(MintPress) – A recent Department of Justice investigation into a Mississippi juvenile detention facility reveals major violations in private prison management. A Federal Judge describing the Walnut Grove Youth Detention Facility as “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhumane acts” blamed both state authorities and GEO Inc., the second largest private prison operator in the United States for improperly staffing the facility.
Despite signing a court decree in March to overhaul the facility, violations persist, much to the chagrin of prisoners and rights groups. With large prison populations in many cash-strapped communities, state authorities have cut funding to prisons despite reports of inhumane conditions and overcrowding. In many cases, private corporations have become an increasingly popular option for states pursuing policies of economic austerity. However, cases, such as the one in Mississippi, indicate that private, for profit companies provide little in the way of improved conditions for inmate populations.
Gross misconduct
The report showed enormous misconduct, including sexual abuse by prison guards, many of whom are known to have gang affiliations. Troubling, too, is the lack of basic healthcare for the prisoners. Guards, according U.S. Justice Department Investigators, are unwilling, or unable to quell violence which persists among inmates. The report cited one incident among many in which an prisoner was stabbed in the eye during a fight.
While state authorities requested that GEO Inc. improve the conditions in the prison two months ago, state officials note that GEO Inc. has no obligation to improve conditions under the current contract. Emmitt Sparkman, Deputy Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections said, “All we can do is make a request,” referring to the apparent lack of state control in the matter during a recent federal court testimony.
With little room for recourse, Mississippi has pledged to replace GEO Inc. with Management & Training Corp, another private prison company once the current contract expires. However, swapping one private company for another has done little to allay fears of continued misconduct. The problem remains serious: when states use for-profit corporations to provide a service that ought to be a public duty, prisons suffer from poor service and oversight. The issue, unfortunately, seems to be of growing national concern.
The privatization of prisons
With a population around 313 million, the United States represents just 5 percent of the world’s population, but claims 25 percent of all inmates in the world, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at the University of Essex. The independent project, which records statistics globally on prison population, found that the U.S. incarcerates 753 people per 100,000 citizens, also the highest rate anywhere in the world.
By comparison, England imprisons 153 per 100,000, while France and Italy boast 96 and 92 per 100,000, respectively.
While the reasons for the rise in prison populations are many, Nake M. Kamrany and Ryan J. Boyd wrote in a recent Huffington Post article, “Over the past forty years the number of incarcerated people has increased 350 percent while population increased 33 percent, violent crimes rose 3 percent higher than 1980 while property crimes dropped from 496.1 per 1,000 in 1980 to 134.7 in 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This growth in incarceration rates is primarily attributed to changes in correctional policies that have been ruled by the Supreme Court, followed by the judiciary system, the Justice Department, and the prosecutors whose utility function for re-election by ‘being tough on crime,’ overrides national well-being.”
Kamrany and Boyd, point to California’s controversial “three strike law”, which imposes mandatory life sentences for criminals who have committed three felony convictions. While three strike laws are used most often against criminals who have committed violent crimes, there have been a number of cases where a criminal who has committed three non-violent crimes is given a life sentence.
Troubling, too, is the high number of non-violent drug offenders who populate U.S. prisons. Twenty-five percent of the U.S. prison population falls into this category, up from less than 10 percent in 1980. Kamrany and Boyd, note that in other developed countries, most of these individuals would be treated as patients in state sponsored rehab programs, rather than simply as criminals.
“Tough on crime” policies pushed by President Reagan, which criminalize disease and poverty, have led to skyrocketing prison populations as well, despite recorded decreases in violent crimes nationally over the past 30 years.
States unable to afford the maintenance of growing prison populations have increasingly relied upon private companies to fill the void. Writing on this issue, Adam Gopnik, a reporter for the New Yorker elaborates, saying:
“A growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.”