With severe overcrowding easing in
state lockups, California is winding down a controversial deal with the
nation’s biggest private prison operator and will bring thousands of inmates
housed in facilities as far away as Mississippi back to California within the
next few years.
Currently, some 9,500 state inmates
are serving sentences in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma operated
by the Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America. As part of a strategic plan announced in April, the state Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation will transfer those inmates back to California facilities by
2016.
The return of the first group, 600
inmates housed in Arizona, will begin “immediately,” said Corrections Secretary
Matthew Cate. Another 4,000 prisoners will return to California in 2014.
Steve Owen, spokesman for the
Corrections Corporation, confirmed the company agreed to modify its contract to
lower the total number of California inmates housed in out-of-state facilities
from 9,588 to 9,038 for this year. The contract guarantees 90 percent
occupancy.
The revised contract will reduce
California’s fee to the private prison group by $67 million for the current fiscal
year, according to corrections spokeswoman Dana Simas. The state will save
another $14 million in 2012 by cutting staff positions for the program, which
is administered in Sacramento.
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California is paying the Corrections
Corporation $61 to $72 per prison bed per day, making the original contract
worth more than $280 million for 2012-13, according to the Legislative
Analyst's Office and corrections department figures.
The group won its first contract
with California in 2006 after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the prison system. Schwarzenegger said the action was
necessary “to prevent death and harm caused by California’s severe prison
overcrowding.”
The proclamation allowed officials
to override a law that prohibits sending inmates outside the state without
their consent. A year later, the Legislature also approved some out-of-state
transfers as part of a prison construction bill. The Legislature’s authority
for those transfers expired last year, but the state continues to rely on the
2006 proclamation to keep inmates in out-of-state prisons.
Moving inmates out of California
against their will proved controversial. Prisoner advocacy groups said keeping
inmates far away from their families could undermine their chances of leading
productive lives after release. Representatives from the prison guards union
complained the program was taking jobs away from Californians.
But state officials praised the
Corrections Corporation for making prison beds available on short notice and
helping alleviate extreme overcrowding.
The California Emergency Services
Act states that the governor “shall proclaim the termination of a state of
emergency at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant.” Corrections
officials say that while conditions have dramatically improved, they do not
know when the state of emergency will be formally lifted.
Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed
into law an overhaul of California’s penal
system, which intends to cut billions in spending and comply with multiple
federal court orders for improving inmate health care.
“The passage of our blueprint will
show the federal courts that California is serious about ending the
long-standing lawsuits overseeing much of our operations,” Cate said.
California is under a court order to
reduce its prison population to 137 percent of design capacity, or about
110,000 inmates. Since California began transferring authority over some
offenders to counties as part of Brown’s public safety realignment, the state
inmate population has dropped by about 25,000 inmates.
However, Cate said the return of all
inmates from out-of-state facilities is still dependent on the court increasing
the population threshold to 145 percent of design capacity.
But even if the plan is fully
implemented, it remains uncertain how much money it actually will save the
state. According to department projections, “the elimination of the
out-of-state contract beds will result in a reduction of $318 million General
Fund and over 400 positions from the department’s budget.”
But as the Legislative
Analyst's Office points out,
bringing thousands of inmates back to California lockups will incur other
costs, including housing and medical care.
What’s more, the analyst's office
asserts there could be significant savings elsewhere if California continued to
keep some inmates in out-of-state facilities. That includes canceling several
prison construction projects for a savings of about $155 million annually.
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