IT'S TIME TO TRY OUT PRIVATELY OPERATED PRISONS

It costs Canadian taxpayers about $66,000 a year to incarcerate a person in
a federal prison.

Despite the steep price, the Correctional Service of Canada is not,
according a new book, Con Games: The Truth About Canada's Prisons, doing a
very good job of either reforming criminals or protecting the public.

If that's the case, it's time to think about privatizing prisons. Several
American states have done so over the past decade and they're getting
better results at a lower cost.

Michael Harris, the author of the book, says our prison system is
dysfunctional. He points out that the use of drugs and home-brewed alcohol
is rampant, and prison officials make things easier by providing prisoners
with all they need to indulge themselves.

He also goes on to say that Canada's prisons are "one of the most dangerous
and poorly managed workplaces in the country." During the past decade
alone, there have been 775 serious violent incidents in federal prisons, of
which 32 were major assaults on staff and 51 were murders.

A new study entitled Weighing the Watchmen by Geoffrey Segal at the Reason
Public Policy Institute in California suggests that Canadians could not
only save tax dollars but also get better service with privately run
prisons rather than government-run correctional facilities.

As importantly, Mr. Segal found that prisons operated by the government
have also managed to cut costs and improve the quality of services when
they find themselves facing direct competition from private prisons.

While admitting that the private sector could deliver prison services at a
lower cost, critics worry that it would also mean lower quality service for
inmates.

Mr. Segal disagrees. His study says 44 per cent of privately managed
correction facilities are accredited by the American Corrections
Association for meeting national guidelines for the quality of operation,
management and maintenance. Yet only 10 per cent of government managed
prisons met these standards.

As well, an examination of 18 quality comparison studies done over the past
13 years found that private prisons provided equal, if not better service
than publicly run facilities. As far as relative costs go, 22 out of the 28
studies reviewed also found privately run correctional facilities had
significant savings.

Professor Charles Thomas, formerly a criminology professor at the
University of Florida, says the evidence of cost savings in the range of 10
to 20 per cent in privatized prisons is "overwhelming."

The book, Privatization of Correctional Services, published by the
Vancouver-based Fraser Institute also demonstrates that private prisons can
provide better safety for prisoners and staff and better quality services
at a lower cost than public prisons.

These are all the reasons why the private prison population in the U.S. has
increased from about 21,000 in 1992 to more than 143,000 today.

In Canada, all our prisoners are housed in publicly run facilities. Ottawa
spends more than $1.4 billion a year on this enterprise. Experts say that
if the federal government were to privatize its prisons it could save $140
million to $280 million annually and enhance public safety.

On the basis of this overwhelming evidence, turning over some government
prisons to private operators sounds like the obvious thing to do.

But both Ottawa and the provinces seem reluctant to go down that road. Even
Alberta's conservative government ruled out handing over the operation of
publicly run prison facilities to the private sector last month. Nova
Scotia thought about private prisons for a while and then dropped the idea.

Apart from one project in Ontario, there is not much talk of privatization
of prisons in the rest of the other provinces, including B.C.

What more evidence do politicians need before they turn over the failing
public prison system to private operators who have a proven track record of
turning them around?

It's time for some government -- and we suggest B.C. -- to take at least an
experimental step down that road.