[Vision2020] Prisons, Privatization, Patronage

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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June 21, 2012
Prisons, Privatization, Patronage By PAUL KRUGMAN

Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying
reports<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/nyregion/in-new-jersey-halfway-houses-escapees-stream-out-as-a-penal-business-thrives.html?_r=2>about
New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the
regular system of prisons. The series is a model of investigative
reporting, which everyone should read. But it should also be seen in
context. The horrors described are part of a broader pattern in which
essential functions of government are being both privatized and degraded.

First of all, about those halfway houses: In 2010, Chris
Christie<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/christopher_j_christie/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the state’s governor — who has close personal ties to Community Education
Centers, the largest operator of these facilities, and who once worked as a
lobbyist for the firm — described the company’s operations as “representing
the very best of the human spirit.” But The Times’s reports instead portray
something closer to hell on earth — an understaffed, poorly run system,
with a demoralized work force, from which the most dangerous individuals
often escape to wreak havoc, while relatively mild offenders face terror
and abuse at the hands of other inmates.

It’s a terrible story. But, as I said, you really need to see it in the
broader context of a nationwide drive on the part of America’s right to
privatize government functions, very much including the operation of
prisons. What’s behind this drive?

You might be tempted to say that it reflects conservative belief in the
magic of the marketplace, in the superiority of free-market competition
over government planning. And that’s certainly the way right-wing
politicians like to frame the issue.

But if you think about it even for a minute, you realize that the one thing
the companies that make up the prison-industrial complex — companies like
Community Education or the private-prison giant Corrections Corporation of
America — are definitely not doing is competing in a free market. They are,
instead, living off government contracts. There isn’t any market here, and
there is, therefore, no reason to expect any magical gains in efficiency.

And, sure enough, despite many promises that prison privatization will lead
to big cost savings, such savings — as a comprehensive study by the Bureau
of Justice Assistance <https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf>,
part of the U.S. Department of Justice, concluded — “have simply not
materialized.” To the extent that private prison operators do manage to
save money, they do so through “reductions in staffing patterns, fringe
benefits, and other labor-related costs.”

So let’s see: Privatized prisons save money by employing fewer guards and
other workers, and by paying them badly. And then we get horror stories
about how these prisons are run. What a surprise!

So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons, and just about
everything else?

One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth form of government
borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront expenses (or even
raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their long-run
costs in ways taxpayers can’t see. We hear a lot about the hidden debts
that states have incurred in the form of pension liabilities; we don’t hear
much about the hidden debts now being accumulated in the form of long-term
contracts with private companies hired to operate prisons, schools and
more.

Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting rid of public
employees, who do have a habit of unionizing and tend to lean Democratic in
any case.

But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money. Never mind what
privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it
does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians
and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized,
states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions
and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting
government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the
politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?

Now, someone will surely point out that nonprivatized government has its
own problems of undue influence, that prison guards and teachers’ unions
also have political clout, and this clout sometimes distorts public policy.
Fair enough. But such influence tends to be relatively transparent.
Everyone knows about those arguably excessive public pensions; it took an
investigation by The Times over several months to bring the account of New
Jersey’s halfway-house-hell to light.

The point, then, is that you shouldn’t imagine that what The Times
discovered about prison privatization in New Jersey is an isolated instance
of bad behavior. It is, instead, almost surely a glimpse of a pervasive and
growing reality, of a corrupt nexus of privatization and patronage that is
undermining government across much of our nation.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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