More prisoners being sent across state lines to private, rural prisons as space grows more scarce

"Chronic prison overcrowding has corrections officials in Hawaii and at least seven other states looking increasingly across state lines for scarce prison beds, usually in prisons run by private companies," reports Solomon Moore in The New York Times. Facing a court mandate, California last week transferred 40 inmates to Mississippi and has plans for at least 8,000 to be sent out of state. The long-distance arrangements account for a small fraction of the country’s total prison population — about 10,000 inmates, federal officials estimate — but corrections officials in states with the most crowded prisons say the numbers are growing."

Most of the prisons are in rural areas, such as Beattyville and Wheelwright in Eastern Kentucky. The phenomenon has "raised concerns among some corrections officials about excessive prisoner churn, consistency among the private vendors and safety in some prisons," Moore reports. "Moving inmates from prison to prison disrupts training and rehabilitation programs and puts stress on tenuous family bonds, corrections officials say, making it more difficult to break the cycle of inmates committing new crimes after their release. Several recidivism studies have found that convicts who keep in touch with family members through visits and phone privileges are less likely to violate their parole or commit new offenses." (Read more)