Corrections Corporation of America

Recently, the Justice Department announced that the federal prison system would distance itself from privately owned prisons. The gradual implementation will take five years and instructs officials to not renew contracts or to limit the power of private companies in these “contract prisons.” This tangled relationship began at the federal level in 1997. But in many ways, the privatization of prisons is homegrown Tennessee politics.

Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the first and largest private prison company in the U.S., felt the aftershock of the news with a 35 percent drop in stock prices.

The Justice Department determined that private prisons were neither more cost-effective nor safer than government-run facilities. In an eight-category analysis, inspectors found that contract prisons lagged behind their publicly run counterparts. This included a higher rate of assaults directed at prisoners and staff. The Justice Department decided that contract prisons are a poorer option than government-run prisons.

This wasn’t the message touted by government in the 1980s. CCA first emerged in Nashville. Its cofounder, Tom Beasley, began his career under Tennessee politician Lamar Alexander. Within two years of its founding, many Republicans and Democrats at the state level owned stock in the upstart company that was generating substantial profits from the incarceration business.

The company also capitalized on growing discontent and legal qualms about state prisons. A series of riots in 1985 shook Tennessee politics. Lawsuits had already snaked their way through the courts, and an investigation found prisoner living conditions “shocking” and “unsafe.” The investigation cited recently enacted tough-on-crime measures as the major factor in a massive prison population boom. In the late 1970s, Alexander ran on a tough-on-crime platform that put people in prison and kept them there for longer.

Prisoners had begun airing their grievances to local newspapers. Prisoners at four locations burned facilities, took hostages, demanded a live press conference, caused more than $11 million in damages, and attracted national attention. The state’s leaders decided Tennessee needed to unload its prison problems.

Enter CCA. The governor’s wife, Honey Alexander, and Speaker of the House Ned McWherter quickly dumped their CCA stock to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. Then, in a swiftly called special session, Governor Alexander endorsed a full buyout of Tennessee prisons by the private company, calling this new alternative “cheaper and better.”

Other politicians and legislators questioned the legality of the deal but paid no mind to the implications of turning the prison system into a for-profit business. After revisions, the state legislature struck down the buyout proposal.

Although the full buyout never happened, the slow encroachment of private companies into prisons soon became a reality as the legislature approved the takeover of several state facilities. Republican members of the state legislature supported the move. Democrats largely accepted it and provided no viable alternative. Although prisoners and state prison workers protested privatization, politicians in Tennessee remained silent.

Those opposed to private prisons have gained important allies in recent months. For the first time, a presidential hopeful from a major party has made a serious call to do away with contract prisons. And although Bernie Sanders’ run for president is over, there is a political opportunity for Democrats to fight prison privatization, especially in light of the Justice Department’s decision.

The move to end the relationship between federal prisons and private companies is an important step, but it’s not where privatization began, nor is it where it should end. More than 30 years ago, the Democratic Party’s silence on the issue in Tennessee allowed prison privatization to take hold. The Justice Department’s decision affects only a fraction of prisoners living in private prisons. Most prisoners are still held at state-level prisons, where CCA began and is still a dominant force.

The same criticisms that the Justice Department acknowledged regarding privately run federal prisons hold true for their state counterparts. Ending the for-profit business model of incarceration at the state level is a battle that must be fought in state legislatures around the country.

Andrea L. Ringer is a PhD candidate in the history department at the University of Memphis.

Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Back during the 1970s and 1980s, many states and the federal government enacted stiffer, often mandatory, punishments for drug offenses. The “war on drugs” resulted in a rapid increase in the number of imprisoned

Americans. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the emergence of private, for-profit prison companies.

In 1983, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) began lobbying to build and operate state and federal prisons. Their claim was that they could provide the same quality of service offered by publicly operated prisons but at a lower cost. One year later, CCA was awarded a contract for a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. It was the first instance of the public sector contracting management of a prison to a private company.

In the years since, the privatization of state and federal prisons has grown rapidly, with other corporations getting into the for-profit prison business. Today, CCA operates nearly 70 facilities nation-wide, and provides incarceration for around 80,000 prisoners. In Tennessee, the company houses about 19 percent of the state’s incarcerated population.

Private prison lobbyists claim that the private sector saves resources through greater efficiencies. They also claim that governments can benefit in the short-term through the direct sale of correctional facilities to private companies and can save money when constructing new facilities. However, Government Accountability Office (GAO) studies have shown these benefits to be mostly illusory.

What is clear is that for for-profit prison businesses, the more “customers” you have, the more money you make. Nationwide, it’s a multi-billion dollar business and growing. Profits often come at the cost of those working for the prisons. From a GAO report: “Privately managed prisons attempt to control costs by regularly providing lower levels of staff benefits, salary, and salary advancement than publicly-run facilities (equal to about $5,327 less in annual salaries for new recruits and $14,901 less in maximum annual salaries). On average, private prison employees also receive 58 hours less training than their publicly employed counterparts. Consequently, there are higher employee turnover rates in private prisons than in publicly operated facilities.”

In Tennessee, the public prison system is under severe strain. Guards are quitting the public system in droves, due to changes made to their schedules and the less-than-stellar wages they are paid. The natural reaction on the part of our business-minded Republican governor and state legislators may well be more privatization. But expanding the role of private prisons and making crime pay for “Big Incarceration” is a short-sighted solution.

Re-examining sentencing policies, guard compensation and hours, and funding our public prisons at an adequate level — thereby keeping them under public scrutiny — is a much better way to go than attempting to “save money” via more privatization of what should rightfully be a government function.