WHERE ARE BIDS FOR PRIVATE PRISONS?

If you're drinking the Kool-Aid in Tallahassee, the current effort to
privatize Florida prisons involves an amazing moment of convergence:
a tea party governor working with a conservative Legislature to lower
incarceration while reducing costs and helping former prisoners.

Corrections Secretary Ed Buss, speaking at a Florida TaxWatch event,
spoke convincingly about "redefining corrections" and reducing the
"corrections industrial complex."

Meanwhile, the actual bid document, created amid secrecy and almost
zero public or legislative input, sets performance standards at a
disappointing level "comparable to existing Department of Corrections
facilities" and fudges issues of recidivism and hidden costs.

It turns out firing 4,000 corrections officers will cost the state
$25 million in "unanticipated" annual leave costs. But the proposal
is even sneakier than that.

Instead of demanding performance criteria, Buss has announced that it
would be "preferable" to award the whole contract to a single bidder.

Questionable Process

In what will be the largest correctional privatization contract in
U.S. history, a more deliberative process would be prudent. Assuming
you accept the logic of market forces controlling costs, then why
would you bias the process in favor of a monopolized industry?

Why not get the bids first and then decide? Using only one provider
gives only one corporation much control over a significant portion of
the state budget (several hundred million dollars).

Moreover, many of the details of this proposal could well remain
unavailable for public view as part of a "proprietary" bidding
process. Are Floridians really going to fall for that?

By using a "blended per diem" rate in the contract, some facilities
by definition will be loss leaders for the provider, particularly
because this project involves satellite facilities, too.

This gives monopoly corporations a competitive advantage over the state.

For such a large contract, separating the awards could offer lower
costs to the state across-the-board per facility.

You cannot conduct a true cost-benefit analysis without entertaining
multiple providers.

The state is also using a watered-down measure of recidivism in this
contract, counting only new instances of incarceration 24 months
after release as a new crime. Given that it can easily take 18 months
to fully adjudicate and incarcerate a newly released offender who
commits a new crime right away, this recidivism measure is a sham.

Re-arrest rates, rather than re-incarceration rates, are the usual
definition of recidivism and should have been used. But the Florida
Department of Corrections has been using a watered-down recidivism
measure for its own facilities for years, so nothing has changed.

Poor Record

But what bothers me most about the current proposal is not Florida's
dismal track record in prison privatization. What works best for
prisoners is helping them in the community after release.

But this request for proposal takes a hands-off attitude about
prisoner re-entry services. It off-loads responsibility for
transitional services for inmates to subcontractors, while defining
most "re-entry" services as 'behind the walls" activities that
detract from profits.

This compromises the significant progress Florida had been making on
programs that work with offenders in their communities. Even though
these programs are more cost-effective and have better results for
prisoners, prior to this request for proposals, these funds were sent
to local communities rather than given over to private corporations.

Michael Hallett is professor and chairman of the Department of
Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of North Florida. He
is author of the book "Private Prisons in America."