Research questions cost-savings claims of private-prison industry, a familiar rural employer

Supporters of for-profit, private prisons say they are cheaper and safer than those run by government, and are at least as accountable to the public, but a growing body of research has cast doubt on those claims. Michele Deitch, a University of Texas professor who was part of an American Bar Association task force that drafted proposed national standards on the treatment of prisoners, says it's a "myth that private prisons can provide services better and more cheaply that those run by the government," R. G. Dunlop of the Courier-Journal of Louisville reports.

"The facts are that private vendors compromise safety and security to keep down costs," Deitch said in an address to a criminal-justice conference in Honolulu last October. "They save money by hiring inexperienced staff at the low end of the wage scale. When you've got inexperienced, poorly trained staff, you've got a recipe for security and safety problems in a prison." A spokesman for Corrections Corp. of America, the nation's largest operator of private prisons, asked the Courier-Journal to submit a list of written questions for the story then did not respond to them. CCA cites a study on its website which revealed private prisons are more cost effective, but notes it partially funded the research.

Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb acknowledged to Dunlop that "private prisons are not less expensive than all of our institutions," but noted the department "does continue to assert that the private prisons are a cost-effective option in housing Kentucky's felon population." She said it was "very difficult" to determine whether Kentucky's private prisons actually comply with the state-mandated 10 percent savings required compared to state-run facilities. "Since the mid-1990s, at least 10 studies, including several by researchers at the federal Bureau of Prisons, have questioned the private prison industry's claims, especially with respect to cost savings and security," Dunlop writes.

"I'm not anti-privatization," Gerald Gaes, formerly of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who in 1999 released a report for the bureau questioning many of the cost-saving claims made by the private prison industry, told Dunlop. "But I don't think the case has been made that (private prisons) are superior in cost or quality. Quite the opposite, in fact." One area private prisons seem to have a clear cost-saving edge is in employee compensation, especially in rural areas, which are popular locations for prisons. Starting pay at CCA's Otter Creek prison in Eastern Kentucky is $8.25 an hour, $3 an hour less than two nearby state-run prisons. (Read more)

Not all the jobs go to locals. Jessica Lilly of West Virgnia Public Broadcasting reports that at a new prison in McDowell County, residents of the county have "landed very few of those rare jobs" filled so far. Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that the recession has been hard on corrections companies. "State corrections agencies are crowding prisoners into more facilities as they do in California, or trying to change legislation to make sentencing less harsh for nonviolent criminals," Nancy Cook reports.