azstarnet.com

Tucson, Arizona

By Caroline Isaacs

None of the findings in Indiana's report on the riot that occurred in its New Castle facility, where some Arizona inmates are housed, are surprising to anybody who has been paying attention to prison privatization over the past 30 years. Ever since we began this experiment in for-profit incarceration, serious problems have cropped up over and over again in private prisons nationwide.

Many private prisons are woefully understaffed, and high turnover rates mean that staff are inexperienced and unsure of what to do in a crisis. The analysis released by the Indiana Department of Corrections bears this out, citing "unseasoned staff" as a cause of the riot.

Another factor cited in Indiana's report was "offender idleness." This basically means the prison didn't have enough guards to supervise recreation, oversee prison jobs or administer rehabilitative programs.

Other findings from Indiana include the admission that the prison was so poorly managed that they had prisoners playing basketball in the middle of the night and going to meals at all hours. There was poor communication at all levels, insufficient emergency plans, and doors and windows "not of proper strength or design to contain offenders in their housing units."

They didn't have the sense to keep tool boxes and ladders under lock and key, and both were appropriated by the prisoners during the riot.

Who in their right mind would run a medium-security prison with inexperienced staff, flimsy doors and windows, and no plan for how to manage a huge influx of prisoners? A for-profit corporation that is more concerned about its shareholders than it is about real public safety.

The facility is managed by GEO Group, one of the nation's largest private prison management companies. The report states that the contract was an effort to help Arizona "alleviate its prison overcrowding problem." It fails to mention that GEO actually exacerbated our overcrowding problem by kicking Arizona prisoners out of two of its other facilities.

Arizona hastily contracted with the state of Indiana in March after GEO group abruptly cancelled its contracts with the state of Arizona in two of its Texas prisons. Why cancel the contracts? Because the federal government was willing to pay a higher per-diem rate to house its prisoners in those facilities.

Private prison corporations are focused on the bottom line. They take the highest bidder and have no allegiance or accountability to either the communities where they are located or the communities from which their prisoners originate. They have high staff turnover because they pay guards poorly. They have incidents like this because they don't invest in staff training or in positive programming for prisoners. Those things cost money and hurt their bottom line.

The high incidences of disturbances, abuses, financial misconduct and mismanagement in private prisons are well documented, should anybody care to look.

Unfortunately, the leadership in Arizona is so ideologically wedded to the concept that privatization solves everything that they have been unwilling to see the evidence to the contrary.

This terrible incident should serve as a wake-up call. We can no longer ignore the fact that prioritizing the financial bottom line over good correctional practice is a recipe for disaster.

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