Inside Private Prisons Read online

  Inside Private Prisons

  INSIDE PRIVATE PRISONS

  An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration

  Lauren-Brooke Eisen

  Columbia University Press

  New York

  Columbia University Press

  Publishers Since 1893

  New York Chichester, West Sussex

  cup.columbia.edu

  Copyright © 2018 Lauren-Brooke Eisen

  All rights reserved

  E-ISBN 978-0-231-54231-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Eisen, Lauren-Brooke, author.

  Title: Inside private prisons : an American dilemma in the age of mass incarceration / Lauren-Brooke Eisen.

  Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017027653 | ISBN 9780231179706 (alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Prisons—United States. | Privatization—United States. | Corrections—Contracting out—United States.

  Classification: LCC HV9469 .E57 2017 | DDC 365/.973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027653

  A Columbia University Press E-book.

  CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].

  Cover design: Milenda Nan OK Lee

  Cover image: © Shutterstock

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Prison Buildup and the Birth of Private Prisons

  CHAPTER TWO

  How the Government Privatized

  CHAPTER THREE

  Prisoners as Commodities

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Prison Industrial Complex

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Private Prisons and the American Heartland

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Prison Divestment Movement

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Politics of Private Prisons

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Shadow Prisons: Inside Private Immigrant Detention Centers

  CHAPTER NINE

  Public Prisons Versus Private Prisons

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wrestling with the Concept of Private Prisons

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Future of Private Prisons

  Conclusion

  Notes

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  THIS ENDEAVOR WOULD not have been possible without the guidance of many colleagues, the support of my family and friends, and countless cups of coffee.

  This book owes so much to the thoughtful and careful editing of Stephen Wesley, who believed in this project from day one. His vision of the book guided me along this journey, and his patience with my late night emails filled with bullet points is very much appreciated. To my agent and dear friend, Stefanie Lieberman, thank you for spending hours on the phone explaining the ins and outs of the publishing world to me and continuing to serve as one of my chief advocates. I also appreciate the detailed feedback from peer reviewers at the Columbia University Press, all of whom had thoughtful and important critiques of early chapters.

  To my Brennan Center colleagues, thank you for your support of this project. I owe a huge debt to Inimai Chettiar, who blessed this project from the beginning and challenged me to explore the powerful role of incentives to change public policy. To Fritz Schwartz, thank you for reading early chapters and providing feedback and for your encouragement to dig into the subject matter more deeply. To Michael Waldman, for teaching me how to fight for our democracy and inspiring me with your own tales of all-nighters to finish books. To Dorothy Samuels, for taking the time to think through some of the book’s challenges with me, and for your invaluable advice on this project. To Elisa Miller, for reviewing the manuscript and for her continued support of this project. To John Kowal, Vivien Watts, Mike German, Beatriz Aldereguia, Nicole Fortier, Ames Grawert, Matt Menendez, Grainne Dunne, Natasha Camhi, Vienna Tompkins, Alicia Bannon, Chisun Lee, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Diana Kasdan, Jaemin Kim, Faiza Patel, and Kim Thomas, thank you for your support, advice, and pats on the back. To Jen Weiss-Wolf, thank you for being my partner in crime and commiserating with me on how hard it is to write a book and hold down a full-time job. To Jeanine Plant-Chirlin, for reviewing my book proposal and for her effusive encouragement; to Jim Lyons, for his editing assistance and always making the time to review my materials; to Erik Opsal and Rebecca Autrey, for editing countless articles I wrote on this issue; Jessica Katzen and Mellen O’Keefe for their help with this book’s rollout; and to Andrew Cohen, who pushed me to ensure that this book included the perspective of everyone that a private prison touches. A number of colleagues and New York University Law School clinic students have made significant contributions to this book, including Jay Cullen, Adureh Onyekwere (who is a whiz at finding esoteric information), Noah Atchison, Jon Frank, Leah Romm, Carson Whitelmons, Jason O’Conner, Nicole Lieberman, and Danielle N Vildostegui.

  I am grateful for the conversations I had with so many colleagues and mentors in the criminal justice field over the past few years about what we should expect from our correctional system. Martin Horn, thank you for your guidance on this project, introducing me to your colleagues, and providing insight into this complicated world. I am especially grateful to Rick Raemisch for opening up his prisons to me. Thank you to Michael Wishnie, for reviewing an early chapter of the book, and to Sarah Serafin, who transcribed many of my interviews.

  My conversations with Jeremy Travis, Michael Jacobson, Jim Austin, AT Wall, Justin Jones, Rick Seiter, Jack Donson, Suzi Wizowaty, Frank Smith, Tiffany M. Joslyn, Leonard Gilroy, Daniel Hanson, Erik Schlosser, Barry Friedman, Scott Schuchart, Glenn Martin, Khalil Cumberbatch, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Bernie Warner, Alex Friedmann, Bob Libal, Lisa Graybill, Dan Carillo, Sawy Rkasnaum, Barbara Hines, Andy Mannix, Donald Cohen, Marc Mauer, Reggie Wilkinson, David Wagner, Bret Bucklin, John Pfaff, and Jimmy LeBlanc were invaluable to my research.

  I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Peggy McGarry and Alison Shames for their mentorship and guidance in this field and to former colleagues Ram Subramanian and Danyelle Solomon, whose friendship and sage advice mean so much to me. To friends who supported this endeavor and gave me feedback on early chapters, Lauren Brody, Brian Elderbroom, Jessica Mederson, Jen Millstone, Jennifer Suellentrop, Emily Turner, and Joanna Weiss, thank you for making the time!

  For those who shared their personal stories with me, I am grateful to Bob Thompson, Ron Ronning, Ella Every, Joseph Gaylin, Lindsay Holcomb, Gary Hendricks, Chadwick Syltie, Kathleen Culhane, Michael Ingram, Richard Gagnon, Greg Turner, Eric Daley, Layne Pavey, Khalil Kumberbach, Elizabeth Cree, so many undocumented immigrants who I spoke to in detention centers in Texas, and inmates at private prisons in New Mexico and Colorado who spoke to me when I visited. For those of you who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, please know how grateful I am to you for opening up about your experiences in prisons and detention centers.

  Thank you to my daughters, Hadley and Phoebe, who continue to inspire me with their kindness, wisdom, energy, and unconditional support. Thanks also to my husband, Elias Levenson, who provided a valuable sounding board, many illegible edits, and even more nights of entertaining Hadley and Phoebe while I was researching and writing this book. To my father, Charles Eisen, who cheered me on during this process and passed down to me his belief in the power of laws to improve the world. To my big brother Scott Eisen, for always looking out for me. My mother-in-law Isabella Levenson deserves a special shout-out for her relentless support and wise counsel, making it possible to work full-time and write a book with two young chil
dren running around. Thank you to Bob Shapiro for your support and unabated interest in my work, to Amy Singer and Conrad Levenson for your support and ideas, to Harriet Singer for your hugs, to Jackie Pletcher for making my father smile and laugh every day, and to Madonna Park for your energy. Georgia Levenson-Keohane, thank you for opening doors for me and serving as a role model who gets even less sleep than I do, and to the rest of the Keohane Clan (Frances, Eleanor, and Nat) for their support. Finally, to my mother, Ruthie Eisen, the kindest and gentlest person I have known, who left this world far too soon and continues to be the quiet inspiration for everything I do.

  Introduction

  The subject of prisons and corrections may tempt some of you to tune out. You may think, “Well, I am not a criminal lawyer. The prison system is not my problem. I might tune in again when he gets to a different subject.” In my submission you have the duty to stay tuned in. The subject is the concern and responsibility of every member of our profession and of every citizen. This is your justice system; these are your prisons.

  JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY, AUGUST 9, 20031

  THE PRISON SITS on a road not heavily traveled unless you work in corrections, know someone in prison, or are an inmate yourself. It is a short drive but a world away from Colorado Springs, where the Colorado Department of Corrections is headquartered. The road unfolds in front of the blue-gray Rockies, the land gradually flattening, the houses smaller and farther apart, and the vegetation shifting from green shrubs to brown grass peeking with cacti. Riding with Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Rick Raemisch, we pass bison on our right and train tracks on our left. We are headed to the Crowley County Correctional Facility, a private prison run by CoreCivic, formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The medium security prison is situated in remote Olney Springs in southwestern Colorado, about a hundred miles from the New Mexico border. Olney has a population of about 345, but the prison can house up to 1,800 inmates.

  I was in the car that day to examine an industry that had long intrigued me, and I wanted to see for myself its practical effect on the ground. It was one visit of many I would make to untangle through first-hand experience how exactly private corporations operated prisons and immigrant detention centers. I needed to see the everyday reality behind a roiling debate that had preoccupied me and my colleagues for many years: the federal government’s and states’ growing reliance on corporations to oversee American incarceration. When Governor John Hickenlooper appointed Raemisch, he asked him to limit the use of solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates and generally to reform the practice for state prisoners. The director Raemisch replaced had been shot and killed by a former inmate who had spent a good portion of his eight years in prison in solitary confinement.2 Within seven months of taking the reins as head of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Raemisch spent twenty hours in solitary confinement. The cell was only 7 feet by 13 feet. He didn’t sleep at all. The lights were on, and every half hour guards would yank on his door. “I couldn’t make any sense of it, and I was left feeling twitchy and paranoid. I kept waiting for the lights to turn off, to signal the end of the day. But the lights did not shut off,” Raemisch said. “I began to count the small holes carved in the walls.”3 Raemisch has since devoted himself to reforming solitary confinement policies across the nation.

  On this June afternoon, Raemisch, talking to me about private prisons, said “private prison companies are not the demons they are made out to be,” candidly sharing his complicated view of the role of private prisons formed from his experience.

  Raemisch spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Private prisons filled a void when politicians did their ‘tough-on-crime’ thing. Our relationship with them in Colorado is good, and they are receptive to our needs. I came from Wisconsin where we didn’t use private prisons though.” Before taking the top job in Colorado, Raemisch was head of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. After nearly two years at the helm of Colorado’s prison system, Raemisch was still open-minded about the partnerships with private prison corporations, but he understood the discomfort many have about a corporation profiting from running a nation’s prisons.

  As we headed up the access road to the Crowley County Correctional Facility, withered peach, apple, and pear trees flanked the road, victims of Colorado’s struggles with a decade-long drought. A CCA guard stood watch on the roof, scanning the 21 acres that surround the medium security prison, the border lined with barbed wire. A few days earlier, the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black aired an episode depicting private prisons as Keystone-cop ventures run solely to turn a profit. The episode prompted Carl Takei, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a thorn in the side of the private prison industry, to publish a blog claiming that “life in many real private, for-profit prisons is actually worse.” That week Columbia University announced it would become the first university to divest itself of private prison stocks, selling $10 million worth of shares in the industry, including a stake in CCA.

  We walked into the prison, a low-lying brick structure enclosed in razor wire, and passed a row of lockers where correction officers store items from their transparent backpacks. CCA staff ushered us into a conference room where CCA’s chief executive officer was waiting. I had spent time in dozens of prisons, but the receiving line of CCA officials took me aback. Damon Hininger, CEO of CCA, had flown in from the company’s Nashville headquarters for my visit. Beside Hininger stood CCA’s director of public affairs, Jonathan Burns. I had spoken to Burns a few months ago when I was at my wit’s end trying to gain access to CCA’s facilities in Texas and Louisiana. One call to Raemisch and I was invited out to tour a CCA prison.

  The Crowley County Correctional Facility was built in 1998 as a speculative undertaking by the Dominion Group, a collection of real estate companies. Among other things, Dominion specializes in leasing properties to the U.S. government, with holdings in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico. At one time Dominion had been a major investor in private prison construction, claiming it had “developed more high-security prisons than any other privately owned company in the U.S.”4 Whatever its holdings once were, Dominion is now out of the private prison business; it sold the Crowley County Correctional Facility to CCA in 2003.

  We sat awkwardly around the large table, sipping bad coffee out of black CCA mugs. On the wall was a map of the United States showing CCA’s eighty-nine correctional facilities. Crowley was marked with a thumbtack. With a total design capacity of approximately 88,500 beds in twenty states and the District of Columbia, CCA is the nation’s largest private prison operator.

  Another private prison titan, GEO Group, oversees the operation and management of approximately 87,000 beds at 104 correctional, detention, and reentry facilities worldwide. It is the seventh largest correctional system in the United States by number of beds in its capacity. With operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa, GEO Group is the second largest provider of privatized correctional and detention facilities worldwide. America’s third largest for-profit prison corporation, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), founded in 1981, is privately owned and operates twenty-six state and federal prisons in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Ohio, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Texas.

  In the conference room I asked about this private prison, trying to understand how it was different from Colorado’s state prisons. Warden Michael Miller detailed the strides they have made toward reentry. In criminal justice argot, reentry is the transition of inmates to civilian life. Decades of research indicate that the better prepared prisoners are to reenter their communities, the less likely they are to be rearrested. Miller spoke highly of the reentry pods where inmates nearing their release dates lived together and received services to help them acclimate to life back in the community. The prisoners participate in specialized programming such as classes that instruct them in how to find housing. “I didn’t become a warde
n to house inmates behind walls,” Miller said.

  A lawyer who works to eliminate private prisons warned me before my visit to look out for perfectly polished floors but grime on the walls and ceiling that the cleaning staff might have forgotten to clean in their haste. He said these clues would reveal the naked truth about the conditions of the prison. As I walked around the prison, I noticed that the floors were clean, as expected, and that the ceilings were not covered in grime.

  I was ushered into a classroom where GED classes are taught. With its wooden tables and desk chairs, it didn’t look very different from any high school classroom in the United States. Inspirational words were painted on the walls: “Failure is not an option.” “Success (sek ses), n. a favorable result; wished for ending; good fortune. 2. Person or thing that succeeds.” In the computer room, ten inmates sat at monitors, dressed in matching green pants and green tops. Some wore baseball hats. They were learning skills they would need upon release. One man was reading about renting a car. Across the room, another struggled with a computer exercise on money management. This education program is highly sought after: 136 inmates were on the waiting list that day.

  Director Raemisch explained to me that this programming was part of the reentry initiative for the Colorado Department of Corrections. He introduced himself to the inmates and asked whether they had any questions. One of the inmates complained he had not finished his reentry programming and was about to be released. “I feel like I am being set up for failure,” he said quietly. Raemisch listened to his concerns and wrote down his name.

  Once a farming area, Crowley County’s economy turned to corrections when crop and cattle prices dramatically declined in the 1960s. Two state prisons operate within the county’s borders: the Arkansas Valley Correctional Center (Arkansas Valley), owned and operated by the state, and the Crowley County Correctional Facility, owned and operated by CCA. Together they make up 46 percent of the estimated 5,823 people residing in the county. CCA’s private prison in Crowley contributes more than half of the county’s $1.6 million annual property tax revenue.5 Most prison employees live outside the county, commuting from larger towns and cities. Like many prison towns, the unemployment rate is high: 16 percent of Crowley residents are unemployed and almost 30 percent live below the poverty line.6