Private Prisons in the United States, 1999:
An Assessment of Growth, Performance, Custody
Standards, and Training Requirements

Federal Bureau of Prisons
Office of Research and Evaluation
320 First Street, NW
400 Building, Room 3006
Washington, DC 20534
March 2000

Scott D. Camp, Ph.D.
Gerald G. Gaes, Ph.D.

Contents
Guide to Abbreviations Used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Research Plan for the Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
General Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Training Standards and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Custody Standards and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Verification of Inmate Classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Appendix 1: Growth and Development of the Private Prisons Industry . . . . . . . 93
by Douglas C. McDonald, Ph.D. and Carl W. Patten, Jr., Esq.
Abt Associates, Inc.
Appendix 2: List of Private Prisons Holding Sentenced Adult Inmates . . . . . . 113
Appendix 3: Instrument used for the 1999 Survey of Private Sector
Training and Custody Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Guide to Abbreviations Used

API
BOP
CCA
CCI
CGI
CSC
DM
FCI
MCS
MPC
MTC
NIC
NOCC
ORE
TCI
USP
WCC

Alternative Programs, Inc.
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Corrections Corporation of America
Cornell Corrections, Inc.
CiviGenics, Inc.
Correctional Services Corporation
Dominion Management
Federal Correctional Institution
McLoud Correctional Services, LLC
Marantha Production Company, LLC
Management & Training Company
National Institute of Corrections
Northeast Ohio Correctional Center
Office of Research and Evaluation (BOP)
Taft Correctional Institution
United States Penitentiary
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation

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Private Prisons in the United States, 1999:
An Assessment of Growth, Performance, Custody
Standards, and Training Requirements
Executive Summary
This report addresses issues surrounding the growth in the private sector’s operation of adult,
secure facilities for sentenced inmates in the United States. It is also an analysis of private sector
standards in staff training, policy and procedure devoted to inmate security and custody, and some
of the important indicators of the quality of private prison operations. This report fulfills a
mandate from the U.S. Congress (pursuant to Public Law 105-277, Sec. 111).
Private sector firms have responded to the need for prison beds created by the rapid growth in the
jail and prison populations in recent years. This growth has generated tremendous opportunities
for entrepreneurs to build, own, and operate prisons. The two largest firms, Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) arose in the
1980s and rapidly expanded to provide care to more inmates in the United States than most State
systems. The private sector housed 69,188 inmates in 94 prisons on July 31, 1999. Private prisons
held 5.3 percent of the 1.3 million inmates under the jurisdiction of State and Federal
Governments at this time. This marked a significant increase from the end of 1997, when there
were 91 contracts that covered 37,651 inmates in 84 private prisons.
CCA held 37,244 inmates in 45 prisons in 1999—53.8 percent of the total number of inmates in
private prisons. WCC incarcerated another 19,001 inmates in 26 prisons—27.4 percent of the
total number of privately held inmates. CCA was responsible for more inmates than those held in
all but seven States and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). An additional nine State systems
had more inmates than the total reported for WCC, or 16 States altogether plus the Bureau of
Prisons. Together, CCA and WCC held 56,245 inmates, or 81.3 percent of the inmates held in
secure, adult, private prisons.
Along with the opportunities generated by the rapid influx of prisoners into the private sector, the
private companies also experienced the challenges of operating rapidly expanding correctional
systems. In particular, the private companies had to recruit, train, and maintain adequate numbers
of correctional staff to operate their prisons.

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Some evidence suggests that the private sector prison providers had problems in maintaining
adequately trained and experienced staff and that there were critical lapses in appropriate security
practices. Both major companies, CCA and WCC, had inmates escape from their adult prisons in
1999. CCA had three escape incidents in 1999 during which four inmates were able to breach the
perimeter and escape from secure facilities. CCA, and its subsidiary TransCor, also experienced
escapes when inmates were being transported, either for medical treatment or to a prison. There
were four such incidents in which five inmates escaped. WCC had two separate incidents in 1999
where one inmate in each incident was able to successfully escape from inside of a secure prison.
One of the WCC escapes was particularly relevant for the BOP, an inmate escaped from the Taft
Correctional Institution (TCI), which is operated by WCC for the BOP. Correctional Services
Corporation (CSC) had significant problems with the McKinley County Detention Center it
operated in New Mexico. There were two separate escape incidents in which nine inmates were
able to escape from inside of the facility. (CSC has since lost the contract to operate this facility.)
The Management & Training Company (MTC) also had one escape in 1999 in which three
inmates were able to escape from inside of a secure prison.
Private sector companies also experienced serious group disturbances in 1999, most of which
could be viewed as riots. CCA (five incidents), WCC (three incidents), and CSC (one incident)
experienced group disturbances in which chemical agents had to be used to control inmates,
and/or injuries resulted to staff members, and/or significant property damage occurred. In the
most tragic of these incidents, a correctional officer was killed at the Guadalupe County
Correctional Facility, which was operated by WCC for the State of New Mexico.

Research Plan for the Analysis
The U.S. Congress (Public Law 105-277, Sec. 111, Fiscal Year 1999 Omnibus Appropriations
Bill) required that the Director of the BOP initiate a study that “evaluates the growth and
development of the private prison industry during the past 15 years, training qualifications of
personnel at private prisons, and the security procedures of such facilities, and compares the
general standards and conditions between private prisons and Federal prisons.”
To fulfill this requirement, the Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE), in
conjunction with subject matter experts within the BOP and the National Institute of Corrections
(NIC), developed a research plan with three major components: (1) a census of secure private
prisons for sentenced, adult inmates, (2) a survey of Government employees responsible for
administering the private prison contracts within agencies that utilized private prison bed space,
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and (3) site visits to selected private institutions. This report covers the census and survey. A later
report will discuss the findings of the site visits.

Census
The census identified 94 different institutions that held sentenced, adult inmates for departments
of corrections in one of the 50 States, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, or the Federal
Government. Nine of the prisons had contracted with two or more jurisdictions to hold inmates,
meaning that, at the time of the census, there were 103 different contracts to hold adult inmates in
private prisons.
As of July 31, 1999, there were 69,188 adult inmates incarcerated in private prisons in the United
States. The majority of these inmates were identified by the respective jurisdictions as being
medium security, with 33,088 of the inmates, or 48 percent, so classified. The next largest
classification of inmates was minimum security with 35 percent (24,014) of the inmate total. For
the remaining inmates, 12 percent (8,103) were identified as low security, 4 percent (2,772) as
maximum security, and 2 percent (1,211) as having a different or no security classification.
The private sector holds a lower percentage of high and medium security offenders than the public
sector. Other aspects of the custody classification of inmates held by the private prisons are less
clear, especially the experiences of the private sector in holding what the BOP classifies as an
inmate with medium security needs. There are differences between many State corrections
systems and the BOP in terms of classification criteria and nomenclature. As a result, in many
State systems, inmates who would be considered in the Federal system as low security risks are
classified as medium security risks.

Survey
The survey developed by the BOP’s ORE was distributed to contract administrators who were
responsible for administering the private prison contracts. Information was received for 91 of the
103 contracts identified, for a response rate of 88 percent.
The survey was designed around three basic sections. The first and longest section asked for
information about the respective training policy and standards in private and State-operated
prisons. The second section asked for basic information about custody policy and standards at
private prisons. The final section covered three major areas: general characteristics of the prison
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and staff, information about the types of inmates housed at the prison, and data about the types of
inmate misconduct experienced at the prison.
The data reported here allowed the authors of the report to compare key staffing characteristics at
private prisons and BOP prisons. There was no attempt to collect information on pay and
benefits—generally it is expected that the pay and benefits of individual line staff in the Federal
sector surpass that in the private sector. This is not to say that overall staffing costs in the Federal
sector are necessarily higher than those in the private sector. In a cost analysis of the first year of
operations at TCI, Nelson (1999) found that the BOP would have operated TCI for less money
than WCC did, assuming that the BOP staffed TCI the way it staffed comparable Federal prisons.
WCC employed more staff than the comparable BOP prisons.
General Characteristics of Private Prisons
There were differences between the BOP and private sector prisons. The BOP reported lower
ratios of custody staff to inmates than most of the private prisons, but it reported comparable
ratios for total staff to inmates. It would seem that the comparable ratios of total staff to inmates
resulted from the BOP’s greater use of case management and program staff, although this issue
was not examined directly in the survey.
The BOP had a more stable workforce. The separation rates for custody staff at most private
prisons were much higher than the corresponding rates for BOP prisons. Where the average sixmonth separation rate for custody staff at BOP prisons was 4.4 percent and no BOP prison had a
rate greater than 9 percent, 95 percent of the private prisons had a separation rate that was equal
to or greater than 10 percent. In fact, almost half of the private prisons had a separation rate equal
to or in excess of 50 percent. The contract administrators noted that the separation rates at the
private prisons were higher than the corresponding rates at comparable public prisons operated by
their respective agencies. They further responded that the separations created staff shortages.
Regarding inmate misconduct, there were lower hit rates for drug use in BOP prisons than in
many of the private prisons, although quite a few of the private prisons were doing very well on
this measure. The BOP had substantially fewer escapes from secure prisons than the private
prisons taken as a whole. The homicide rates for all BOP prisons and all private sector prisons
were very similar. However, it is worth remembering that secure BOP institutions had a higher
percentage of maximum security prisoners, and probably had a higher percentage of medium

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security prisoners as well. Due to the incompatibility in the survey question and the BOP data, it
was not possible to compare the assault rates effectively.
For the most part, the contract administrators rated inmate misconduct in private prisons as being
comparable to rates of misconduct in their own public prisons.
Training Standards and Policy
For employment requirements, public agencies were somewhat more likely to require initial
firearms, firearms refresher, and gang management training; initial and periodic custody training
seemed to be required at about the same levels. The small difference in training standards may be
attributable to the fact that the contract prison population represents, on average, lower security
and custody level inmates.
Public and private agencies frequently used the same standards for the various kinds of training
either because the contract between the public agency and the contractor mandated the same
standards, or because the contractor adopted the public standards.
Training at the privately-operated prisons was primarily the responsibility of the private sector
employees, although the public sector also did a significant amount of the training. The number of
training hours was almost identical between the public agency employees and the staff at the
privately-operated institutions.
The larger picture that emerged from this data is that private contractors were typically obligated
to use the training standards and policies of the public agencies. There was much more variation
from jurisdiction to jurisdiction than there was between the publicly and privately-operated
institutions within a jurisdiction.
Custody Standards and Policy
The responses to this section of the survey showed that the private sector’s standards and policies
were typically a reflection of the jurisdiction governing the contract. The public sector maintained
responsibility for routine and intensive formal reviews of custody practices but often did these
reviews in conjunction with the private sector. The training and custody sections of the survey
demonstrate that the training and custody policies and standards of the privately-operated prisons

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were a reflection of the same standards and policies of the public jurisdiction responsible for those
contracts.
Verification of Inmate Classification
A follow up phone call was made to contract monitors to establish whether the privately operated
facilities had procedures in place to verify the security classification level of the inmates they were
receiving from the public sector. Most facilities had procedures in place. The typical circumstance
was that inmates were classified by State experts and the private vendor used the State
classification system to verify that the classification level was appropriate.

Concluding Remarks
The private prison industry experienced phenomenal growth from its founding in the 1980s until
the present. While there have been changes in the types of inmates held in private prisons, most of
the experiences of the private sector have been with lower-risk inmates. The relative growth in the
private sector (that is, the increase in prisoners in comparison to the numbers previously held) will
probably not be as dramatic in the future as it has been in previous years. In fact, there is some
evidence that the growth in the U.S. prison population is slowing down. Nonetheless, there is
every reason to believe that growth in absolute numbers of inmates held in private prisons will
continue to expand, necessitating increased hiring and training of private prison staff. Many of the
factors driving the growth of the U.S. prison population—increased arrests and prosecutions,
mandatory minimum sentences, determinate sentencing/elimination of parole, less use of
probation—are the same factors that necessitate that a jurisdiction add prison capacity and
contract for some of those beds.
From the survey results presented here, there do appear to be some systemic problems that the
private sector must address. For example, the rapid turnover of staff perpetuates the situation in
which private prisons are operated by inexperienced staff. The large numbers of escapes from
private sector prisons, in comparison to the BOP, may be related to the lack of experienced staff
who are essential to operating safe and secure prisons. As anecdotally reported here and more
systematically in the Clark and Austin et al. reports, staff inexperience was evident in the
Youngstown situation, the New Mexico problems, the Colorado group disturbance, and the Taft
Correctional Institution incidents.

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Another area that needs more probing is the staffing patterns at public and private prisons. The
custody staff-to-inmate ratio is generally higher at private prisons than in the BOP, suggesting
that private prisons may focus too many resources in this area. The total staff-to-inmate ratio of
most private facilities lies somewhere between the staffing levels of the Bureau of Prisons lowand medium-security prisons. Thus, the private sector’s overall staffing levels are comparable to
the BOP; however, since their custody staffing levels are higher, they probably use fewer program
and case management workers. This suggests that there may be fundamental differences in how
the private sector approaches custody.
The impetus for the use of private prisons in the United States was the promise of lower costs and
the need for additional capacity. In Australia and the United Kingdom, the motivation to privatize
was driven by these factors but was also propelled by prison reforms. In fact, some have proposed
that private prisons are places for experimentation, a test-bed for new approaches to
programming, management, and staffing. The competition that arises from the contrasting
approaches between the public and private sectors, according to this proposition, will promote
innovation and cross-fertilization of ideas and practices. While this proposition appears plausible,
there are factors that limit these possibilities.
Because of the inherent risk of corrections, private companies and State agencies that have
oversight obligations are unlikely to wander very far from standards and requirements that have
already been established in each jurisdiction. The survey results on training and custody standards
and requirements show that the private sector, even when there is no contractual obligation, has
adopted the standards and policies of their public sector counterparts. A different constraint upon
private operators involves jurisdictional requirements that cost savings must be demonstrated.
These requirements reduce the opportunities for innovation, especially in the private sector’s
flexibility to experiment with the management of human resources, the most costly part of prison
operations. One of the few alternatives the private sector has to save money and make a profit is
to suppress labor costs through direct measures such as restructuring pay and benefits. But,
reducing pay and benefits may result in high separation rates among staff.
The question that remains is whether there is sufficient room for the private sector to maneuver
and innovate when they are constrained by correctional standards and State cost containment
goals. Because of these types of restraints, in most jurisdictions, the privately operated prisons
become an extension of the public correctional agency.

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There are exceptions to the pattern of private prisons being extensions of the public sector that
contracts for their services. In Florida, for example, the contracting for private prisons is under
the control of an agency separate from the Florida Department of Corrections. The Bureau of
Prisons’ philosophy concerning contracting for private facilities is to provide a balance between
setting policy and encouraging innovation. The BOP structures its contracts, where feasible,
around performance goals instead of policy compliance. In other words, the Bureau contracts for
certain levels of output from the vendor, but the vendor is free to specify how they could achieve
the output goals when bidding for the contracts.
Nonetheless, the general practice in the United States is for private prisons to reflect the training
and security policies and standards of the agencies contracting for their services. There was much
greater variation between jurisdictions than there was between the public and private sectors
within a jurisdiction. The implication of this finding may be that the operations and standards of
the private sector are a reflection of the contracting jurisdiction whether the jurisdiction’s policies
and standards are good or bad, progressive or retrogressive. Thus, despite the fact that CCA and
WCC are large correctional entities, the operations at their facilities are more likely to be
influenced by the contract jurisdictions and local circumstances (e.g., labor markets, cost of living)
than they are by corporate policies and standards. Given the problems with escapes, disturbances,
and staff instability, many (though certainly not all) of the privately-operated prisons are
struggling to meet basic safety and security standards. This may be a reflection of the immaturity
of the private corrections sector. It may be alleviated if private operators can stabilize their
workforce and retain sufficient numbers of line and supervisory staff with sufficient correctional
tenure. Experienced staff can train the younger workforce and serve as models for that workforce.
It is important to distinguish between the standards and policies of a correctional system and the
manner in which they are implemented. Having sound policy is only the first step. Ensuring that
staff execute policy correctly is just as important. The survey methodology used in this report
could not measure how well privately-managed prisons operated on a day-to-day basis. That kind
of performance is assessed through systematic audits of all aspects of prison operations. The only
evidence we had from this survey were indicators of performance, such as escapes, drug use hit
rates, major incidents, and homicides. Based on those indicators, and on the high turnover rate of
staff at private prisons, it would appear that both the public and private sector managers need to
be vigilant in their monitoring of the day-to-day operations of privately-operated
prisons—certainly no less vigilant than they are about public sector performance. It is important
to note that this report is not an indictment of every privately-operated prison. The data represent
an overall picture.
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This study brings to light several significant issues related to staffing, workforce experience, and
performance in the private sector. We believe that these issues should be addressed before the
private sector is allowed to take responsibility for the custody of more violent and sophisticated
prisoners.

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-xii-

Introduction
This report presents the growth in the private sector’s operation of adult, secure facilities for
sentenced inmates in the United States. It is also an analysis of private sector standards in staff
training, the development of policy and procedure devoted to inmate security and custody, and
some of the important indicators of the quality of private prison operations. This report fulfills a
request for information from the U.S. Congress (Public Law 105-277, Sec. 111).
The rapid growth in the jail and prison populations in recent years has generated tremendous
opportunities for entrepreneurs to build, own and operate prisons.1 The two largest firms,
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC)
arose in the 1980s and rapidly expanded to provide custody of more inmates in the United States
than most State systems. Abt Associates Inc., under contract with the National Institute of
Corrections (NIC), conducted a census of adult prison facilities in the United States and found
that the private sector housed 69,188 inmates in 94 different prisons on July 31, 1999 (see
Appendix 2).2 Private prisons held 5.3% of the 1.3 million inmates under the jurisdiction of State
and Federal Governments at that time. This marked a significant increase from the end of 1997,
the last time Abt conducted a census, when Abt determined that 91 contracts covered 37,651
inmates in 84 different private prisons (McDonald, Fournier, Russell-Einhorn, and Crawford
1998). A more complete history of the rise of private sector prisons is provided in Appendix 1 of
this report, written by Douglas C. McDonald and Carl W. Patten, Jr., of Abt Associates, Inc.
In 1999, CCA held 37,244 inmates in 45 prisons—53.8 percent of the total number of inmates in
private prisons. WCC incarcerated another 19,001 inmates in 26 prisons—27.4 percent of the
total number of privately-held inmates. CCA was responsible for more inmates than those held in
all but seven States and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. These comparisons are based on numbers
reported for the State and Federal systems on January 1, 1998, the latest date for which complete

Private prisons in the United States are not new phenomena. In the 19th century, some States entered into
agreements with private parties to lease the labor of inmates. In some of these agreements, the private party became
responsible for the housing and care of the inmates in addition to paying a fee for the labor of the inmate. This
system was subject to abuse and was fairly widespread. The convict lease system came to an end in 1923 during the
Progressive Era (Shichor 1995: 34-43). Under the current incarnation of private prisons, the opportunity for private
operators to benefit directly from the labor of inmates has been removed for the most part.
1

2
Private prison operators hold a large number of adults in jails and detention centers in the U.S., such as
the illegal aliens incapacitated for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the pre-trial inmates held for
the U.S. Marshals Service. These facilities and inmates are not the focus of the present report which concentrates
on secure adult prisons, and Abt Associates did not attempt to collect information on these types of facilities.

1

data were available (Camp and Camp 1998: 6-7).3 An additional nine State systems were larger
than the total reported for WCC, or 16 States altogether plus the Bureau of Prisons.4 Together,
CCA and WCC held 56,245 inmates, or 81.3 percent of the inmates in secure, adult, private
prisons.
As Harding (2000) has argued, private prison companies are not prison systems in the usual sense
of the term. To quote Harding (2000: 2): “This is a fundamentally erroneous concept, suggesting
status and autonomy as principal. Both CCA and WCC and each of the other operators are agents
of the State in the various jurisdictions” (emphasis in original). It is important in Harding’s
conceptualization of the relationship between the public and private sectors that the
State—although it has contracted for the care and well-being of prisoners—is still ultimately
responsible for ensuring that the care and well-being of the prisoners is provided through
regulatory and accountability mechanisms.
In addition, there is another fundamental difference between private and public prison “systems.”
Unlike CCA or WCC, the BOP runs a system of prisons that are integrated by common laws,
policies, and practices. CCA and WCC, on the other hand, operate a series of prisons that are
extensions of other prison systems. To date, a private prison company has not operated an entire
prison system, although CCA and WCC have proposed in the past to operate the prison systems
in Tennessee and Florida (Harding 2000).
While we emphasize the difference between prison systems and private companies that operate
prisons, there are still some commonalities between them. As already mentioned, during a period
of growth, both must be capable of hiring and training staff to meet the demands of an increasing
population. Both must be capable of activating new facilities with a relatively immature
workforce. Both must make prudent decisions about using limited funds to best meet the needs of
the inmate population, while protecting staff and citizens. To the extent there is a corporate
approach, or perhaps even to the extent there is a corporate ethos in meeting these requirements,
private companies can be said to be corporate prison systems.

3
The seven States with larger populations in secure prisons were California (155,276), Florida (61,270),
Illinois (40,787), Michigan (42,388), New York (69,108), Ohio (47,808), and Texas (129,278). The Federal
Bureau of Prisons had 87,224 inmates in secure prisons.

4
In addition to the States listed in footnote 3, the following States had larger inmate populations than
WCC on January 1, 1998: Alabama (19,541), Arizona (23,484), Georgia (35,677), Missouri (23,645), New Jersey
(22,252), North Carolina (28,696), Pennsylvania (30,819), South Carolina (20,629), and Virginia (24,644).

2

The rapid influx of prisoners into the private sector brought challenges and opportunities. One of
the most significant challenges was the need to recruit, train, and maintain adequate numbers of
correctional staff that were necessary to operate the prisons they managed.
Many of the concerns about private corporations and their staff capabilities came to a head in the
aftermath of the highly publicized escape of six maximum risk inmates, five of them convicted
murderers, from the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (NOCC) in July of 1998. In a detailed
and rare glimpse into the operations of a private prison, John L. Clark, the Corrections Trustee
for the District of Columbia, provided a detailed examination of the problems experienced by
CCA at NOCC during its initial operations. In addition to the much-publicized escapes, there
were two inmate murders and numerous stabbings and assaults, including assaults on staff.
Among his findings, Clark documented the lack of basic security practices and the inexperience
and inability of staff to handle difficult inmates (Clark 1998). Since the escapes, staffing and
procedural changes were instituted at NOCC, and the institution received ACA accreditation.
WCC also experienced highly publicized problems in two of the prisons it operated in New
Mexico: the Lea County and Guadalupe County Correctional Facilities. The incidents at these
facilities are recorded in Table 1. At the request of the Special Advisory Group composed of New
Mexico State Senators, State Representatives, the State Corrections Secretary, and the State
Deputy Attorney General, a group of independent consultants were asked to examine the
operations in New Mexico public and private prisons in light of the problems experienced by the
New Mexico Corrections Department and WCC. The correctional consultants documented their
evaluation in a report submitted to the Special Advisory Group (Austin, Crane, Griego, O'Brien,
and Vose 2000). Among the types of problems documented, some were attributed to the New
Mexico Department of Corrections, such as lack of surveillance of gang activities and inequity in
housing conditions between the public prisons and the more Spartan private prisons. Other
problems were more likely to be found in the private prisons: problems with inadequate numbers
of staff, inexperienced staff, insufficiently trained staff (partly caused by difficulty in scheduling
access to the State training academy), and physical plant deficiencies in the facilities owned by
WCC. Richard Crane argued that part of the problem in operations at the two facilities originated
with the complicated contractual arrangements between the Corrections Department, the Counties
of Guadalupe and Lea, and WCC. To quote Crane (2000: 54):
In the end, the complex contractual arrangements, the unclear facility missions, the need for
prison beds, and the involvement of too many agencies and individuals in negotiations, resulted
in contracts which fall well short of industry standards and create significant security,
programmatic and fiscal implications for the State (p. 54).

3

Jerry O’Brien, a correctional consultant, conducted operational reviews at the Lea and Guadalupe
facilities. With regard to security issues, O’Brien listed a number of issues: tool control was in
“total disarray” and was being handled by the inmates (O'Brien 2000: 125); the security staffing at
the two contract facilities reflected an immature and untrained security workforce and even
inexperience at the supervisory level; there were recruitment and retention problems and “serious
shortfalls” in filling positions (O'Brien 2000: 124); there were serious gaps in search procedures to
find contraband; and there were deficiencies in intelligence gathering. O’Brien also found fault
with one of the facilities operated by the State of New Mexico, but not to the same degree as in
the privately-operated institutions.
The Clark and Austin et al. reports should not be taken as evidence of problems in the entire
private prison sector. The reports were requested and issued because there were known problems
at these institutions, and they certainly do not reflect or represent all privately-operated prisons.
By the very nature of the reports, they provided intensive case studies of the prisons within which
specific incidents occurred rather than a more general assessment of the ability of the private
sector to operate safe and efficient prisons. There is other evidence, though, that private sector
prison operators continued to experience problems in operating their prisons in 1999.
Accounts reported in the press suggest that the private sector prison providers had problems in
maintaining adequately trained and experienced staff and appropriate security practices. Table 1
lists some of the more serious incidents at the private adult prisons that were reported in the
media for calendar year 1999.5 As can be seen there, both major companies, CCA and WCC, had
inmate escapes at their adult prisons in 1999. CCA had three escape incidents from the inside of
secure facilities in 1999 in which four inmates were able to breach the perimeter. CCA, and its
subsidiary TransCor, also experienced escapes when inmates were being transported, either to
medical treatment or to a prison. There were four such incidents involving the successful escapes
of five inmates. WCC had two separate incidents in 1999 where one inmate in each incident was
able to successfully escape from inside of a secure prison. One of the WCC escapes was
particularly relevant for the BOP as an inmate was able to escape from the Taft Correctional
Institution, which is operated by WCC for the BOP. Correctional Services Corporation (CSC)
had significant problems with the McKinley County Detention Center it operated in New Mexico.

5
There were escapes and other major incidents at other secure facilities operated by the private companies,
but since these facilities are jails and detention centers, they were not relevant for or included in this report. Ryan
Sherman, Esq., a legislative aide for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, counted 38 escapes
that were reported in the media from all secure private facilities in 1999 (Sherman 1999). He also found reports of
26 escapes in 1998, 20 in 1997, 38 in 1996, and 20 in 1995.

4

There were two separate escape incidents in which nine inmates were able to escape from inside
of the facility. (CSC has since lost the contract to operate this facility.) The Management &
Training Company (MTC) also had one escape in 1999 in which three inmates were able to
escape from inside of a secure prison.
In contrast to this spate of inmate escapes from secure private correctional facilities, the BOP had
one escape in 1999. This was the first escape from a secure BOP facility since 1996. The BOP,
with 80,800 inmates in secure prisons in July of 1999, was almost 17 percent larger than the
combined inmate populations of all private adult prisons in July of 1999.6 Taken all together, the
private prisons had 18 inmates escape from inside of secure prisons in 1999, and 5 inmates who
were housed in secure prisons were able to escape while they were being transported elsewhere.
Private sector companies also experienced serious group disturbances in 1999. CCA (five
incidents), WCC (three incidents), and CSC (one incident) experienced group disturbances in
which chemical agents had to be used to control inmates, and/or injuries resulted to staff
members, and/or significant property damage occurred (see Table 1). In the most tragic of these
incidents, a correctional officer was killed at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility,
operated by WCC for the State of New Mexico.
In the BOP, seven incidents were classified as major disturbances in fiscal year 1999. All of these
incidents involved large numbers of inmates fighting among themselves, usually gang related. Four
of these disturbances required the use of gas, nonlethal munitions, or warning shots from guards
on perimeter towers to control the inmates. There were no serious staff injuries in any of the
seven incidents. Two of the group disturbances occurred at one institution, FCI Big Spring. In
one of the incidents, MK-9 pepper fogger (an aerosol that irritates the eyes and respiratory
system) was used by the disturbance control team to disperse the inmates. In the other incident at
FCI Big Spring, warning shots were fired before gas and sting ball grenades (nonlethal weapons
that release rubber pellets that “sting” the legs) were used to disperse the fighting inmates. Stun
munitions and sting ball grenades were used at USP Leavenworth to stop fighting inmates.
Finally, warning shots were fired to control inmates at USP Florence.

6
Secure prison is defined for purposes of this report as a facility with a secure perimeter fence or fences.
Also, the facility must hold sentenced adult inmates in general population units. In the BOP, this excludes all
facilities that are designated as minimum-security prison camps, metropolitan detention centers, prison hospitals,
and metropolitan correctional centers. Secure prisons incarcerating sentenced adults include the security levels of
low, medium, and high.

5

The capability of staff at private prisons has been openly questioned in some of the publicized
incidents. Following the group disturbance at the Crowley County Correctional Facility (which is
operated by CSC), John Suthers, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections,
noted that “staff was (sic) not as well trained as it (sic) could have been” in handling the
disturbance. Suthers promised that future contracts would place more emphasis upon “proper
training.” There have been other allegations, such as those made by some staff at the Kit Carson
Correctional Facility (operated by CCA), that staff separations and lack of training have caused
problems, but there is typically no hard evidence to support or refute such charges.
There is further anecdotal evidence of staff problems—at least short-term problems. In the wake
of a food and work strike at TCI on August 25, 1999 (not listed in Table 1) and the group
disturbance at TCI listed in Table 1, the issue of staff experience came into question from the
private sector vendor. Contrary to WCC’s own (and proper) correctional practice, the top
executive staff directed activities from the institution compound, instead of from the command
center. In both instances, the executive staff felt that they needed to be on the compound with line
staff because of the youth and inexperience of the line staff (Andrews 1999: 2).

Research Plan for the Analysis
The U.S. Congress (Public Law 105-277, Sec. 111) required that the Director of the BOP initiate
a study that “evaluates the growth and development of the private prison industry during the past
15 years, training qualifications of personnel at private prisons, and the security procedures of
such facilities, and compares the general standards and conditions between private prisons and
Federal prisons.”
To fulfill this requirement, the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE), in conjunction with
subject matter experts within the BOP and the National Institute of Corrections (NIC), developed
a research plan with three major components: (1) a census of secure private prisons for sentenced,
adult inmates, (2) a survey of contract officials within agencies that utilized private prison bed
space, and (3) site visits to selected private institutions. This report covers the census and survey.
A later report will discuss the findings of the site visits.
The BOP, through the NIC, contracted with Abt Associates, Inc. of Cambridge, MA for
assistance on the first two aspects of this project. Dr. Douglas McDonald of Abt Associates
conducted the census of adult, secure correctional facilities. Dr. McDonald also administered the

6

survey that was developed by the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) at the BOP to
institutions identified in the census. A copy of the survey instrument is presented in Appendix 3.
Once Abt Associates produced the database corresponding to the completed surveys, the data
were turned over to the BOP for analysis by the ORE. The results of that survey are presented in
this report. Dr. McDonald also was asked to update the earlier description of the growth and
development of the private prison sector provided in the 1998 report, Private Prisons in the
United States: An Assessment of Current Practice (McDonald, Fournier, Russell-Einhorn and
Crawford 1998). This update, written with Carl W. Patten, Jr., appears as Appendix 1 of this
report.
The site visits were conducted to evaluate the extent to which the training and custody policies
were being implemented at the privately-operated institutions. A representative sample of private
institutions would require site visits to at least 30 institutions and would involve a great deal of
time and money. In lieu of that approach, it was decided that it would be more expedient to visit a
few institutions that represent the positive and negative exemplars of private corrections. The
selection of sites would be based on the data we received from the survey. This would be the only
opportunity to closely evaluate the consistency (or lack thereof) between the standards and policy
adopted by the private sector and the procedures and practices as they were being executed by
line staff and their supervisors. In order to evaluate the facilities, a security-custody audit was
chosen, since security and custody represent core elements of correctional practice.7
The NIC assisted the ORE in identifying an independent reviewer to accompany BOP personnel
on visits to the selected private prisons. Superintendent Joan Palmateer, currently the warden of
the Oregon State Penitentiary, formerly Chief of Security for the Oregon Department of
Corrections, accompanied BOP research and custody experts to share her expertise. This report
covers the census and survey. A later report will discuss the findings of the site visits.

7
A security audit is a risk assessment that is used to determine the likelihood of a significant safety or
security problem. It focuses on the potential for an inmate escape, staff or inmate injury, disturbance, or property
damage. The audit procedures were developed by the National Institute of Corrections. The audit covers such areas
as the institution's armory, contraband management, hazardous materials, searches, post orders, key control, tool
control, and perimeter security. The audit procedures are intended to clarify the factors that may increase or
minimize the risk of a significant security problem. These factors include:"...poorly designed policy; inadequate
procedures; overlooked standards; a facility design inappropriate to a changed inmate profile; inadequate training;
or lack of knowledge, complacency, or inattention of staff to the requirements of their position." (National Institute
of Justice, 1999: Introduction, p. 1)

7

Census
The census conducted by Abt Associates identified 94 different institutions that held sentenced,
adult inmates for departments of corrections in one of the 50 States, Puerto Rico, the District of
Columbia, or the Federal Government. Nine of the prisons had contracted with two or more
jurisdictions to hold inmates, meaning that, at the time of the census, there were 103 different
contracts to hold adult inmates in private prisons. A complete list of the contracting jurisdictions,
the corresponding prisons, the location of the prisons (which is sometimes different from the
contracting State), the security level of the inmates being held at the facility, and the total number
of inmates being held can be found in Appendix 2. The list is sorted by the contracting
jurisdictions.
As of July 31, 1999, there were 69,188 inmates incarcerated in adult, private prisons in the United
States. The majority of these inmates were identified by the respective jurisdictions as being
medium-security, with 48 percent or 33,088 of the inmates so classified. The next largest
classification of inmates was minimum-security with 35 percent (24,014) of the inmate total. For
the remaining inmates, 12 percent (8,103) were identified as low-security, 4 percent (2,772) as
maximum-security, and 2 percent (1,211) as having a different or no security classification (see
Table 2).8
The private sector holds far fewer high- or maximum-security inmates than the public sector. In
all of the public sector adult prisons in the United States, 11.7 percent of inmates received the
highest or maximum-security designation (Camp and Camp 1998: 18-19) compared with the 4
percent in the private sector. Other aspects of the custody classification of inmates held by the
private prisons are less clear, especially the experiences of the private sector in holding what the
BOP classifies as an inmate with medium security needs. Most private prison operators accept the
inmate custody classification provided by the contracting jurisdiction. Most States use different
classification instruments than the BOP, even using different custody classes. The custody
classification reported here, that of minimum, low, medium, and maximum, is based on the BOP
classification system. However, most States use a three-level system, whereby inmates are
classified as minimum, medium, or maximum/close/high. At least some medium-security State
inmates would be classified as low security in the Federal system.

Most of the inmates, 4,741, that were reported to be low security risks were held in four different private
prisons for the BOP.
8

8

The varying definitions of medium-security were illustrated in a small study conducted by the
BOP that appeared in the report Private Prisons in the United States (McDonald, Fournier,
Russell-Einhorn and Crawford 1998: 27). In that study, the appropriate administrators at three
Louisiana prisons (Avoyelles, which is operated by the State, and Allen and Winn, which are
privately operated) reported that 80 percent of the inmates held in their prisons were mediumsecurity. Ten percent were identified as maximum-security, and ten percent were minimumsecurity. However, when a team of BOP staff assigned initial inmate classification status to a
sample of the inmates at these prisons using the BOP classification procedure, only 33 percent
classified as medium-security, 10 percent of the inmates as high-security, 29 percent as lowsecurity, and 28 percent as minimum-security. According to the BOP classification standards, only
half of the inmates that the State classified as medium or higher security risk actually were at the
higher security levels, e.g., 90 percent were identified as medium or maximum by the State of
Louisiana standards as opposed to 43 percent according to BOP standards.
We expect that there are probably many differences between jurisdictions in establishing the
security risks of their population. We emphasize the relevance of the BOP’s security classification
system in this context because the Congressional mandate of this study asked for a comparison of
privately-operated prisons and those operated by the BOP. The best evidence we currently have is
that privately-operated prisons are primarily holding inmates at levels commensurate to the
Bureau of Prisons minimum- and low-security levels, with a significantly smaller percentage of
inmates at the medium and high (maximum/close) levels.

Survey
The survey developed by the BOP’s ORE was distributed to officials designated by their
respective corrections headquarters as contract administrators for the private prisons identified in
the Abt census. As noted previously, a copy of the instrument appears in Appendix 3. Information
was received for 91 of the 103 contracts identified, a response rate of 88 percent. The most
systematic sources of missing data in this report came from the District of Columbia and Puerto
Rico. Three private facilities were identified as holding inmates for the District, and none of the
D.C. contract administrators responded to the survey in time for inclusion into this report. The
District has since responded to the survey, and the data are available for future analyses. None of
the administrators identified for the four private facilities holding Puerto Rican inmates responded
to the survey. The other missing information on contracts was less systematic. Information was

9

not obtained for one of the nine contracts for California inmates, two of the four contracts for
Montana inmates, and two of the twenty contracts for Texas inmates.
The survey was designed around three basic sections. The first, and longest section, asked for
information about the respective training standards in private and State prisons. In particular,
efforts were made to uncover what training standards were followed in the private prisons and
comparable public prisons, how the respective standards compared, and whether the private
sector was allowed to determine its own standards or was required to follow standards prescribed
by the contracting agency.
The second section of the survey asked for basic information about custody standards at private
prisons. Information was obtained about the source of the custody standards (ACA standards,
public agency standards, some other source, or some combination of sources), whether the public
or private agency implemented the standards, which party to the contract monitored the standards
on a daily and periodic basis, and how security technology at private prisons compared to
comparable public prisons.
The final section of the survey covered three major areas: general characteristics of the prison and
staff, information about the types of inmates housed at the prison, and data about the types of
inmate misconduct experienced at the prison. Many of the most controversial issues in the use of
private prisons pertain to staff issues. In one sense, corrections is a service industry dependent
upon the quality and training of its supervisors and line staff. While institution design and
technology may increase staff efficiency, these are not substitutes for the daily personal
interactions between staff and inmates.
The hiring and training of supervisory and line staff is probably the single most important factor
distinguishing the daily operations of private and public sector prisons. Labor expenses represent
between 60 and 80 percent of the costs of operating a prison. Assuming private prisons can be run
more cheaply than their public sector counterparts (a claim that has been questioned, c.f.
McDonald, Fournier, Russell-Einhorn and Crawford 1998: Chapter 3), the savings will most likely
come from lower wages and/or benefits, fewer staff, or both. This point has been made by many
other analysts (mostly self-avowed critics) of the private corrections industry (for example, see
Mobley and Geis 2000; Schlosser 1998).

10

Private corrections entrepreneurs such as Doc Crants, one of the founders of CCA, have openly
stated that savings can be created by driving down correctional labor costs (Crants 1991). The
resulting research question is “What effect will lower labor costs have on the quality of the
correctional product?” A systematic answer to this question involves assessing labor costs,
evaluating the quality of supervisory and line staff, and finally, measuring the indicia of
correctional performance. While we did not collect data on labor costs in this study, we were able
to collect information on staff turnover and a few indicia of correctional performance such as
inmate escapes, drug usage hit rates, and homicides.
We are not aware of any hard data that have been collected on staff turnover prior to this study.
Researchers, such as Mobley and Geis (2000), have made theoretical claims in their analysis
devoted to dissecting problems with the operation of CCA facilities. These authors claim that
“CCA no doubt expects very high rates of staff turnover, meaning that CCA prisons may be
perpetually manned by inexperienced crews” (Mobley and Geis 2000: 31).
While we are not aware of any study establishing the importance of tenured staff, most
correctional professionals will claim that well-trained and experienced line staff are the most
essential resource of a correctional agency. Staff must learn how to cope with an inmate
population composed of individuals who range from reluctant wards to openly hostile and
belligerent antagonists. Staff must act as role models, teachers, and mentors to prisoners. They
must be able to resist inmate attempts at sophisticated manipulation as well as bribes and other
illegal overtures. Staff must protect the larger inmate society from the recalcitrant core of inmates
that is still committed to crime. An experienced, well-trained workforce has been taught to handle
inmate interactions in a professional manner, while guarding against inmate impropriety. If staff
are turning over at a high rate, this makes it difficult to teach and reinforce the essential values
and skills necessary to deal with the inmate population. A naive workforce could pose a danger to
inmates, staff, and the public. It is important to realize that the more violent and the more
recalcitrant an inmate population is, the more dangerous a naive workforce becomes. In the
language of corrections, institutions composed of inmates with higher classification risk levels are
the most problematic when being run by poorly trained or naive staff.
The data reported here allowed us to compare key staffing characteristics at private prisons and
BOP prisons. There was no attempt to collect information on pay and benefits—generally it is
expected that the pay and benefits of individual line staff in the Federal sector surpass that in the
private sector. This is not to say that overall staffing costs in the Federal sector are necessarily

11

higher than those in the private sector. In a cost analysis of the first year of operations at TCI,
Nelson (1999) found that the BOP would have operated TCI for less money than WCC did,
assuming that the BOP staffed TCI the way they staffed comparable prisons. WCC employed
more staff than the BOP at comparable prisons. In a separate cost analysis, Nelson (1998)
demonstrated that in one jurisdiction, Tennessee, benefits paid to private prison administrators
were much greater than the benefits provided to either private sector line staff or public sector
workers.
To address the staffing issue, the data collection focused on uses and stability of staff. In
particular, we examined staff-to-inmate ratios and separation rates, two measures that are
generally regarded to be important in assessing prison operations.
The results of the survey are presented by section, starting with the third section.
General Characteristics of Private Prisons
Inmate Gender. Of the 84 private prisons, covering 91 contracts, for which data were returned,
72 or 85.7 percent of the prisons housed male inmates exclusively, 8 or 9.5 percent females
exclusively, and 4 or 4.8 percent both males and females.
Institution Security. Table 3 presents information about the physical security of the 84
institutions—not to be confused with the security risks posed by the inmates. Table 3 also lists the
total number of sentenced adult inmates held there, the number of custody staff, and the number
of all staff. Ratios that show the number of custody staff per 100 inmates and all staff per 100
inmates are also presented. Ratios could not be computed for seven of the prisons because of
missing information. For convenience, the table is sorted alphabetically by the facility name. Low-,
medium-, and maximum (high)-security prisons operated by the Bureau of Prisons are presented
in the table as aggregates for purposes of comparison. For example, the BOP low-security prisons
held 38,054 inmates, using 3,539 custody staff and 8,442 total staff.
Staff-to-Inmate Ratios. If the institutions are ordered by the highest to the lowest custody staff to
inmate ratio, then the data appear as they do in Figure 1. The Bureau of Prisons aggregates are
represented and labeled “BOP Low,” “BOP Med.,” and “BOP Max.” These lines represent the
average custody staff per 100 inmates for BOP low-, medium-, and maximum-security prisons

12

respectively.9 It is apparent from Figure 1 that most private prisons used more custody staff per
100 inmates than did the average BOP low-security prisons (9.3 custody staff per 100 inmates).
Of the 77 private prisons for which a ratio could be computed, only two facilities used fewer
custody staff per inmate than BOP low-security prisons. That is, BOP low-security institutions
ranked third lowest in custody staff use. For these rankings, there were 80 total ranks as there are
the 77 private prisons and the three BOP composites for low, medium, and maximum security
prisons. The respective rankings for BOP medium-security prisons (14.4 custody staff per 100
inmates) and maximum-security prisons (19.9 custody staff per 100 inmates) were 24 and 58.
Most privately-operated prisons use much higher custody staffing levels than the typical BOP
low- and medium-security institutions. It is only when you compare privately-operated prisons to
the highest BOP security level that you find custody staffing levels, on average, lower than the
Bureau of Prisons. It is worth mentioning one more time, since it is easy to lose focus, that the
best evidence suggests that inmates in low-security level BOP facilities are more like inmates in
privately-operated medium-security level prisons rather than the minimum- or low-security level
prisons operated by the private sector.10
If the data in Table 3 are reordered by the ratio of all staff per 100 inmates, from highest to
lowest, then the data appear as they do in Figure 2. BOP low-security level prisons still, on
average, appear to use fewer overall staff than a considerable number of privately-operated
prisons. The BOP low-security level institutions rank 24th from the lowest total staffing level. The
BOP medium-security institutions rank 63rd, and the BOP maximum-security institutions rank 66th
out of the 80 institutions. Thus, the total staff-to-inmate ratios for most privately-operated prisons
fall somewhere in between the total staffing ratios of BOP low- and medium-security prisons11.

The BOP uses a different terminology. Rather than maximum, the BOP uses high security to refer to its
highest security prisoners.
9

Exceptions to this rule are the low security level facilities operated for the BOP: Taft Correctional
Institution, Eden Detention Center, Eloy Detention Center, and Big Spring Correctional Facility. The inmates held
at these prisons are assigned to the institutions using the BOP inmate classification system.
10

The 1998 Corrections Yearbook also reports inmate to staff ratios for correctional officers and total
institution staff. We converted those ratios to the number of staff per 100 inmates so it was compatible with our
report. In 1997, there were 17.9 correctional officers per 100 inmates and 32.3 total staff per 100 inmates
averaging across all jurisdictions. Since the data were not reported by security level, and higher security prisons
tend to have higher staffing levels, we did not compare the average State staffing ratios to those we computed for
the private sector.
11

13

Staff Separations. Summarized data for staff separations at the 84 private prisons are presented in
Table 4. It is important to clearly understand what is meant by separation rate. The separation rate
is the number of custody staff who either voluntarily or involuntarily left their jobs in the 6 months
prior to July 31, 1999 divided by the number of custody staff in place at the facility at the end of
July 1999. The separation rate provides an idea of the percentage of staff at the prison who had to
be trained in the past 6 months, although not all of those new staff were necessarily still on the
job. Given the way the separation rate was computed here, it was possible for the separation rate
to exceed 100 percent because more than one person could be hired into and vacate the same
custody slot at a prison.
Correctional officers in their first year of employment are far more likely to resign than more
experienced officers. Given the fact that newly activating prisons almost always have a higher
percentage of new staff than more established prisons, it follows that newly activating prisons
have higher separation rates, all other things being equal. Therefore, the separation data in Table 4
are divided into newly activating prisons, those that did not operate prior to January 1998, as
identified in the 1998 Corrections Yearbook, and those that had been in operation prior to January
of 1998.
The separation rates presented for the private prisons in Table 4 are high in comparison to the
rates observed at the BOP during the same time period. In the period between February and July
1999, the BOP experienced 211 job separations among custody staff working at secure prisons.12
Given that there were 10,380 custody staff, the BOP had a separation rate of 4.4 percent for the 6
month period ending in July 1999. As can be seen in Table 4, only 3 private prisons, or 4.5
percent of the total, had separation rates that were anywhere near the overall BOP rate.
Therefore, 95 percent of the private prisons replaced and trained new staff at much higher rates
than the more stable BOP prisons, and this difference between the private sector and the BOP
existed both for new prisons that were activating during this period and “older” private prisons.
None of the BOP prisons had a separation rate among custody staff that was greater than 9
percent for this period. Of the private sector activating institutions, almost half had separation
rates that exceeded 50 percent of their staff. Even among private institutions that had been
established, 22.5 percent had separation rates that exceeded 50 percent in a 6 month period.

Job separations in the BOP include resignations and terminations as well as retirements. Although the
private sector separations may include retirements, it is likely that the numbers of retirements in the private sector
were fairly low.
12

14

Staff turnover for State jurisdictions is also reported in the 1998 Corrections Yearbook. The
average percentage turnover of correctional officers for all reporting States was 14.9 percent for
the entire year. To adjust this percentage to be comparable with the six-month period used in our
survey, we assume that turnover is constant throughout the year. Then approximately 7.5 percent
of correctional officers, on average, separate from the State corrections agencies in a six-month
period. It is not clear whether the separation rates reported for correctional officers in the 1998
Corrections Yearbook include retirements. The table which follows the correctional officer table
depicts staff separations for all staff. Those separations do include retirements and the overall
percentage for all State jurisdictions is 15.4 percent for the entire year. Thus, we assume the
separation percentage for all staff in a six-month period was 7.7 percent. These separation
percentages, whether for correctional officers or all staff, are lower than most of the private
prison separation percentages noted in Table 4.
Additional information about the separations of custody staff at the private prisons was solicited.
In particular, the contract administrators were asked whether custody staff separations created
shortages among custody staff at the respective prisons, whether the private facility had difficulty
in filling vacant positions, and how the turnover of custody staff compared to turnover in a
comparable public institution.
As can be seen from Table 5, almost 64 percent of the contract administrators who responded to
this question claimed that the separations of custody staff created shortages at the private prisons.
This was most true for institutions that were newly activating. For these facilities, 73.2 percent of
the contract administrators for these facilities noted that separations of custody staff created
shortages. The problem was less severe at facilities that had been operating for a length of time.13
The data for how the separations of custody staff at private prisons correspond to comparable
public prisons are presented in Table 6. One of the first things to notice about this table is the
relatively high number of cases for which a comparison was not made by the respondents. Twenty
six respondents failed to answer this question, which is almost 29 percent of the respondents who
returned surveys. Of these missing cases, 6 of the contract administrators claimed that there were
no comparable public prisons within their agencies with which to compare the private prison. This

As the data for this table are based upon contract administrator opinions, there are multiple responses for
the facilities that hold inmates from more than one jurisdiction. It is interesting to note that, with one exception,
the administrators from different jurisdictions who housed inmates in the same facilities were in agreement in their
evaluations of staff shortages created by custody staff separations.
13

15

problem with missing data also was encountered for three other survey questions that asked the
contract administrators to compare the private prison to a comparable public prison. The results
presented later in the report for comparison of escape, homicide, and assault rates had about the
same number of missing observations. The missing data problem may indicate that the reason
there were no comparable public institutions in a jurisdiction was that the private sector was filling
a niche in the supply of facilities needed by the public sector. Thus, pre-release prisons, facilities
for women, or other specialized institutions may compose a significant portion of the private
sector market.
For those contract administrators who did complete the question, 47.7 percent of the total number
of respondents claimed that the separation rate of custody staff at the private prisons was higher
than the rate at a comparable public prison. There was slight differentiation by the activation
status of the prisons, as 42.9 percent of the respondents who answered for an operating private
prison claimed the private prison had a higher separation rate, as compared to 53.3 percent of the
respondents at newly activating prisons. What is most striking about the data in Table 6 is the low
number of respondents who claimed that the separation rate was lower at the private prison.
Overall, only 6.2 percent of the respondents provided this response.
Given the custody staff shortages noted previously, the responses to the question about the
difficulty of filling staff positions were somewhat incongruent. Overall, 62.9 percent of the
respondents claimed that the institutions they oversaw had no difficulties in filling staff positions
(see Table 7). There was some difference between new institutions and old. A higher percentage
of administrators who oversaw newly activating institutions than older private prisons (42.9
percent versus 27.7 percent) claimed that the institution had some difficulty in filling staff
positions. Even though this question did not specifically focus on custody staff, it is difficult to
reconcile why custody staff separations should have led to custody staff shortages if there were no
problems in filling staff positions. What this could mean is that although turnover created staff
shortages, contract administrators thought that the private sector could always find candidates to
refill these positions. Thus, while turnover was problematic, there was an ample labor supply.
Drug Misconduct. One of the most reliable indicators of prison operations is the rate at which
inmates test positive for the use of drugs and alcohol. If substance use is prevalent, it indicates a
pattern of poor security practices within an institution. Random drug testing provides a snapshot
of the extent of a banned activity in the general population. For other types of prison misconduct,
the data include typically only those behaviors known or recognized by the prison administration,

16

and what is “known” is subject to many types of influence including the seriousness of the offense
(most prison homicides are presumably known, where this is not as likely for less serious offenses)
and the efficacy of prison control measures. For example, to compare the extent of drug
misconduct at two prisons based on the rate at which inmates are convicted of drug offenses at
the respective prisons, it is necessary to assume that drug misconduct is both uncovered and
adjudicated with equal likelihood at both prisons, since it is extremely unlikely that all misconduct
is known or successfully prosecuted. When comparing rates of positive results for random drug
tests at different prisons, no assumptions about whether misconduct is discovered or adjudicated
at similar rates across jurisdictions are necessary.
Of the 91 contracts for which information was provided, 74 required that the private sector
vendor conduct random urinalysis tests of the inmates. For the 17 contracts where random drug
testing was not required under the contract, 7 were with vendors who performed random drug
tests anyway. This meant that for 84 of the 91 contracts, random drug testing was conducted on
the inmates covered.
The data in Table 8 demonstrate that many of the private prisons for which respondents provided
assessments of drug tests results for the most recent month for which data were available had
favorable results.14 In the BOP, low-security prisons, on average, had a positive finding for
random drug tests of 0.6 percent in July of 1999. For medium- and high-security level prisons, the
respective rates in the BOP were 1.0 percent and 2.7 percent for this time period.
In private prisons, 34 percent of the respondents indicated that the respective prison had hit rates
for banned substances of 0 percent. About 40 percent of private prisons had positive hit rates of 3
percent or above, and almost 20 percent of the private prisons had rates at or above 10 percent.
During July of 1999, 42 of the 68 BOP secure prisons in operation, or 61.8 percent, reported a
random UA positive result rate of 0 percent. Another 8.8 percent of BOP institutions (6) had a
positive result rate of 1 percent, while 13.2 percent of the institutions (9) had a 2 percent rate, and
16.2 percent of the institutions (11) reported a positive rate greater than or equal to 3 percent.
One BOP institution had a hit rate of 11 percent, but no other institutions had a positive rate for
random drug tests greater than 6 percent.

Twenty-seven contract administrators failed to respond to this question.

14

17

If attention is restricted to BOP secure institutions with a security rating of low and medium (the
BOP security levels most comparable to the majority of private prisons), the rates at which drugs
were detected were even lower. Sixty-six percent of the 57 BOP low- and medium-security
institutions (38) had a positive detection rate of 0 percent. A positive rate of 1 percent was
observed in 7 percent of the institutions. A rate of 2 percent was observed in 14 percent of the
institutions. And a rate of 3 percent or greater was observed in 12 percent of the prisons. A
positive rate of 6 percent was the largest rate observed for low- and medium-security BOP
prisons during this month.
Respondents also were asked about practices at public prisons in their own prison system.
Seventy-nine of the 91 respondents answered that their agency conducted random drug tests in
comparable public prisons, 7 reported that drug tests were not conducted, and responses were
missing in 5 cases. The respondents also were asked about the hit rates for unauthorized
substances at a comparable public prison, but only 29 (32 percent) of the respondents provided
useable data. Since most of the data for this item were missing, it would be misleading to try and
analyze the responses to this question.
Escapes and Homicides. Escapes from secure prisons and homicides are uncommon but
extremely critical. However, fluctuation in escape and homicide rates may be deceiving. Take, for
example, the following hypothetical headline: “Homicide rate in local prison increases by 100
percent.” Such a headline is certain to capture the attention of readers. However, a 100 percent
increase would be produced by a change of 1 unit, from 1 murder per year to 2. Imagine how this
compares to another hypothetical headline: “Budget in local prison increases by 100 percent.”
Clearly, this latter 100 percent increase would not have been created by an increase of one dollar.
The reason for this rather pedantic point is that it is important to frame the context of the critical
nature of escapes and homicides when comparing numbers. Both for substantive and
methodological reasons, the numbers for escapes and homicides should be treated for what they
are: rare events, but escape data are sometimes treated as reflecting more common events and
thus subject to standard statistical treatment. Dr. William Archambeault, for example, compared
two private prisons and one public prison in Louisiana (Archambeault and Deis 1996). He found
that one of the private prisons experienced three escapes, the second private prison experienced
five escapes, and the public prison had no escapes. These escapes occurred over a period of 3 to 4
years. He performed a standard analysis of variance statistical test on these data and concluded
that there were no significant differences between the three prisons in terms of escapes. This

18

conclusion is only as sound as the appropriateness of the test, and there are good reasons not to
perform a statistical test in this case. Substantively, something differed in the practices between
the three prisons whereby inmates were able to escape from two of the prisons on multiple
occasions, but not the third.
The data in Table 9 demonstrate that the anecdotal evidence on escapes culled from newspaper
accounts agreed with the data collected in this survey, even though the 12-month time spans
overlap only for the first seven months of 1999. The anecdotal evidence covered January to
December 1999, while the data collected in the survey covered August 1, 1998 to July 31, 1999.
Where the media reports for 1999 revealed 18 inmate escapes from inside of secure prisons, a
simple tabulation of the data presented in Table 9 shows that there were a total of 23 escapes. All
of the escapes were from male prisons. The data also show that most of the prisons, 85 percent of
all private prisons, had no escapes during this time period.
Earlier, it was reported that the BOP had one escape from one facility during the 1999 calendar
year. This escape occurred within the time frame covered by the survey. There were 68 secure
Federal prisons in operation at the beginning of calendar year 1999. This means that 98.5 percent
of BOP secure prisons experienced no inside escape in 1999.
Data on homicides are presented in Table 10. As can be seen there, homicides occurred in only 3
of the male private institutions during the 12 months prior to and including July 1999. Homicide
data were reported for 80 of the 84 private prisons. The institutions for which homicide data were
available covered 63,124 inmates. There were 5 homicides reported at these facilities. The BOP
had seven inmate homicides at six different prisons. Stated differently, homicides occurred in 3.8
percent of the private prisons and 7.5 percent of the BOP prisons.
Another way to present homicide data is to calculate a rate per 5,000 inmates. In the BOP, there
were 80,800 inmates in secure prisons during July of 1999, and there were 7 inmate homicides.
That means that there were 0.433 homicides for every 5,000 inmates. In the private sector with
data covering 63,124 inmates and 5 homicides, the corresponding rate per 5,000 inmates was
0.396. The rates in the BOP and private prisons were close to one another. The slightly higher
BOP rate may well be related to the fact that the BOP confines significantly more high-security
inmates. In fact, only 3 of the 7 homicides occurred at a low- or a medium-security prison during
this 12 month period. Since there were 68,541 inmates in these facilities, the corresponding

19

homicide rate per 5,000 inmates was 0.219, a figure lower than that observed for the private
prisons.
Assaults. Cross-jurisdictional comparisons of assaults are difficult to make. Jurisdictions use
different reporting conventions and different definitions to distinguish simple and aggravated
assaults. Throwing a fluid on a correctional officer is a serious assault in some jurisdictions but
not others.
The data for serious assaults in the 12 months prior to and including July 1999 are presented in
Table 11. Thirty-eight of the 75 private prisons, or slightly over half, reported that at least one
serious assault had occurred over the course of 12 months. In all, there were 346 serious assaults
reported at private prisons. Computed as a rate, since there were 63,124 inmates for whom
assaults were reported, the rate of assaults was 27.4 per 5,000 inmates in the private prisons. In
the BOP for this time period, there were 267 assaults by inmates on another inmate where a
weapon was used. There were an additional 730 assaults of an inmate by an inmate where a
weapon was not used. Again, many of the assaults occurred at high-security BOP prisons. When
high-security prisons are excluded, there were 143 assaults on another inmate with a weapon and
548 assaults where a weapon was not used.
There is no direct correspondence between the survey question on serious assaults and the data
the BOP collects on inmate assaults. The private sector serious assault rate of 27.4 per 5,000
inmates is higher than the BOP assault rate when only assaults involving a weapon are chosen.
This is true whether the comparison is based on all secure BOP prisons (rate of 16.5 assaults per
5,000) or whether the comparison is based on low and medium security BOP institutions (rate of
10.4 assaults per 5,000). If, on the other hand, serious assaults encompass every assault, with or
without a weapon, then the BOP rate is higher than the private sector, whether based on all secure
BOP prisons (rate of 45.2 assaults per 5,000) or only low and medium security prisons (rate of
40.0 assaults per 5,000). Whether or not the private sector’s serious assault rate was higher or
lower than the BOP’s serious assault rate is ambiguous. The choice is left to the reader.
Victim Injury. To provide context to the Bureau of Prisons data, information about injury to the
victim is collected on serious assaults. In a recent study conducted by the Office of Research
(Gaes and Karacki 2000), it was found that most “serious violent incidents” do not result in injury
to the victim. When a staff member was a victim, 93 percent of the time there was no injury. Even
among inmate victims, almost half of all serious violent behavior had no associated injury.

20

Comparison of Misconduct. The contract administrators who completed the surveys were asked
to compare the escape, homicide, and assault rates that they reported for the private prison they
oversaw with rates at a comparable public prison operated by their agency. These responses are
summarized in Tables 12, 13, and 14. As discussed previously, there were relatively large numbers
of missing responses for each of these tables, about a third of the responses in each table. For the
respondents who did provide an evaluation, their responses demonstrated that the escape,
homicide, and assault rates at private prisons compared very favorably to the respective public
prisons. For all three types of misconduct, at least 60 percent of the valid responses indicated that
the private prison misconduct rates were the same as the public prison rates. Another 30 percent
of the respondents noted that the private prison misconduct rates were lower than the comparable
public prisons, and very few respondents answered that the private prisons rates were higher than
the public prisons for any of the three types of misconduct.
Security Threat Groups. The contract administrators were asked about intelligence activities
relating to gang members and other members of security threat groups. As can be seen in Table
15, most of the administrators, 85.7 percent, reported that the agencies they worked for tracked
this information with an intelligence system. Of those States with intelligence systems, almost all
of them shared this information with the private contractors (91.7 percent) and obtained input into
the intelligence data from the private contractors (91.7 percent).
Visiting Policies. The contract administrators were surveyed about the visiting policies in place at
the private prisons. They were asked to evaluate the policies at the private prison in comparison
to similar public prisons within their own agencies. As can be seen from Table 16, most of the
administrators (89.9 percent) claimed that the visiting policies at the private prisons were the same
as those at comparable public facilities. Only a small percentage of respondents said that the
visiting policies at the private facility were more lenient (4.5 percent) or more stringent (5.6
percent) than the public sector visiting policies.
Inmate Placement. Table 17 presents information on the restrictions, if any, placed on the types of
inmates sent to the private prisons under the terms of the 88 contracts for which data were
available for this question. For 33 of the contracts (or 37.5 percent), there were no restrictions on
the types of inmates that were sent to the affected private prison. Restrictions were in effect for
62.5 percent of the contracts. The most common restriction was for inmates with special medical
needs. Such inmates were not sent under the terms of 50 percent of the contracts. The next most

21

common restriction was for the “other” category (39.7 percent of the contracts), followed by
restrictions on high publicity inmates (22.7 percent) and gang members (14.7 percent).
Summary of General Characteristics Section
There were differences between the BOP and private sector prisons on several of the measures
examined in this section. The BOP reported lower ratios of custody staff to inmates than most of
the private prisons; however, the BOP used comparable staffing ratios for total staff to inmates. It
would seem that the comparable ratios of total staff to inmates resulted from greater use of staff
such as case management and program staff, although this issue was not examined directly in the
survey.
The BOP also had a more stable workforce. The separation rates for custody staff at most private
prisons were much higher than the corresponding rates for BOP prisons. The State contract
administrators surveyed also noted that the separation rates at the private prisons were higher
than the corresponding rates at comparable public prisons operated by their respective agencies.
Regarding inmate misconduct, urinalysis hit rates were lower in BOP prisons than in many of the
private prisons, although quite a few of the private prisons were doing very well on this measure.
The BOP also had substantially fewer escapes than private prisons taken as a whole. The
homicides rates for all BOP prisons and all private sector prisons were very similar. However, it is
worth remembering that secure BOP institutions had a higher percentage of high- and maximumsecurity prisoners, and probably medium-security prisoners as well. Due to the incompatibility in
the survey question and the BOP data, it was not possible to compare assault rates effectively.
The contract administrators, for the most part, rated inmate misconduct in private prisons as being
comparable to rates of misconduct in their own public prisons.
Training Standards and Policy
In this section and in the next section on custody standards, we represent much of the data by
jurisdiction. It simply made more sense to represent the survey results by jurisdiction because of
the way the questions were asked. For example, at the time of the survey, the Oklahoma
Department of Corrections had six contracts, four with Corrections Corporation of America, and
one each with Wackenhut Corrections Corporation and McLoud Correctional Services. Question

22

1 asked about preemployment requirements for staff at the contract institutions and question 2
asked about the same preemployment requirements for staff at the public agency. Although there
could be six different responses for the different Oklahoma contracts, one might expect one
consistent response for the preemployment requirements for public employees of the Oklahoma
Department of Corrections. While there is a great deal of consistency in the responses associated
with questions about the public agencies, there are occasions when there were different responses
for a particular jurisdiction. There are logical reasons why this may have happened. Perhaps there
were different requirements for different kinds of institutions within a jurisdiction and the
respondent was making a logical comparison between the particular contract he or she was
evaluating and a similar public institution. If more than one person filled out this survey within a
jurisdiction, there also could have been differences in interpretation. These differences do not
seem to affect the substantive interpretation of the results of this survey. But rather than impose
our own interpretation on the responses, we present the results as they occurred, showing the
variation of responses within a jurisdiction.
Employment Requirements. We review the responses question by question and then draw general
conclusions at the end of the section. The first two questions, as already mentioned, refer to the
employment requirements imposed upon employees working for privately-operated prisons and
requirements for the public agency employees. As can be seen in Table 18, jurisdictions imposed a
number of different employment requirements for both privately contracted and publiclyemployed staff. In Table 19, these data are represented by jurisdiction. In each cell of the table,
the number to the left of the slash (“ / ”) represents the response for each of the contracts within a
jurisdiction. The number to the right of the slash represents the response associated with the
public agency of that jurisdiction. For example, looking at the Arizona row, one can see that the
State required an employee working for private contractors to have an NCIC check, local police
check, drug test, physical exam, a background interview, background investigation, and
psychological test. These same requirements were imposed upon the public sector employees as
well.
The last column in Table 19 compares the responses provided for the public and private sectors.
For the most part, requirements were the same for the private and public sector employees. There
was much more variation between jurisdictions than there was between the private and public
sectors within a jurisdiction. The only jurisdiction where the requirements were dramatically
different was Minnesota.

23

Use of Force. Table 20 represents the responses to question 3, which asked whether staff at the
privately-operated prisons had legal authority to use lethal and nonlethal force. With some
exceptions, staff at the privately-operated prisons were generally allowed to use deadly force,
pursue an escaping inmate off prison property, carry a weapon on escorted trips, and search
visitors. Carrying a weapon while at work was the least likely action to be authorized. The
jurisdictional breakdown (Table 21) shows that the pattern noted in Table 20 was particularly true
in California, Georgia, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, and Texas. As Table 22 indicates, 82
percent of the responses indicated that staff at the privately-operated prisons had access to
firearms.
Initial Firearms Training. Questions 5 through 9 posed a series a questions about the kinds of
training custody staff received. Question 5 asked a series of questions about initial firearms
training. Of the 91 contracts represented in responses to this survey, 77 respondents (85 percent)
indicated that the staff at the private facilities had initial firearms training (Table 23). Of the 77
responding “yes” to initial firearms training, 64 (83 percent) indicated that this was a contract
requirement (Table 24). Thus, of 91 contracts, only 64 (70 percent) had requirements for initial
firearms training. A higher percentage of the respondents indicated that the public agencies
represented in these surveys, 28 different jurisdictions, were more likely to require initial firearms
training. Table 25 shows that 82 of the 91 responses (91 percent) indicated that firearms training
was a requirement for staff at the public agencies. This included 7 jurisdictions that either
indicated the question was not applicable or where the responses were missing.
When one examines the responses to this question by jurisdiction (Table 26), every jurisdiction
had respondents indicating public employees had to receive initial firearms training. Several
jurisdictions, such as Texas, which had multiple contracts with private prisons, had a small
number of responses where the information was missing. Furthermore, a few Texas respondents,
and nobody else, indicated that public employees did not have to receive initial firearms training;
however, of the 18 Texas responses, 14 indicated public employees were required to have initial
firearms training. The Texas responses may indicate that some contract facilities have such low
custody requirements that weapons were not necessary, and there may have been no comparable
or applicable public agency facility.
Respondents to the survey were asked to compare the standards used by the public and private
agencies for initial firearms training. While there were 77 contracts that involved initial firearms
training, there were 72 responses to this question (Table 27). Those responding indicated that the

24

standards were the same in 53 cases (73 percent)—either because the contract required public
standards or because the vendor chose to adopt public standards. Most of the time, staff at the
privately-operated prisons provided the firearms training. The second most common method was
for public staff to provide the training at a public training facility (Table 28). Some jurisdictions
with more than one contract have adopted a uniform way in handling firearms training (Table 29).
For example, the BOP, Mississippi, and New Mexico had uniform policies regarding initial
firearms training. The BOP and Mississippi allowed the private vendor to do the training, while
New Mexico used public agency trainers. The corrections departments in Texas and Oklahoma
allowed the training to be conducted by either the private or public sector. Most jurisdictions
indicated that private and public sector employees had to have the same number of hours of
training (see Table 30).
Initial Training for Custody Staff. Questions 6, 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, and 6e asked for the same series of
responses on initial training for custody staff. Every jurisdiction except one indicated that custody
staff at the private facilities were required to undergo training before or soon after their
employment (Table 31). Of the 90 contracts for which custody training was required, 86 (96
percent) had this requirement built into the contract (Table 32). Of the responses to the question
on whether the public agency also required initial custody training, two responses were either
missing or inapplicable. When we looked at the jurisdictional responses, every jurisdiction
indicated that initial training for custody staff was a requirement (data available upon request, see
summary in Table 33). Participants were then asked whether the standards for initial training for
custody practices were the same as or different from requirements for public sector employees.
The responses indicated that the standards were the same because of contract requirements (Table
34). The second most frequently used category was “other.” The exact responses are listed below
Table 34 in Note 1. For the most part, these responses either indicated the standards were difficult
to compare or the respondent gave a qualification to his or her response that the standards were
similar.
Question 6d asked who was responsible for providing initial custody training. The private
contractor’s staff were most likely to provide the training, followed by public sector staff (Table
35). We also analyzed this question by jurisdiction (Table 36). Jurisdictions that used the private
contractor to conduct training also used alternative training techniques. For example, Texas used
the public agency training facilities and the private sector’s personnel to train custody staff.

25

Table 37 represents the hours of initial custody training required by both the public agencies and
their contractors. For the most part, the side-by-side comparisons indicated that the public and
private sector employees were involved in roughly the same number of hours of training within
jurisdictions. There was much greater variation between jurisdictions than there was between the
public and private sectors within a jurisdiction. In some cases, jurisdictions required less than 50
hours, while others required more than 500 hours.
Firearms Refresher Training. Questions 7, 7a, 7b, 7c, 7d, and 7e focus on requirements for
firearms refresher training, which ensures that staff maintain their firearms skills. Most private
facilities required firearms refresher training (Table 38), and among those that did, this was
primarily a contract requirement (Table 39). The public agencies were only slightly more likely to
require firearms refresher training (see Table 40). Every jurisdiction responding to this survey
indicated that they required firearms training in the public sector; however, there were a few
jurisdictions in which there was some inconsistency noted in the responses. Although the majority
of respondents indicated firearms refresher training was required by the public agency, one or a
few respondents indicated that the public sector did not require it or the question was inapplicable
(data are available from the authors but is not presented in the tables). Respondents to this
questionnaire may have been using a public agency comparison standard that included non-secure
facilities that do not require perimeter security or firearms training.
The great majority of respondents (78 percent) indicated that periodic firearms refresher training
standards for private prisons were the same as the requirements for public institutions (Table 41).
Once again, the private sector assumed the primary responsibility for this kind of refresher training
(Table 42 and Table 43), while the public sector was the second most likely source of periodic
firearms refresher training. Most agencies and their contractors required 8 hours of periodic
firearms refresher training (Table 44), and there was very little difference between the public and
private sector.
Refresher Custody Standards Training. Questions 8, 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d, and 8e refer to periodic
refresher training for custody standards. Periodic refresher training is important not only to
maintain the skills of staff but to inform them of changes to policy and introduce new techniques.
Every respondent except one (who didn’t know), indicated that the private contractors under their
jurisdiction required periodic refresher training for custody standards (Table 45). This was a
contract requirement 93 percent of the time (Table 46). Most of the respondents also indicated
that the public agencies also required periodic refresher training for custody practices (Table 47).

26

When these data were analyzed by jurisdiction, every jurisdiction indicated that the public agency
required periodic refresher training for custody practices; however, as was the case with the
firearms training, a few respondents indicated that the question was not applicable or that the
periodic training was not required by the public agency (data available from the authors and not
reported in the tables). Once again the respondents may have been making specific comparisons to
public facilities that were atypical of the majority of the institutions run by the public agency. The
standards for this kind of training were primarily those issued by the public agencies or those
public agency standards adopted by the contractor (Table 48). The private contractor’s staff were,
by far, the most likely to provide the custody practice refresher training (Table 49). In some
jurisdictions, multiple sources were used to accomplish the refresher training (Table 50). Most
jurisdictions required 40 hours of periodic refresher training on custody practices, whether it was
for the private or public sector employees (Table 51).
Specialty Training on Inmate Gangs. The last question in the training section of this survey asked
about specialty training regarding inmate gangs. Of course, this kind of training was most
appropriate in higher-security facilities, where gangs pose a much greater problem. About 59
percent of the contracts involved privately-operated institutions, where there was training for
managing inmate gangs (Table 52). When this kind of training occurred, it was only a contractual
requirement half of the time (Table 53). Of the contract-by-contract responses, only 55 percent
indicated that the public agency required gang management training (Table 54). The jurisdictional
data indicated that 9 of the 28 (32 percent) responding agencies did not require gang management
training (data by jurisdiction are available from the authors). Since private sector inmates still
tended to be lower-security prisoners, it is not surprising that gang management training was not
required for a large number of the contracts. The standards for gang management training were
most likely to be the public sector standards (Table 55), and the training was done primarily by
the staff at the privately-operated facilities (Table 56), although in some jurisdictions, training was
done by multiple sources (Table 57). Gang management training was typically 40 hours,
regardless of whether it was conducted by the private or public sector (Table 58).
Summary of Training Section
For employment requirements, public agencies were somewhat more likely than private
companies to require initial firearms, firearms refresher, and gang management training, while
initial and periodic custody practices training seemed to be required at about the same levels. The

27

small difference in training standards may be attributable to the fact that the contract prison
population represents, on average, lower security and custody level inmates.
The standards used by the public and private agencies for the various kinds of training were more
likely to be the same, whether it was because the contract between the public agency and the
contractor mandated the same standards, or whether it was because the contractor adopted the
public standards.
Training at the privately-operated prisons was primarily the responsibility of the private sector
employees, although the public sector also did a significant amount of the training. The number of
training hours was almost identical between the public agency employees and the staff at the
privately-operated institutions.
The larger picture that emerged from this data is that private contractors were typically obligated
to use the training standards and practices of the public agencies. There was much more variation
from jurisdiction to jurisdiction than there was between the publicly- and privately-operated
institutions within a jurisdiction.
Custody Standards and Policy
A section of the survey addressed policies governing custody standards. The first question asked
about the standards used to govern custody practices at the private facilities. Not surprisingly, the
private facilities were using combinations of American Correctional Association (ACA) standards
and public agency standards (Table 59). When the responses are represented by jurisdiction
(Table 60), it is clear that most jurisdictions used combinations of standards produced by ACA,
the public agency, and other relevant jurisdictional standards.
The second question asked how custody policy was established. Table 61 depicts the responses to
this question. Custody policy was primarily developed by the private vendor, but it had to meet
standards set by the agency (42 percent). In 23 percent of the contracts, the private operators had
to adopt the public agency policy in its entirety, adopt the public agency policy with small
allowances for change (18 percent), or adopt some portions with the private contractor
developing the rest (15 percent). Thus, the private vendors were heavily influenced by the public
agency custody policy.

28

Many jurisdictions used various combinations of policy development requirements, especially
those with many different contracts (Table 62). California was an exception. All 8 of the
California contracts required the private vendor to adopt the public agency policy (with some
small allowances for change).
Contract monitoring is, of course, an important aspect of quality assurance, both for the private
and public agencies. Table 63 represents the answers to the question about who was responsible
for routine monitoring of actual custody practices to determine if standards were being followed.
The most common response, by far, was that both the public agency and private contractor were
responsible for monitoring (68 percent). Only 6 percent of the respondents indicated that only the
private agency was responsible, and the remaining 23 percent indicated that the pubic agency had
exclusive responsibility.
Question 4 in this section asked who was responsible for intensive, formal reviews to insure that
the ongoing monitoring of custody practices was functioning properly. This question was used to
distinguish routine monitoring from intensive audits of custody policy and practices. Table 65
presents the summary of responses. It was equally likely that either the public agency exclusively,
or the public and private agency in concert, performed the intensive formal reviews. Both
represented 46 percent of the responses. Only 6 percent of the respondents indicated that the
private vendor was solely responsible for the intensive formal reviews. When this question is
represented by jurisdiction (Table 66), it is clear that some jurisdictions preferred to have public
employees perform intensive formal reviews, while others used both public and private staff to do
the reviews.
One claim made by advocates of privatization is that the private sector capitalizes on technology
more than the public sector. The last question in this section asked the respondents to compare
the level of security technology used at the contract facility and the most comparable public
institution. The responses appear in Table 67. In most cases, the security technology was rated to
be equivalent between the public and private facilities (70 percent). If there was a difference, it
favored the private sector, where 19 percent of the respondents answered that the private
institution had more advanced technology. Only 6 percent of the responses indicated that the
private-sector technology was inferior. Since many of the private facilities were newer than most
public facilities, the advantage the private sector held may be due to the fact that newer facilities
tend to have more security technology built into them.

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Summary of Custody Section
The responses to this section of the survey showed that the private sector’s standards and policies
were typically a reflection of the jurisdiction governing the contract. The public sector maintained
responsibility for routine and intensive formal reviews of custody practices but often did these
reviews in conjunction with the private sector. The training and custody sections of the survey
demonstrate (not surprisingly) that the training and custody policies and standards of the
privately-operated prisons were a reflection of the same standards and policies of the public
jurisdiction responsible for those contracts.
Verification of Inmate Classification
One of the criticisms of CCA noted in the Clark report was that there was no attempt by the
company to verify the security/custody status of the inmates they were receiving from the District
of Columbia. According to the contract, CCA was only supposed to house medium or highmedium security prisoners. In fact, the Clark report noted that “Until recently, NOCC never
developed a capacity for inmate classification and screening.” (Clark 1998:Executive Summary,
Page 1). Classification procedures have become so fundamental to the orderly running of most
correctional systems that they could be considered a prerequisite for a system to work well.
To assess whether the NOCC experience was an anomaly or a common practice among private
correctional agencies, questions were developed to find out what, if any, procedures were used by
private vendors to verify the security/custody status of the inmates they received from different
State jurisdictions. An analyst at Abt Associates made telephone calls to the contract
administrators and, when directed, made further calls to knowledgeable people who could answer
the questions. Table 68 lists the responses to the primary question: Do administrators at this
facility have a method of determining (or verifying) the security level of inmates they receive? Of
the 92 responses to this question (11 missing responses), 75 (81.5 percent) indicated that the
private vendor used procedures to verify the security level of inmates sent to their institution.
Table 68 also lists answers to the follow up question that asked the respondents to explain their
answer. As can be seen in Table 68, the most common response was that the State determined the
security level of the inmate, typically using a State-developed classification tool. It was the
responsibility of the private vendor to verify the status of that inmate by checking the
classification level once the institution received inmates and their documentation. The private

30

vendor used the State classification tool to verify the inmate’s status. In some cases, the State
took complete responsibility for security assignment and verification.
Thus, contrary to the NOCC experience, it seems that private vendors are using procedures to
verify the security status of the inmates assigned to their facilities. These findings also confirm a
broader theme in these data. Private vendors must develop expertise consistent with the
jurisdiction with which they contract.

Concluding Remarks
The private prison industry experienced phenomenal growth from its founding in the 1980s until
the present. While there have been changes in the types of inmates held in private prisons, most of
the experiences of the private sector has been with lower risk inmates. The relative growth in the
private sector (that is, the increase in prisoners in comparison to the numbers previously held) will
probably not be as dramatic in the future as it has been in previous years. In fact, there is some
evidence that the growth in the U.S. prison population is slowing down. Nonetheless, there is
every reason to believe that growth in absolute numbers of inmates held in private prisons will
continue to expand, necessitating increased hiring and training of private prison staff. Many of the
factors driving the growth of the U.S. prison population—increased arrests and prosecutions,
mandatory minimum sentences, determinate sentencing/elimination of parole, less use of
probation—are the same factors that necessitate that a jurisdiction add prison capacity and
contract for some of those beds.
From the survey results presented here, there do appear to be some systemic problems that the
private sector must address. Particularly regarding staffing, the rapid turnover of staff perpetuates
the situation in which private prisons are operated by inexperienced staff. Experienced staff are
essential in operating safe and secure prisons. The large numbers of escapes from private sector
prisons, in comparison to the BOP, may be related to this phenomenon. As anecdotally reported
here and more systematically in the Clark and Austin et al. reports, staff inexperience was evident
in the Youngstown situation, the New Mexico problems, the Colorado group disturbance, and the
Taft Correctional Institution incidents.
Another area that needs more probing is the staffing patterns at public and private prisons. The
custody staff-to-inmate ratio is generally higher at private prisons than in the BOP, suggesting the
private sector is more invested in staffing patterns that emphasize security. The total staff-to-

31

inmate ratio of most private facilities lies somewhere between the staffing levels of the Bureau of
Prisons low- and medium-security prisons. Thus, our best evidence is that the private sector’s
overall staffing levels are comparable to the BOP; however, since their custody staffing levels are
higher, they probably use fewer program and case management workers. This suggests that there
may be fundamental differences in how the private sector approaches corrections.
The impetus for the use of private prisons in the United States was the promise of lower costs and
the need for additional capacity. In Australia and the United Kingdom, the motivation to privatize
was driven by these factors but was also propelled by prison reforms (see, for example, Harding
1997; Vagg 1994). In fact, Harding (2000) and others have proposed that private prisons are
places for experimentation, a test-bed for new approaches to programming, management, and
staffing. The competition that arises from the contrasting approaches between the public and
private sectors, according to this proposition, will promote innovation and cross-fertilization of
ideas and practices. While this proposition appears plausible, there are factors that limit these
possibilities.
Because of the inherent risk of corrections, private companies and State agencies that have
oversight obligations are unlikely to wander very far from standards and requirements that have
already been established in each jurisdiction. The survey results on training and custody standards
and requirements show that the private sector, even when not contractually obligated, has
adopted the standards and policies of their public sector counterparts. A different constraint upon
private operators involves jurisdictional requirements that cost savings must be demonstrated.
These requirements reduce the opportunities for innovation, especially in the private sector’s
flexibility to experiment with the management of human resources, the most costly part of prison
operations. One of the few alternatives the private sector has to save money and make a profit is
to suppress labor costs through direct measures such as restructuring pay and benefits. But,
reducing pay and benefits may result in high separation rates among staff.
The question that remains is whether there is sufficient room for the private sector to maneuver
and innovate when they are constrained by correctional standards and State cost containment
goals. Thus, in most jurisdictions, the privately operated prisons become an extension of the
public correctional agency.
There are exceptions to the pattern of private prisons being extensions of the public sector that
contracts for their services. In Florida, for example, the contracting for private prisons is under

32

the control of an agency that is separate from the Florida Department of Corrections. Also, the
philosophy concerning contracting for private facilities at the BOP is to provide a balance
between setting policy and encouraging innovation. The BOP structures its contracts, where
feasible, around performance goals instead of policy compliance. In other words, the Bureau
contracts for certain levels of output from the vendor, but the vendor is free to determine how
they can achieve the output goals when bidding for the contracts.
Nonetheless, the general practice in the United States is for private prisons to reflect the training
and security policies and standards of the agencies contracting for their services. As we noted
throughout the training and custody sections of the report, there was much greater variation
between jurisdictions than there was between the public and private sectors within a jurisdiction.
The implication of this finding may be that the operations and practices of the private sector are a
reflection of the contracting jurisdiction, whether the jurisdiction’s policies and standards are
good or bad, progressive or retrogressive. Thus, despite the fact that CCA and WCC are large
correctional entities, the operations at their facilities are more likely to be influenced by the
contract jurisdictions and local circumstances (e.g., labor markets, cost of living) than they are by
corporate policies and standards.
Given the problems with escapes and disturbances documented here and the problem of staff
instability, many (though certainly not all) of the privately-operated prisons are struggling to meet
basic safety and security standards. This may be a reflection of the immaturity of the private
corrections sector, and it may be alleviated if the private vendors can stabilize their workforces
and retain sufficient numbers of line and supervisory staff with sufficient correctional tenure.
Experienced staff can train the younger workforce and serve as models for that workforce.
It is important to distinguish between the standards and policies of a correctional system and the
manner in which they are implemented. Having sound policy is only the first step. Ensuring that
staff execute policy correctly is just as important. The survey methodology used in this report
could not measure the extent to which practice fulfilled policy at private prisons on a day-to-day
basis. That kind of performance is assessed through systematic audits of all aspects of prison
operations. The only indicators of performance we had from this survey were the numbers
regarding escapes, drug use hit rates, assaults, disturbances, and homicides. Based on those
indicators, and on the high turnover rate of staff at private prisons, it would appear that both the
public and private sector managers need to be vigilant in their monitoring of the day-to-day
operations of privately-operated prisons—certainly no less vigilant than they need to be about

33

public sector performance. It is important to note that this is not an indictment of every privatelyoperated prison. The data represent an overall picture.
This study brings to light several significant issues related to staffing, workforce experience, and
performance in the private sector. We believe that these issues should be addressed before the
private sector is allowed to take responsibility for the custody of more violent and sophisticated
prisoners.

34

References
Andrews, R.D. 1999. “After Action Review—Food and Work Strike, August 25, 1999.” Taft
Correctional Institution, Taft, CA.
Archambeault, William G. and Donald R. Deis. 1996. “Cost Effectiveness Comparisons of Private
Versus Public Prisons in Louisiana: A Comprehensive Analysis of Allen, Avoyelles, and
Winn Correctional Centers.” Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.
Austin, James, Richard Crane, Ben Griego, Jerry O'Brien, and George A. Vose. 2000. “The
Consultants' Report on Prison Operations in New Mexico Correctional Institutions.”
Special Advisory Group.
Camp, Camille Graham and George M. Camp. 1998. The Corrections Yearbook: 1998.
Middletown, CT: Criminal Justice Institute.
Clark, John L. 1998. “Report to the Attorney General: Inspection and Review of the Northeast
Ohio Correctional Center.” Office of the Corrections Trustee for the District of Columbia,
Washington, D.C.
Crane, Richard. 2000. “Monitoring of Guadalupe and Lea County Correctional Facilities.” Pp.
48-82 in The Consultants' Report on Prison Operations in New Mexico Correctional
Institutions, edited by J. Austin, R. Crane, B. Griego, J. O'Brien, and G. A. Vose: Special
Advisory Group.
Crants, III, Doctor R. 1991. “Private Prison Management: A Study in Economic Efficiency.”
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 7:49-59.
Gaes, Gerald G. and Loren Karacki. 2000. “Misconduct in Special Housing Units.” Federal
Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC.
Harding, Richard. 2000. “Private Prisons.” Forthcoming in Crime and Justice: A Review of
Research, edited by M. Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harding, Richard W. 1997. Private Prisons and Public Accountability. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction.
McDonald, Douglas C., Elizabeth Fournier, Malcolm Russell-Einhorn, and Stephen Crawford.
1998. Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current Practice. Boston,
MA: Abt Associates Inc.
Mobley, Alan and Gilbert Geis. 2000. “The Corrections Corporation of America: AKA The
Prison Realty Trust, Inc.” Forthcoming in Privatization of Criminal Justice: Past, Present
and Future, edited by D. Shichor and M. Gilbert. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.

35

National Institute of Corrections. 1999. “The Security Audit program: A ‘How To’ Guide and
Model Instrument for Adaptation to Local Standards, Policies, and Procedures.” U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections, Washington, D.C. November.
Nelson, Julianne. 1998. “Appendix 1: Comparing Public and Private Prison Costs.” Pp. 1-34 in
Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current Practice, edited by D.
McDonald, E. Fournier, M. Russell-Einhorn, and S. Crawford. Boston, MA: Abt
Associates Inc.
Nelson, Julianne. 1999. “Taft Prison Facility: Cost Scenarios.” National Institute of Corrections,
Washington, DC.
O'Brien, Jerry. 2000. “Summary of Correctional Facility Security Review.” Pp. 115-265 in The
Consultants' Report on Prison Operations in New Mexico, edited by J. Austin, R. Crane,
B. Griego, J. O'Brien, and G. A. Vose: Special Advisory Group.
Schlosser, Eric 1998. “The Prison-Industrial Complex.” The Atlantic Monthly, December, pp. 5177.
Sherman, Ryan. 1999. “Private Prisons: Public Safety Threatened: A Summary of Recent
Escapes.” California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
Shichor, David. 1995. Punishment for Profit: Private Prisons/Public Concerns. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
Vagg, Jon. 1994. Prison Systems: A Comparative Study of Accountability in England, France,
Germany, and the Netherlands, Edited by R. Hood. New York: Oxford.

36

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Number of Custody Staff per 100 Inmates

Figure 1. Private Institutions Ordered by Their Custody Staff to Inmate Ratios

80

70

60

50

40

30

20
BOP Max.

BOP Med.

10
BOP Low

0

Institutions

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Figure 2. Private Institutions Ordered by Their Total Staff to Inmate Ratios

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BOP Med.

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Institutions

Table 1. Serious Incidents at Private Prisons in 19991
Listed by Company and Date
Company

Date

Correctional Facility

Incident

Facility
Type

Brief Description

CCA

1/30/1999

South Central
Correctional Facility,
TN

Escape

Prison

An inmate, who confessed to first-degree murder in
1990, was able to escape with the cooperation of a staff
member. A female prison officer dressed the inmate as
an officer and helped him walk out of the prison.

CCA

3/19/1999

North Fork Correctional
Facility, OK

Group
disturbance

Prison

A dispute between a Wisconsin inmate and a
correctional officer in the dining hall spread to other
inmates, including inmates in a housing unit. Gas was
used to control the inmates. All inmates in the facility
are from WI.

CCA

5/20/1999

West Tennessee
Correctional Facility,
TN

Escape /
Attempted
Escape

Prison

Four Montana inmates being held in a TN prison
attempted an escape. Two inmates were caught before
they could climb the perimeter fence, but two inmates,
one a convicted murderer, were able to complete the
escape.

CCA

7/25/1999

In Transit, VA

Escape

Transport

Two maximum security inmates, both convicted
murderers, who were being returned to a Virginia prison
after a court appearance in TN, were able to escape
from two CCA officers. The officers left the door to the
van unlocked while at a restaurant, and the inmates
were able to slip their leg irons and flee.

CCA

7/28/1999

Bent County
Correctional Facility,
CO

Escape

Prison

An inmate was able to escape from the prison, probably
by stowing away in a trash truck. Another inmate had
escaped from this prison two weeks earlier by hotwiring a prison van while working at a regional recycling
center.

Company

Date

Correctional Facility

Incident

Facility
Type

Brief Description

CCA

8/15/1999

Diamondback
Correctional Facility,
OK

Group
disturbance

Prison

A disturbance started when correctional officers
attempted to stop two inmates from climbing a fence
separating two recreation areas. 25 inmates went on a
rampage with $400,000 in damage from fire, smoke,
and water resulting from 12 separate fires.

CCA

8/16/1999

Hardeman County
Correctional Facility,
TN

Escape

Transport
from
Prison

While on a hospital visit, an inmate, convicted of
robbery, was able to escape by overpowering a officer
after the officer had released the inmate from
handcuffs. The inmate took the officer’s gun, a woman
hostage, and a car stolen from the hostage to flee down
an interstate highway.

CCA

8/17/1999

Torrance County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Group
disturbance
/ Assault on
staff

Prison

Two officers were seriously injured in a disturbance that
involved about 290 inmates. One officer was in a coma
for four days. As many as 75 inmates were involved in
the disturbance, which may have been staged as a
cover for an aborted escape attempt.

CCA

1/1999
through
9/1999

Kit Carson Correctional
Facility, CO

Staff
misconduct

Prison

Charges were made that up to 15 female officers and
nurses had affairs with Colorado inmates during the first
9 months of operation of this private facility.

CCA

11/17/1999

Pamlico Correctional
Facility, NC

Escape

Transport
from
Prison

A convicted killer in North Carolina escaped from
officers who had escorted the inmate to a doctor’s
office in New Bern, NC.

CCA

11/30/1999

Whiteville Correctional
Facility, TN

Group
disturbance

Prison

A disturbance started in the dining hall shortly after the
visiting Corrections Secretary of Wisconsin left the
dining hall. The facility holds WI inmates. The inmates
took 15 hostages, and 3 staff received minor injuries
during the incident. Tear gas was used to end the
disturbance.

Company

Date

Correctional Facility

Incident

Facility
Type

Brief Description

CCA

11/30/1999

Crossroads
Correctional Center,
MT

Group
disturbance

Prison

A dispute over prison policies regarding televisions
escalated into a riot involving 49 inmates. The incident
was brought under control quickly with the use of tear
gas. Damages were limited.

CSC

3/5/1999

Crowley County
Correctional Facility,
CO

Group
disturbance

Prison

The disturbance started in the dining hall when a
Washington state inmate hit a correctional officer with a
tray. The disturbance spread to two housing units,
where staff were able to control the disturbance with the
use of OC spray. While the incident started with
Washington state inmates, inmates from Wyoming and
Colorado also became involved in the disturbance.

CSC

9/5/1999

McKinley County
Detention Center, NM

Escape

Jail2

Four inmates, including two murder suspects, were able
to escape from the facility by crawling through an air
vent. The sheriff was notified 1 hour and 15 minutes
later. The jail inmates were sent to the facility to keep
the inmate population at the Bernalillo County Jail
under a court mandated population cap.

CSC

11/26/1999

McKinley County
Detention Center, NM

Escape

Jail

Five inmates were able to escape from the facility by
climbing through a skylight. CSC claimed that the
facility is not structurally sound. As a result, the
company returned inmates, including some penitentiary
inmates from Montana, to their home jurisdictions.

MTC

4/4/1999

Promontory Prison, UT

Escape

Prison

Three inmates were able to escape from this minimum
security prison by cutting a hole in a fence with a file.
The facility functions as a pre-release center.

Company

Date

Correctional Facility

Incident

Facility
Type

Brief Description

TransCor

10/16/1999

In Transit, NM

Escape

Transport

A North Dakota inmate, convicted of murdering a child,
escaped from a bus that was transporting him from ND
to the super-maximum prison in Organ, NM. The
inmate had concealed a cuff key on himself, unlocked
his restraints, and escaped through a vent on top of the
bus. The escape was not noted for 9 hours, and the NM
police were not notified for another 2 hours.

WCC

1/13/1999

Lea County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Inmate
death

Prison

An inmate was found stabbed to death at the prison.
WCC said the stabbing appeared to be gang related.
This was the eighth stabbing and second such death
since the prison opened 6 months prior to this event.

WCC

4/6/1999

Lea County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Group
disturbance

Prison

A group of 150 inmates rioted at this facility, producing
minor injuries to 13 staff members. The incident started
in the dining hall, but it spread to other parts of the
facility. At issue, in part, were religious demands of
Native American inmates.

WCC

6/18/1999

Lea County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Inmate
death

Prison

An inmate was found stabbed to death in his cell. Two
rival gang members were suspected of the crime. This
was the third fatal stabbing at the facility.

WCC

8/11/1999

South Bay Correctional
Facility, FL

Escape

Prison

Two inmates, one convicted of murder and the other of
burglary and aggravated assault, were able to escape
from this facility.

WCC

8/12/1999

Guadalupe County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Inmate
death

Prison

An inmate was murdered with a laundry bag filled with
rocks as he watched television.

Company

Date

Correctional Facility

Incident

Facility
Type

Brief Description

WCC

9/1/1999

Guadalupe County
Correctional Facility,
NM

Group
disturbance
/ Staff death
/ Inmate
assault

Prison

There was a riot involving 290 inmates. A correctional
officer was stabbed numerous times by up to 9 inmates.
The riot was in response to efforts to lock down the
institution following the stabbing of an inmate.

WCC

9/6/1999

Taft Correctional
Institution, CA

Escape

Prison

A Federal inmate was able to escape the secure facility
by altering his appearance and walking out of the
institution with visitors following visitation.

WCC

9/7/1999

Travis County
Community Justice
Center, TX

Contract
revocation

Prison

The state of Texas retook control of this prison. 11
former officers and a case manager were indicted on
criminal sex charges. They are charged with felony
charges of sexual assault and improper sexual activity
as well as misdemeanor charges of sexual harassment.
The state is also investigating fraud.

WCC

11/16/1999

Taft Correctional
Institution, CA

Group
disturbance

Prison

Federal inmates broke windows, televisions, and tables
in a disturbance that started over issues with food
services. Damage was estimated at between $50,000
and $60,000. The staff used gas, nonlethal bullets, and
other nonlethal weapons to control about 1,000 inmates
who had refused to return to their housing units.

...........................................
Notes:

1. The incidents reported in this table are for the facilities listed in Appendix 1 only. Escapes and major incidents at jails, detention centers, and
juvenile facilities operated by the respective private prison companies are not included in this table.
2. Jails that serve principally in that function are not included in this study. The McKinley County Detention Center, however, held 72 sentenced,
medium-security inmates from Montana at the time the data were collected for this study (July 31, 1999).

Source:

Published newspaper accounts.

Table 2. Private Prison Vendors Sorted by Number of Inmates
Inmates
Company

Number of
Facilities

Maximum
Security

Medium
Security

Low Security

Minimum
Security

None or
Other

Total

Corrections Corporation of
America

45

1,454
(4%)

21,580
(58%)

2,593
(7%)

10,632
(29%)

985
(3%)

37,244
(100%)

Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation

26

1,143
(6%)

8,218
(43%)

2,345
(12%)

7,126
(38%)

169
(1%)

19,001
(100%)

Management & Training
Corporation

8

29
(1%)

1,258
(24%)

295
(6%)

3,716
(70%)

0
(0%)

5,298
(100%)

Cornell Corrections, Inc.

4

0
(0%)

629
(18%)

2,282
(65%)

572
(16%)

22
(1%)

3,505
(100%)

Correctional Services
Corporation1

5

98
(4%)

554
(24%)

157
(7%)

1,536
(65%)

0
(0%)

2,345
(100%)

McLoud Correctional
Services, LLC

1

0
(0%)

599
(100%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

599
(100%)

Marantha Production
Company, LLC

1

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

256
(50%)

256
(50%)

0
(0%)

512
(100%)

Alternative Programs, Inc.

1

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

175
(50%)

176
(50%)

0
(0%)

351
(100%)

Dominion Management

1

0
(0%)

250
(100%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

250
(100%)

CiviGenics, Inc.

2

48
(58%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

0
(0%)

35
(42%)

83
(100%)

94

2,772
(4%)

33,088
(48%)

8,103
(12%)

24,014
(35%)

1,211
(2%)

69,188
(100%)

Total

Notes:

1. Correctional Services Corporation operates a facility in addition to the five listed in this table, the Crowley County Correctional Facility. That facility
is owned by Dominion Management. Inmates held in the Crowley facility that are under contract with CSC are listed in the inmate totals for CSC.
Inmates held at the Crowley facility under contract with Dominion Management are listed in the Dominion Management row of the table.

Table 3. Staffing Levels
Facility Name

Security Inmates
Level
Allen Correctional Center
Maximum
1,547
Arizona State Prison West
Low/Min
400
B.M. Moore Correctional Center
Low/Min
500
Baker Community Corr. Facility
Low/Min
250
Bartlett State Jail
Medium
928
Bay Correctional Facility
Medium
691
Bent County Corr. Facility
Medium
465
Big Spring Correctional Facility
Low/Min
2,059
BOP Aggregate2
Low
38,054
BOP Aggregate
Medium 30,487
BOP Aggregate
Maximum 12,259
Bradshaw State Jail
Medium
1,683
Bridgeport Correctional Center
Low/Min
520
Bridgeport Pre-Parole Transfer Fac. Low/Min
189
Brownfield Intermed. Sanction Fac. Medium
245
Central Arizona Detention Center Maximum
958
Central Oklahoma Correctional Fac. Medium
735
Central Texas Parole Violator Fac. Maximum
166
Central Valley Comm. Corr. Fac.
Medium
524
Charlton County Prison
Medium
1,000
Cibola County Correctional Facility Medium
250
Cimarron Correctional Facility
Medium
961
Cleveland Correctional Center
Low/Min
520
Coffee County Prison
Medium
1,000
Crossroads Correctional Center
Medium
0
Crowley County Correctional Fac.
Medium
943
Davis Correctional Facility
Medium
971
Dawson State Jail
Medium
1,415
Delta Correctional Facility
Medium
989
Desert View Comm. Corr. Fac.
Medium
532
Diamondback Correctional Facility Medium
977
Diboll Correctional Center
Low/Min
518
Eagle Mountain Comm. Corr. Fac. Low/Min
410
East Mississippi Correctional Fac.
Medium
499
Eden Detention Center
Low/Min
1,306
Eloy Detention Center
Low/Min
1,448
Florence DWI Prison
Low/Min
600
Gadsden Correctional Facility
Medium
791
Golden State Comm. Corr. Fac.
Medium
539
Great Plains Correctional Facility
Medium
812
Guadalupe County Corr. Facility
Medium
335
Hardeman County Corr. Center
Medium
1,951
Huerfano County Correctional Fac. Medium
769
Kit Carson Correctional Facility
Medium
758

45

Custody
Staff
255
56
80
36
174
148
104
230
3,539
4,397
2,444
212
71
27
38
350
99
130
85
188
64
248
90
179
149
127
274
125
87
123
80
63
100
199
813
42
78
85
111
161
324
114
90

Custody
Ratio1
16.5
14.0
16.0
14.4
18.8
21.4
22.4
11.2
9.3
14.4
19.9
12.6
13.7
14.3
15.5
36.5
13.5
78.3
16.2
18.8
25.6
25.8
17.3
17.9
15.8
13.1
19.4
12.6
16.4
12.6
15.4
15.4
20.0
15.2
56.1
7.0
9.9
15.8
13.7
48.1
16.6
14.8
11.9

All Staff
339
99
138
55
254
250
182
346
8,442
9,590
4,451
324
115
49
63
684
152
182
106
232
125
378
141
252
246
212
395
224
109
190
147
96
160
224
430
109
181
106
162
141
460
200
198

All Staff
Ratio1
21.9
24.8
27.6
22.0
27.4
36.2
39.1
16.8
22.2
31.5
36.3
19.3
22.1
25.9
25.7
71.4
20.7
109.6
20.2
23.2
50.0
39.3
27.1
25.2
26.1
21.8
27.9
22.6
20.5
19.5
28.4
23.4
32.1
17.2
29.7
18.2
22.9
19.7
20.0
42.1
23.6
26.0
26.1

Facility Name

Security
Level
Low/Min
Medium
Low/Min
Medium

Kyle Pre-Release Center
Lake City Correctional Facility
Lake Erie Correctional Institution
Lawrenceville Correctional Center
Lawton Correctional Facility
Lea County Correctional Facility
Medium
Lee Adjustment Center
Medium
Lindsey State Jail
Medium
Lockhart Work Program Facility
Low/Min
Marana Community Treatment Fac. Low/Min
Marion Adjustment Center
Low/Min
Marion County Jail
Medium
Marshall County Correctional Fac. Medium
McFarland Community Corr. Facility Low/Min
McKinley Adult Detention Center
Medium
Mesa Verde Comm. Corr. Facility
Low/Min
Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Tran. Fac. Low/Min
Moore Haven Correctional Center
Medium
Mountain View Corr. Institution
Medium
New Mexico’s Women’s Corr. Fac. Medium
North Coast Corr. Treatment Fac.
Low/Min
North Fork Correctional Facility
Medium
North Texas Inter. Sanction Fac.
Low/Min
Otter Creek Correctional Center
Low/Min
Pamlico Correctional Institution
Medium
Park County Detention Center
Medium
Prairie Correctional Facility
Medium
Promontory Correctional Center
Low/Min
Ronald McPhearson Corr. Center Maximum
Scott Grimes Correctional Center
Medium
South Bay Correctional Facility
Maximum
South Central Correctional Center Medium
South Texas Inter. Sanction Fac.
Medium
Southern Nevada Womens Corr. F. Maximum
Taft Correctional Institution
Medium
Venus Pre-Release Center
Low/Min
Victor Valley Comm. Corr. Fac.
Medium
West Tennessee Detention Facility Maximum
Wheeler County Prison
Medium
Whiteville Correctional Facility
Medium
Wilkinson County Corr. Facility
Medium
Willacy State Jail
Medium
Winn Correctional Center
Maximum
Notes:

Inmates
520
339
0
1,535
1,840
1,064
482
1,008
497
450
561
397
990
200
72
351
2,085
702
527
319
0
1,057
402
535
526
83
708
322
600
591
1,214
1,484
444
490
1,302
1,000
512
199
1,000
1,500
898
993
1,544

Custody
Staff
76
100

All Staff
147
178

All Staff
Ratio1
28.3
52.5

220

14.3

311

20.3

194
98
163
142
52
70
119
142
39

18.2
20.3
16.2
28.6
11.6
12.5
30.0
14.3
19.5

298
150
252
231
119
123
165
225
53

28.0
31.1
25.0
46.5
26.4
21.9
41.6
22.7
26.5

55
170
122
109
64

15.7
8.2
17.4
20.7
20.1

78
300
202
163
136

22.2
14.4
28.8
30.9
42.6

165
47
77
109
24
236
31

15.6
11.7
14.4
20.7
28.9
33.3
9.6

265
88
117
163
35
355
64

25.1
21.9
21.9
31.0
42.2
50.1
19.9

209
260
61
100
279
145
66
124
160
243
184
166
250

17.2
17.5
13.7
20.4
21.4
14.5
12.9
62.3
16.0
16.2
20.5
16.7
16.2

346
400
96
185
395
223
87
178
236
384
228
242
328

28.5
27.0
21.6
37.8
30.3
22.3
17.0
89.4
23.6
25.6
25.4
24.4
21.2

1. Number of staff for every 100 inmates.
2. The BOP classifies facilities as minimum, low, medium, and high.

46

Custody
Ratio1
14.6
29.5

Table 4. Custody Separations by Activation Status
Activation Status1

Six Month
Separation
Rate

Operating

Activating

Frequency Percentage

Frequency

0-9.9%

3

7.5

10-19.9%

5

12.5

1

20-29.9%

8

20.0

30-39.9%

9

40-49.9%

Total

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

3

4.9

3.7

6

6.6

6

22.2

14

19.7

22.5

5

18.5

14

23.0

6

15.0

2

7.4

8

11.5

50-59.9%

3

7.5

3

11.1

6

9.8

60-69.9%

3

7.5

5

18.5

8

11.5

1

3.7

1

1.6

70-79.9%
80-89.9%

2

5.0

1

3.7

3

4.9

>=90%

1

2.5

3

11.1

4

6.6

40

100.0

27

100.0

67

100.0

Total
Missing
Notes:

17

1. Institutions included in this analysis and appearing in Corrections Yearbook 1998 were considered to
have been “operating” for at least the 1 and ½ years between Jaunary 1, 1998 (the date for Corrections
Yearbook 1998) and July 31, 1999. Institutions identified in this study but not appearing in Corrections
Yearbook 1998 are considered to be newly “activating.”

Table 5. Custody Shortages by Activation Status
Activation Status
Operating
Shortage

Frequency

Activating

Percentage

Frequency

Total

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

26

55.3

30

73.2

56

63.6

No

20

42.6

8

19.5

28

31.8

1

2.1

3

7.3

4

4.5

47

100.0

41

100.0

88

100.0

Don't Know
Total
Missing

3

47

Table 6. Comparison of Private-Public Separations by Activation Status
Activation Status
Private Prison
Separation Rate

Operating
Frequency

Activating

Percentage

Frequency

Total

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Higher

15

42.9

16

53.3

31

47.7

Lower

2

5.7

2

6.7

4

6.2

Same

18

51.4

12

40.0

30

46.2

Total

35

100.0

30

100.0

65

100.0

Missing

26

Table 7. Filling Positions by Activation Status
Activation Status
Difficulty in Filling
Positions

Operating
Frequency

Activating

Percentage

Frequency

Total

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

13

27.7

18

42.9

31

34.8

No

34

72.3

22

52.4

56

62.9

2

4.8

2

2.2

42

100.0

89

100.0

Don’t Know
Total

47

100.0

Missing

2

48

Table 8. Hit Rates for Unauthorized Substances
Males
Pos. UA Rate

Freq

0%
1%
2%
3%
5%
6%
7%
8%
10%
11%
13%
15%
19%
20%
Total
Missing

15
11
3
5
3
1
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
1
52

Females
%

Freq

28.8
21.1
5.8
9.6
5.8
1.9
1.9
3.8
5.8
1.9
3.8
5.8
1.9
1.9
100.0

Both

%

7

2

9

Freq

Total
%

77.8
1
1

33.3
33.3

1

33.3

3

100.0

22.2

100.0

Freq
22
12
4
5
5
1
1
2
4
1
2
3
1
1
64
27

%

Cum. %

34.4
18.8
6.3
7.8
7.8
1.6
1.6
3.1
6.3
1.6
3.1
4.7
1.6
1.6
100.0

34.4
53.1
59.4
67.2
75.0
76.6
78.1
81.3
87.5
89.1
92.2
96.9
98.4
100.0

Table 9. Escapes by Sex of Inmates at Institution
Number of

Sex of Inmates
Male

Escapes, Aug 98
– July 99

Frequency

Female/Both

Percentage

0

56

82.4

1

8

2

Frequency

Percentage
85.0

11.8

8

10.0

2

2.9

2

2.5

5

1

1.5

1

1.3

6

1

1.5

1

1.3

68

100.0

80

100.0

12

Missing

100.0

Frequency
68

Total

12

Percentage

Total

100.0

4

49

Table 10. Homicides by Sex of Inmates at Institution
Number of

Sex of Inmates

Homicides, Aug

Male

98 – July 99

Frequency

Percentage

0

66

95.7

1

2

3
Total

Total

Female/Both
Frequency
11

Percentage

Percentage

77

96.3

2.9

2

2.5

1

1.4

1

1.3

69

100.0

80

100.0

11

100.0

Frequency

100.0

Missing

4

Table 11. Assaults by Sex of Inmates at Institution
Sex of Inmates

Number of
Assaults, Aug 98
– July 99
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
10
11
14
16
23
25
29
31
38
68
Total
Missing
Notes:

Male
Frequency
29
12
3
5
2
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
1

1
1
1
64

Total

Female/Both

Percentage

Frequency

45.3
18.8
4.7
7.8
3.1
3.1
1.6
1.6
1.6
3.1
1.6
1.6
1.6

1.6
1.6
1.6
100.0

Percentage

8

72.7

11

9.1

11
11

9.1
9.1

11

100.0

Frequency
37
12
3
5
2
2
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
75
9

Percentage
49.3
16.0
4.0
6.7
2.7
2.7
2.7
1.3
1.3
2.7
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
1.3
100.0

1. This institution houses only female inmates. There were four institutions that housed both males and
females. One of these institutions failed to report the number of assaults, and the other three reported no
assaults.

50

Table 12. Private Prison Escape Rate Compared to Public Agency
Private Escape

Males

Females
%

Freq

%

Both

Rate:

Freq

Freq

Higher

2

3.8

Lower

19

35.9

5

62.5

1

Same

32

60.4

3

37.5

Total

53

100.0

8

100.0

Total
%

Freq

%

2

3.1

33.3

25

39.1

2

66.7

37

57.8

3

100.0

64

100.0

Missing

27

Table 13. Private Prison Homicide Rate Compared to Public Agency
Private Prison
Homicide Rate:

Males
Freq

Females
%

Freq

%

Both
Freq

Higher

1

2.0

Lower

19

37.3

5

71.4

1

Same

31

60.8

2

28.6

Total

51

100.0

7

100.0

Total
%

Freq

%

1

1.6

33.3

25

41.0

2

66.7

35

57.4

3

100.0

61

100.0

Missing

30

Table 14. Private Prison Assault Rate Compared to Public Agency
Private Serious
Assault Rate:

Males
Freq

Females
%

Freq

%

Both
Freq

Higher

1

1.9

Lower

17

32.7

3

60.0

2

Same

34

65.4

2

40.0

Total

52

100.0

5

100.0

Missing

Total
%

Freq
1

1.7

66.7

22

36.7

1

33.3

37

61.7

3

100.0

60

100.0

31

51

%

Table 15. Intelligence Gathering on Gangs and Security Threat Groups
State or Contracting Jurisdiction

Public Intel. System

Private Access

Priv. Contributes

Alaska

Yes

Yes

Yes

Arkansas

Yes

Yes

No

Arizona

Yes

Yes

Yes

Bureau of Prisons (Federal)

Yes

No

Yes2

California

Yes

No

Yes

Colorado

1

Yes

Yes

Yes

Florida

Yes

Yes

Yes1

Georgia

No

Not Applicable

Not Applicable

Hawaii

Yes3

Yes

Yes

Idaho

Yes

Yes

No

Indiana

Yes

Yes

Yes

Kentucky

Yes

Yes

Yes

Louisiana

Yes

Yes

Yes

Minnesota

Yes

Yes

Yes

Mississippi

Yes

Yes

Yes

Montana

Yes

Yes

Yes

North Carolina

Yes

Yes

Yes

New Mexico

Yes

Yes

Yes

Nevada

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ohio

Yes

Yes

Yes

Oklahoma

Yes

1

Yes

Yes1

Tennessee

Yes

Yes

Yes

1

1

Yes

Yes

Yes1

Utah

No

Not Applicable

Not Applicable

Virginia

No

Not Applicable

Not Applicable

Washington

Yes

Yes

Yes

Wisconsin

Yes

Yes

Yes

Wyoming

No

Not Applicable

Not Applicable

Total Yes

24 of 28 (85.7%)

22 of 24 (91.7%)

22 of 24 (91.7%)

Texas

Notes:

1. There was one administrator who stated No in response to this question. However, the other three
answered Yes.
2. Two of the four respondents for Federal contracts indicated that intelligence was provided to the
Federal system by the private contractor, and two reported that the private contractor did not provide
intelligence.
3. Two of the contract monitors for Hawaii reported Yes for this question and two reported No.

52

Table 16. Vendor vs. Agency Visiting Policies
Private Prison Visiting Policy:
Same

Frequency

Percentage

80

89.9

More Lenient

4

4.5

More Stringent

5

5.6

89

100.0

Total
Missing

2

Table 17. Restrictions on Types of Inmates Sent Under Contract
Restrictions on Type of Inmates

Number

Percentage*

No restrictions on inmates

33

37.5

No high publicity inmates

20

22.7

No special medical needs inmates

44

50.0

No gang members

13

14.7

Other types of restrictions

35

39.7

Notes:

1. Percentages do not add to 100 in this table as respondents were able to choose
as many restriction types as were applicable. The total number of respondents
that provided data was 88, meaning that information on three contracts was
missing.

53

Table 18. Training questions 1 and 2 . Which of the following requirements
must be satisfied by custody staff for employment at private and public
facilities?
Private Contracts
Response

Public Facilities

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

None

0

0%

0

0%

NCIC1

67

74%

74

81%

Local/state police check

78

86%

69

76%

Credit report

20

22%

16

18%

Drug test

79

87%

73

80%

Physical examination

66

73%

64

70%

Background interview

68

75%

71

78%

Background investigation

67

74%

68

75%

Psychological test

22

24%

32

35%

Other

55

6%

9

10%

Don’t know

1

1%

N/A

N/A

Notes

1. National Crime Information Center.

54

Table 19. Training questions 1 and 2 by jurisdiction – Requirements for employment of custody staff
Credit
Report
Pr/Pb

Drug Physical
Exam
Test
Pr/Pb
Pr/Pb

Background Background
Investigation
Interview
Pr/Pb
Pr/Pb

Psychological Other
Pr/Pb
Test
Pr/Pb

Don’t Compare
Know
Pr
Pr/Pb

NCIC
Check
Pr/Pb

Police
Check
Pr/Pb

Alaska

1/1

1/1

1/1

N1/1

1/1

N/1

N/1

4/7

Arkansas

N/2

2/N

2/2

2/N

N/2

2/2

N/2

4/5

Arizona

3/3

3/3

3/2

3/2

3/3

3/3

3/3

7/7

Bureau of Prisons

4/4

4/4

California

8/8

8/8

Colorado

5/3

4/2

Florida

5/3

4/N

Georgia

3/3

3/3

Hawaii

1/4

4/4

Idaho

1/ N

Indiana

1/2

2/1

Kentucky

1/3

3/3

Louisiana

2/2

2/2

2/2

Minnesota

1/1

1/1

Mississippi

4/3

4/2

Montana

1/2

Jurisdiction

North Carolina

4/4

2/1
4/4
1/1

2/2

2/2

4/4

4/4

4/4

4/4

3/2

8/8

N/8

N/8

8/8

8/8

N/7

4/7

4/3

3/3

4/4

2/2

5/5

5/4

5/4

4/4

3/3

3/3

3/3

3/3

4/4

4/4

4/4

4/4

3/4

8/8

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

6/5

2/1

2/1

2/2

1/2

1/1

8/8

3/N

3/3

3/3

3/3

2/2

2/2

N/1

N/1

N/1

4/3

3/2

3/3

2/2

2/2

2/2

3/3

3/3

3/3

3/3

Nevada

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

Ohio

2/2

2/2

2/2

2/2

Oklahoma

4/4

6/4

Tennessee

2/2

Texas

7/11

17/17

Utah

1/1

Virginia

1/1

Washington
Wisconsin

1/1
2/2

Wyoming
Notes 1.

1/1

6/6

6/5
N/1

2/6
7/7

1/2

N/1

2/2

2/2

1
2/2

3/3

2/3
7/7
5/5
4/4

2/2

2/2

2/2

6/5

6/5

5/4

5/4

2/2

N/1

1/1

2/1

2/2

18/17

12/6

8/10

11/10

1/N

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1

1/1
2/2

1/N
2/N

2/2

1/1
2/2

1/1
1/2

2/2
N stands for No Response.

2/N

N/1

2/1

6/3

8/7

5/5

4/3

New Mexico

6/6
1/1

7/7
7/7
5/6
2/6

9/8
6/6
6/6

N/1

5/5
6/5
3/3

Table 20. Training question 3. Are custody staff at this private facility legally
authorized to:
Clearly
Yes

Clearly
No

Unclear
Authority

Don’t
Know

m1

Use deadly force?

74

13

2

1

1

Pursue an escaping inmate off of prison property?

68

13

9

0

1

Carry a weapon while at work?

56

34

0

0

1

Carry a weapon on escorted trips?

73

14

1

3

0

Search visitors?

80

3

8

0

0

Notes:

1. Missing

56

Table 21. Training questions 3 by jurisdiction – Legal authorization
Use Deadly Force

Jurisdiction

Yes

No

Unclear

Pursue Escaping
Yes

No

Unclear

Carry Weapon at Work
Yes

No

Unclear

Carry Weapon on Trips
Yes

Alaska

1

1

1

1

Arkansas

2

2

2

2

Arizona

3

3

3

2

Bureau of Prisons

4

California

4
8

4

2

6
4

5

2

5

4

Georgia

3

3

Hawaii

4

4

1

Idaho

1

1

1

Indiana

2

2

1

Kentucky

3

3

3

3

Louisiana

2

2

2

2

Minnesota

1

1

1

Mississippi

4

4

4

Montana

1

2

North Carolina

2

2

New Mexico

3

Nevada

1

1
4

Ohio

2

4

3

3

3

2
1

1

2
2

2

2
2

1

1

1

2

2

2

5

6

2

2

5

3

2

2

Texas

14

16

1

2
1

1

6

1

2

12

3

14

1

1

1

1

1

Washington

1

1

1

1

Wisconsin

2

2

2

Wyoming

2

2

1

1

1

4
1

Virginia

1

1

5

1

Tennessee

4

1

5

3

Oklahoma

1
8

Florida

1

Unclear

4
8

Colorado

Utah

3

No

Table 22. Training question 4. Do custody staff at this private facility have
access to firearms?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

75

82%

No

16

18%

Table 23. Training question 5. Are custody staff at this private facility required
to undergo initial training (i.e. before or soon after employment) for firearm
certification?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

77

85%

No

13

14%

Don’t know

1

1%

Table 24. Training question 5a. Is this training a contract requirement? (Only
for those responding ‘yes’ to question 5. Number responding ‘yes’=77)
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

64

83%

No

9

12%

Missing

4

5%

58

Table 25. Training question 5b. Does your public agency require initial training
for firearm certification for the public agency’s custody staff?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

82

91%

No

2

2%

Not Applicable/
Missing

7

7%

59

Table 26. Training question 5b. By jurisdiction – require initial firearm training
for public agencies.
Jurisdiction

Yes

Alaska

1

Arkansas

2

Arizona

3

Bureau of Prisons

4

California

8

Colorado

3

Florida

4

Georgia

3

Hawaii

3

Idaho

1

Indiana

2

Kentucky

3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

2

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

5

Tennessee

2

Texas

14

Utah

1

Virginia

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

2

Wyoming

2

No

Not
Applicable

Missing

2

1

1

2

2

60

Table 27. Training question 5c. If both the public agency and the private
contractor for this facility provide initial firearm certification training, how do
these standards compare?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Same: Because the contract requires same standards as public

48

66%

Same: Because Private contractor adopted public standards

5

7%

Different

7

10%

Don’t Know

2

3%

Other

10

14%

Table 28. Training question 5d. Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides
the initial training for firearm certification for custody staff employed by the
private contractor? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

Publicly operated training facility also used by public sector

27

Same contractor that also trains public staff

3

Private contractor chosen by private companies

6

Private contractor’s staff

40

Other

14

No one provides training of this type

1

Don’t know

7

61

Table 29. Training question 5d by jurisdiction–Who provides firearms training?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency
Training

Public
Private
Agency
Corporation
Contractor Contractor

Staff of
Private
Corporation

Alaska

1

Arkansas

2

Arizona

1

2

Bureau of Prisons

Other

Don’t
Know

1

4

California
Colorado

1

Florida

5

Georgia

3

1

1

Hawaii
Idaho

4

2
1

1

Indiana
Kentucky

2

1
3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

1

North Carolina
New Mexico

2
3

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

1

2
1

Tennessee

3

2

Texas

5

Utah

1

Virginia

1

3

1
1

8

2

1

Washington
Wisconsin

2

1

1
1

Wyoming

2

62

1

Table 30. Training question 5e. How many hours of initial training for firearm
certification are required for custody staff employed by the private contractor
and the public agency – by jurisdiction?
Jurisdiction

Private Contractor

Public Agency

Alaska

24

40

Arkansas

10

24

Arizona

16

16

Bureau of Prisons

8

8,9

California

50

Colorado

8,16,240

24

Florida

56,64,80

56,64,80

Georgia

24

24

Hawaii

8,40

60

Idaho

16

16

Indiana

40

60

Kentucky

23

23

Louisiana

8

6

12,48,81

48,60

Minnesota
Mississippi
Montana

8

North Carolina

16

16

New Mexico

52

32,52

Hours vary

Hours vary

Ohio

24

24

Oklahoma

40

40,54

Tennessee

4

4

4,8,12,35,36

8,12

Utah

16

16

Virginia

16

40

Washington

8

16

Wisconsin

16,40

20

Wyoming

8,16

8,16

Nevada

Texas

63

Table 31. Training question 6. Are custody staff at this private facility required
to undergo initial training (i.e., before or soon after employment) for custody
practices other than firearms training?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

90

100%

No

0

0%

Missing

1

Table 32. Training question 6a. Is this training a contract requirement?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

86

96%

No

4

4%

Table 33. Training question 6b. Does the public agency require initial training
for custody practices other than firearm training for the public agency’s custody
staff?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

88

98%

Not Applicable/
Missing

2

2%

64

Table 34. Training question 6c. If both the public agency and the private
contractor provide initial training for custody practices other than firearm
training, how do these standards compare?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Same: Because the contract requires same standards as public

51

58%

Same: Because Private contractor adopted public standards

2

2%

Different

13

15%

Don’t Know

3

3%

1

Other

18

21%

Missing

1

1%

Notes:

1. Difficult to determine whether standards are lower or higher.
Difficult to compare standards here – contractor is required to have state certified trainer.
Following response occurred 8 times: They are similar. However, staff in private CCF’s receive no training
in the exercise of arrest powers or in the use of weapons. All training is provided by California Board of
Corrections certified instructors .
Following response occurred 3 times: Contractor’s staff is required to complete Department’s Basic
Correctional Officer training class taught by Department staff.
Both meet ACA standards as established for adult correctional facilities.
We have developed our own policy which is in compliance with our contract as well as ACA standards.
Both meet ACA training requirements and private contractor is required to implement specific DOC
policies. However, they have the latitude of incorporating private contractor’s policy in other areas.
The private facility adheres to standards applied by the Texas Commission on Jail standards and Texas
Commission Law Enforcement Officer Standards Education (TCLEOSE).
The North Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility provides three weeks of training for custody staff.

65

Table 35. Training question 6d. Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides
the initial training for custody training other than firearm training for custody
staff employed by the private contractor? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

Publicly operated training facility also used by public sector

24

Same contractor that also trains public staff

5

Private contractor chosen by private companies

7

Private contractor’s staff

53

Other

19

No one provides training of this type

0

Don’t know

2

66

Table 36. Training question 6d. By jurisdiction – Who provides custody
training?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency
Training

Public
Private
Agency
Corporation
Contractor Contractor

Staff of
Private
Corporation

Alaska

1

Arkansas

2

Arizona

2

Bureau of Prisons

2

1

2

8

Colorado

1

Florida

5

Georgia

3

2

5

1

2

1

Hawaii
1

1

1

Indiana
Kentucky

1
3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

2

North Carolina
New Mexico

2

1
2

2

Oklahoma

6

Tennessee

2

Texas

6

Utah

1

13

Virginia

1

Washington
Wisconsin

2

3

Nevada
Ohio

Don’t
Know

4

California

Idaho

Other

1

Wyoming

67

1

1

1

2

1

1

2

1

Table 37. Training question 6e by jurisdiction. How many hours of initial
custody training other than firearm training are required of custody staff
employed by the private contractor and the public agency?
Jurisdiction

Private Contractor

Public Agency

Alaska

160

320

Arkansas

190

216

Arizona

240

240

120,136,152

120,160

California

32,107

270

Colorado

32,40,104,160

Bureau of Prisons

Florida

160,466,480,504,530

160,466,480,504,530

Georgia

136

136

Hawaii

160,200

Idaho

42

42

Indiana

144

160

Kentucky

138

138

Louisiana

160

160

Minnesota

120

Mississippi

162,200,280

280

Montana

120

120

North Carolina

160

160

New Mexico

268

268

Nevada

160

160

Ohio

256

256

Oklahoma

12,120,160,210

320

Tennessee

120,136

120,136

80,120,160,196,200,228,2
40

228,240

Utah

520

520

Virginia

280

360

Washington

160

280

Wisconsin

160

260

Wyoming

120

80

Texas

68

Table 38. Training question 7. Are custody staff at this private facility required
to undergo periodic refresher training for firearm certification?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

77

85%

No

5

6%

Don’t know/
Not applicable

9

9%

Table 39. Training question 7a. Is this training a contract requirement?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

69

90%

No

6

8%

Missing

2

2%

Table 40. Training question 7b. Does the public agency require periodic
refresher training for firearm certification for the public agency’s custody staff?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

79

87%

No

3

3%

Missing
Not applicable

9

10%

69

Table 41. Training question 7c. If both the public agency and the private
contractor provide periodic training for firearm certification, how do these
standards compare?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Same: Because the contract requires same standards as public

50

71%

Same: Because Private contractor adopted public standards

5

7%

Different

8

12%

Don’t Know

2

3%

1

Other

4

6%

Missing

1

1%

Notes:

1. Following response occurred 2 times: Difficult to compare the training component.
Not all private prison officers are required to qualify.
The private facility adheres to standards applied by the Texas Commission on Jail standards and Texas
Commission Law Enforcement Officer Standards Education (TCLEOSE).

Table 42. Training question 7d. Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides
the periodic refresher training for firearm certification for custody staff
employed by the private contractor? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

Publicly operated training facility also used by public sector

19

Same contractor that also trains public staff

2

Private contractor chosen by private companies

10

Private contractor’s staff

51

Other

11

No one provides training of this type

0

Don’t know

1

70

Table 43. Training question 7d. By jurisdiction – Who provides refresher
training?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency
Training

Public
Private
Agency
Corporation
Contractor Contractor

Staff of
Private
Corporation

Alaska

1

Arkansas

2

Arizona

3

Bureau of Prisons

2

Other

Don’t
Know

1

4

California
Colorado
Florida

1
1

4
4

Georgia

3

Hawaii

3

Idaho

1

Indiana
Kentucky

1

1
1

1

1

3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

1

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

2

2
1

Tennessee

2

2

Texas

5

Utah

1

Virginia

1

3

1
1

9

1

1

Washington
Wisconsin

2

1

1
1

Wyoming

1

71

1

1

Table 44. Training question 7e. How many hours of periodic refresher training
for firearm certification are required of custody staff employed by the private
contractor and the public agency?
Jurisdiction

Private
Contractor

Public
Agency

Alaska

24

8

Arkansas

2

8

16,40

16,40

8

4,8

Arizona
Bureau of Prisons
California
Colorado

8
8,16

Florida

8

8

Georgia

8

8

Hawaii

8,40

Idaho

8

8

Indiana

8

8

Kentucky

4

4

Louisiana

8

5

Minnesota
Mississippi

8,12

Montana
North Carolina

8

8

Hours vary

Hours vary

Nevada

24

24

Ohio

8

8

Oklahoma

4,8,40

8,40

Tennessee

4

4

4,8,36

8

Utah

16

16

Virginia

8

8

Washington

4

8

Wisconsin

16

4

Wyoming

8,40

8,40

New Mexico

Texas

72

Table 45. Training question 8. Are custody staff at this private facility required
to undergo periodic refresher training for custody practices other than firearm
training?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

90

99%

Don’t know

1

1%

Table 46. Training question 8a. Is this training a contract requirement?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

84

93%

No

5

6%

Missing

1

1%

Table 47. Training question 8b. Does the public agency require periodic
refresher training for custody practices other than firearm training for the public
agency’s custody staff?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

82

90%

No

1

1%

Missing/
Not applicable

8

9%

73

Table 48. Training question 8c. If both the public agency and the contractor for
the private facility provide periodic training for custody practices other than
firearm certification, how do these standards compare?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Same: Because the contract requires same standards as public

50

61%

Same: Because Private contractor adopted public standards

6

8%

Different

7

9%

Don’t Know

4

5%

1

14

17%

Other
Notes:

1. Difficult to determine whether the training contractor provides is comparable to the BOP training.
Difficult to compare the type of training.
Following response occurred 8 times: They are similar with exceptions.
Both meet ACA requirements. However, any additional training is at the discretion of the facility.
The private facility adheres to standards applied by the Texas Commission on Jail standards and Texas
Commission Law Enforcement Officer Standards Education (TCLEOSE).

Table 49. Training question 8d. Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides
the periodic refresher training for custody practices other than firearm training
for custody staff employed by the private contractor? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

Publicly operated training facility also used by public sector

13

Same contractor that also trains public staff

1

Private contractor chosen by private companies

7

Private contractor’s staff

71

Other

13

No one provides training of this type

0

Don’t know

1

74

Table 50. Training question 8d. By jurisdiction – Who provides refresher
training for custody practices?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency
Training

Public
Private
Agency
Corporation
Contractor Contractor

Alaska

Staff of
Private
Corporation

Other

Don’t
Know

1

Arkansas
Arizona

3

Bureau of Prisons

4

California

8

Colorado

1

2

5

Florida

5

Georgia

3

Hawaii

4

Idaho

1

1

Indiana

2

Kentucky

3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

1

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

1

3

3

3

Nevada
Ohio

1
2

2

Oklahoma

6

Tennessee

2

Texas

6

Utah

1

14

Virginia

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

1
2

Wyoming

1

75

1

1

1

Table 51. Training question 8e. How many hours of periodic custody training,
excluding initial custody training, are required of custody staff employed by the
private contractor and the public agency?
Jurisdiction

Private
Contractor

Public
Agency

Alaska

40

40

Arkansas

40

40

Arizona

40

40

32,40

40

California

40

40

Colorado

10,40

Florida

32,40

32,40

Georgia

40

24

Hawaii

40

Idaho

24

24

Indiana

40

40

Kentucky

40

40

Louisiana

40

40

Minnesota

40

40

Mississippi

40

40

North Carolina

40

40

New Mexico

40

40

Nevada

24

24

Ohio

40

40

Oklahoma

8,40

40

Tennessee

40

40

32,36,40,120

32,40

Utah

24

24

Virginia

40

40

Washington

40

20

Wisconsin

40

16

Wyoming

40

40

Bureau of Prisons

Montana

Texas

76

Table 52. Training question 9. Are custody staff at this private facility required
to undergo specialty training for managing inmates affiliated with gangs?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

54

59%

No

35

39%

Don’t know

2

2%

Table 53. Training question 9a. Is this training a contract requirement?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

28

50%

No

25

45%

Missing

3

5%

Table 54. Training question 9b. Does the public agency require specialty
training for managing inmates affiliated with gangs for the public agency’s
custody staff?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Yes

50

55%

No

26

29%

Don’t know

2

2%

Not applicable/
Missing

13

14%

77

Table 55. Training question 9c. If both the public agency and the contractor for
the private facility provide specialty training for managing inmates affiliated
with gangs, how do these standards compare?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Same: Because the contract requires same standards as public

24

60%1

Same: Because Private contractor adopted public standards

6

15%

Different

2

5%

Don’t Know

6

15%

Other

1

3%

Missing

1

3%

Notes:

1. Percentages do not total to 100% due to rounding error.

Table 56. Training question 9d. Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides
the specialty training for managing inmates affiliated with gangs for custody
staff employed by the private contractor? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

Publicly operated training facility also used by public sector

20

Same contractor that also trains public staff

3

Private contractor chosen by private companies

6

Private contractor’s staff

56

Other

14

No one provides training of this type

0

Don’t know

1

78

Table 57. Training question 9d. By jurisdiction – Who provides training for
managing inmate gangs?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency
Training

Public
Private
Agency
Corporation
Contractor Contractor

Staff of
Private
Corporation

Alaska

Other

Don’t
Know

1

Arkansas
Arizona

2

1

Bureau of Prisons

3

1

4

2

California
Colorado

2

1

Florida

1

4

Georgia

3

3

3

4

1

Hawaii
Idaho

1

Indiana
Kentucky

1
1

2

1

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

3

Montana
North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

3

3

Nevada
Ohio

1
2

Oklahoma

5

Tennessee
Texas

4

Utah

1

1

2

1

13

Virginia

2

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin
Wyoming

1

79

1

1

1

2

1

Table 58. Training question 9e. How many hours of specialty training for
managing inmates affiliated with gangs are required of custody staff employed
by the private contractor and the public agency?
Jurisdiction

Private
Contractor

Public
Agency

Alaska

40

40

Arkansas

40

40

Arizona

40

40

32,40

40

California

40

40

Colorado

10,40

Florida

32,40

32,40

Georgia

40

24

Hawaii

40

Idaho

24

24

Indiana

40

40

Kentucky

40

40

Louisiana

40

40

Minnesota

40

40

Mississippi

40

40

North Carolina

40

40

New Mexico

40

40

Nevada

24

24

Ohio

40

40

Oklahoma

8,40

40

Tennessee

40

40

32,36,40,120

32,40

Utah

24

24

Virginia

40

40

Washington

40

20

Wisconsin

40

16

Wyoming

40

40

Bureau of Prisons

Montana

Texas

80

Table 59. Custody question 1. What standards are used to govern the custody
practices at this private facility? (Circle all that apply)
Response

Frequency

ACA standards

74

Standards established for your public
agency

67

Other

26

81

Table 60. Custody question 1. By jurisdiction – What standards apply?
Jurisdiction

ACA
Standards

Public
Agency Standards

Other
Standards

Alaska

1

Arkansas

2

2

Arizona

1

3

1

Bureau of Prisons

4

4

3

California

8

Colorado

5

3

1

Florida

5

3

5

Georgia

3

3

Hawaii

4

1

Idaho

1

Indiana

2

1

Kentucky

3

3

Louisiana

2

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

4

Montana

1

2

North Carolina

2

2

New Mexico

3

2

Nevada

1

1

Ohio

2

2

Oklahoma

5

3

Tennessee

1

1

Texas

14

16

Utah

1

Virginia

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

2

Wyoming

2

1
1
1

1

2

1

2

5

1

2

82

Table 61. Custody question 2. Which of the following best characterizes how
custody policy is established?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

The public agency requires the contractor to adopt the policy of the
agency

21

23%

The public agency requires the contractor to adopt the policy of the
agency with some small allowances for change

16

18%

The public agency requires the contractor to adopt only certain portions
of the policy of the agency and the contractor develops the rest

14

15%

Private vendor develops its own policy but must meet standards set by
the agency

38

42%

Missing

2

2%

83

Table 62. Custody question 2. By jurisdiction – Which of the following best
characterizes how custody policy is established?
Jurisdiction

Vendor Adopts Vendor Adopts Vendor Adopts
Agency
Agency Policies Some Policies,
Policies
w/ Changes
Agency Rest

Alaska

2
2

1

Bureau of Prisons
California

2

2

2

3

8

Colorado
Florida

1

4

Georgia

3

Hawaii

1

Idaho

1

3

Indiana

1

Kentucky

3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota
Mississippi

Missing

1

Arkansas
Arizona

Vendor
Develops Own
Policies

1
3

Montana

1
2

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

1

Tennessee

1

Texas

5

1

3

1
1

4

9

Utah

1

Virginia

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

1

Wyoming

1
2

84

Table 63. Custody question 3. Who is responsible for routine monitoring of
actual custody practices to determine if standards are being followed?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Public agency

21

23%

Private vendor

5

6%

Public agency and private vendor are both responsible

62

68%

Ongoing monitoring is not required

1

1%

Missing

2

2%

85

Table 64. Custody question 3. By jurisdiction – Who is responsible for routine
monitoring?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency

Private
Vendor

Alaska

3

Bureau of Prisons

1

2

California
2

3
5

Georgia

3
3

1

Idaho

1
1

1

Kentucky
Louisiana

3
2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

4

Montana

1

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

1

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

1

Tennessee

1

Texas
Utah

4

1

17

1
1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

1
1

Virginia

Wyoming

1

8

Florida

Indiana

Missing

2

Arizona

Hawaii

Not
Required

1

Arkansas

Colorado

Both

1

1

2

86

Table 65. Custody question 4. Who is responsible for intensive, formal reviews
to insure that the ongoing monitoring of custody practice is functioning
properly?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

Public agency

41

46%

Private vendor

5

6%

Public agency and private vendor are both responsible

41

46%

Intensive, formal review is not required

1

1%

Missing

2

2%

87

Table 66. Custody question 4. By jurisdiction – Who is responsible for formal
reviews?
Jurisdiction

Public
Agency

Private
Vendor

Alaska

Both

Missing

1

Arkansas

2

Arizona

2

Bureau of Prisons

1
1

2

California

8

Colorado

2

1

2

Florida

1

1

3

Georgia

3

Hawaii

4

Idaho

1

Indiana

1

Kentucky

3

Louisiana

2

Minnesota

1

Mississippi

1

1

3

Montana

2

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

3

Nevada

1

Ohio

2

Oklahoma

2

Tennessee

1

Texas

6

Utah

1

3

1

11

1

Washington

1

Wisconsin

1
1

Virginia

Wyoming

Not
Required

1

1

2

88

Table 67. Custody question 5. How would you rate the overall level of security
technology used at this private facility in comparison to the most comparable
institution operated by your agency?
Response

Frequency

Percentage

About the same

62

70%

More advanced

17

19%

Inferior

5

6%

Not applicable

2

2%

Missing

3

3%

89

Table 68. Do administrators at this facility have a method of determining (or
verifying) the security level of inmates they receive?
Jurisdiction

Yes

No

Comments

Alaska

1

Alaskan monitors ensure proper classification

Arkansas

2

Private vendor required to use State classification

Arizona

3

State officials work at the prison site

Bureau of Prisons

2

Private vendor uses BOP system to verify classification

California

9

State officials make assignment and review cases

Colorado

5

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

District of Columbia

2

Classified by DC under BOP system; reviewed by vendor
using BOP system

Florida

5

Vendor uses Florida classification system to verify
security/custody needs

Georgia

3

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Hawaii

3

State uses private vendor classification system; vendor
verifies
For inmates in Oklahoma, State uses Oklahoma
procedures

Idaho

1

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Indiana

2

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Kentucky

2

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Louisiana

2

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Minnesota

1

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Mississippi
Montana

4
3

North Carolina

State assigns; vendor can request a reclassification
hearing
Private vendor required to use State classification for
inmates in Colorado; Uses Montana system in Montana

2

State officials make assignment and review cases

New Mexico

3

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Nevada

1

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

90

Jurisdiction

Yes

No

Comments

Ohio

2

State makes assignment; private vendor can recommend
reclassification

Oklahoma

6

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Tennessee

2

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Texas

18

Utah

1

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system;
Only the State can change custody level; One facility is a
an institution for parole violators

1

Pre-release facility

Virginia

1

State makes assignment; private vendor verifies using
State system

Washington

1

Inmates located in Colorado; Colorado verifies
classification

Wisconsin

2

Wisconsin classifies inmates; private vendor selects from
a pool of classified inmates

Wyoming

2

Inmates located in Colorado; Colorado verifies
classification
Inmates located in Oklahoma; Oklahoma procedures apply

91

92

Appendix 1
Growth and Development of the Private Prisons Industry

by
Douglas C. McDonald, Ph.D.
Carl W. Patten, Jr., Esq.
Abt Associates, Inc.

93

Growth and Development of the Private Prisons Industry1
Douglas C. McDonald
Carl W. Patten, Jr.
Abt Associates Inc.
This chapter offers a thumbnail portrait of correctional privatization. Its focuses on the practice of contracting
with state and federal correctional agencies to hold prisoners, mostly convicted, who would otherwise be in
government operated prisons. It begins with a brief history of the industry since the mid-1960s and a
discussion of why private prisons emerged. It then describes several different constellations of public/private
involvement in owning and operating prisons, where privately operated facilities are located, and their
experience with housing higher-security inmates.

A Short History of Correctional Privatization
The phenomenon of private prisons and jails came into the public eye in the mid-1980s, when the fledgling
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) offered to take over the entire State of Tennessee’s troubled prison
system, with a 99-year lease from the state, for which it would pay $250 million dollars. CCA would, in
return, house the state’s convicted prisoners for a negotiated per diem payment. Moreover, it would guarantee
that the prisons would meet the standards set by a federal judge, who had earlier found the state’s correctional
system to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution because of the conditions of confinement in its prisons. The
state refused, but the offer ignited widespread press attention and public debate.
Despite the apparent novelty of the idea, privately operated correctional facilities were not new in this country.2
Private imprisonment had been common in earlier centuries in both England and the United States. By the
beginning of this century, however, governments nearly everywhere had assumed responsibility for
imprisonment and most other criminal justice functions.3 By mid-century, the notion that governments were
responsible for the administration of justice, and especially imprisonment, had become so well entrenched that

1
This essay is a revised and updated version of a chapter in McDonald, et. al., Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of
Current Practice (Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates Inc., 1998), pp. 4-33 (1998), which can be found on the Internet at
http://www.abtassoc.com/reports/criminal-justice/ES-priv-report.pdf. The survey data referred to here were collected by Abt Associates Inc.; we are
grateful to Stephen Crawford and Cassie Bacani of Abt Associates for their work on this survey. This project was funded by a grant from the National
Institute of Corrections, cooperative agreement number 99K38GIK9. We are grateful to the National Institute for its generous support.

2

A longer discussion of this history can be found in Douglas McDonald, “Private Penal Institutions,” in Michael Tonry (ed.), Crime and
Justice: A Review of Research (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992); “Introduction,” in Douglas McDonald (ed.), Private Prisons and
the Public Interest (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); and Aric Press, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Private Prisons in the
1980s,” in McDonald (ed.), Private Prisons and the Public Interest, pp.19-41.
3
W.S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, Vol. 4, 3rd ed., (London: Cambridge University Press, 1922-24), p. 397; A. Crew, London
Prisons of Today and Yesterday (London: I. Nicholson & Watson, 1933), p. 50; Blake McKelvey, American Prisons: A History of Good Intentions
(Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1977), pp. 197-216.

94

many argued that imprisonment is an “intrinsic” or “core” function of government.4 But even though state
responsibility for imprisonment was well established, contracting continued for a variety of services associated
with imprisonment, including facility management and operation, albeit confined to various niches of the
juvenile and adult correctional systems. Private, mostly not-for-profit charities and organizations had played a
long and distinguished role in operating facilities for juvenile offenders. Indeed, the private Society for the
Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents established the first house of refuge in New York City in 1825. By the
mid-nineteenth century, private cottages had been established in several states.5 During the 1960s, the number
of privately operated juvenile facilities began to grow rapidly. By the time a national census of juvenile
correctional facilities in the United States was conducted in 1989, the number of privately operated facilities
had grown to 2,167, compared to 1,100 public ones.6 The private facilities were very different from the public
ones, however. Most were small community-based group homes or halfway houses, whereas most of the
government facilities were training schools and detention centers.
In the adult correctional system, private firms had long been contracting with federal and state governments to
provide a variety of specific services to correctional facilities, such as food services, maintenance, education,
vocational training, health care, prison industries programs, and counseling.7 Such contracting received little
attention because it did not seem to pose fundamental questions about the state’s authority to incarcerate
prisoners. Nor were questions raised when the Bureau of Prisons began in the late 1960s to contract with
private firms to operate community treatment centers, halfway houses to which federal prisoners were
transferred prior to being released or paroled.8 These were outside the mainstream of secure prisons.
The private sector began to approach that mainstream in 1979 when the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) began contracting with private firms to detain illegal immigrants pending hearings or deportation,
some of whom had finished terms in state or federal prisons, in secure confinement facilities. These contracts
provided the seedbed for the contemporary private imprisonment industry in the United States, as several of the
now-significant players in the industry started with them. This includes CCA, a Tennessee-based firm that
incorporated in 1983 and opened its first detention center in Houston, Texas, the following year. Wackenhut,
Inc., a long-established private security firm, entered the private imprisonment business when it won a contract
to build a detention facility outside Denver, Colorado, for the INS. Similarly, the Correctional Services

4
American Bar Association, Report to the House of Delegates (Chicago, IL: American Bar Association, February 13, 1989), p. 3; John J.
DiIulio, Jr., “The Duty to Govern: A Critical Perspective on the Private Management of Prisons and Jails,” in McDonald (ed.), Private Prisons and
the Public Interest, pp. 172-177; Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration (Washington, DC: American Bar Association,
1988), p. 44.

5

Philip B. Taft, Jr., “The Fiscal Crisis in Private Corrections,” (Part I), Corrections Magazine VIII, no. 6 (December 1982), 27-32.

6
Biannual Census of Public and Private Juvenile Detention, Correctional, and Shelter Facilities (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 1989 census).

7

Camille G. Camp and George M. Camp, Private Sector Involvement in Prison Services and Operations (South Salem, NY: Criminal
Justice Institute, 1984).
8
Matthew J. Bronick, The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Experience with Privatization (Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Prisons,
March 1989).

95

Corporation (formerly ESMOR) won a contract in 1989 to operate a immigrant detention facility in Seattle,
Washington.
These developments drew little attention, but this changed in 1985 and 1986 when governments began to
contract with private firms to operate secure facilities that functioned as county jails and state prisons. In
1985, CCA contracted with Bay County, Florida, to operate its jail and with Santa Fe County, New Mexico in
1986, to operate its jail. In January 1986, U.S. Corrections Corporation opened a 350-bed prison in St.
Mary’s, Kentucky to hold sentenced prisoners for the state. At approximately the same time, a small privately
operated facility was opened in rural Cowansville, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia government
arranged to transfer 55 inmates from the District’s overcrowded jails to it. Their arrival created an uproar.
Local residents came together and patrolled the streets with shotguns, fearing escapes. A prison reform group
in Philadelphia learned of this and successfully petitioned the state legislature to declare a moratorium on
privately operated prisons in that state.9
These events set off a nationwide debate about the legality, propriety, and desirability of private imprisonment.
Congress held hearings in 1986; the National Institute of Justice convened a conference; and many criminal
justice professional associations took a stand. The latter included the American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Workers (opposed), the National Sheriff’s Association (opposed), the American Correctional
Association (cautious support), and the American Bar Association (which asked for a moratorium pending
further study).10 The American Bar Association (ABA) study concluded that delegating operating authority to
private entities posed ?grave constitutional and policy problems.”11 This debate did not stop correctional
privatization in its infancy, however. By the end of 1989, there were 44 secure private facilities in this country,
housing about 15,000 prisoners.12 According to the estimates developed by Charles Thomas and his associates,
dated November 18, 1999, the total number of private facilities in the United States has grown to 162 private
facilities.13
Comparisons between conditions prevailing in 1986 and 1996 give some measure of the rapid growth
experienced in this industry. The number of beds in privately operated facilities in operation or under

9
Joint State Government Commission, Report of the Private Prison Task Force (Harrisburg, PA: General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, March 1987).

10
U.S. House of Representatives, Privatization of Corrections: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the
Administration of Justice of the Committee of the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, First and Second Sessions on
Privatization of corrections, November 13, 1985, and March 18, 1986. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986); John Peterson,
Corrections and the Private Sector: A National Forum (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1988),
Conference Proceedings.

11

American Bar Association, Report to the House of Delegates (Chicago, IL: American Bar Association, February 13, 1989).

12
Douglas McDonald, “Private Penal Institutions,” in Michael Tonry (ed.), Crime and Justice: A Review of Research (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1992).

13
Charles Thomas, Private Corrections Project (Gainesville, FL: Center for Studies in Criminology and Law, University of Florida,
November 18, 1999) http://web.crim.ufl.ed/pcp/. It is unclear whether Dr. Thomas and his associates included facilities other than secure adult
correctional facilities. The title of the chart which displays this information is entitled “Rated Capacities of Private Facilities by Geographical
Location.” Similar charts from previous years counted the number of secure private adult prisons. However, there is no description of exactly what
the term “secure private adult prisons” includes.

96

construction in the U.S. increased at an average annual rate of 45 percent during this period. Few of these beds
were empty: the occupancy rate of all private adult facilities averaged 96 percent during 1996. In 1987, there
were about 3,000 prisoners in such facilities. By 1996, the number had soared to more than 85,000. During
1996 alone, the number of prisoners increased 30 percent.14
As a result of these trends, the private corrections industry experienced explosive growth: from about $650
million in 1996 to about $1 billion in 1997.15 Wall Street and individual investors were impressed with these
growth statistics and with the apparently bright prospects for future growth (private facilities had less than 3
percent of the “market share” of prisoners held in state and federal prisons and in local jails in the United
States).16 Stock prices of the four publicly traded firms at that time saw sharp price appreciation, providing
these companies with access to substantial amounts of cash to finance further expansion.
However, 1998 and 1999 witnessed stark changes in the private corrections industry. First, the structure of the
industry changed. In February of 1998, Correctional Properties Trust was created, and in September of 1998,
Prison Realty Trust was created. Both of these companies are Real Estate Investment Trusts (or REITs). Both
were formed to develop and buy correctional facilities. The major tenant of Correctional Properties Trust is
Wackenhut Corrections, and the primary tenant of Prison Realty Trust is CCA. Furthermore, the core
management structure of these REITs is substantially similar to the core management of their primary tenants.
Second, investors have not been as kind to the private corrections industry in 1998 and 1999 as they were in
1996 and 1997. Although revenues and net income have generally continued to rise, stock prices have fallen
sharply. In December of 1997, Wackenhut’s market capitalization was approximately 610 million dollars. By
December of 1999, that number decreased to 225 million dollars.17 Before CCA merged with Prison Realty
Trust, CCA projected that the combined company’s market capitalization would be approximately 4 billion
dollars.18 As of December 20, 1999, Prison Realty Trust’s market capitalization is less than 25 percent of that
figure at 814 million dollars.19

14
Charles Thomas, Diane Bolinger, and John Badalamenti, Private Adult Correctional Facility Census, Tenth Edition (Gainesville, FL:
Center for Studies in Criminology and Law, University of Florida, 1997). These annual census of privately operated facilities use similar rules for
including facilities in each. Generally, they include only “secure” facilities.

15
1996 data from Nzong Xiong, “Private Prisons: A Question of Savings,” The New York Times, July 13,1997; 1997 data from Alex M.
Singal and Raymond F. Reed, An Overview of the Private Corrections Industry: Industry Analysis, (Baltimore, Md: Legg Mason Wood Walker,
Inc., July 16, 1997), p. 12. Singal and Reed estimate the “revenue power” of the industry to have been about $1 billion in mid-1997; we have not
attempted to determine the actual revenues received by year-end.

16
On June 30, 1997, a total of 1.2 million persons were held in state and federal correctional facilities, and 570,000 in local jails. As
discussed below, the private industry’s current share of the state and federal market is slightly larger, about 5.3 percent.

17

Media General Financial Services (December 20, 1999) http://www.stocksheet.com/goto/?Ticker=whc.

18
Corrections Corporation of America. Printed in “company news on-call” (April 20, 1998) http//www.prnwswire.com/cgibin/stories/pl?ACT=105&STORY=/www/sto.../000063474.

19

Media General Financial Services (December 20, 1999) http://www.stocksheet.com/goto/?Ticker=pzn.

97

Negative publicity towards the market leaders in this industry has contributed significantly to these declines in
market capitalization. In May of 1997, CCA signed a contract with the District of Columbia to provide 900
beds in the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio—a medium-security facility. In October,
the agreement expanded to 1,700 beds. By the end of July, 1998, however, twenty inmates had been stabbed,
two were killed and six escaped from the facility in broad daylight.20 Two major failures by CCA contributed
to these catastrophes. First, CCA failed to supply a sufficient number of, and adequately trained, staff. For
example, where CCA had one corrections officer assigned to watch two pods housing 128 inmates, an Ohio
prison would have assigned four guards.21 Furthermore, guards armed with shotguns were never trained to use
a firearm.22 Second, the medium-sized facility housed maximum-security inmates that preyed on mediumsecurity inmates. This lack of training and the housing of maximum-security inmates are the basis of a 110
million dollar lawsuit filed by India Chisley, a widow of a Washington, D.C. medium-security inmate who was
killed by a maximum-security inmate at the Youngstown facility.23
Wackenhut also received much public attention when troubles arose in one of its New Mexico facilities. The
Lea County Correctional facility, located in Hobbs, New Mexico is owned and operated by Wackenhut
Corrections. This 1,500 bed, medium-security prison opened in May of 1998. By July of 1999, the facility
had three fatal stabbings and six non-fatal stabbings, a disturbance involving 170 inmates and a missing gun
report. Furthermore, two cases of cover-ups of excessive force by guards have led to officers being fired or
disciplined.
Smaller firms have also received their share of negative publicity. For example, at the Santa Fe County (NM)
Jail, operated by Cornell Corrections, guards were accused of sexually assaulting inmates; three guards were
found to have slipped through Cornell’s background check with felony convictions; and a plumber working at
the jail was fired for smuggling cocaine into the facility.24 Also, an inmate was severely injured by guards
trying to subdue him when he was shot in the groin with a bean-bag pellet.25 Cornell has also encountered
negative publicity in Pennsylvania. It plans to locate a prison in Clearfield County, but residents have
contested the construction because of the sullied reputations of privately operated prisons as well as the fear of
having inmates in their backyards.26

20

Tatge, Mark, Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Employees criticize privately run prison,” (August 30, 1998).

21

Ibid.

22

Ibid.

23

The Beacon Journal, “Widow suing owner of Youngstown private prison” (September 16, 1998).

24

The Legal Times, “Proposed Prison Elicits Mixed Reactions (September 6, 1999), p. 3.

25

Ibid.

26

Ibid.

98

Why the Private Prisons Industry Emerged
The contemporary private imprisonment industry owes its emergence to several dynamics, other than the
obvious fact that entrepreneurs saw business opportunities and seized them. One was the desire of many
government correctional agencies to expand their capacity quickly. For example, the INS, faced with the need
for more beds to house illegal aliens, turned to private firms to design, build, and operate detention facilities.
This could be done quickly, using funds budgeted for detention operations, rather than waiting months or years
for a capital appropriation to be requested and approved.
For cities and counties, contracting for private imprisonment resolved certain problems peculiar to local
governments. In Bay County, Florida, for example, the county commissioners were displeased with the pace at
which the independently elected sheriff was making improvements to the local jail, which had been found by the
state to be in violation of established standards. The commissioners turned to the Corrections Corporation of
America, which promised to make the necessary improvements quickly and to get the state off the county’s
back within a matter of months. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, the county had built a larger jail than it needed,
resulting in a higher per prisoner expenditure than anticipated. County officials decided that it would be more
economically advantageous to contract with a private firm to operate the facility and to pay only for the space
used, leaving the rest of the facility to be used for housing prisoners in other “markets”— for example,
prisoners from other counties that lacked sufficient bed space or federal prisoners being transported by the U.S.
Marshals Service.
Different dynamics created business opportunities for the private sector in state governments. Beginning in
1973, the nation’s state and federal prison population began growing rapidly, and by 1986, it had almost
tripled, growing more than fifteen times faster than the general population. To accommodate the increase from
1985 to 1986 alone—about 43,000 additional prisoners—seven new medium-sized (500-bed) prisons were
needed each month.27 Governments did not build facilities quickly enough to handle this flood of prisoners, and
severe overcrowding became the norm. By 1986, all but seven states were operating their prisons in excess of
95 percent capacity; 38 were either full or above capacity; and seven states exceeded capacity by more than 50
percent. The federal prison system was also operating at somewhere between 27 and 59 percent above
capacity. Throughout the nation, prisoners were sleeping in hallways, day rooms, gymnasiums, sometimes
even in bathrooms, or were doubled up in small cells.
Overcrowding exacerbated another serious problem: a large proportion of the nation’s penal facilities were
outmoded and even obsolete by contemporary standards. A government survey conducted in 1983 found that
half of all state and federal prisons in operation at the time were more than 35 years old and a substantial
number more than a hundred.28 Only about one-fifth of all state and federal prisons had been accredited by the

27

McDonald (ed.), Private Prisons and the Public Interest, p. 4.

28
Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in State and Federal Institutions on December 31, 1983 (Washington, DC: Department of
Justice, 1986), Table 16.

99

Commission on Accreditation for Corrections. The confluence of these dynamics resulted in a spate of lawsuits
challenging the constitutionality of the conditions under which prisoners were being confined. By mid-1988, 39
states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands were operating prisons and jails under
court orders to remedy unconstitutional conditions. Several states were even forced to release prisoners ahead
of time to bring occupancy levels down to mandated levels.
Correctional administrators found themselves in a difficult position, unable to stanch the flow of prisoners and
constrained in the ability to build more prisons quickly. Following the passing of Proposition 13 in California
in 1978, expenditure controls or revenue restrictions were placed on many state and local governments. Federal
aid to state and local governments had also been shrinking since 1980. By 1986, the general revenue sharing
program was dead, leaving many local governments without any federal assistance. Many state governments
were reaching their debt ceilings and were unable to issue more bonds to finance prison construction. Even
though voters were supporting legislation to send more criminal offenders to prison and for longer times, they
often voted down prison construction debt proposals.
Turning to the private sector to provide new prison beds was an attractive solution to many governments facing
debt restrictions. If a private firm financed, constructed, and operated a new prison, payments to the firm by
governments for housing the state’s prisoners could be charged against operations budgets, rather than capital
budgets, thereby avoiding any need for increasing debt. Some jurisdictions relied on a variant of this
arrangement: private corporations (usually not-for-profit) were brought into being, operating on behalf of a
government, which would issue bonds to finance the construction of a new prison that would then be leased to
the state. Lease payments could be paid using government operating funds, and the state’s corrections
department could operate the facility as if the state owned it outright.29
To this day, the market for private imprisonment is largely confined to the provision of new beds in state and
federal prisons, rather than takeovers of existing government operated facilities. Although privatization came
onto the public stage with the Corrections Corporation of America’s bid to take over Tennessee’s prisons in
1985, such a transfer of assets has occurred only once. Effective January 30, 1997, CCA acquired a twentyyear lease on the District of Columbia’s Correctional Treatment Facility for which it pays $233,000 a month.
CCA also has a twenty-year contract to operate the facility.
The growth and development of the private imprisonment industry received important support from broader
political and ideological developments in the mid-1980s. On both sides of the Atlantic, in the United States and
in Great Britain, conservative governments held sway and launched concerted attacks on the institutional
structures and ideology of the welfare state. “Privatization” initiatives gained influential proponents, although
the opportunities in this country were fewer, largely because governments here hold fewer assets that can be
privatized and because a wide variety of services funded by governments had long been delivered by private
contractors. Despite this, the public landscape in the United States was combed in search of targets for

29
Jan Chaiken and Stephen Mennemeyer, Lease-Purchase Financing of Prison and Jail Construction (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1987).

100

privatization or contracting, and prisons were identified by some as promising opportunities for expanding
private sector involvement.30
For a variety of reasons, the belief emerged that contracting for services, including correctional services, was
superior to direct government provision.31 Private firms were said to be more efficient as they are not mired in
the “red tape” that encumbers public agencies, especially in procurement and labor relations. Private managers
can hire and fire without the constraints of civil services and restrictions on creating budget lines for new
employees; labor can be disciplined and reassigned with far greater ease in the private sector, especially if
labor is not unionized.
Another purported advantage of the private sector was its greater efficiency in the face of competition.
According to this line of argument, public agencies have monopolies on services, and few incentives exist to
discover and implement ways of improving efficiency. Shielded from the demands of the marketplace, public
managers may not strive for greater productivity but for maintaining their positions by avoiding risks.
Government positions and agency budgets, once established, are difficult to reduce because constituencies are
created inside and outside government that press legislatures for continued funding. In contrast, competition in
the private marketplace, and the risk of losing money or going out of business, supposedly stimulates the search
for increased efficiency.
Critics of privatization have challenged these beliefs, however. For example, Donahue argues that there is little
room for technological innovation in prisons because of their labor intensive nature.32 Others argue that the
high priority given to maximizing profits creates incentives to minimize costs, which may lead to reductions in
service quality.33 Critics also point to examples of flagrant overcharging by contractors to state and local
governments for shoddy goods and poor services.34 Some opponents of privatization in corrections point to the
dismal experience with the convict leasing arrangements that pervaded the South during the Civil War decades.
The conditions of those privately operated facilities were generally appalling, and the death rates in them were
considerably higher than in public prisons.35

30
President’s Commission on Privatization, Privatization: Toward More Effective Government (Washington, DC: President’s
Commission on Privatization, 1988).

31
The arguments in support of this belief are offered in, for example: E.S. Savas, Privatizing the Public Sector: How to Shrink
Government (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1982); Stuart Butler, Privatizing Federal Spending: A Strategy to Eliminate the Deficit
(New York, NY: Universe Books, 1986); James K. Stewart, “Costly Prisons: Should the Public Monopoly Be Ended?” in Patrick B. McGuidan and
Jon S. Pascale (eds.) Crime and Punishment in Modern America (Washington, DC: The Institute for Government and Politics of the Free Congress
Research and Education Foundation, 1986), pp. 365-388; President’s Commission on Privatization, Privatization: Toward More Effective
Government (Washington, DC: President’s Commission on Privatization, 1988).

32

John D. Donahue, The Privatization Decision (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1990).

33

American Bar Association, Report to the House of Delegates, unpublished document (Chicago: American Bar Association), p. 4.

34
American Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSME) AFL-CIO, Passing the Bucks: The Contracting Out of Public
Services. (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, 1984).

35

George Cable, “The Convict Lease System,” in The Silent South (Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1969).

101

State and Federal Experience with Private Prisons
This survey focuses on privately operated prisons, rather than jails or detention centers. That is, we examine
privately operated secure confinement facilities that are most equivalent to secure confinement facilities in state
or federal prison systems and which contract with the correctional agencies in the surveyed jurisdictions to
provide prison space. In contrast with jails, prisons are designed to hold inmates for longer terms and have a
variety of programs for the inmates. We exclude from our purview the following: all privately operated
facilities that function as jails;36 detention centers for illegal immigrants or others; facilities operating under
contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, or local
governments; all privately operated non-secure facilities; and all juvenile facilities.
To identify the subset of privately operated facilities that most closely correspond to state or federal prisons, we
conducted a survey in 1998 in which we mailed questionnaires to the heads of all correctional agencies in all
states, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the
U.S. Virgin Islands. (Hereafter, these governmental entities are referred to as “jurisdictions.”) This survey
asked these correctional agencies to identify all privately operated facilities that were under contract on
December 31, 1997 to hold prisoners under their authority. Fifty-three of the 55 agencies surveyed responded.
Twenty-eight jurisdictions reported having a total of 91 active contracts on that date, with 84 different private
facilities. (The number of contracts exceeded the number of private facilities because some facilities contracted
with more than one political jurisdiction.) These facilities held a total of 37,651 prisoners at year end 1997.
This survey undercounted by an undetermined amount both the number of such facilities and the number of
prisoners in them at year-end 1997. This occurred because we asked for facilities that had contracts with
departments of corrections. We overlooked the fact that some departments lacked contractual agreements with
private firms and relied on an intergovernmental agreement to transfer prisoners to a public correctional agency
in another state, which did have such a contract. Two departments provided information about privately
operated facilities that held prisoners so transferred, but several did not, limiting their answers to the question
that we posed to them.
In 1999 we conducted another survey for this study of classification and training standards and procedures.
This questionnaire obtained information about 1) the location of the facility; 2) the contractor; and 3)
classification information about the inmate population and the physical security of the facility on July 31, 1999.
Unlike the 1998 survey, it omitted questions about the total number of inmates and ownership of correctional
facilities; however, it explicitly asked for information about any facility holding sentenced adult prisoners and
not just those facilities with which they contracted. This survey asked respondents to exclude community based
facilities, which we define as facilities at which 50 percent or more of the inmates are regularly permitted to
depart unaccompanied for educational release and rehabilitation. All of the 55 surveyed government agencies
responded to the survey. These 94 facilities held a total of 69,188 prisoners

36

However, the study does include Texas State Jails, which hold state inmates.

102

Table 1
Number of Prisoners in Privately Operated Facilities on July 31,
1999, by Government Entity Having Jurisdiction Over Prisoners.

State

Alaska
Arkansas
Arizona
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Minnesota
Mississippi
Montana
North Carolina
New Mexico
Nevada
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
Wyoming
BOP
Washington, DC
Puerto Rico
Total
Note:

Sources:

Total prisoners under government’s
jurisdiction in privately operated
facilities
on July 31, 1999

717
1,191
1,450
3,514
2,621
3,737
3,000
1,183
250
890
1,578
3,091
50
3,376
316
1,053
1,718
490
5,295
3,435
15,122
322
1,535
250
2,557
197
6,115
1,596
2,539
69,188

Total prisoners under
government’s
jurisdiction at
year end 1998

4,097
10,638
25,311
161,904
14,312
67,224
39,262
4,924
4,083
19,197
14,987
33,227
5,572
16,678
2,734
31,811
4,985
9,651
20,892
17,738
144,510
4,391
28,560
14,161
18,451
1,571
123,041
9,949
853,861

The Abt Associates 1999 survey did not ask for the total number of prisoners for which the
jurisdictions above were responsible. Thus, we used December 31, 1998 data as an
approximation.
Abt Associates Inc. 1999 survey of state and federal correctional administrators.; Beck and
Mumola, “Prisoners in 1998," Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, August, 1999, p. 3.

103

on July 31, 1999.37 This included all prisoners under the correctional authority of these surveyed jurisdictions
who were held in privately operated secure facilities (whether by direct contracts or through intermediary local
governments). This represents 5.3 percent of the nation’s 1.3 million prisoners held by state and federal
correctional agencies at this time.
Of the 69,188 inmates held in private prisons in this country, most of these (55,022) were held in the political
boundaries of the jurisdiction responsible for those inmates. (This does not include the 6,115 federal prisoners
held in private facilities.) A small number (8,051) were held in facilities located in
other states. These included, most notably, 2,557 prisoners from Wisconsin held in Oklahoma and Tennessee;
1,596 prisoners from the District of Columbia held primarily in Ohio; and 1,183 inmates from Hawaii held in
Minnesota, Oklahoma and Tennessee facilities. Also worth noting are Oklahoma and Colorado. On December
31, 1997, Colorado and Oklahoma held 1,008 and 933 prisoners, respectively, in private prisons located
outside of the political boundaries of these states. By July 31, 1999, these jurisdictions relied on private
prisons that were located within their political boundaries.

Contracting for Secure Confinement
Twenty-six states reported having contracts with private firms on July 31, 1999, to house prisoners, in addition
to the District of Columbia, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. These 29
jurisdictions reported having a total of 103 active contracts on that date, with 94 different private facilities.
(The number of contracts exceeded the number of private facilities because some facilities contracted with more
than one political jurisdiction.) The survey indicated that certain jurisdictions have far greater experience in
contracting with private firms for secure beds than others (Table 2). The Texas Department of Criminal
Justice reported having 20 active contracts on July 31, 1999 for secure imprisonment services (excluding
contracts with six privately operated jails). The State of Florida reported five active contracts on that day;
Oklahoma reported six; California reported nine.

37
This number differs dramatically from that reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in its 1995 Census of State and Federal
Correctional Facilities (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997). This census identified 29 privately operated secure confinement
facilities, holding 12,534 inmates. This discrepancy does not reflect simply a four-year difference in data collection points. Rather, it is a result of
different inclusion rules in the Abt Associates and the Bureau of Justice Statistics censuses. The former asked correctional officials to report on all
facilities under contract to hold their prisoners, whereas the BJS census asked correctional officials to exclude private facilities in which fewer than 50
percent of the prisoners were from state or federal agencies. Correctional officials may have been unable to make that determination effectively,
especially because many facilities accept prisoners from a number of different federal or state agencies and no single agency may know the total
state/federal share.

104

Table 2
Number of Active Contracts for Secure Confinement on July 31, 1999, by
Contracting Jurisdiction
Alaska

1

New Mexico

3

Arkansas

2

North Carolina

2

Arizona

3

North Dakota

1

California

9

Ohio

2

Colorado

5

Oklahoma

6

Florida

5

Oregon

0

Georgia

3

Tennessee

2

Hawaii

4

Texas

Idaho

1

Utah

1

Indiana

2

Virginia

1

Kentucky

3

Washington

2

Louisiana

2

Wisconsin

2

Minnesota

1

Wyoming

2

Mississippi

4

Federal Bureau of Prisons

4

Montana

4

District of Columbia

3

Nevada

1

Puerto Rico

4

Total Contracts

20

103

Source: Abt Associates Inc. 1999 survey of state and federal correctional administrators.

Characteristics of Privately Operated Prisons
This section describes, in summary fashion, those privately operated prisons that were reported to be
contracting with state and federal correctional agencies on July 31, 1999. This includes information about the
landscape of the private sector, the geographical location of the facilities, ownership, reported levels of physical
security, and numbers and proportions of prisoners classified according to the risk they pose.
Industry Concentration

Two firms—CCA and Wackenhut—continue to dominate the market. Holding 77 of all 103 reported contracts
with state and federal agencies that were active on July 31, 1999, the market share of these firms has increased
from 67 percent (as of December 31, 1997) to 75 percent. CCA had 51 active contracts with state or federal
correctional agencies, Wackenhut 26. (This reflects the dominance of these two in contracting with all

105

governments generally, not just state and federal.) The market share of these firms rose 5 percent and 3
percent, respectively, since December 31, 1997.38
Long dominated by a few big players, the industry appears to be experiencing still further consolidation, as well
as some diversification. Smaller firms are being acquired by larger ones, and some are developing new
capacities—such as drug treatment services—to augment their “core” capabilities. Firms that have been
focusing on the adult corrections market are also moving into juvenile corrections.
Where Private Prisons are Located

Most of the privately operated prisons holding state or federal prisoners in this country are located in the West
and in the South (Table 3). Texas is home to the most such facilities by far—22. California is the state next
most populated with such facilities, having 10 within its boundaries. Oklahoma has eight, and New Mexico
has six. The remaining jurisdictions have five or fewer private facilities that hold state or federal prisoners.
Table 3
Number of Private Facilities Contracted by State and Federal Correctional
Agencies, by State of Location on July 31, 1999
Arkansas

2

Mississippi

4

Arizona

5

North Carolina

2

New Mexico

6

California

10

Colorado

5

Nevada

1

District of Columbia

1

Ohio

3

Florida

5

Oklahoma

8

Georgia

3

Puerto Rico

4

Indiana

1

Tennessee

4

Kentucky

3

Texas

Louisiana

2

Utah

1

Minnesota

1

Virginia

1

Total Facilities
Source: Abt Associates Inc. 1999 survey of state and federal correctional administrators.

38

However, the 1998 study did not include IGA contracts.

106

22

94

Facility Ownership

Of the 94 facilities that contract with state or federal correctional agencies to house their prisoners, 39 are
owned by governments (Table 4). Fifty-five others are owned by the management firms that operate the
facilities or by other private entities. With respect to the private owners, two points are important. First,
several of the privately owned facilities are only nominally private, as they have been created by governments to
own the facility on behalf of the government.39 Second, CCA and Wackenhut are absent from this list. As
stated above, CCA merged with Prison Realty Trust. As a result, all of the properties owned by CCA are now
owned by Prison Realty Trust. Wackenhut has transferred its properties to Correctional Properties
Trust—another REIT.
On December 31, 1997, 50 facilities were in the hands of 19 private owners. CCA owned 16 of those facilities
and Wackenhut owned 5 —that is, 32% and 10% respectively. On July 31, 1999, 13 private entities owned 55
facilities. Of the facilities owned by private organizations as of July 31, 1999, Prison Realty Trust owned 27
and Correctional Properties Trust owned 8. That is 49% and 15% respectively. Not only has there been a
sharp trend of ownership consolidation, but Prison Realty Trust seems to have created this trend almost singlehandedly.

Table 4
Number of Privately Operated Facilities, by Ownership on July 31, 1999
Private Owners

Facilities

Prison Realty Trust

27

Correctional Properties Trust

8

Cornell Corrections, Inc.

3

Corrections Services Corporation

4

Management and Training Corporation

4

Civigenics Incorporated/Fenton Securities

1

Marantha Production Company, LLC

1

Industrial Development Authority of Brunswick Co.

1

Delta Correctional Authority

1

Louisiana Corrections Facility Corporation

2

Mooreland Corporation

1

Wilkinson County Industrial Development Authority

1

Hardeman County Correctional Facility Corporation

1

Subtotal Private Owners

55

39
For example, the Industrial Development Authority of Brunswick County owns Lawrenceville Correctional Center on behalf of
Brunswick County.

107

Table 4
Number of Privately Operated Facilities, by Ownership on July 31, 1999
Private Owners

Facilities

Government Owners
Arkansas

2

Crystal City, OK

1

Bexar County, Texas

1

Brownfield, TX

1

Eden, TX

1

Florida

5

Hinton, Oklahoma

1

Mississippi

2

Marion County, IN

1

Ohio

1

Puerto Rico

4

Tennessee

1

Texas

15

Utah

1

Federal Bureau of Prisons

2

Subtotal Government Owners

39

Total

94

Source: Abt Associates Inc. 1999 survey of private facility operators.

The Private Sector’s Experience with Medium and High-Security Prisoners

As discussed above, the private sector got its start outside of the correctional mainstream, in community-based
or less secure facilities. In recent years, however, increasing numbers of facilities are designated as offering
higher levels of security. This section examines the experience of the private sector in managing criminals who
pose high security risks. It also explores the relevance of this experience with respect to managing federal
prisoners.
Prisons differ according to their physical security. Minimum security institutions often lack secure perimeters.
Medium security prisons have secure perimeters—often two fences with a bank of razor wire between them or,
in older facilities, high concrete walls ringed with razor wire and fences. Maximum security prisons typically
have secure perimeters and guard towers, in which armed officers are posted. There are many variations in
these general configurations, and classification of the physical security also depends on the architecture of the
housing units and the procedures that are followed inside the prison.

108

Some private facilities have the physical characteristics to meet ACA standards for medium and higher security
facility ratings. As shown in Table 5, the distribution of private facilities categorized by physical security are
highly concentrated in the medium and minimum categories. Each category holds 47% of the private, secure
facilities that hold federal or state inmates among these jurisdictions. The number of maximum/close/high
security facilities rose sharply between December 31, 1997 and July 31, 1999. At the end of 1997, only 1
private, adult, secure facility was categorized as maximum (South Bay Correctional Facility in Florida,
operated by Wackenhut). On July 31, 1999, there were four more, located in Arizona, Colorado, New
Mexico, and Tennessee.

Table 5
Physical Security of Privately Operated Facilities on July 31, 1999

Number

Proportion

5

5%

Medium

44

47%

Minimum

44

47%

Other

1

1%

Total

94

100%

Maximum/Close/High

Notes:

1.

Respondents attributed multiple physical security categories to one facility. To these
facilities we assigned the physical security classification according to the highest
proportion of inmates it held by custody level.

2.

The facility classified as “Other” is a Minimum/Medium facility. The inmate population
is not segregated into individual classification groups.

Source: Abt Associates Inc. 1999 survey of state and federal correctional administrators.

Operating medium and high security prisons is not the same as managing medium and high security prisoners,
however. Almost all correctional agencies classify prisoners according to the risk that they pose to staff, to
other inmates, and to the public. One common convention is to use a three-tiered classification: minimumsecurity, medium-security, and maximum-security (sometimes called “high-security” or “close supervision”).
Many jurisdictions use procedures employing objective criteria rather than subjective assessments to classify
prisoners.
The Abt Associates survey of correctional agencies asked respondents to report the numbers of prisoners in
each of the privately operated facilities under contract with that agency, by the prisoners’ security
classifications. Forty-eight percent of all prisoners held in privately operated prisons under contract with these
governments on July 31, 1999 were classified as medium-security; 4 percent were maximum-security, and 46
percent were minimum/low security (Table 6). Compared to all prisoners held by state and federal prisons

109

operated by public employees, the private sector has a disproportionate number of minimum security prisoners
and few maximum security ones. On June 30, 1995 (the most recent data available), 20 percent of all prisoners
housed in all state and federal prisons were classified as maximum-security, 39 percent medium-security, and
33 percent minimum security.40

Table 6
Classification of Prisoners’ Custody Levels in Confinement Facilities

Privately-Operated (1999)

All State and Federal (1995)

2,772 (4%)

201,996 (20%)

Medium

33,088 (48%)

404,256 (39%)

Minimum

32,117 (46%)

337,779 (33%)

Not Classified

740 (1%)

39,302 (4%)

Other

471 (1%)

Maximum/Close/High

Total

69,188

992,333

Notes:

The Abt Associates Inc. survey counted prisoners in custody in privately operated state and federal correctional agencies on July 31,
1999.
The BJS census counted prisoners in custody on June 30, 1995 and includes unsentenced prisoners. Numbers do not sum to total
shown here; data computed from that reported as shown in BJS Census. The BJS census includes all prisoners in custody in
confinement facilities (i.e., not community-based) in state and federal correctional agencies. These include a small number of
privately-managed facilities.

Sources:

Abt Associates Inc. survey of state and federal correctional administrators; and Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995 Census of State and
Federal Correctional Facilities (1997), Table 13.

To further characterize private facilities’ experience with more dangerous prisoners, surveyed correctional
administrators were also asked if they send violent offenders to the privately operated facilities with which they
contract. Administrators replied that this was done in 63 of the 91 total contracts that were active on
December 31, 1997. They did not report the number or security classification of the violent offenders actually
placed in private facilities.
The private sector’s experience with higher risk prisoners is not fully described in Table 6, however, for several
reasons. First, classification procedures vary from one jurisdiction to another, and a prisoner classified as
“medium security” in one may be classified as minimum in another. (Indeed, some respondents to the Abt
Associates survey had difficulty conforming to our requested categories of minimum, medium, and high
security.) Second, prisoner classifications are not static. Rather, each prisoner’s security rating may change

40

Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995 Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities (1997).

110

throughout his institutional career, depending upon his behavior, among other things. That is, prisoners may be
classified as medium security, for example, but may be housed in lower security facilities by virtue of their
sustained good behavior. Indeed, it is not uncommon for maximum security prisoners to be placed in lower
security institutions and then subsequently be reclassified to medium security (or they may simply keep their
initial designation). Prisoners classified as medium-security, therefore, may include persons who pose
substantial risk as well as those seen as posing relatively little risk. Some respondents reported that the private
facilities were used to house “better” inmates, although others reported that the most troublesome prisoners
were transferred to private facilities. It is difficult to know, therefore, whether the medium-security prisoners
held in private facilities were equivalent, as a whole, to the populations of medium-security prisoners in the
same jurisdiction’s government facilities.

111

112

Appendix 2
List of Private Prisons Holding Sentenced Adult Inmates, by
Contracting State, as Identified on July 31, 1999*

*Several private prisons held inmates from multiple jurisdictions
and appear the corresponding number of times in this list.

113

Contract State
AK

Facility Name
Central Arizona Detention Center

Location State
AZ

Contractor
CCA

Maximum
311

Medium
189

Low
0

Minimum
214

NoClass
3

Other
0

Total Inmates
717

AR

Scott Grimes Correctional Center

AR

WCC

7

358

226

0

0

0

591

AR

Ronald McPhearson Correctional Center

AR

WCC

109

117

374

0

0

0

600

AZ

Marana Community Treatment Facility

AZ

MTC

0

0

0

450

0

0

450

AZ

Arizona State Prison - Phoenix, West

AZ

CSC

0

0

0

400

0

0

400

AZ

Florence DWI Prison

AZ

CSC

0

0

0

600

0

0

600

BOP

Eloy Detention Center

AZ

CCA

0

2

756

6

684

0

1,448

BOP

Taft Correctional Institution

CA

WCC

0

38

620

644

0

0

1,302

BOP

Big Spring Correctional Facility

TX

CCI

0

0

2,059

0

0

0

2,059

BOP

Eden Detention Center

TX

CCA

0

0

1,306

0

0

0

1,306

CA

Baker Community Correctional Facility

CA

CCI

0

0

125

125

0

0

250

CA

Leo Chesney Community Correctional Facility

CA

CCI

0

0

98

98

0

0

196

CA

Mesa Verde Community Correctional Facility

CA

API

0

0

175

176

0

0

351

CA

Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility

CA

MTC

0

0

205

205

0

0

410

CA

McFarland Community Correctional Facility

CA

WCC

0

0

100

100

0

0

200

CA

Central Valley Modified Community Corr. Facility

CA

WCC

0

0

262

262

0

0

524

CA

Golden State Modified Community Corr. Facility

CA

WCC

0

0

269

270

0

0

539

CA

Desert View Modified Community Corr. Facility

CA

WCC

0

0

266

266

0

0

532

CA

Victor Valley Modified Community Corr. Facility

CA

MPC

0

0

256

256

0

0

512

CO

Park County Detention Center

CO

CGI

48

0

0

0

35

0

83

CO

Bent County Correctional Facility

CO

CCA

14

369

0

82

0

0

465

CO

Huerfano County Correctional Facility

CO

CCA

15

430

209

115

0

0

769

CO

Kit Carson Correctional Facility

CO

CCA

32

425

229

72

0

0

758

CO

Crowley County Correctional Facility

CO

CSC

43

268

157

78

0

0

546

DC

North East Ohio Correctional Center

OH

CCA

0

666

0

666

0

0

1,332

DC

Torrance County Detention Facility

NM

CCA

88

43

4

0

0

0

135

DC

Central Arizona Detention Center

AZ

CCA

0

129

0

0

0

0

129

FLP

Gadsden Correctional Facility

FL

CCA

0

161

0

630

0

0

791

FLP

South Bay Correctional Facility

FL

WCC

917

220

0

74

3

0

1,214

FLP

Bay Correctional Facility

FL

CCA

0

526

0

165

0

0

691

FLP

Moore Haven Correctional Center

FL

WCC

0

451

0

251

0

0

702

FLP

Lake City Correctional Facility

FL

CCA

52

167

0

120

0

0

339

GA

Coffee County Prison

GA

CCA

0

649

0

338

0

13

1,000

GA

Wheeler County Prison

GA

CCA

0

618

0

363

0

19

1,000

GA

Charlton County Prison

GA

CCI

0

629

0

349

0

22

1,000

HI

West Tennessee Detention Facility

TN

CCA

67

0

0

0

0

0

67

HI

Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility

OK

CSC

0

86

0

0

0

0

86

HI

Diamond Back Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

372

0

0

0

0

372

Contract State
HI

Facility Name
Prairie Correctional Facility

ID

Cibola County Correctional Facility

IN

Marion County Jail

IN

Location State
MN

Contractor
CCA

Maximum
0

Medium
658

Low
0

Minimum
0

NoClass
0

Other
0

Total Inmates
658

NM

CCA

IN

CCA

0

120

0

130

0

0

250

0

397

0

0

0

0

Diamondback Correctional Facility

OK

397

CCA

0

493

0

0

0

0

KY

Lee Adjustment Center

493

KY

CCA

0

208

0

274

0

0

KY

482

Otter Creek Correctional Center

KY

CCA

0

0

0

535

0

0

535

KY

Marion Adjustment Center

KY

CCA

0

0

0

561

0

0

561

LA

Allen Correctional Center

LA

WCC

0

1,547

0

0

0

0

1,547
1,544

LA

Winn Correctional Center

LA

CCA

0

1,544

0

0

0

0

MN

Prairie Correctional Facility

MN

CCA

0

50

0

0

0

0

50

MS

Delta Correctional Facility

MS

CCA

0

989

0

0

0

0

989

MS

Wilkinson County Correctional Facility

MS

CCA

450

424

0

24

0

0

898

MS

Marshall County Correctional Facility

MS

WCC

0

990

0

0

0

0

990

MS

East Mississippi Correctional Facility

MS

WCC

66

407

0

26

0

0

499

MT

West Tennessee Detention Facility

TN

CCA

43

41

0

42

0

6

132

MT

Central Arizona Detention Center

AZ

CCA

19

59

0

34

0

0

112

MT

McKinley Adult Detention Center

NM

CSC

0

72

0

0

0

0

72

MT

Crossroads Correctional Center

MT

CCA

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

NC

Pamlico Correctional Institution

NC

CCA

0

526

0

0

0

0

526

NC

Mountain View Correctional Institution

NC

CCA

0

527

0

0

0

0

527

NM

New Mexico's Women's Correctional Facility

NM

CCA

30

230

0

44

15

0

319

NM

Lea County Correctional Facility

NM

WCC

16

1,038

0

10

0

0

1,064

NM

Guadalupe County Correctional Facility

NM

WCC

0

335

0

0

0

0

335

NV

Southern Nevada Womens Correctional Facility

NV

CCA

172

172

0

146

0

0

490

OH

North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility

OH

CGI

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

OH

Lake Erie Correctional Institution

OH

MTC

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

OK

Great Plains Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

811

0

1

0

0

812

OK

Davis Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

971

0

0

0

0

971

OK

Cimarron Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

961

0

0

0

0

961

OK

Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility

OK

MCS

0

599

0

0

0

0

599

OK

Lawton Correctional Facility

OK

WCC

0

1,840

0

0

0

0

1,840

OK

Diamondback Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

112

0

0

0

0

112

PR

Ponce Prison - Adults

PR

CCA

0

897

0

25

0

0

922

PR

Guayama Correctional Center

PR

CCA

42

895

0

32

0

0

969

PR

Bayamon Correctional Facility

PR

WCC

28

305

0

74

0

0

407

PR

Ponce Prison - Young Adults

PR

CCA

25

169

0

47

0

0

241

TN

South Central Correctional Center

TN

CCA

75

442

0

967

0

0

1,484

TN

Hardeman County Correctional Center

TN

CCA

19

632

0

1,300

0

0

1,951

Contract State
TX

Facility Name
Diboll Correctional Center

TX

B.M. Moore Correctional Center

TX

Kyle Pre-Release Center

TX

Location State
TX

Contractor
MTC

Maximum
0

Medium
0

Low
0

Minimum
518

NoClass
0

Other
0

Total Inmates
518

TX

MTC

TX

WCC

0

0

0

500

0

0

500

0

0

0

520

0

0

Venus Pre-Release Center

TX

520

CCA

0

0

0

1,000

0

0

1,000

TX

Central Texas Parole Violator Facility

TX

South Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility

TX

WCC

0

0

0

0

0

166

166

TX

CSC

0

0

0

444

0

0

TX

444

Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility

TX

CCA

0

0

0

2,085

0

0

2,085

TX

Lockhart Work Program Facility

TX

WCC

0

0

0

497

0

0

497

TX

Brownfield Intermediate Sanction Facility

TX

CCA

0

0

0

0

0

245

245

TX

North Texas Intermediate Sanction Facility

TX

WCC

0

0

0

402

0

0

402

TX

Bridgeport Pre-Parole Transfer Facility

TX

CCA

0

0

0

189

0

0

189

TX

Lindsey State Jail

TX

WCC

0

137

0

871

0

0

1,008

TX

Bartlett State Jail

TX

CCA

0

414

89

425

0

0

928

TX

Bradshaw State Jail

TX

MTC

29

89

90

1,475

0

0

1,683

TX

Travis County Community Center

TX

WCC

0

435

0

558

0

0

993

TX

Lockhart Renaissance Facility

TX

WCC

0

0

0

496

0

0

496

TX

Cleveland Correctional Center

TX

WCC

0

0

0

520

0

0

520

TX

Bridgeport Correctional Center

TX

WCC

0

0

0

520

0

0

520

TX

Dawson State Jail

TX

MTC

0

1,169

0

246

0

0

1,415
993

TX

Willacy State Jail

TX

WCC

0

0

228

765

0

0

UT

Promontory Correctional Center

UT

MTC

0

0

0

322

0

0

322

VA

Lawrenceville Correctional Center

VA

CCA

0

1,535

0

0

0

0

1,535

WA

Crowley County Correctional Facility

CO

DM

0

250

0

0

0

0

250

WI

North Fork Correctional Facility

OK

CCA

0

1,057

0

0

0

0

1,057

WI

Whiteville Correctional Facility

TN

CCA

0

1,500

0

0

0

0

1,500

WY

Crowley County Correctional Facility

CO

CSC

38

108

0

1

0

0

147

WY

Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility

OK

CSC

17

20

0

13

0

0

50

33,088

8,103

24,014

740

471

69,188

Total Inmates

2,772

Appendix 3
Instrument used for the 1999 Survey of Private
Sector Training and Custody Practices

117

1999 Survey of Private Sector Training
and Custody Practices
(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)
Survey Instructions
This survey was requested of the U.S. Department of Justice by Congress. It contains questions about
(1) the training provided to custody staff, (2) custody practices, and (3) general characteristics of the
staff and inmates at this private facility. We ask that you complete it and mail it to us by November
17, 1999.
Please note the following:
!

Please complete one survey form for the privately operated facility referenced above.

!

In some cases, the questions ask for comparable information about similar facilities operated by
your agency. Comparable facilities are those of the same security level, which hold the same
security level of prisoners. The questions about facilities operated by your agency are included
to provide a context for your contracting practices.

!

If you are not able to answer a question but know who can, your effort to obtain the
information from that person would be greatly appreciated.

!

Please complete and mail these surveys via overnight mail, if possible, to Cassie Bacani by
November 17th.
Cassie Bacani
Abt Associates Inc.
55 Wheeler Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel. (617) 349-2581
Fax (617) 349-2610

Thank you for responding to this survey. This information will be of great value to our ongoing
efforts to assess the quality and effectiveness of private correctional facilities for Congress. If you
have any problems responding to the questions in this survey, you are encouraged to contact Cassie
Bacani at Abt Associates between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (eastern time).

Training. This section asks for information about initial training and periodic refresher training.
Initial training refers to the type of training provided by correctional agencies to new custody staff
before or shortly after they start work at a correctional facility. Generally speaking, initial training
occurs once during the career of a custody staff member. Periodic refresher training is provided to
custody staff on a repeated basis, typically (although not necessarily) on a yearly basis. Custody staff
refers to those staff, both supervisory and not, who primarily protect the safety of the public, staff, and
inmates. Please use these distinctions when answering the following questions.

1.

Which of the following requirements must be satisfied by custody staff for employment
at this private facility? (circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

2.

None
NCIC (National Crime Information Center)
Local/state police check
Credit Report
Drug Test
Physical Examination
Background Interview (including self-report of illegal and other undesirable acts)
Background Investigation (verification of applicant provided material)
Psychological/Personality Suitability Test
Other, please specify
Don’t know

Which of the following requirements must be satisfied by custody staff employed by
your agency? (circle all that apply)
1.
2
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

None
NCIC (National Crime Information Center)
Local/agency police check
Credit Report
Drug Test
Physical Examination
Background Interview (self-report of illegal and other undesirable acts)
Background Investigation (verification of applicant provided material)
Psychological/Personality Suitability Test
Other, please specify

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

1

3.

Are custody staff at this private facility legally authorized to:
Clearly
Yes

Clearly
No

Unclear
Authority

Don’t
Know

use deadly force?
pursue an escaping inmate off
of prison property?
carry a weapon while at work?
carry a weapon on escorted trips?
search visitors?
4.

Do custody staff at this private facility have access to firearms?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
No
Don’t know

Initial Training: Firearms
5. Are custody staff at this private facility required to undergo initial training (i.e., before or
soon after employment) for firearm certification?
1.
2.
3.

Yes (Continue with Question 5a.)
No (Skip to Question 5b.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 5b.)

5a.

Is this training a contract requirement?
1. Yes
2. No

5b.

Does your public agency require initial training for firearm certification for the
public agency’s custody staff?
1. Yes (If Yes and Question 5 is Yes, then answer Question 5c.)
2. No (Skip to Question 5d.)

5c.

If both the public agency and the private contractor for this facility provide initial
firearm certification training, how do these standards compare?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

They are the same because the contract requires the same standards that
apply to the public correctional agency.
They are the same because the private contractor chose to adopt public
agency standards.
The standards are different.
Don’t know
The above choices are inadequate. Please explain in your terms.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

2

5d.

Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides the initial training for firearm certification for
custody staff employed by the private contractor? (circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

5e.

A publicly operated training facility that also trains public-sector custody staff.
The same contractor that your public agency uses to train public-sector custody
staff.
A different private contractor chosen by the private prison contractor.
Private contractor’s staff.
Other, please specify
No one provides training of this type at this facility.
Don’t know

How many hours of initial training for firearm certification are required of custody staff
employed by
the private contractor?
the public agency?

Initial Training: Custody
6. Are custody staff at this private facility required to undergo initial training (i.e., before
or soon after employment) for custody practices other than firearm training?
1.
2.
3.

Yes (Continue to Question 6a.)
No (Skip to Question 6b.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 6b.)

6a.

Is this training a contract requirement?
1. Yes
2. No

6b.

Does the public agency require initial training for custody practices other than
firearm training for the public agency’s custody staff?
1. Yes (If Yes and Question 6 is Yes, then answer Question 6c.)
2. No (Skip to Question 6d.)

6c.

If both the public agency and the private contractor provide initial training for
custody practices other than firearm training, how do these standards compare?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

They are the same because the contract requires the same standards that
apply to the public correctional agency.
They are the same because the private contractor chose to adopt public
agency standards.
The standards are different.
Don’t know
The above choices are inadequate. Please explain in your terms.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

3

6d.

Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides the initial training for custody training other
than firearm training for custody staff employed by the private contractor?
(circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

6e.

A publicly operated training facility that also trains public-sector custody staff.
The same contractor that the public agency uses to train public-sector custody
staff.
A different private contractor chosen by the private prison contractor.
Private contractor’s staff.
Other, please specify
No one provides training of this type at this facility.
Don’t know

How many hours of initial custody training other than firearm training are required
of custody staff employed by
the private contractor?
the public agency?

Refresher Training: Firearms
7. Are custody staff at this private facility required to undergo periodic refresher training
for firearm certification?
1.
2.
3.

Yes (Continue with Question 7a.)
No (Skip to Question 7b.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 7b.)

7a.

Is this training a contract requirement?
1. Yes
2. No

7b.

Does the public agency require periodic refresher training for firearm certification
for the public agency’s custody staff?
1. Yes (If Yes and Question 7 is Yes, then answer Question 7c.)
2. No (Skip to Question 7d.)

7c.

If both the public agency and the contractor for the private facility provide periodic training
for firearm certification, how do these standards compare?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

They are the same because the contract requires the same standards that apply
to the public correctional agency.
They are the same because the private contractor chose to adopt public agency
standards.
The standards are different.
Don’t know
The above choices are inadequate. Please explain in your terms.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

4

7d.

Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides the periodic refresher training for firearm
certification for custody staff employed by the private contractor? (circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

7e.

A publicly operated training facility that also trains public-sector custody staff.
The same contractor that the public agency uses to train public-sector custody staff.
A different private contractor chosen by the private prison contractor.
Private contractor’s staff.
Other, please specify
No one provides training of this type at this facility.
Don’t know

How many hours of periodic refresher training for firearm certification are required
of custody staff employed by
the private contractor?
the public agency?

Refresher Training: Custody
8. Are custody staff at this private facility required to undergo periodic refresher training for
custody practices other than firearm training?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
(Continue to Question 8a.)
No
(Skip to Question 8b.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 8b.)

8a.

Is this training a contract requirement?
1. Yes
2. No

8b.

Does the public agency require periodic refresher training for custody practices
other than firearm training, for the public agency’s custody staff?
1. Yes (If Yes and Question 8 is Yes, then answer Question 8c.)
2. No (Skip to Question 8d.)

8c.

If both the public agency and the contractor for the private facility provide periodic
refresher training for custody practices other than firearm training, how do these
standards compare?
1. They are the same because the contract requires the same standards that apply
to the public correctional agency.
2. They are the same because the private contractor chose to adopt public agency
standards.
3. The standards are different.
4. Don’t know
5. The above choices are inadequate. Please explain in your terms.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

5

8d.

Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides the periodic refresher training for custody
practices other than firearm training for custody staff employed by the private contractor?
(circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

8e.

A public agency-operated training facility that also trains public-sector custody staff.
The same contractor that the public agency uses to train public-sector custody staff.
A different private contractor chosen by the private prison contractor.
Private contractor’s staff.
Other, please specify
No one provides training of this type at this facility.
Don’t know

How many hours of periodic custody training, excluding initial custody training, are required
of custody staff employed by
the private contractor?
the public agency?

Specialty Training: Management of Inmate Gangs
9. Are custody staff at this private facility required to undergo specialty training for managing inmates
affiliated with gangs?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
(Continue to Question 9a.)
No
(Skip to Question 9b.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 9b.)

9a.

Is this training a contract requirement?
1. Yes
2. No

9b.

Does the public agency require specialty training for managing inmates affiliated
with gangs for the public agency’s custody staff?
1. Yes (If Yes and Question 9 is Yes, then answer Question 9c.)
2. No (Skip to Question 9d.)

9c.

If both the public agency and the contractor for the private facility provide specialty
training for managing inmates affiliated with gangs, how do these standards compare?
1. They are the same because the contract requires the same standards that apply to the
public correctional agency.
2. They are the same because the private contractor chose to adopt public agency standards.
3. The standards are different.
4. Don’t know
5. The above choices are inadequate. Please explain in your terms.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

6

9d.

Even if not required, who, if anyone, provides the specialty training for managing inmates
affiliated with gangs for custody staff employed by the private contractor?
(circle all that apply)
1. A public agency-operated training facility that also trains public-sector
custody staff.
2. The same contractor that the public agency uses to train public-sector
custody staff.
3. A different private contractor chosen by the private prison contractor.
4. Private contractor’s staff.
5. Other, please specify
6. No one provides training of this type at this facility.
7. Don’t know

9e.

How many hours of specialty training for managing inmates affiliated with gangs
are required of custody staff employed by
the private contractor?
the public agency?

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

7

Custody Practices. This section asks for information about policies governing custody practices
at this private facility and the oversight process involving custody practices.

1.

What standards are used to govern the custody practices at this private facility?
(circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.

2.

Which of the following best characterizes how custody policy is established?
1.
2.
3.
4.

3.

Public agency
Private vendor
Public agency and private vendor are both responsible.
Ongoing monitoring is not required.

Who is primarily responsible for intensive, formal reviews to insure that the ongoing monitoring
of custody practice is functioning properly?
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.

The public agency requires the contractor to adopt the policy of the agency.
The public agency requires the contractor to adopt the policy of the agency,
with some small allowance for changes.
The public agency requires the contractor to adopt only certain portions of the
policy of the agency and the contractor develops the rest.
Private vendor develops its own policy but must meet standards set by the agency.

Who is responsible for routine monitoring of actual custody practices to determine if
standards are being followed?
1.
2.
3.
4.

4.

ACA standards
Standards established for your public agency
Other, please specify

Public agency
Private vendor
Public agency and private vendor are both responsible.
Intensive, formal review is not required.

How would you rate the overall level of security technology used at this private facility in
comparison to the most comparable institution operated by your agency?
1.
2.
3.

About the same
More advanced
Inferior

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

8

General Characteristics. This section asks for information about the general features of the
physical security at this private facility, the number and types of inmates housed at this private
facility, and the types of misconduct at this private facility.
Some questions ask for data on July 31, 1999. If these data are unavailable, then use data
from the most recent month for which data are available.

1.

How many inmates under the jurisdiction of your agency were housed at this private
facility on July 31, 1999? __________

2.

Was the number of inmates at this private facility constant over the past year, or did the
number vary substantially?
1.
2.
3.
4.

Number was fairly constant
Number increased over the course of the year
Number decreased over the course of the year
Number fluctuated greatly over the course of the year

3.

How many staff of all kinds were employed at this private facility on July 31, 1999?
__________

4.

How many custody staff were employed at this private facility on July 31, 1999?
__________

5.

Which of the following designations best describes the physical security of this private
facility?
1.
2.
3.

6.

low/minimum physical security
medium physical security
maximum physical security

On July 31, 1999, what percentage of the inmates from your jurisdiction in this private
facility were classified as
low/minimum security?
medium security?
maximum/close/high security?
other?
not classified

7.

What is the sex of the inmates housed by your agency at this private facility?
1.
2.
3.

Male
Female
Both male and female (what percentage are male? ______)

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

9

8.

Does the contract with the public agency require that the private contractor conduct random
urinalyses of inmates for drugs?
1.
Yes
2.
No

9.

Does the private contractor at this private facility conduct random urinalyses of
inmates for drugs?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
No (Skip to Question 10.)
Don’t know

1.

If the contractor does test at this privately operated facility, what percentage of the
random tests in the most recent reporting period returned positive results for an
unauthorized substance? ____________

2.

Was this higher or lower, on average, than what was reported in earlier periods?
1. Higher
2. Lower
3. Don’t know

10. Does your agency conduct random urinalyses of inmates at comparable publicly
operated correctional facilities?
a.
Yes
b.
No (Skip to Question 12.)
11. What percentage of the random tests in the most comparable publicly operated facility on
July 31, 1999 returned positive results for an unauthorized substance? ___________
12. How many inside escapes occurred (between August 1, 1998 and July 31, 1999) from this
private facility in which an inmate under the jurisdiction of your agency was able to exit
from a secure perimeter? __________
13. How does the rate of inside escapes from this private facility compare to rates at
similar prisons operated by your agency having comparable security levels over this
same time period?
1.
2.
3.

The rate of inside escapes at this private facility was higher.
The rate of inside escapes at this private facility was lower.
The rate of inside escapes were about the same at this private facility and the public
prisons.

14. How many homicides occurred at this private facility involving inmates under the
jurisdiction of your agency between August 1, 1998 and July 31, 1999? ______

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

10

15. How does the rate of homicides at this private facility compare to rates at similar prisons
operated by your agency?
1.
2.
3.

The rate of homicides at this private facility was higher.
The rate of homicides at this private facility was lower.
The rate of homicides were about the same at this private facility and
the public prisons.

16. How many serious assaults, excluding homicides, occurred at this private facility
involving inmates under the jurisdiction of your agency between August 1, 1998
and July 31, 1999?
__________
17. How does the rate of assaults, excluding homicide, at this private facility compare to rates at
similar prisons operated by your agency?
1.
2.
3.

The rate of assaults at this private facility was higher.
The rate of assaults at this private facility was lower.
The rate of assaults were about the same at this private facility and the comparable
public prisons.

18. How many custody staff at this private facility were dismissed or resigned during the 6
months ending July 31, 1999?
______ Resigned
______ Dismissed
______ Total (please provide if you do not know one or both of the
components above)
19. Did the number of custody staff who were dismissed or quit during the past
6 months create staffing shortages at this private facility?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
No
Don’t know

20. How does the turnover of custody staff created by resignations and dismissals at this
private facility in the past 6 months compare to turnover at the most comparable institution
in your agency over the same time period?
1.
2.
3.

The turnover was higher at this private facility.
The turnover was lower at this private facility.
The turnover was about the same at this private facility.

21. Does this facility have difficulties in filling vacant positions?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
No
Don’t know

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

11

22. Does the contract/agreement with this private facility provide for a time period within which
the private contractor must fill a vacant position? If yes, what is that time period?
1.
Yes
2.
No
23. Does the public agency have a systematic intelligence system to track gang membership and
other security threat groups?
1.
2.
3.

Yes (Go to Question 23a.)
No (Skip to Question 24.)
Don’t know (Skip to Question 24.)

If yes,
1.

Does the private contractor have access to the public agency’s intelligence data on
gang membership and security threat groups?
1. Yes
2. No
3. Don’t know

2.

Does the private contractor provide data to the public agency’s intelligence system?
1. Yes
2. No
3. Don’t know

24. Are there limits on the type of inmates designated to this private facility in comparison to
similar public prisons operated by your agency? (circle all that apply)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

No
Yes, this private facility does not receive high publicity cases.
Yes, this private facility does not receive inmates with special medical needs.
Yes, this private facility does not receive inmates who are gang members.
Yes, other types of inmates are excluded for reasons other than those given.

25. Are the visiting policies at this private facility the same as comparable public prisons
operated by your agency?
1.
2.
3.

Yes
No, the policies at this private facility are more lenient in providing visitor access.
No, the policies at this private facility are more stringent in providing visitor access.

(Name of Private Prison Surveyed)

12