By James Osborne
The Philadelphia Inquirer
CAMDEN, N.J. — For months, Camden County officials have promoted their plans to privatize the county jail as a means to lower the cost of locking up criminals in a city that has the highest crime rate in the country.
But the corrections officers’ union, which opposes privatization, says county leaders are not telling the whole story.
County records show the existence of millions of dollars in revenue not included in freeholders’ reports of the annual cost of the jail - put at $58 million in a presentation to Camden County mayors and law enforcement officials late last year.
Revenue, including fees from the state prison system to house its overflow and commissions from inmates’ telephones calls and commissary purchases, totaled at least $4.4 million in 2008 and was on track to exceed that in 2009, bringing down the operational costs of the jail.
Local 351 of the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, which represents the 350 corrections officers who work at the jail and stand to lose their jobs if privatization goes through, contend that county officials are manipulating their finances to make the jail appear more expensive than it is.
“They want to drive the numbers up to justify bringing a private company in,” said Sgt. Peter Farlow, a union leader. “They can omit whatever they want to omit, but the bottom-line numbers are what tell the truth.”
County spokeswoman Joyce Gabriel said the revenue, in particular the $2.9 million for overflow state prisoners, was not guaranteed and would likely be affected by Gov. Christie’s plans to cut government spending.
“You can’t count on” that revenue, she said. “It’s a changing playing field, and everyone is going to have to be more efficient.”
The jail opened on Federal Street in downtown Camden in 1988 as the city’s crime rate was climbing toward its peak in the mid-1990s. The brown concrete tower, designed to hold 1,267 inmates, was quickly over capacity.
By 2005, the average daily population had climbed to 1,848. Three or four inmates would share cells designed for two, with people sleeping on the concrete floor, according to a study commissioned by the county.
That year, Corri Dittimus-Bey, a former inmate, filed a class-action suit against the county over conditions at the jail. Avoiding a ruling from the courts, freeholders elected to work with the plaintiffs to deal with the overcrowding.
Under court order, the county agreed to increase the number of beds by building a new jail or expanding the existing one, and overhaul the criminal justice system to improve the flow of inmates through the jail; most are awaiting trial or sentencing to state prison.
A criminal justice consultant was brought on board, and the average daily population fell. It now hovers around 1,600.
In December, after a lengthy review, county freeholders announced their plans to seek a deal with a corrections company to build and manage a new jail.
Officials are looking for a contract of between $65 and $85 a day to house a single inmate, which at the current population would mean between $38 million and $49.6 million a year for the corrections company that won.
Consequently, the cost of the jail - $58 million according to county and just over $50 million according to the union - has figured critically into the debate.
While a string of present and former law enforcement officials has come out in favor of handing the jail over to a company, there has not been unanimity.
Mike McLaughlin, who was county sheriff from 1995 to 2006 after 28 years with the New Jersey State Police, said he had been consulted about privatization while in office and told officials that “it was a bad move.”
McLaughlin and a team of representatives from the county’s various criminal justice agencies had been looking into ways to bring the jail population down. He suggested sending the overflow to jails in rural Delaware or Maryland, which was rejected.
“They didn’t want to hear anything that was going to cost them more money or cost them politically,” he said. “Privatization will backfire on them. It won’t right away, but the first time they have a major incident, a riot where local police have to be called in, there’s going to be costs involved. And they haven’t factored those in.”
But to many local officials, both elected and in law enforcement, the jail is a long-standing financial drain.
Endorsements for privatization have been steady, but in some cases tentative - dependent on the terms the county can negotiate.
“If fully privatizing the jail gets the best cost savings, maybe that is something we’ll get behind,” said Somerdale Mayor Gary Passanante, who sits on the recently formed jail committee of the Camden County Mayors’ Association.
The move toward private prisons gained steam nationally in the early 1980s when state and federal governments looked to the privatization of traditional government industries like trash collection and public transit as a means to cut government spending, said Mark Cohen, a business management and law professor at Vanderbilt University, who has studied the private corrections industry.
About 7.5 percent of U.S. prisoners, including state and federal inmates, are housed in private facilities.
And while some case studies show private facilities are more dangerous than their public-sector counterparts and fail to provide the savings they advertise, overall the industry has a good track record, Cohen said.
“There’s so many dimensions to factor in. It’s very complicated,” he said. “But there’s no evidence they’re worse in any dimension. They’re as good or better, and they save a little money.”
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