Texas Prison Bid'ness

Earlier this year, the news media took the guided tour of the T Don Hutto prison, which holds children while they and their parents await their immigration hearings. Media members were allowed to film a few areas, but not allowed to interview anyone imprisoned there. But they were allowed to talk to someone from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about what a good idea it is to lock up entire families.

Strangely, the ICE spokespeople (and the ICE website) say that the children being held at the Hutto prison are not forced to wear "prison garb," but in the video (carefully shot so that no faces are shown), it's plain that all the kids are wearing the same clothing --- the medical-style "scrubs" that are familiar to us from other prison settings. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement web page for Hutto explains, "Residents are provided with t-shirts, sweat shirts and/or medical-style scrubs. (“Jail uniforms” are not worn)." So even though 400 people who are confined there wear the same clothes, and they're not the same clothes as the people who work there, we shouldn't call them "uniforms."

Not that the clothes are the worst part of this, compared to the reports from the some of the parents and children in the prison. You can read the profiles of some of the families imprisoned at Hutto at the ACLU website. Parents have reported being separated from their kids (in separate cells), the lack of access to medical care, and that some of their children are not eating enough (due to short mealtimes and poor quality food), so have lost weight. One recurring theme is staff threatening the children with being separated from their parents if they don't behave. Not only does it sound like a prison, it sounds like the worst kind of prison. How much longer can this go on?

Tomorrow lawmakers in the Texas House of Representatives will debate HB 198, a bill that would raise the state’s cap on contracting for private prison beds. These policymakers appear to be considering expanding reliance on prison privatization in the context of an historic shift of focus in correctional policy. One the one hand, they can expand drug and alcohol treatment, revise parole standards,and modestly expand discretionary release, saving Texas taxpayers money and eliminating the prison bed shortfall -- the combination of treatment and discretionary release can save over half a billion dollars not just in the cost of incarceration, but also the savings from decreased crime. Or, lawmakers can enact HB 198, enriching private prison companies and digging an even deeper financial hole for the Texas Department of Community Justice.

Proven Strategies or Profit?

Safety Committee Chairman Madden and Senator Whitmire have proposed to address a projected shortfall in 2012 of more than 17,000 prison beds by providing treatment for thousands of non-violent and low-level drug offenders. Dr. Tony Fabelo has laid out a plan showing how greater reliance on treatment and modest increases in discretionary release rates could eliminate the prison bed shortfall, saving Texas taxpayers more than one half a billion dollars.

The latest report on evidence-based public policy options from the Washington State Institute on Public Policy (WSIPP) shows the benefit of treatment-oriented programs coupled with intensive supervision in the community. The Washington comparison shows a modest recidivism reduction rate of just 5.7 percent for in-prison programs, compared with a 16.7 percent reduction for intensive supervision of treatment-oriented programs. This comparison falls nicely in line with other recent research from WSIPP, showing that Washington state’s drug courts produce $1.74 in crime-reduction benefits from every dollar invested in that community-based treatment delivery system.

It's growing increasingly clear that where the state provides treatment makes a difference. Earlier this year, California’s Inspector General released a report on in-prison substance abuse programs, finding that the state’s correctional managers had squandered more than a billion dollars on a totally ineffective in-prison substance abuse treatment delivery system.

A key finding was that California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation correctional facilities were often not amenable to the therapeutic community treatment model, and that prison managers were not able to hold contractors accountable to delivery of the essential components of quality treatment. The effort was deemed a “complete waste of money.”

Texas lawmakers should consider this research carefully before they build new "treatment prisons," especially private ones. There are serious questions raised by a very considerable body of solid research about whether the private prison sector – overall – has the capacity to deliver quality correctional services. A small mountain of evidence has been collected and presented by academics and independent researchers, sponsored mostly by various units of the U.S. Department of Justice. The jury has come back in and the verdict is not favorable.

Staffing troubles lead to safety troubles at private prisons

Gerry Gaes at the National Institute of Justice and Scott Camp at the Bureau of Prisons have documented much higher rates of escapes from private prisons, as well as more contraband violations as evidenced by higher rates of positive urine tests for drug use.

It is likely that prisons where drugs are more available are also experiencing more incidents of other security problems. (Read another comparison).

In my previous research comparing CCA’s Prairie Correctional Facility with three comparable public prisons in Minnesota, I was able to study the impact of CCA’s employment policies on prison programs and services. CCA was not required to hire certified teachers, and most of their instructors did not hold professional credentials. At the public prisons, the education programs were inspected and licensed by the state education authorities, and all teachers were certified to meet state standards for public education. I found that the rate of GED attainment was much lower in the private prison system (you can read more about this is in Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights, and my chapter "Lack of Correctional Services: The Adverse Effects on Human Rights.”) The GED rate completion rate was 55 per thousand prisoners, compared with 74 per thousand for prisoners confined in the state-run facilities.

Jim Austin and Gary Coventry’s national survey of private prisons for the Bureau of Justice Assistance found that private prison guards are assaulted by prisoners at a rate that is 49% higher than the rate of assaults experienced by their public prison counterparts.

These shocking deficiencies can likely be traced directly to personnel policies and practices regarding compensation and qualification requirements. National figures show that turnover for private prison guards run more than three times higher than turnover for correctional officers employed by public prison agencies Cite my chapter again –- 52 percent compared to 16 percent respectively.

In my research for the RAND Corporation I found TDCJ’s Institution Division policies and practices for contracting, monitoring, and enforcement of contract requirements to be exemplary of the best practice in the field. Yet given evidence that overall, private prison performance has been found to be gravely deficient on these critical outcome measures, it would seem only prudent that more information is needed about certain critical issues before anyone can wisely make a decision to expand use of prison privatization of any type in Texas.

So far in 2007, one in three Texas jails have failed state inspection because of problems with sanitation and safety. About 19 county jails that are publicly and privately managed have failed inspection. More people enter and exit county jails than state prisons on an annual basis. What happens in county jails does not stay inside of county jails -- it goes home with jail guards at the end of their shift and with the hundreds of thousands of jail detainees that cycle through county facilities each year. The safer prisoners and correctional officers are inside of county jails, the safer all Texans will be.

New legislation proposed by State Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) would require the agency that oversees county jails to contract with special monitors to review and monitor facilities that have failed three consecutive annual inspections. This would help improve conditions in county jails across the state. Given that most people in jails are being released back into the community in less than a year, how safe our jails are relates directly to how safe our communities are.

For the past three years, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has found the Harris County Jail in noncompliance with Texas jail standards, primarily for conditions related to crowding. A state inspector concluded in 2005 that those conditions led to "safety" and "sanitation" issues. Additionally, the Dallas County jail has failed four annual inspections in a row. During an inspection earlier this year, holding cells were found to be over capacity.

Increasing mechanisms for accountability will enhance compliance with the state’s minimum standards. Effective oversight of county jails will identify and correct safety problems in local jails, both public and private. In combination, these mechanisms can work to provide the levels of transparency and accountability that we should expect from our public institutions. Without safe jails, we're shooting our public safety efforts in the foot.