By Chris Kirkham
Huffington Post
BALDWIN, Mich. — Looking to cut a corrections budget that accounts for nearly a quarter of the state’s general fund each year, Michigan lawmakers have reopened the door to privatizing state prisons.
Prison systems constitute a major slice of state budgets across the country, prompting legislators to explore savings measures. Under legislation signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder (R) this week, Michigan could send inmates to a troubled private prison or privatize other prisons as part of an effort to trim costs in the state’s $1.9 billion corrections system.
The legislation is a potential boon for the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison operator, which owns a now-vacant youth prison in rural Baldwin, Mich. Ever since the state canceled its contract with GEO in 2005, company executives have unsuccessfully tried to find inmates to fill the 1,725 empty prison beds. The company boosted its spending on political lobbying in Michigan more than fivefold last year.
But the Baldwin prison has a checkered past. The state closed the facility, its only private prison, in 2005, following a series of audits and investigations that found high levels of assault, frequent staff vacancies and operating costs that exceeded those in comparable state prisons.
Civil rights and criminal justice policy groups argue Michigan cannot ignore its troubled history with privatization. “There’s absolutely no reason to think that conditions will necessarily be better, or that problems like staff turnover will have been solved,” said Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, a Michigan group that advocates for sentencing reform and reducing prison populations. “There are a lot of lessons to be learned.”
Michigan’s experience with privatization offers a case study of the challenges many states have faced in outsourcing public safety to for-profit corporations: Cost savings often don’t materialize, and lower wages lead to high rates of turnover, which critics say compromises safety.
Full story: Michigan Private Prisons Law Could Reopen Facility With Checkered Past