More than 176,000 inmates are confined in the correctional institutions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) system today, up from 58,000 in 1990. As a result, the BOP system is operating at 34% over-capacity or about 45,000 inmates above the number that should be housed in the system.
At the same time, the tremendous growth in the BOP prison inmate population continues to outpace the growth in the number of federal correctional officers who staff BOP prisons. The BOP prison system is currently staffed at an 89% level, as compared to the 95% staffing levels of the mid-1990s.
This massive overcrowding and serious understaffing is creating hazardous conditions and security risks for BOP prison inmates, federal correctional officers and other staff employees, and the local communities within which they work.
AFGE, which represents the federal correctional officers and other federal employees who work at the 105 prison facilities of the BOP system, is strongly committed to fight: (1) for substantially increasing the number of federal correctional officers who work at BOP prisons; (2) against any attempts to undermine the Federal Prison Industries (FPI) prison inmate work program; and (3) against the incarceration of federal inmates in private prisons.
AFGE strongly supports any effort to substantially increase the number of federal corrections officers who work at BOP prisons.
While the federal prison inmate population has increased dramatically over the past two decades, federal prisons have become seriously understaffed. It is reported that the BOP system is being funded at 89% staffing levels, as compared to the 95% staffing levels of the mid-1990s. And this 89% staffing level does not take into account the 500 correctional workers who have been called up for military service in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Last year, the AFGE and its Council of Prison Locals (CPL) urged President George W. Bush and Congress to support at least a $500 million increase in FY 2005 BOP funding to increase correctional worker staffing levels at BOP prisons. Unfortunately, the final FY 2005 Treasury and Transportation appropriations bill signed by the President included only a $213 million increase above the FY 2004 level.
AFGE and the CPL were disappointed that President Bush and Congress failed to provide the necessary level of FY 2005 funding necessary for BOP to deal with the significant correctional worker understaffing at BOP prisons. But we were outraged that President Bush’s Office of Management and Budget in June 2004 required BOP Director Harley Lappin to cut spending by $140 million in 2004 and $300 million in 2005. These spending cuts may result in BOP laying off many of its 35,000 correctional workers – making BOP prisons increasingly dangerous places to work.
In his June 17, 2004 letter formally notifying AFGE and CPL of these potential layoffs, Director Lappin wrote that it was his “sincere desire” to avoid these layoffs through other cost-saving measures at BOP. Such measures include eliminating certain managerial and central office positions, combining some departments, managing two prisons with a single warden (wherever feasible), operating with no associate wardens at stand-alone minimum security prisons (wherever possible), and delivering prison pharmacy services through a Central Fill facility operated by the Veterans’ Administration. But the Director added that “the reality is that if our efforts are unsuccessful, for whatever reason, the agency will have no choice but to complete a formal [layoff]. This [layoff] could affect every employee and position in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and could begin as early as nine months from the date you receive this letter [i.e., March 2005].”
AFGE strongly opposes any effort to eliminate the Federal Prison Industry (FPI) work program’s mandatory source preference for the entire federal government unless an alternative job skills work program is designed and put into place.
The FPI is a self-supporting government corporation that provides job skills opportunities to federal prison inmates by producing goods and services for federal agencies. By statute, FPI products must be purchased by non-defense federal agencies (a requirement referred to as "mandatory source preference") and are not available for sale in interstate commerce or to non-federal entities. Non-defense federal agencies can obtain products and services from the private sector through a FPI-issued waiver if FPI is unable to provide the needed good or service at a competitive price, with the necessary quality or in a timely manner.
AFGE strongly opposes any legislation that would undermine the FPI prison inmate work program. Eliminating the mandatory source preference for FPI products would endanger countless numbers of federal prison inmate jobs, thereby (1) creating substantial problems for the safe and secure operation of federal prisons, and (2) eliminating real opportunities for federal prison inmates to learn marketable job skills and values.
FPI is an essential prison management tool that contributes significantly to the safety and security of federal prisons. FPI helps keep thousands of federal prison inmates productively occupied in labor-intensive work activities, thereby reducing inmate idleness and the violence associated with that idleness. It also provides incentives to encourage good inmate behavior, as those who want to work in FPI must maintain clear conduct and participate in educational programs.
In addition, FPI is an important rehabilitation tool that provides federal prison inmates an opportunity to develop job skills and values that will allow them to reenter our communities as productive, law-abiding citizens. A multi-year study of FPI, completed in 1999 by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, demonstrated that FPI work programs contribute substantially to lower recidivism and increased job-related success for inmates after their release. Inmates employed by FPI were found to be 24 percent more likely to become employed after release and remain crime-free for as long as 12 years after release.
Unfortunately, in the past few years, some in Congress have been working to eliminate the FPI mandatory source preference. For example:
· Section 811 and Section 819 of the National Defense Authorization Acts of 2002 and 2003, respectively, have eliminated the FPI mandatory source preference with respect to the Department of Defense. To date, the decline in sales earnings of certain FPI work programs have resulted in FPI closing or reorganizing 18 factories, idling 2,000 inmates, and eliminating 100 FPI federal correctional officer positions.
· On November 6, 2003, the House passed, 350-65, the Federal Prison Industries Restructuring Act (H.R. 1829), a bill that would eliminate permanently the FPI mandatory source preference for the entire federal government. H.R. 1829 contained certain provisions – worked out between the bill’s sponsors and representatives of AFGE and CPL – to mitigate somewhat the adverse effects of the bill. Fortunately, H.R. 1829 was never considered by the Senate.
· The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on June 2, 2004, approved a similar bill (S. 637) to eliminate the FPI mandatory source preference for the entire federal government. The committee adopted various provisions – again worked out between the bill’s sponsors and representatives of AFGE and CPL – to mitigate the adverse effects of the bill. Fortunately, S. 346 was never considered by the full Senate.
· The final FY 2005 Treasury and Transportation appropriations bill signed by President Bush on December 8, 2004, includes a provision (Section 637) that will eliminate for one year the mandatory source preference of the FPI for the entire federal government. It is expected that this provision will further constrain FPI’s ability to operate within its own statutory obligations – i.e., to remain financially self-sustaining while providing “employment for the greatest number of inmates in the United States penal and correctional institutions who are eligible to work as is reasonably possible.”
AFGE strongly opposes any effort to incarcerate federal prison inmates in private prisons.
In recent years, the federal government and some state and local governments have experimented with prison privatization as a way to solve the overcrowding of our nation’s prisons – a crisis precipitated by increased incarceration rates and the public’s reluctance to provide more prison funding. But results of these experiments have demonstrated little evidence that prison privatization is a cost-effective, high-quality alternative to government-run prisons.
Private Prisons Are Not More Cost Effective
Proponents of prison privatization claim that private contractors can operate prisons less expensively than federal and state correctional agencies. Promises of 20 percent savings are commonly offered. However, existing research fails to make a conclusive case that private prisons are substantially more cost effective than public prisons.
For example, in 1996, the U.S. General Accounting Office reviewed five studies of prison privatization deemed to have the strongest designs and methods among those published between 1991 and mid-1996. The GAO concluded that “because these studies reported little cost differences and/or mixed results in comparing private and public facilities, we could not conclude whether privatization saved money.”
Similarly, in 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice entered into a cooperative agreement with Abt Associates, Inc. to conduct a comparative analysis of the cost effectiveness of private and public sector operations of prisons. The report, which was released in July 1998, concluded that while proponents argue that evidence exists of substantial savings as a result of privatization, “our analysis of the existing data does not support such an optimistic view.” Instead, “our conclusion regarding costs and savings is that…..available data do not provide strong evidence of any general pattern. Drawing conclusions about the inherent [cost-effective] superiority of [private prisons] is premature.”
Finally, in July 1999, Travis Pratt, Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, published the results of his meta-analysis of 33 cost effectiveness evaluations of private and public prisons from 24 independent studies. The results revealed that private prisons were not more cost effective than public prisons, and that other institutional characteristics, such as the prison facility’s number of inmates, age, and security level, were the strongest predictors of a prison’s daily per diem cost.
Private Prisons Do Not Provide Higher Quality, Safer Services
Proponents of prison privatization contend that private market pressures will necessarily produce higher quality, safer correctional services. They argue typically that private prison managers will develop and implement innovative correctional practices to enhance performance. However, emerging evidence suggests these managers are responding to market pressures not by innovating, but by slashing operating costs. In addition to cutting various prisoner programs, they are lowering employee wages, reducing employee benefits, and routinely operating with low, risky staff-to-prisoner ratios.
The impact of such reductions on the quality of prison operations is obvious. Inferior wages and benefits contribute to a “degraded” workforce, with higher levels of turnover producing a less experienced, less trained prison staff. The existence of such under-qualified employees, when coupled with insufficient staffing levels, adversely impacts correctional service quality and prison safety.
Numerous newspaper accounts have documented alleged abuses, escapes and riots at prisons run by the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company. In the last several years, a significant number of public safety lapses involving CCA have been reported by the media. The record of Wackenhut Corporation, the nation’s second largest private prison company, is no better, with numerous lapses reported since 1999.
And these private prison problems are not isolated events, confined to a handful of “under performing” prisons. Available evidence suggests the problems are structural and widespread. For example, an industry-wide survey conducted in 1997 by James Austin, a professor at George Washington University, found 49 percent more inmate-on-staff assaults and 65 percent more inmate-on-inmate assaults in medium- and minimum-security private prisons than in medium- and minimum-security government prisons.
Thus, prison privatization is not the panacea that its proponents would have us believe. Private prisons are not more cost effective than public prisons, nor do they provide higher quality, safer correctional services.
Members of Congress should support increasing FY 2006 funding by $500 million to substantially increase the number of federal corrections officers who work at BOP prisons.
Members of Congress should oppose any legislation that would eliminate the mandatory source preference of the FPI with respect to the entire federal government – unless an alternative job skills work program is designed and put into place.
Members of Congress should support legislation that would (a) prevent the federal government from housing, safeguarding, protecting, and disciplining federal prisoners in private prisons; and (b) prohibit state and local governments from using federal funds to contract with private companies for the provision of these core correctional services.