Pitfalls and Promises - Michigan Corrections Organization

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Section 1Introduction: A Problem with No Easy SolutionEveryone is frustrated. Corrections spending just won’t come down. Theprison population has been reduced, and corrections staff have been cut.Hard choices have been made. Risks have been taken, and sacrifices have beenborne—but results remain elusive.Legislators are looking for new ideas. Private groups such as the Citizens ResearchCouncil of Michigan (CRC), the Center for Michigan and the CitizensAlliance on Prisons and Public Spending (CAPPS) have proposed ideas suchas establishing a sentencing commission, expediting the parole process, andincreased use of medical/geriatric parole—to name a few. 1Industry groups, meanwhile, are pushing to turn Michigan prisons over tofor-profit companies. Privatization, however, is not a promising path. Tounderstand why, this report examines the privatization of prisons and prisonfunctions.The report begins with Michigan’s experience with private prisons thenexpands to other states’ experience. The focus is on costs and performance,paying special attention to the GEO Group, the private prison company mostactive in the state of Michigan.The report also reviews contracted correctional healthcare—again focusing onMichigan’s own experience, the experience in other states and Corizon, thecompany currently active in Michigan.Pitfalls and Promises 8
Learning from Experience: Case Studies andFacts About GEO and the Private Prison IndustrySection 2Private prison may look, at first, like an attractive idea. But they’re not newand, by now, they should be judged by their results. Case studies exemplifysome of the pitfalls and broken promises inherent in prison privatization, aswell as systemic problems at GEO, the nation’s second-largest private prisoncompany.North Lake Facility for Youth in Baldwin, MichiganMichigan’s Costly Experiment with Prison PrivatizationThe state of Michigan entered the field early with the North Lake facility foryouth in Baldwin in 1997, and exited quickly when it terminated the contractin 2005. The experiment bears examination because of the evidence of:• Violence;• Chronic understaffing;• Unacceptably high turnover; and• Corporate violations of the contract with the state of Michigan.The North Lake facility was private from the beginning, built under contractin 1997 by Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which later became the GEOGroup. Private prisons were new at the time, and Wackenhut Corrections wasjust getting started. It had spun off from the parent Wackenhut Corp. a fewyears earlier, and was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996.After two years of construction, the North Lake facility opened in July 1999for 480 youth convicted as adults under Michigan law.Performance problems started right away. A hearing by the House AppropriationsSubcommittee on Corrections in August 2000 revealed the understaffedyouth prison was three times more violent than the state’s other maximum-securityprisons. Teens were assaulting corrections officers, attacking each otherand trying to kill themselves. 2North Lake reported 110 critical incidents, including 46 assaults and 12attempted suicides in the first five months of operation under Wackenhut,now GEO Group.Further investigation by the Grand Rapids Press revealed that Wackenhut hadviolated its contract with the state by not providing counseling programs andnot hiring contractually required levels of staff. Staff shortages and high turnoverwere forcing the remaining staff to work long hours; sometimes reaching100 hours of overtime in a month. 3By 2005, operations at North Lake were discontinued. Money was scarce, thesecure capacity was proving not to be needed, and the state wanted to reducecorrections spending. 4 At the same time, a major lawsuit had been filedagainst both Wackenhut and state officials over conditions of confinement. 5The state solved both problems at once by cancelling the contract and closingthe facility.9
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Page 4 and 5: ExecutiveSummaryPitfalls and Promis
Page 6 and 7: In 2010, GEO made $63 million in ne
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Page 14 and 15: GEO Group FacilitiesThe GEO Group,
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Page 18 and 19: Ohio Revised Cost Savings Downwards
Page 20 and 21: Section 6Twenty Questions to Ask in
Page 22 and 23: 15. How might privatizing specific
Page 24 and 25: tion enforcement efforts, leniency
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Page 30 and 31: Section 10Michigan Prison Privatiza
Page 32 and 33: Section 11RecommendationsThis paper
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Page 36: 85 Lee Williams and Esteban Parra,

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