opinion

Johnson: Using state over private prisons saves money

At the end of this month, the Mississippi Department of Corrections Task Force — created by Gov. Bryant after the indictment of former MDOC Commissioner, and my successor, Chris Epps — is set to issue their recommendations regarding Mississippi’s future with for-profit prisons.

I encourage them to recommend the state begin to phase out for-profit prisons and use the savings to (1) raise compensation for corrections officers to reduce corruption, (2) hire more qualified corrections officers to increase competency, (3) improve conditions in current facilities and (4) invest in proven rehabilitation and training programs.

Let me take you back about 20 years and tell you how we got here.

In the mid-to-late 1990’s, Mississippi built 15 new prisons in seven years to address chronic overcrowding in our corrections system due to more stringent criminal and sentencing laws. The state relied on for-profit companies to come in and handle much of this expansion with the promise they would do so at a lower cost that saves taxpayer money. The deal was taxpayers would pay for the capital costs to build the new prison facilities and the private companies would operate them once completed.

In 2001, however, Mississippi faced another problem. After spending millions on building these new prisons, we had about 2,000 more prison beds than prisoners. Because for-profit prisons charged the state by the number of inmates they housed, it made more financial sense to me — as MDOC commissioner at the time — to put more prisoners in the state-run facilities that we were already paying for instead of paying an extra per diem to house them in a for-profit prison. It was like owning a hotel. Why would you pay to put somebody up in another hotel when you have an empty bed in your own? It was simple economics.

As you can imagine, this was not ideal for the companies operating the for-profit prisons, as they were losing money on empty beds the state was not paying for. So, they hired some lobbyists to convince legislators to establish a minimum bed quota for for-profit prison capacity, guaranteeing them both a certain number of prisoners and a statutory source of revenue.

This made no sense to me. Nor did it make sense to then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove who vetoed legislation guaranteeing for profit prison companies a certain number of inmates. Unfortunately, his veto was ultimately overridden by the lobbyist-influenced Legislature.

Fast-forward about 15 years and the circumstances have not gotten any better. In fact, they are considerably worse now that these same companies are embroiled in the corruption scandal enveloping state government.

As of last month, the average occupancy in the four for-profit prisons that house the state’s inmates was at 79 percent capacity. Meanwhile, the average occupancy in the three major state-run prisons was at 71 percent capacity. These state-run prisons have 3,360 empty beds, which is almost enough to hold the entire prison population housed in for-profit prisons. Again, if we have the space, why are we paying extra for them to stay in for-profit prisons?

It gets worse. These for-profit prisons are not keeping their promise to save the state money. In 2014, the average cost per day to keep an inmate at a for-profit prison was $53.52, including capital expenses to the taxpayer. The average cost per day to keep an inmate at one of the three major state-run prisons? $45.19 — over eight bucks cheaper per prisoner every day. If the 3,936 inmates in for-profit prisons were moved to these facilities today, it would save the state $32,786.88 tomorrow and nearly $12 million over the next year.

A little over a month ago while speaking on a panel at Ole Miss, Andy Taggart — the co-chairman of the MDOC Task Force —claimed that he understands the argument that introducing for-profit prisons was “the only way to get the bed space we needed” 20 years ago, but that today, “it certainly seems like a bad idea.” He went further to predict that for-profit prisons were not part of “the long-term future” of the Mississippi correction system.

I agree with him. There is an argument that for-profit prisons were necessary 20 years ago when Mississippi was desperate for a quick fix to our prison space problems. But now and for the foreseeable future, they are no longer necessary and are creating a financial burden on the taxpayers of Mississippi that is unsustainable.

As they finalize their recommendations in these last few weeks, I hope Mr. Taggart and the members of the MDOC Task Force take a hard look at both the history and the current facts and recommend Mississippi phase out its use of for-profit companies to run its prisons.

Robert Johnson was the Mississippi’s corrections commissioner from 2000-2002, after previously serving as police chief, in Jackson, as well as Lansing and Jackson, Michigan. He is currently the owner of RL Johnson & Associates LLC.