Witz, I worked for the State prison system for 24 years in the state that is also the home of the biggest for-profit privately run prison company in the US. I worked in prison administration when this company came in and we saw it all first hand. The whole concept of for-profit prisons and jails is horrible because it means that the more they can cut corners, the more profit they make. And in spite of constant lawsuits and horror stories, they still run several state-owned institutions and large county jails.
And the corruption was there from the very start. When it was first proposed, the idea was to turn over the entire State prison system to this company. Then it was discovered that the state official who was pushing it the hardest was married to the woman who was the main lobbiest for this company and who stood to make a huge "bonus" if the deal went through! And this "gentleman" had the cajones to claim that this had nothing to do with why he thought it was a good idea! It would have gone through too but the State Dept. of Correction employees (including me) protested long and hard and stormed the State capitol en force. They ended up turning over three or four state-owned institutions and a few large county jails to be administered by this company.
They have never been held to the same standards as the State-run institutions and have cut corners in everything from inmate meals to medical, dental and mental health care. But the thing is, they have always been allowed to "cherry pick" the inmates they will accept. They usually want only the young, healthy ones that don't require a lot of expensive care. They were allowed to reject the ones with chronic medical or mental health conditions, and the elderly ones who require a lot more medical care. They could refuse the AIDS patients and others that the State spends millions every year to care for. And this is NOT taken in to account when they make financial comparisons about their costs to run a prison vs the State.
And their staff is treated no better for the most part. I KNOW for a fact that when they were initially hiring, they would send applicants back again and again until they could pass the drug test. Drug-using employees could be a huge problem in a prison! They are poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly paid, resulting in a huge turnover. So you see poorly trained inexperienced employees who have only been there a year or so being put in positions of authority, mostly by default. I totally agree with you that the "for-profit" system of prison administration is horrible and should be done away with. But it's politics ... politics and money!
