By Finn Bullers
The Kansas City Star
JOHNSON COUNTY, Mo. — Forget housing inmates in private jails, Johnson County Sheriff Frank Denning says. He thinks he can house an inmate for $30 less a day.
In May, county commissioners met with a spokesman from one of the nation’s largest private penal firms to consider the county’s growing jail needs and how to avoid building more cells.
Denning has called private jails a “train wreck” that would compromise public safety and drive up costs.
Ray Hodge, senior director of development for Corrections Corp. of America, said the sheriff’s number were “guesstimates” and “until they open their books — and if we opened ours — all of this discussion is purely speculative.”
“We have other customers,” he said Friday. “We just saw this as an opportunity to help the region out and build a regional jail. But it doesn’t seem the politics have lined up to make that feasible.”
In May, Denning said he was trying to blow up “this myth that somebody else can do this a whole lot cheaper and more efficiently than we can.”
Since then, Kent Brown, the sheriff’s chief financial officer, has been crunching numbers to make the case.
Brown’s numbers, based on comments made by Hodge in May, suggest the county could house a medium-risk inmate for $30 a day less than the private company could. Efforts to get firm numbers from Corrections Corp. were unsuccessful, Denning said.
Until now, Denning has put the cost of housing an inmate at about $103 a day, which includes more than $28 in costs not directly associated with inmate housing.
But to get an “apples to apples” comparison, Denning said those costs should be stripped out, bringing the total to care for an inmate housed elsewhere to about $74, a figure that includes inmate transportation, medical care and food.
To make a fair comparison with Corrections Corp., Denning said, medical and transportation costs of about $21 should be added to what the sheriff pegged as the firm’s $65 base daily cost for a medium-risk inmate.
Bottom-line comparison for a medium-security inmate, Denning said: $55.62 for inmates housed within the county and $86.35 for Corrections Corp.
“It’s very compelling data,” Brown said in an interview. “Why would you hire an outside firm and bring on liability concerns when you can do it cheaper or as cheaply and still have direct control over the inmates?”
Hodge counters that his firm’s basic medical care and transportation, as well as administrative costs, are included in his inmate cost figures. Only extreme medical costs — kidney dialysis or a pregnancy, Hodge said — would be the responsibility of the county.
In 2005, a consultant’s report showed that a proposed jail expansion would be full immediately if it opened in 2009 and an additional 752 beds were recommended to be opened a year later. That concerns Johnson County commissioners.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. wants to expand its operation on the western bluff of the Missouri River to house more federal prisoners.
That would open space at the 802-bed Leavenworth Detention Center, a maximum-security facility that the firm wants to expand to 1,122 beds for offenders from across the region and beyond.
For Johnson County, that could forestall the costly construction and operating expenses of new jails.
Supporters said it also could free up county money for other needs.
“We clearly think we can house inmates at a more reasonable price without compromising quality or standards,” Hodge said.
It’s unfair, Hodge said, “for him (Denning) to assume things based on a guess that was forced out of us at a meeting when we didn’t know what was expected of us.”
Commissioners listened to the sheriff’s presentation last week but said little.
Ed Eilert and John Segale said a true “apples to apples” comparison should include the debt service costs of the county’s jail expansion.
Copyright 2007 Kansas City Star