NEWS

June 21, 2010
Privatization sought for Ohio prisons

At least half of Ohio's 31 prisons could be privately operated, under legislation recently introduced by two state senators.

Republican State Sens. Bill Seitz of Green Township and Timothy Grendell of Chesterland proposed legislation to create a new 15-member Prison Privatization Commission. If approved by the General Assembly, the commission must complete a study by the end of next year, of what Seitz calls "a successful 10-year experiment'' with private management of two state prisons.

Under Senate Bill 269, a progress report to legislative leaders, the governor and state auditor is due by June 30, 2011, but there is no specific time frame suggested to transfer management of another 29 state prisons to private operators.

"This could take years to implement,'' Seitz said Friday. "It definitely will not happen overnight.'' Seitz said that if the study concludes, it is not a good idea to privatize any more prisons, "it will not be done.'' Ohio had a poor experience with a private company managing a federal prison in Youngstown in the late 1990s; it attracted national headlines after escapes and murders.

But the private operation of two state prisons in Northeast Ohio has been generally favorable, according to Seitz. The president of the state's largest union disagrees, saying the daily cost of operating comparable state prisons is about the same as the daily cost paid to the two privately-managed prisons.

Ohio Civil Service Employees Association President Charlie Williamson said his union also is concerned about prison safety and the loss of public jobs And while the Utah-based private operator - Management Training Corp. - must file annual reports including costs to the state, privately-run prisons are motivated by profit, Ohio union officials say.

Williamson - a corrections officer at Lucasville prison - said prisons are more accountable to the public if they're state run, rather than private. Union officials said the two prisons that are privately run are not saving the state any money, but Senate leaders think privatization could save between 10 to 20 percent a year. Seitz and Grendell see privatization as one way to help balance the state budget in future years, as federal stimulus money runs out and Ohio is projected to rack up a deficit of as much as $8 billion.

Separately within the same bill, the senators proposed creation of a 21-member State Function Privatization Commission to identify and recommend government functions of state agencies that could be privatized for "greater efficiency." "I've been telling them (the union) it's a substantial overreaction,'' Seitz said Friday. The public prisons, including two in Warren County, employ more than 13,000 staff of which 7,000 are corrections officers.

The statewide inmate population is 50,800, just below the record of 51,273 set in November 2008. That is an inmate-to-guard ratio of 7 to 1. Prison spending is usually the last part of the state budget legislators want to cut, especially in an election year. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) spends about $2 billion annually, an average cost of $25,367 per inmate each year. Ohio's two privately operated prisons are the Lake Erie Correctional Institution and North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility, both in northeast Ohio.

Those prisons house only minimum- or medium-security prisoners. "There are good and bad private vendors, just like there are good and bad public operators,'' Seitz said. The state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has not at this point taken a position on Senate Bill 269.

Opponents of Seitz' plan point to Ohio's rotten luck at Northeast Ohio Correctional Facility, a federal prison in Youngstown once run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) In 1998, six prisoners, including five murderers, escaped from Northeast Ohio Correctional Facility.

Prior to the escape, in the first year of that prison's operations, two inmates were murdered and as many as 20 more were stabbed. Many of the guards had little or no experience in corrections, and maximum-security inmates were transferred from out of state to what was intended as a medium-security institution. Inmates received inadequate medical treatment and conditions at the prison were generally chaotic, according to a May 2001 study by Policy Matters of Ohio.

The Cleveland-based non-profit research group, concluded: "Ohio seems to have a particularly high tolerance for scandals in privatized prisons.''

Seitz said that action is needed, in part, because legislators have failed to act on prison-crowding and sentencing reform legislation he proposed in February 2009. Senate Bill 22, supported by Gov. Ted Strickland, and two state DRC directors, has failed to get to the Senate floor for a vote.

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