TALLAHASSEE — Millions of dollars in campaign contributions from for-profit prison companies may not be enough this year to push through a prison privatization plan that is a priority of Gov. Rick Scott and Republican legislative leaders.

The push to privatize one-fifth of the state corrections facilities along with all inmate health care could net prison companies hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts, and those companies have spent millions in the past year trying to win support for the plan. Report by The Palm Beach Post.

But Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, who made the prison outsourcing one of his top goals, put the bill on hold twice last week because he lacked the votes within his Republican caucus to pass it.

Research by The Palm Beach Post shows that Boca Raton-based GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, have contributed nearly $2 million to candidates and political parties since Scott’s election.

GEO has contributed at least $475,000 in the past year, including $336,000 to the Republican Party of Florida.

During the 2010 election cycle, the company contributed at least $880,000 – more than two-thirds of that going to the Republican Party – including $25,000 to defray costs of Scott’s inauguration. Just before last year’s legislative session kicked off in March, GEO gave $25,000 to a political committee headed by House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park.

CCA contributed a minimum of $38,500 for the 2012 election cycle and at least $62,000 for the 2010 Florida elections.

The contributions do not include money given by principals of the corporations or their lobbyists.

Asked about the companies’ siz able contributions, Haridopolos said unions as well as the prison companies are big donors. And he’s correct.

Labor unions in Florida have contributed more than $1.3 million since 2009 to legislators, the Cabinet and the political parties. That includes about $586,000 from the Florida Police Benevolent Association and $284,000 from the Teamsters. The PBA represented corrections workers until defeated by the Teamsters in the fall.

But privatization is not the only issue labor unions are fighting in Tallahassee. The unions lost one battle over pensions last year when the legislature ordered all state workers to contribute 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions. The retirement age for firefighters and police officers was raised from 55 to 60 and from 25 years to 30 years of service for full pensions, changes law enforcement unions are fighting to undo.

Political activity increased on both sides when Scott, on the campaign trail in 2010, opened the door for a major privatization by pledging to slash $1 billion from prison spending. GEO contributions rose sharply, and the PBA launched a tough television ad campaign equating Scott’s proposed spending cuts to setting dangerous criminals on the loose.

Florida legislators included a sweeping privatization proposal in last year’s budget, signed into law by Scott in May. The plan would have outsourced more than two dozen prisons and all other Department of Corrections operations, including work camps and re-entry facilities, in the 18-county region south of Polk County to the Florida Keys. A separate plan also privatized all health care services for the state’s 100,000-plus inmates.

Judge killed initial plan

GEO affiliate GEO Care is one of the businesses in the running for the lucrative health care contract, which could garner up to $1.5 billion for seven years. GEO Care is headed by Jorge Dominicis, a lobbyist who previously worked for Florida Crystals Corp.

A Tallahassee judge late last year scrapped the privatization effort, saying the way legislators went about approving it – by blending it into the budget bill instead of putting it up for consideration in a stand-alone bill – was unconstitutional. The PBA filed the challenge.

Last week, the union representing nurses filed a similar lawsuit against corrections officials over health care privatization.

Legislators revived the prison privatization plan as a stand-alone bill this time, but Haridopolos has delayed a vote on the measure, which would require at least two companies to take over Department of Corrections duties, after it became clear that Sen. Mike Fasano, a New Port Richey Republican fiercely opposed to the measure, had the votes to stall the effort by first requiring a study. In retaliation, Haridopolos stripped Fasano of his chairmanship of the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, saying he had lost confidence in the veteran legislator.

Backing like-minded pols

CCA spokesman Scott Owen said his Nashville-based company gives to legislators who share its philosophy. “We participate in the process just as other organizations do, including public employee unions,” he said. “We do contribute to support those who are either supportive of public-private partnership or receptive to that.”

GEO, which did not respond to several requests for comment, and CCA have been steady contributors in Florida and throughout the nation for years. But since 2004 in Florida, GEO’s contributions peaked from a low in 2004 of just over $89,000 to more than $833,000 in 2010, just before legislators began publicly discussing the privatization plan.

GEO also spent up to $520,000 on a cadre of lobbyists in 2010 and up to $475,000 from January through September last year. CCA spent up to $80,000 in 2010 and up to $45,000 last year through September.

Haridopolos and his budget chief, J.D. Alexander, insist Florida taxpayers will save from $16.5 million to $44 million a year once the region is privatized, because the contracts require vendors to cost 7 percent less than what the state is paying now to run the prisons. Much of those savings are anticipated to come from lower salaries and fewer benefits for the non-­unionized employees. About 3,800 prison workers now on the state payroll would be out of jobs if the privatization takes place.

The political contributions were not a factor in GOP leaders’ decision to privatize, Haridopolos said recently.

“Yes, there’s some vested interests. That’s what Madison talked about when he came up with the Constitution. So there’s not a lack of money on either side,” Haridopolos said.

Haridopolos said the cost savings are his goal, and repeated his argument that the money would be better spent on education and health care.

“If we’re given the same quality of work at a lower price, who wouldn’t select the lower price at the same quality?” he said.

PBA Executive Director Matt Puckett also said he did not believe the privatization effort was linked to political support from the prison companies, facing a decline in prisoners and mixed reactions to privatization nationwide.

“They’ve been giving money for decades. This is a different moment in time. They’re looking at a declining prison population. They’re looking at declining revenue. So they’re striking now. I don’t think it has anything to do with the contributions they give,” he said.

Tammy Florida, Private Prisons

Bexar County TX Commissioners’ Court voted to extend the GEO Group’s contract to manage the Central Texas Detention Facility in San Antonio, according to the SA Business Journal.

The 685-bed facility, which is owned by Bexar County, houses detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service. Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO has managed the facility since 1988. The new contract will have an effective date of April 29, 2009, and will last for 10 years. Officials with GEO expect the latest contract will generate $11 million in annualized operating revenues for the company at full occupancy.

“The Central Texas Detention Facility plays an important role in addressing the need for federal detention bed-space along the southern border of the United States,” says GEO Chairman and CEO George C. Zoley. “We look forward to strengthening our public-private partnership with Bexar County and the U.S. Marshals Service.”

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Criminals are using the lack of rehabilitation in South Australian jails to win less jail time.

In the past 12 months, evidence of the lack of rehabilitation has been considered by judges when:

• Releasing a multiple child sex offender from indefinite detention partly because a lack of resources had delayed rehabilitation.
• Overturning the indefinite detention of a rapist, partly because it was “unfair” he was denied rehabilitation reserved for those soon to be released.
• Fixing a non-parole period for a drug user, commenting he could access better rehabilitation in the community.
• Suspending the sentence of a man convicted of assault, commenting this would allow him to access community rehabilitation.
• Lowering a non-parole period for a sex offender, commenting prison could set back his recovery.

Chair of the Law Society’s Criminal Law Committee George Mancini said the trend was increasing because of a State Government policy of longer sentences. “It is an aspect of overcrowding, of longer terms of imprisonment and not spending sufficient resources on rehabilitation,” he said.  A spokesman for Prisons Minister Tom Koutsantonis defended the Government’s record on rehabilitation.  “Prior to 2005, there was no sex offender treatment in SA prisons at all,” the spokesman said.

A number of the recent decisions have been made on the advice of Dr Raeside, a consulting psychiatrist to the Department of Correctional Services, who has been praised by judges for his professionalism and is highly critical of rehabilitation in the state’s jails.

“I figure if we are going to lock more people up for longer (whether one agrees with that policy or not) then we ought to do something for them whilst they are there to reduce the chances of them re-offending and make the community safer when they get out,” he said.

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New South Wales, Australia, prison officers say an Easter weekend outbreak of violence at Parklea prison is a prelude to further trouble in the state’s jails if the State Government privatises prison operations.  Story from the Canberra Times.

The Prison Officers Vocational Branch, the union representing officers, says private jail operators would not employ enough staff to contain the sort of incident that occurred last Friday, in which a group of inmates, allegedly bikies, attacked another prisoner during morning muster, reportedly using sharpened toothbrushes.

The Department of Corrective Services has downplayed the incident. It said only seven prisoners were involved, and only one inmate, Mesbah Mirzaei, who allegedly led the attack, was a member of the bikie gang Notorious.

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Oklahoma prison officials say as many as 1,000 California inmates soon could be arriving at a private prison in Sayre, OK.  Report from NewsOnSix.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections officials say the mostly medium-security inmates will begin arriving at the North Fork Correctional Facility April 16. The private prison in Beckham County has a capacity of 2,400 beds but currently houses a little more than 1,400 inmates.   Officials from Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, which owns the Sayre facility, and the California Department of Corrections would not confirm the transfer of inmates from California to Oklahoma.

About 470 of the inmates at Sayre are from Wyoming and Idaho, and both of those states plan to return those offenders to their home states later this year. The rest of the inmates at the Sayre facility are from California. DOC private prisoner administrator Renee Watkins says none of the out-of-state prisoners held at Sayre will be maximum-security inmates.

vericatrajkova CCA, California, Oklahoma, Private Prisons

Corrections Corp. of America said Wednesday it has won a 4-year contract worth up to $226.4 million to house federal inmates at a new prison in Mississippi.

Under the 4-year contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons, the company would house up to 2,567 inmates the company’s recently completed 2,232-bed Adams County Correctional Center … The contract carries up to three 2-year renewal options and a guarantee of 50 percent occupancy at the beginning and eventually 90 percent.

The Nashville-based company houses more than 8,500 Bureau of Prisons inmates at several facilities and expects to begin taking inmates at the new prison during the third quarter of this year.

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A company expected to bid for contracts to operate two jails in Australia has backed facilities in which inmates have keys to their cells and are on a first-name basis with their jailers. Gary Sturgess, research director of the U.K.-based Serco Group, will tell a New South Wales, Australia, parliamentary inquiry Friday that decency, not efficiency, is the main reason to privatize jails.  This report from Fox News Australia.

He says overseas experience shows that prisoners enjoy more privileges — including being given the keys to their own cells — in correctional systems where private and public providers compete … Prisoners in these systems spend more time out of their cells and have far greater interaction with their jailers — with whom they are frequently on first-name terms — than in systems where public providers face no competition, Sturgess says.  The results are safer jails and lower rates of reoffending.

Serco is expected to bid for the contracts to operate Cessnock prison, in the Hunter Valley, and Parklea prison, in western Sydney, when the jails are privatized this year.  The company already operates one jail in Victoria and one in Western Australia.

Sturgess’s submission to the upper house inquiry links private jail services in Britain to the “decency agenda” pursued by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.   “Contract prisons in the U.K. are more humane, partly because government demanded a higher standard when writing the original contracts, partly because price was not allowed to dominate the procurement process, and partly because the political and policy environment at the time when the market was first established was focused on the quality of prison life,” the submission from Serco argues.   He said the inmates in low- and medium-security prisons in Britain had been allowed to hold duplicate keys to their own cells, which improved both efficiency and decency.

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Seventeen percent of the buildings at Oklahoma’s correctional facilities need major work or need to be torn down, according to a summary of an assessment obtained by the Tulsa World.

The initial facility assessment ranked the 402 buildings at the state’s prisons on a scale of one to four.   A one ranking meant a building was new or minimal repairs were needed, while a four meant a building needed major renovation, replacement or to be torn down. Rep. Randy Terrill, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, said 17 percent of the buildings earned a three or four rating, while more than 80 percent ranked one or two.  “I think the report mostly confirms what we suspected,” said Terrill.  “Department of Corrections facilities are not in the best or absolute worst of shape.”

The article at Tulsa World goes into speculation about how this report is linked to the privatization movement in Oklahoma.

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Alaska Legislators are cringing at the cost of the planned new jumbo state prison in the Matanuska-Susita Borough and want to look at turning it into a private prison.

State representatives are also reluctant to pony up an additional $20 million the Palin administration has requested for the $240 million project. Enthusiasm for the project isn’t what it used to be before oil prices plummeted, dragging state revenues down with them.  Fairbanks Republican Rep. Mike Kelly took over the corrections budget in the state House this year and said that — if he could — he would slow the project down. But the bonds for construction have already been sold. That’s left lawmakers with few options.  One is to privatize operations of the prison when it opens …

Private prisons have been hugely controversial in Alaska.  “They’ve figured prominently into a lot of the problems we’ve had,” said Eagle River Republican Rep. Bill Stoltze, an influential supporter of keeping the project in state hands. The ongoing federal corruption investigation, which has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 12 lawmakers, lobbyists and others, began with inquiry into a push to build a private prison in the state …

Political battles over private prisons in Alaska kept the state’s jail-building efforts on hold for a decade. In the meantime, the lack of space in Alaska’s correctional system has the state sending hundreds of Alaska prisoners to a private prison in Arizona …The prison fight appeared to be over after Senate President Lyda Green, who is now retired, pushed through the new state prison to be built in her home area of the Mat-Su. The planned Goose Creek Correctional Center, about nine miles north of Point Mackenzie, will be the largest prison in Alaska at 1,536 beds. The Mat-Su Borough sold the $240 million in construction bonds for it earlier this year. The state is to lease the prison for 25 years, covering the borough’s bond payments …

Corrections officials are asked to report back with their findings on privatization by next spring.  State corrections officials have never been big fans of privatizing their work. Deputy Corrections Commissioner Dwayne Peeples said officials haven’t come up with a position on the potential of privatizing the Mat-Su prison. But he said any savings would “probably be fairly marginal.”

There is a great deal more background in the article in the Anchorage Daily News.

vericatrajkova Alaska, Economic Issues, Private Prisons

GEO wants to build a 3,000-bed correctional facility near Florida City, reports the Miami Herald.

If approved, the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections, would build the $100 million complex … in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.  It would add 900 jobs, said Jerry Proctor, a lawyer representing the GEO Group. He presented the company’s plan at Tuesday’s Florida City Commission meeting.  He said GEO is still looking for a tenant, either from the local, state or federal government.  One government agency might be the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.   ”The facility is an excellent candidate for use by ICE for its detention requirements,” according to a packet given to the Florida City Commission …

At Florida City’s meeting, GEO Group representatives talked about the economic benefits of having the facility if it is built. They estimated that the combined construction and day-to-day operations of the prison would create 900 jobs and generate nearly $28 million in local spending. Florida City leaders responded positively.  ”The prospect of new, good paying jobs coming into the city is always a positive thing,” Mayor Otis Wallace said.

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