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By JOHN HANRAHANWASHINGTON (UPI) — Turning prisons over to private management is generally a poor idea that will not likely save taxpayers’ money and “will fully protect neither the interests of the public nor the prison inmates,” a liberal think-tank reported.“The evidence on potential cost savings is too weak and too questionable to warrant so radical and risky an experiment,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a 32-page report.The institute also warned: “The cost of labor, moreover, which comprises about three-fifths of total prison budgets, probably cannot be reduced much without lowering the quality of the workforce.”The report cautioned prison privatization takes direct control out of government’s hands but would not exempt the government from “large and expensive liabilities”The evidence of cost savings istoo weak and too questionable//—The Economic Policy Institutefor lawsuits relating to contractor-caused abuses.“There is a substantial likelihood that government contracts with prison corporations will fully protect neither the interests of the public nor the prison inmates,” the report said.The study was conducted by John Donahue, assistant professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-author, with Robert Reich, of“New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American tions field operating more than a dozen adult facilities mSystem” and is working on a book on privatization from nine states and that “the success of this experience en-which the institute’s study was taken.The study was published just in advance of the ex-couraged our actions.”But Donahue’s study found that the experiences of thepected release next week of the report of President “tiny fraction” of penal institutions that are privateUReagan’s Commission on Privatization which, if it run offer inadequate evidence to warrant such omfollows the panel’s preliminary recommendation, will timism.Even in cases in which private firms are able to cut costs through improved management, Donahue wrote.call for the use of private contractors to run federal, state and local prisons and jails.The commission, in an announcement last month, said “There is unlikeh to be enough competition, in amit voted to support prison and jail privatization because given community, to ensure that cost savings are passedit “offers appropriate and efficient methods of opera- on the taxpayers, particularly after private contract! rstions and management” and that the issues of liability become entrenched.”and accountability “do not constitute insurmountableobstacles.”Donahue also said that while privately run prisonsmight not prove to be as “inhumane” as some criticsThe commission’s chairman, David Linowes, said at have contended, privatization could pose civil libertiesthe time there are 24 companies in the private correc- problems.
Newspaper Details
Greensburg Daily News
Greensburg, Indiana, US
Tue, Mar 01, 1988
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Monroe C.
IN, USA 14 Dec 2020
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