Prison Privatization in Ohio
Lake Erie Correctional Institution
Location: Conneaut
Ownership/management: Corrections Corporation of America, Nashville, Tenn, owned and operated.
Inmates: 1,766, minimum and medium security
Staff: 295
North Central Correctional Complex
Location: Marion
Ownership/management: State-owned. Management & Training Corp., Centerville, Utah, operated.
Inmates: 2,738, minimum and medium security
Staff: 365
Food Service
Aramark Correctional Services has a two-year contract worth $$ to provide meals to Ohio’s 50,000 inmates. The deal, implemented in 2013, saves $$ a year but Aramark has been criticized and fined for inappropriate behavior by staff, food shortages and sanitation issues.
Inside the razor-wire topped fences, inmates wearing prison blues jog the track and do chin-ups as uniformed guards keep watch over the Lake Erie Correctional Institution prison yard.
It looks like any other state prison in Ohio, but it is quite different. Four years after Ohio became the first state in the country to sell off a state-owned prison to a private company, there are lingering concerns that privatization sacrifices security and civil rights for profits and cost cutting.
“We really see that there is an inherent ethical dilemma that when we insert a profit motivation into incarcerating a person, that inevitably sets up a bad dynamic in which people’s rights are traded for generating more profit,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director for the ACLU of Ohio.
The Kasich administration remains a big backer of the plan. In late 2011, the administration accelerated the move to privatization by selling off Lake Erie Correctional in Conneaut for $72.7 million to Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit, publicly-traded company that was also hired to run the facility.
At the same time, the state began contracting with Management & Training Corp. of Utah to run the North Central Correctional Complex in Marion.
The long-term contracts, which are up for renewal every two years as part of the state budget, are required to save at least 5 percent over what it would cost the state to run the two prisons.
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokesman Grant Doepel was unable to provide a bottom line on how much money Ohio taxpayers have saved from privatizing the prisons in Conneaut and Marion. He noted that the average annual cost to house inmates at the privately-run prisons is between $15,432 and $16,472, which is less than the DRC system-wide average annual cost per inmate of $24,715.
But the numbers aren’t apples and apples. The system-wide figure includes higher security inmates and prisoners in ill health, who cost more to house than the minimum- and medium-security inmates at Lake Erie and North Central.
Lake Erie Correctional Warden Brigham Sloan, a 20-year CCA employee, said the prison has met the “savings requirements” outlined in the contract.
“From our perspective, we have met the benchmarks,” he said. “We have met the savings requirements provided by the state when they decided to privatize a couple of facilities. There are certainly some financial benefits for the state.”
But Sloan said the benefits also go beyond cost savings. “If we can’t do that without impacting recidivism or making the transitions for inmates back into society better or as good as the DRC, then it’s really not worth it in the long run,” he said. “I can tell you that with the programs that we have put in place, we are very happy and we’re very pleased that the impact has been there.”
First in nation
Initially, Gov. John Kasich wanted to sell off five prisons, eventually settling on just one. But even that was ground-breaking: No state had previously sold off a state-owned facility to a private company.
The privatization effort didn’t stop there. In late 2013, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction hired Aramark Correctional Services to provide meals to the 51,000 inmates in the state-run prisons. The switch shaved food costs, getting it down below $1.28 per meal this year and $1.31 per meal next year.
DRC spending on food dropped from an average of $87 million a year to $62 million a year after the Aramark contract, according to figures provided by the state. But it wasn’t a smooth switch. Sanitation problems, food shortages and inappropriate staff conduct led DRC to fine Aramark more than $250,000.
DRC also banned 234 Aramark employees from state prisons due to conduct issues such as smuggling contraband or having inappropriate relationships with inmates. DRC says the problems have subsided.
The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents the bulk of state workers, fought hard to win back the food service work for its members. OCSEA put a spotlight on Aramark’s problems and proposed to DRC that the union workers could provide food for $1.22 per meal, or lower than Aramark was proposing. Instead, DRC extended its contract with Aramark through 2017.
That sparked the largest arbitration case in the country, according to OCSEA spokeswoman Sally Meckling, a case that’s still pending. The union says the state never really considered its bid and Aramark continues to have problems. Meckling said inmates assigned to kitchen work sat down on the job after Aramark supervisors told them to cut baloney with pot lids rather than knives.
“Aramark is still bad. The most dangerous place is chow at any Ohio prison,” she said. “And it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Recent audits give high marks
CCA had a rocky start running the Lake Erie Correctional Institution as well.
In 2012, a DRC employee assigned to monitor CCA’s contract compliance documented inmates not having immediate access to running water or toilets and using plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination, clogged water fountains, moldy showers, padlocked fire exits, no guards monitoring “pill call” when medications are distributed, and more.
The state fined CCA more than $573,000 and two months later auditors found the issues had largely been addressed. By January 2013, CCA won accreditation for the facility from the American Correctional Association and in 2015 the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, a bipartisan state prison watchdog, noted that Lake Erie Correctional “experienced a rocky beginning but appears to have turned around entirely and is now on the forefront of several DRC initiatives.”
The most recent state audit of the Lake Erie prison, completed in June 2015, gave the facility high marks as well.
The CIIC also reported big improvements from the MTC-run prison in Marion, which in 2014 reported a two-year increase in violence, high backlogs for medical care and very high staff turnover. But a February 2016 internal audit report from DRC says the complex is clean, well-run and following standards.
‘Losing proposition’
The ACLU of Ohio remains a vocal critic, saying the state is abdicating its incarceration duties to private firms — and sacrificing oversight in the process.
“Our belief is the overall trajectory of these facilities is that because of the profit motivation, because of the lack of qualified staff and the cost-cutting measures that the private prisons employ, it is overall going to be a losing proposition for the taxpayers in Ohio,” he said. “It will only be a matter of time before these facilities go back into disarray and poor management.”
Meckling and Brickner both questioned the veracity of DRC reported savings with the privatization deals.
“The math in terms of the savings is often very fuzzy,” Brickner said.
Meckling argues that there is a lack of transparency with private facilities.
“How would we really know?” she said of the companies’ pronouncements. “How would we fact-check that? We can’t really get to the kernel of how safe these prisons are and what they’re spending because they don’t have to reveal that.”
‘I have no problem with it’
Inmates who have been in both public and private run prisons say there are upsides and drawbacks to both.
“I think as long as the state oversees the private institutions to make sure that they’re following the state policies – things differ state to state and some private institutions operate in multiple states — but I think as long as that particular state insures that certain state polices are being followed and upheld, then I have no problem with it,” said an inmate who has so far served 22 years in Ohio prisons, including the last 15 at Lake Erie under both MTC-management and now CCA-ownership and management.
Lake Erie Correctional inmate William Johnson, 47, of Akron, is serving a four-and-a-half year sentence. He said there are fewer staff at the CCA-owned prison than a state lock-up but the programming is better. And he noted that CCA is improving over its rocky start.
“I think it’s starting to move into a better position now than it was in previous years,” he said. “I think you have new people in new positions that are making it happen more than just saying it’s happening.”
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