality for
10
or 15 percent less . . . They bring in a lot of money to the local
economy."
Adrian T. Moore, a privatization
expert with the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank
"We found we can house inmates for a lot less . . . Where
the
state spends an average $76 a day, the new Wackenhut prisons come on
line at $40 to
$50 a day."
Michael Toms, New Mexico
Corrections representative
"Members of the [privatization] industry have already lobbied for
stiffer penalties [for those convicted of a crime] . . . As a matter
of public policy,
private prisons become punishment for profit," American University Law
professor Ira
Robbins told ABC, in what may have been the only truly dissenting voice
to be found in
the report. However, to be fair the Disney-owned ABC admitted that,
"The service
[private prisons provide] lies in keeping people locked up. Full cells
ensure a steady cash
flow. The more beds a prison fills, the greater its value to
stockholders."
The end result is that, as the Justice Committee notes, a private
company like
CCA with net profits of $4 million for $100 million dollars of revenue
by 1998 will
surely try to protect their continued revenue and investment. Like
Microsoft, AT&T,
Wal-Mart and all other powerful private entities, they will do what they
can to protect
their interests with such weapons as soft money - giving cash (which
must be reported)
and various gifts (which do not) to anyone with a vote who's willing to
take them. Will
private-prison companies stay out of the fray when questions such as
parole, drug rehab,
prisoner medication and inmate education are on the table? Probably not
- as Prof.
Robbins states, they are already buying votes on Capital Hill to
increase time
served; and the time prisoners serve now is perhaps even worse than it
was the last time
prisons exploded in violence all those years ago.
"The issue isn't privatizing prisons, but rather
privatizing
prisoners. Inmates, traditionally the responsibility of state and
federal governments,
increasingly are being contracted out to the lowest bidder. Convicts
have become
commodities. Certainly offenders should be punished for committing
crimes, but should
private companies and their stockholders profit from such punishment?
Private prisons would be great if the primary purpose of the
criminal justice
system was to warehouse inmates without providing them with meaningful
opportunities
for rehabilitation. Private prison companies have no incentive to
invest in such
opportunities, especially when they profit from more crime, more
punishment and more
prisons.
Cheaper isn't always better in terms of the criminal justice
system. We
get what we pay for - and that's the bottom line of prison
privatization."
Alex Friedman, reporter and former
prisoner of a CCA-run medium-security prison in Clifton, Tennessee until
officials moved
him to a state prison because, they said, of his "efforts to degrade CCA
with negative
articles and outside sources." He was paroled in November 1999.
"Alex is intelligent," CCA warden Kevin Myers admitted to The
Nation correspondent Eric Bates. "But once he gets in his mind that
something's
wrong, he's going to hit it with a vengeance forever and ever, amen."
The Three Kings
"Recently a number of troubling developments in
facilities
operated by [some of the] largest and most experienced corporations have
damaged the
credibility of privatized correctional services as a concept. These
developments
. . . . . . .
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