A commission looking to improve state government efficiency is expected to release its report on New Hampshire’s corrections system today.
Yesterday, the union representing prison employees criticized the report.
They say it recommends privatizing some or all of the state’s prisons.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s David Darman has more.
About 100 members of the State Employee Association, or SEIU 1984 rallied against privatizing the state prison system.
Lieutenant Paul Casio of the Laconia prison said Governor Benson is bleeding workers to make way for privatization.
01 1717 we have had staff recruitment and retention issues with the governor’s repeated attacks on our retirement funds, attacks to steal our healthcare, hiring freezes, the never ending cycle of cutbacks, and the false campaign promises of balancing the state budget on the backs of the state workers. And we have watched our resources dwindle to the point of not being able to carry out our primary mission, which is to protect the public 1742 and we believe we are being set up for failure. 01 1745
Privatization is part of The Governors’s Efficiency in Government Commission report on prisons.
It indicates that at least the prison in Berlin could be handed over to a private company.
The commission asked Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA to analyze New Hampshire’s prisons.
Scott Owens is a spokesman for CCA.
He says the compay has only looked at how it could help the state better run its system.
08 27 and at this point we are conducting that research we have not formalized any bid or proposal. We have not put anything in front of the state to consider and we have not begun to formulate any sort of a response at this point. We are simply gathering research at this point. 08 42
Nationwide, around 100,000 people are incarcerated in privately managed prisons.
CCA, Wackenhut, and Cornell Corrections are the biggest private prison companies.
They each promise to save governments money when they take over a local jail, or start running prisons within a state’s corrections system.
But critics of privately run prisons say they save money only by compromising standards.
Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project says that’s easy to understand, given the different goals of governments and businesses.
04 15 the focus of a private for profit corporation is to make money. And to make money in corrections, that means cutting corners. Which means hiring staff, that is not as experienced, who are low paid, who are not as well equipped to deal with day to day funcitions that a corrections staff has to perform. 04 41
Corrections companies say their employees do as good a job inside prisons as higher paid government workers.
But critics disagree.
Mark Mower of the Sentencing Project in Washington says there’s a lot of data mounting against the for profit prison industry.
12 146 the experince of private prisons and a number of studies have documented that the rate at which disturbances take place the rate of abuse in private prisons is often greater than it is public institutions and I think much of this goes back to levels of training and supervision that may be inadequate in some of the private institutions. 12 211
The Efficiency Commission’s recommendation to privatize has a long way to go before it can be put into effect.
The executive council would have to sign off on it.
And at least one councilor stands with the State Employees association against privatization.
Councilor Peter Spaulding says there’s no place for privatization in the state’s correction system.
01 2440 the primary mission of the dept of corrections is to protect the residents of nh from the thugs and criminals who’ve been found guilty to violating our laws and values of the state. This task is too important to be experimented with by a bunch of libertarians whose ideas have been rejected time and time again by the citizens of this state. 01 2503
Spaulding would need 2 other councilors to agree with him to effectively derail any privatization plan.
The Governor plans to formally release the efficiency report later today.
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