Privatizing Lockups: Previewing the 2007 Legislature

Don’t say we wuzn’t warned. For example, is there any discussion here about what might make the rise in prison population less inevitable? A same-day story about a mental health crisis places these two issues in separate compartments. But what about the prison population attributable to mental illness? What would first-class mental health mean for prison demand?–gm

As prisons fill, state hunts for scarce beds
Growing convict population raises questions about future housing

By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, July 01, 2006

While the state is paying $40 a day to house more than 1,000 state convicts in county jails, it is paying some private lockups as little as $20 a day to hold several thousand others. It is a difference that state officials are examining closely as they scramble to find new beds to supplement overflowing state prisons.

Why the difference in cost?

“Well, the answer is not simple,” said state Rep. Jerry Madden, a Richardson Republican who leads the House Corrections Committee, which monitors the prison system. “These inmates are all basically the same type, just the price is much higher.”

County jail beds are more expensive than some private lockups’ because their bunks are maximum-security and their costs are higher, prison officials said. However, most of the inmates who are housed outside state prisons are minimum-security, they said.

So why not lease more of the cheaper bunks and save money?

A state law enacted years ago limits the number of state convicts that can be held in any one private prison to 1,000, Madden said. He has promised to try to change that law when the Legislature convenes in 2007 if that is what it takes to save money.

Even then, enough bunks may not be available in either kind of jail to go around. In recent months, state officials said, federal officials have been leasing hundreds of empty jail beds at a higher price than the state pays. That is heightening fears that sometime next year, when the state may need hundreds more bunks for its prisoner overflow, there may not be enough.

“With fewer beds out there, that means we’re going to be tighter for space,” Madden said. “No question about it.”

In all, officials said they are budgeted to spend up to $43.8 million during the fiscal year that ends in August to lease prison beds.

To house a convict in a state-run prison costs Texas taxpayers about $40 a day. Most counties charge the same rate, officials said. But the rate of private lockups is much less, ranging from about $20 to $30 a day, Madden said.

“By contract, they don’t have the medical costs because if an inmate gets sick, they transfer him back to the state,” he said. “Their personnel costs are less. Their overhead is less. But in some cases, their programs are better than the ones offered in the county jails.”

That, prison officials said, is by design: Private prisons include space for programs — vocational instruction and treatment programs, among others — as part of their contract with governments that house inmates there. County jails, however, are built with little or no space for programs because they are generally limited to holding prisoners.

“The counties have no guaranteed minimum number of inmates who will be housed there, like the contract guarantees the private companies get, so there’s more of a financial chance involved in the county operations,” Madden said. “One day they might be full of state inmates; the next day they might not.”

Prison officials said Friday that they are hoping to lease 300 to 400 more beds in coming months; 1,418 prisoners are already housed in county jails.

More than 4,000 state inmates are housed in privately run prisons under long-term contracts with the state. One houses 1,000 inmates, the rest 500 — and all seven are full.

State prisons Friday were about 97 percent full, holding 152,526 convicts.

“The projections are that we’ll need about 3,100 (overflow) contract beds” by the end of August 2007, said Michelle Lyons, a Huntsville-based spokeswoman for the prison system. “That’s more than twice what we contract for now.”

In May, reports show, the prison population grew by 334 convicts — an upward trend that has been demonstrated in three of the first five months of the year.

Officials at the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the agency that oversees county jails and private lockups, said about 2,900 felons were in county jails in June awaiting transfer to a state prison. Statewide, county jails had about 3,900 empty beds.

Of the 81,000 prisoners in county and private jails across Texas, 13,710 were so-called “contract” inmates June 1, including state and federal prisoners, as well as inmates from eight other states.

Considering Texas’ growing prison population, expected to fill state prisons by sometime early next year, Madden said he is pushing prison officials to review their contracting policies — to take advantage of cheaper beds and to ensure that Texas has enough available bunks to hold all its inmates during the coming year.

As part of their interim studies, both the House and Senate committees that oversee prisons are examining ways to slow the flow of convicts into prisons, including diverting more first-time offenders to probation, releasing more nonviolent offenders onto more intensively supervised paroles and even bolstering educational and vocational programs in prisons to cut recidivism.

Madden, a conservative GOP House leader, said he is also supporting expansion of drug- and alcohol-treatment programs championed years ago by Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, and then drastically scaled back by Republicans who replaced her. They blamed the cutbacks on budget belt-tightening.

“Some of those programs appear to be working,” Madden said. “We should look at expanding them.”