http://www.kulturekritic.com/2012/09/news/private-prison-management-company-seeks-guaranteed-90-occupancy-from-states/

excerpt:

“Ohio’s deal requires the state to maintain a 90% occupancy rate, but Janes said that provision remains in effect for 18 months — not 20 years — before it can be renegotiated. As part of the deal, Ohio pays the company a monthly fee, totaling $3.8 million per year. Roger Werholtz, former Kansas secretary of corrections, said states may be tempted by the “quick infusion of cash,” but he would recommend against such a deal. ”My concern would be that our state would be obligated to maintain these (occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied to make sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent to drive up the population,” Werholtz said.”

California Spending More On Prisons Than Colleges, Report Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/california-prisons-colleges_n_1863101.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Poor decisions by the Governor, ADC Director and Legislators have brought Arizona taxpayers huge liabilities and have put ALL at great risk for harm. It’s time for the local media to start a daily “prison ” column where the public can become informed on the reality of living in Arizona as a police / prison state. This daily/weekly column is a place where the public can have dialog. Many people participated for years at the state Capitol, in Rep. Cecil Ash’s House Sentencing committees – open to all. Prison reform and criminal justice reform rallies were held at the Capitol. Yet the people were ignored by the Governor and legislators. It is disgraceful that the legislators / prosecutors (paid for by the taxpayers) REFUSE TO REFORM poorly written, outdated, and draconian laws that guarantee obscene $$$’s for the prison profiteers. Where a non-violent, first offender is sentenced to 75 years for “touching” in a swimming pool. Where changing a baby’s diaper is technically “child molest”. If you think this is not about you, think again. ALL are at risk for great harm and waste of taxpayers scarce $$’s.

“Prison nurse tied to hepatitis C exposure” (comments UNavailable)

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/09/04/20120904arizona-inmates-exposed-hepatitis-c-diryt-needle.html

Get used to life as a “prison state”. Medical care and services “privatized”. The state has the responsibility for those in their custody, for their safety and well-being. While these officials are “growing” the prison population, they are growing huge liabilities, lawsuits / costly litigation, chaos, waste of taxpayers $$$’s and pure destruction.

“Study: Arizona 1st in cuts to schools” (comments available)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20120904study-arizona-1st-in-cuts-schools.html

The Governor and your legislators invested in incarceration rather than education and a better Arizona for the society.

“It isn’t any wonder this is the case, since Jan Brewer is putting our money into building new prisons instead – prisons most people would agree we would never need if we funded education and public mental health care properly in the first place (not with more sales tax, though, folks – that’s pretty regressive and burdens the poor and middle class unfairly…).

Check out the Cradle-to-prison-pipeline for more on how factors like child poverty, illiteracy and adult incarceration are entwined. AZ used to project new prison growth based on our children’s third grade reading scores – perhaps we still do. That should tell you a lot.

The following stats are from a March 2012 slide show addressing literacy and crime by the AZ Department of Education…”

http://www.thenation.com/article/167216/arizonas-private-prisons-bad-bargain

“Since 1997 Arizona’s prison spending has increased from
$409 million per year to more than $1 billion today. Yet the state is still playing catch-up: it never has enough money to pay for its incarceration obligations. That’s because Arizona’s prison population continues to soar; it’s currently at nearly 40,000—and rising fast. In an attempt to manage this growing population, the Department of Corrections has moved since 1986 to privatize services. Its current five-year plan notes that “with over 600 current contracts the Department uses private contractors for many functions, including private prisons that house inmates in-state; correctional health services” and much more.

Currently, more than 16 percent of the state’s prisoners are in private facilities that also play host to prisoners from states, like Hawaii, that have run out of prison beds and have farmed out their surplus to the lowest bidder. Other private facilities house wards of the US Marshals Service, mainly undocumented immigrants marked for deportation.


Arizona’s privatization schemes have become wackier in the face of recession budget woes. Legislators have sold off and then leased back the State Capitol building and pushed for the wholesale privatization of the prison system. The industry, however, is not interested. Private prisons profit only when they can cherry-pick the inmates—setting the conditions for those they’ll accept and rejecting violent or seriously ill inmates—and can make the state cover the hidden costs of running a prison, such as training drug-sniffing dogs and processing release paperwork.


Claims about the cost-effectiveness of private prisons are an illusion. As the AFSC report makes clear, private prisons cost as much as, if not more than, state-run facilities; they endanger public safety; and they result in a worrying level of inmate-on-inmate and inmate-staff violence. Instead of privatizing basic public services in an attempt to maintain incarceration rates without the tax base to support them, states like Arizona should have a sensible discussion about how best to reduce their stunningly high inmate population. It would be the fiscally prudent approach. It would also be the most ethical solution to America’s incarceration problem.”

Private Prisons: The Public’s Problem | American Friends Service Committee

https://afsc.org/document/private-prisons-publics-problem

A quality assessment of Arizona’s Private Prisons

“Arizona has enthusiastically embraced prison privatization, with 13% of the state prison population housed in private facilities (the 11th highest percentage in the nation). Motivated by a belief that private enterprise could build and manage prisons safely and at lower cost than the state, the legislature has mandated construction of thousands of private prison beds. Little was done over the years to test actual performance of private prisons or to determine their cost effectiveness.”

The complete report is 105 pages.

AFSC_Arizona_Prison_Report.pdf

One in 31 U.S. Adults are Behind Bars, on Parole or Probation

Washington, DC – 03/02/2009 – “Explosive growth in the number of people on probation or parole has propelled the population of the American corrections system to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults, according to a report released today by the Pew Center on the States. The vast majority of these offenders live in the community, yet new data in the report finds that nearly 90 percent of state corrections dollars are spent on prisons. One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections examines the scale and cost of prison, jail, probation and parole in each of the 50 states, and provides a blueprint for states to cut both crime and spending by reallocating prison expenses to fund stronger supervision of the large number of offenders in the community.

“Most states are facing serious budget deficits,”said Susan Urahn, managing director of The Pew Center on the States. “Every single one of them should be making smart investments in community corrections that will help them cut costs and improve outcomes.”

In the past two decades, state general fund spending on corrections increased by more than 300 percent, outpacing other essential government services from education, to transportation and public assistance. Only Medicaid spending has grown faster. Today, corrections imposes a national taxpayer burden of $68 billion a year. Despite this increased spending, recidivism rates have remained largely unchanged.”

Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment – Mona Lynch

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17521

“In the late 20th century, the United States experienced an incarceration explosion. Over the course of twenty years, the imprisonment rate quadrupled, and today more than than 1.5 million people are held in state and federal prisons. Arizona’s Department of Corrections came of age just as this shift toward prison warehousing began, and soon led the pack in using punitive incarceration in response to crime. Sunbelt Justice looks at the development of Arizona’s punishment politics, policies, and practices, and brings to light just how and why we have become a mass incarceration nation.”