A Quaker group asked a judge on Friday to block the state from putting more inmates in private prisons, saying the Department of Corrections has never shown it is safe or even cost effective.
Vince Rabago, representing the American Friends Service Committee, told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Arthur Anderson that the law requires the state to make a comparison every two years between the services and safety of state-run facilities and those operated by private companies. But there has never been such a study even though that law has been on the books for more than 20 years.
Without the study, Rabago argued, there is no basis to know whether it makes sense for the state to go ahead with its plans to contract for another 5,000 private prison beds. So he wants Anderson to block that contract from being awarded until the first study, which the Department of Corrections is finally doing this year, is completed.
“The state has an obligation to follow its laws,” Rabago told the judge.
The 1987 law dealing with awarding of contracts for private prisons requires the director of the Department of Corrections to look at the job contractors are doing every two years, considering everything from the programs and services offered to inmates to food service and security. Rabago told Anderson the state needs the study as a baseline to compare to what bidders for the new contract are offering.
Assistant Attorney General Rex Nowlan conceded that the state never had performed the study. But he said that is legally irrelevant, arguing that the Department of Corrections is effectively looking at all those issues.
He also pointed out that same law already prohibits the state from contracting for private prison beds “unless the proposal offers cost savings to this state.”
Anyway, Nowlan questioned how the Quaker group — or the other plaintiffs who are the parents of an adult inmate in a private prison — has any right to sue simply because the Department of Corrections has not complied with the law requiring a study. He said the only people who would have a right to complain are the lawmakers who are supposed to get the report.
Rabago disagreed.
“Taxpayers have a right to prevent the illegal expenditure of taxpayer monies,” he told the judge.
Nowlan responded that the Legislature specifically directed the Department of Corrections to contract for another 5,000 beds at privately run prisons. That is on top of the 6,400 inmates already housed in private facilities.
With that direction, Nowlan said, what the agency is doing cannot be called illegal.
Rabago said this is more than a question of a missing report.
“Maybe had the state done its job, maybe had it been doing these studies properly ... maybe we would not be in a position where we would have had Kingman (private prison) escapees murdering innocent people,” he said. “Maybe we wouldn’t have riots and unsafe conditions which we know exist.”
That murder reference is to an incident last year when three violent criminals escaped from a private prison run by Management and Training Corp. after an accomplice threw a wire cutter over the fence.
All eventually were recaptured, but not before an Oklahoma couple, kidnapped at a New Mexico rest area, was murdered; several of those involved have been charged in that incident.
A study following that incident found various failures with the operation of the facility, including a perimeter alarm system that malfunctioned so often that corrections officers routinely ignored it.
The study also concluded the state itself had done a poor job of oversight.
State officials have not said when they will finally award the new contract. But Barrett Marson, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said his agency asked all the bidders to extend the expiration date on their offers until Nov. 22 to provide more time to review the proposals.
Anderson gave no indication of when he will rule.
Masterrogue666 posted at 6:42 pm on Fri, Oct 14, 2011.
Quakers? How about liberals:
http://afsc.org/
Vince Rabago anti SB 1070:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/07/15/20100715attorney-general-candidate-vince-rabago.html
Sunshine posted at 12:02 am on Sat, Oct 15, 2011.
The state has an obligation to both conduct the studies to see if the taxpayers aren't being taken to the cleaners by these for-profit operators, and to oversee the contracts when they're issued.
It's done neither.
The next riot in a private pen could be as early as this weekend, given the sad state of affairs inside.
The state is being sued for $40 million by the families of the murdered Oklahomans. It cost millions more for the search, apprehension, court proceedings in three states. Those far higher escape ratios should be factored into the actual costs of giving contracts to those operators who have little to recommend them save for massive campaign contributions and other assistance, and the former ADC Director Terry Stewart (of Abu Ghraib fame) whose protege was current director Chuck Ryan.
These contracts are nothing but pork. Thank goodness Rabago has volunteered to take this case. Taxpayers should be grateful.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 7:42 am on Sat, Oct 15, 2011.
How's about putting one of these inmates in Quaker homes for them to take care of ???
Then our bankrupt State Treasury will save $30,000.00 a year.
If you are going to ..."talk the talk"...then you should be willing to ..."walk the walk".
Sunshine posted at 9:33 am on Sat, Oct 15, 2011.
Actually, the Quakers have run halfway houses, not for profit.
They've also worked for at least seventy years for sentencing reform, promoting alternatives to incarceration.
On the other hand, CCA and GEO Group, with perhaps 90% of all the for-profit prison beds in the country, have promoted more criminal laws and longer sentences, in the interest of still greater profits. They spend many millions on campaign contributions to get even greater funding for their prison-industrial complex.
You're talking the irate taxpayer "talk," but you're not bothering to do any research at all, to inform your conclusions. If you paid any attention, you might find that you and the Quakers are on the same side.
A_Rose_By_Any_Other_Name posted at 8:40 am on Mon, Oct 17, 2011.
Sunshine, you say the state has an obligation to both conduct the studies to see if the taxpayers aren't being taken to the cleaners by these for-profit operators, and to oversee the contracts when they're issued? How would you know what the state has or has not done in this regard. You are full of un-cited, inflammatory BS.
As for these Quakers, let them take the prisoners after they are sentenced instead of after some of the safer inmates are released and see how well they do.