The Prison Payoff
The Role of Politics and Private Prisons
in the Incarceration Boom

By Brigette Sarabi & Edwin Bender

R E S E A R C H

A D V I S O R Y

Judy Greene
Justice Strategies

T E A M

Len Norwitz
Tarso Luís Ramos
Western States Center

Marc Mauer
Jenni Gainsborough
The Sentencing Project

Mary Cotter
Center on Crime,
Communities & Culture

Paul Wright
Prison Legal News

Stephen Nathan
Prison Privatization
Report International

Ryan Pintado-Vertner
Data Center

Copyright© November, 2000
Western States Center & Western Prison Project.

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
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Acknowledgements
This report could not have been completed without the assistance of
many individuals. We would like to thank the many activists who
provided information and advice, including all the members of the
research advisory team; Steve Erickson, Rob Jensen and Winston Weeks
of the Citizens Education Project; Si Kahn and Kevin Pranis of the
Public Safety & Justice Campaign; Tracy Huling; Ken Kopczynski of the
Florida PBA; the staff of the Data Center; and Judy Greene, who went
above and beyond the call of duty in her role as research advisor. Many
thanks to Jeff Malachowsky and the staff of the National Institute on
Money in State Politics, as well as the staff of the Western States Center,
for their work on behalf of this project. Holly Pruett did a wonderful job
editing the manuscript. And Sue Greer once again brought her design
expertise to a challenging project. Special thanks to Matt Wuerker for the
illustration on this page and Laure Heinz for the cover illustration.

To all of these people, we say thank you.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................................ii
Methodology............................................................................................................................................................iv
Preface ......................................................................................................................................................................v
Introduction/Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................................vii
Section I: Private Prisons: Moving Backwards in Time ..................................................................................................1
Convict Leasing: A Reconstruction Legacy
The Reagan Revolution
Higher Profits Require More Prisoners
Section II: The Legislative Pipeline .............................................................................................................................3
The American Legislative Exchange Council
The Corporate Connection
ALEC’s Role in Criminal Justice
Pennsylvania: An ALEC Success Story
The Arizona Example
The Campaign Connection
Section III: Courting Political Influence........................................................................................................................7
Bullish on Prisons
Lobbying
Campaign Contributions
The Players
Contribution Strategies
Targeting by State
Targeting by Political Office
Section IV: Westward Ho! Private Prison Corporations Stake Out New Territory .........................................................11
California: Getting Fat Off the Scraps
Corporations Team Up to Push Privatization in Alaska
Private Prisons Move Into the Northwest
Hot Potato in Idaho
Moving Into Montanna
Utah: Activists Turn Back New Private Prison
Section V: Resisting Prison Privatization.....................................................................................................................21
Overview
A Case Study in Organizing Opposition to Prison Privatization
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................................................25
Resources
Appendices
Appendix A: Contribution Strategies by Corporation ..................................................................................................29
Appendix B: Top Recipients of Private Prison Industry Contributions, 1998......................................................................31
Appendix C: Private Prison Industry Campaign Contributions by Legislative Office, 1998.................................................33
Appendix D: CCA Campaign Contributions to Idaho Elected Officials, 1998................................................................35
Appendix E: Political Contribution Data Source ...........................................................................................................37
Endnotes ................................................................................................................................................................39

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Methodology
To conduct this study of the role of politics in the prison privatization push, the Western
Prison Project and Western States Center contracted with the National Institute on Money
in State Politics. Based in Helena, Montana, this nonprofit, non-partisan research service
tracks campaign contribution data from the comprehensive databases they maintain. For
this report, they surveyed forty-two states that had some or all 1998 campaign contribution
data available as of May, 2000. A complete listing of the states surveyed and review of the
data sources available is listed in the appendices. The Institute’s campaign contribution
databases are updated regularly, and can be viewed at www.followthemoney.org. The
Institute also surveyed press archives for articles relevant to the growth of the private
prisons; public-policy web sites for evidence linking private prison corporations to specific
legislation or a legislative agenda; and corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission for background on the corporations, their executives and staff, and future
plans.
After the Institute identified contribution patterns related to prison privatization, the data
was presented to a national research advisory panel recruited by the Western Prison Project.
The advisory panel’s analysis, along with additional research, shaped the resulting report.
This study focuses on the relationship between campaign contributions and state legislative
action. Federal elections and legislation, as well as corporate backing of criminal justice
ballot initiatives, are arenas that merit further investigation.

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Preface
The incarceration boom in the U.S. and increasing trend towards prison privatization are
matters that should be of grave public concern. Aside from the ethical issues involved, the
massive transfer of public resources into corrections and away from other needs such as
education, infrastructure and health care is bad public policy.
We are locking up more and more Americans — most of them people of color, poor, and
increasingly young. We are cutting the very programs that have been proven, time and
again, to deter crime. Even with the harsh sentencing legislation that passed in waves
throughout the country during the 1990s, the vast majority of today’s prisoners will be
released. They will return to the community without the benefit of rehabilitative or
transition services that could bolster their chances for success.
As a nation, we must ask ourselves what kind of a future we are creating for our
communities. What kind of future are we creating for our youth? On the one hand, we
increasingly subject children to long sentences in adult prisons; on the other hand,
corrections officials in many states, desperate for prison guards, are targeting recruitment to
high school students3. Is this the future we want for our youth: to be either the jailer or the
jailed?
Who will determine the answers to these questions? Private prison corporations and the
politicians they sponsor?
This report argues for an alternative. What’s needed is increased awareness among tax payers
and community members about the human, moral and economic cost of the incarceration
boom, and a resulting demand that the profits be taken out of the prison industry.
Our primary objectives in producing this report are:
• to raise public awareness about the influence of private prison corporations
on the incarceration boom;
• to document the links between corporate interests and political interests that
have created a huge shift in public resources to prison construction and
maintenance;
• and to provide activists with information and ideas that can further work
underway throughout the country to turn the tide of increasing incarceration
and create effective, community-based alternatives.

Brigette Sarabi
Director
Western Prison Project

Dan Petegorsky
Executive Director
Western States Center

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Introduction/ Executive Summary
The U.S. is currently engaged in the largest prison build-up in recorded history. Since 1980 we have more
than quadrupled our prison population. Nearly one in every 150 Americans is incarcerated today, at an
annual cost of $40 billion. During the same time period, crime rates have remained steady or decreased.
If crime is not on the rise, why are incarceration rates skyrocketing? It is well documented that the media
sensationalize crime and the public’s fear of crime (which is out of proportion with actual victimization
rates4 ). This propensity feeds and is fed by political opportunism that exploits the public’s fear for the sake
of political gain. Ever since the infamous Willie Horton ads were aired to discredit Democratic Presidential
candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, politicians from both major parties have had a morbid fear of
appearing soft on crime.
But beyond the fears fanned by the media and self-interested politicians, what else is driving the U.S.
incarceration boom?
It is our conclusion that a major factor in the current incarceration boom is the influence of private prison
corporations with vested financial interests in increasing rates of imprisonment. Between 1987 and 1996,
the number of inmates in private prisons soared more than 2000 percent, jumping from 3,122 to 78,000.
By December, 1999, private prison beds in the U.S. numbered over 130,000.
This report documents two of the primary methods used by private prison corporations to wield influence:
political campaign contributions and ideologically-loaded model legislation shaped by the same private
interests who stand to profit from it.
We make no claims of a conspiracy. The reactionary criminal justice policies proposed and passed
throughout the country in the 1990s were decidedly non-partisan; both Republicans and Democrats
positioned themselves as “tougher than the rest” on matters of crime and punishment. And much of the
harsh legislation of the last two decades has been supported by groups, like powerful corrections labor
unions, who otherwise oppose prison privatization.
Nonetheless, private prison companies have deeply insinuated themselves into the political process. This
report illustrates the convergence of factors during the last two decades that have contributed to their rising
influence:
• The ascendancy of conservative politics, which favors privatization of many public responsibilities, including criminal justice;
• The increasingly common practice of exploiting public fears about crime to gain or maintain
political power;
• The concerted efforts of corporate-backed think tanks like the American Legislative
Exchange Council to develop and disseminate pro-privatization legislative models;
• The dependency of elected officials on big-money contributors for their ongoing political
careers; and
• The opportunity for profits to be made off of the criminal justice industry.
This report seeks to provide the information, analysis and resources to help reverse these trends.

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Section I: Private Prisons: Moving Backwards in Time
Maximizing profits off human misery is not a new concept in American criminal justice. The current round
of late-twentieth century prison privatization has its roots in the nineteenth century when privatized
corrections first flourished.

Convict Leasing: a Reconstruction Legacy
The Reconstruction era after the Civil War saw widespread adoption of legislation criminalizing a broad
range of non-violent behaviors to maintain social control over the African American population. Prisons
throughout the south were flooded with recently freed slaves. Faced with rising prison costs, several states
entered into convict leasing agreements with politically-connected private entrepreneurs who contracted for
prison labor and in return provided incarceration services to the state.
These arrangements provided a steady supply of workers to the same plantations that had used slave labor.
There was an important difference, however: while slave-owners had a self-interest in keeping their slaves
alive, under the convict leasing system any such incentive was absent, leading to a privatized prison labor
system that literally worked prisoners to death.
As private enterprise took over more prison systems, corruption became even more rampant.5 According to
an 1867 report for the New York Prison Association on penal methods throughout the U.S., not one
institution in the country considered rehabilitation a priority. Both public and private prison conditions
throughout the country were abominable (the report detailed abusive punishments, crowded cells, horrifying
working conditions, and corrupt and poorly trained guards throughout U.S. prisons).6
By the early 1900s, the conditions in U.S. prisons had become so atrocious that a new movement for penal
reform succeeded in gaining public support. Private prisons were outlawed.

The Reagan Revolution
Private prisons did not reappear on the American stage until the
1980s, when President Reagan led a renewed push for greater
privatization of government services. Since the mid-1980s, a new
breed of private prison operators has surfaced. With the support of
tough-on-crime legislators and conservative think tanks, private
prison corporations have carved a multi-million dollar niche in the
government services market, and codified their place in the publicpolicy arena.
A tidal wave of new sentencing legislation (discussed in greater detail
in Section II) has created a ready market. Twenty-eight states have
now authorized the use of private prisons, as of January 2000.
Between 1990 and 1998, the number of private prison beds in the
U.S. grew from 15,000 to over 130,000.7 Only two states (Illinois
and New York) have prohibited the use of private prisons.8

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Higher Profits Require More Prisoners
For private prison corporations, the financial bottom line depends on high incarceration rates. With millions
of dollars invested in prison construction costs, private prison companies work assiduously to minimize any
risks to profits. In their annual reports to stockholders, both Corrections Corporation of America and
Cornell Corrections (which together account for more than 60 percent of the market share) recognize their
reliance on state legislatures and the threat that a lower crime rate or reduced corrections budget poses for
their profits.
CCA’s S.E.C. filings (March 31, 1997) contained this list of Risk Factors: “Short-Term Nature of
Government Contracts, Dependence on Government Appropriations, and Dependence on Government
Agencies for Inmates.” 9
Private prison corporations need influence at the state level because state governments are their primary
clients. Unlike many other corrections issues, where corrections professionals determine the approach, the
key decision-makers on prison privatization issues are the elected legislators and governors who pass
corrections department appropriations and sentencing legislation.
According to the 1998 Congressional study, Private Prisons in the United States, “[Most] contracting for
imprisonment services was not taken at the initiative of the correctional agency, but was instead mandated
by either the legislature or the chief executive of the jurisdiction, typically the governor.” 10
As a result, influencing elected officials at the
state level has become a key business strategy
for private prison corporations.

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Section II: The Legislative Pipeline
The past twenty years have marked a dramatic shift to downright vengeful criminal justice policies. State and
federal legislation has criminalized more and more behaviors, incarcerated offenders for longer stretches of
time, and dismantled most rehabilitative and transition services that could help prisoners successfully reintegrate into society.
On the federal level, the incarceration boom has been promoted by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, the
Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996 and other key legislation. Most of the action, however, has been at the state level,
where a range of harsh criminal justice legislation has resulted in massive increases in the prison population.
Some of this state-level activity was encouraged by legislation at the federal level, such as the 1994 Crime
Act, which provides money for prison construction to states which pass “Truth-in-Sentencing” legislation.
Much of the legislation at the state level was crafted by a single organization, in partnership with private
prison interests.

The American Legislative Exchange Council
Hundreds of similar pieces of criminal justice legislation were
introduced in states throughout the country in the mid1990s. Their origin can be clearly traced to the influence and
work of one conservative organization: the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy
organization that supports conservative legislators. Launched
in 1973 by Paul Weyrich (a Heritage Foundation founder and
major New Right figure), ALEC exemplifies the overlap
between the corporate sector and public policy.
With over 40 percent of state legislators as members, ALEC
represents a formidable force in state capitols across the
country. Of the more than 6,000 state legislators in the
United States, approximately 2,500 are members of ALEC, including scores who hold key leadership
positions.
A chief function of the Council is the development of model legislative proposals that advance conservative
principles like privatization. In 1995-96, ALEC’s model legislation resulted in 1,647 bills, including 365 that
became law (a 22 percent success rate). By 1999, introduction of bills based on ALEC’s model had increased
by 34 percent; of 2,208 ALEC bills, 322 were enacted into law.11

The Corporate Connection
Business foots the bill for much of ALEC’s operating budget and directly shapes its political agenda through
participation in policy task forces. In 1992, 70 percent of ALEC’s $3.7 million budget came from
corporations. By 1998, the organization’s budget had grown to more than $6 million, with 68 percent
coming from corporate donations.

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Prominent among ALEC’s corporate funders are several major stakeholders in prison privatization, including
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut Corrections, and Sodexho Marriott Services, a
major stockholder in CCA. CCA, the largest private prison corporation in the U.S., made the President’s
List for contributions to ALEC’s 1999 States & Nation Policy Summit. (Sodexho Marriott and Wackenhut
also sponsored the conference.)12
Representatives from the corporate sector co-chair the task forces that develop ALEC’s model legislation.
ALEC’s current Criminal Justice Task Force is co-chaired by Brad Wiggins, CCA Director of Business
Development, and Brian Nairin of the National Association of Bail Insurance Companies. Up until April
2000, the Task Force was co-chaired by John Rees, a vice president at CCA.13

ALEC’s Role in Criminal Justice
Tough criminal justice legislation is a specialty of ALEC. In its 1995 Model Legislation Scorecard the
organization claimed, “The busiest Task Force was Criminal Justice, which had 199 bills introduced.” The
report of the Criminal Justice Task Force states:
The Criminal Justice Task Force is dedicated to developing model policies that reduce
both violent and property crimes in our cities and neighborhoods in an efficient, fiscally
conservative manner. ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act and Three Strikes You’re Out Act
have been the most effective bills supported by the Task Force. At least one of these
model bills has been enacted in half of the states in the country. The Task Force
continues to explore cost-effective methods for states to manage their criminal justice
systems.14
The following chart summarizes ALEC’s criminal justice successes.

The Task Force reports that prison privatization is one of the “major issues” it is focusing on at this time.

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Pennsylvania: An ALEC Success Story
A review of criminal justice trends in Pennsylvania over the last decade
provides a case study in ALEC’s influence. In 1994, ALEC made prison
privatization and tough-on-crime legislation a major policy initiative,
illustrated by its Report Card on Crime and Punishment, issued in October.15
Earlier that year, William Barr, former Attorney General in the Bush
administration, unveiled the ALEC agenda at a January 28th media event.
Titled Every Ten Minutes, A Pennsylvanian Falls Victim to a Violent Crime:
Report Card on Crime Provides Ten Legislative Actions to Fighting Crime in
Pennsylvania,16 the event featured Barr, Sen. Steward Greenleaf, minority
chairman of the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jeff
Piccola, Republican chairman of the Pennsylvania House Judiciary
Committee.
The legislative proposals developed by ALEC for this test-run in Pennsylvania
reflect the conservative criminal justice agenda, and were soon to be
introduced in states around the country.
In February 1995, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an ALEC member, called a
special session of the legislature to address crime in the state. Rep. Piccola
introduced eight pieces of legislation in that session, all based on ALEC’s 10point agenda; Sen. Greenleaf introduced twelve. Overall, the nine-month
session saw 30 crime bills approved, many based on ALEC’s models, and
Gov. Ridge released more than $87 million in state funding for construction
of new prisons.17 In fifteen years, Pennsylvania’s corrections budget grew from
$90 million to more than $600 million in 1995, and was expected to top $1
billion by 2000.18 Gov. Ridge was a featured speaker at ALEC’s 26th Annual
Meeting in Nashville in August, 1999.

The Arizona Example
The 1999 Arizona legislative session provides another example of local
application of ALEC’s national agenda, this time with a sharper focus on
privatization. Senate President Brenda Burns, ALEC’s 1999 national
chairwoman, sponsored two bills aimed at privatizing the state’s prisons
system:

ALEC’S TEN LEGISLATIVE
ACTIONS TO FIGHT CRIME
• Keep dangerous defendants
off the streets by allowing
judges to deny bail to
dangerous offenders, and to
end pre-trial release and
require secured bail for
violent and repeat offenders;
• Require minimum sentences
for repeat felons and other
serious offenders;
• Sentence for “actual
conduct” in serious cases
where plea bargains resulted
in a person being convicted
of a lessor crime;
• Require life in prison for
those convicted a third time
for a violent or serious
offense (so-called “threestrikes” legislation);
• Require prisoners to serve at
least 85 percent of their
sentences (“truth in
sentencing” legislation);
• Treat juveniles as adults for
serious crimes;
• Allow juveniles’ crime
histories to be considered by
the courts;
• Guarantee the rights of
victims to seek and have full
redress and restitution;

• House Bill 2017 required the Department of Corrections
(DOC) to develop, by November 1, 1999, a plan to contract
for up to 4,200 privately operated prison beds, and to begin
phasing in use of those beds by June 2002.

• Require government to
inform the public about the
criminal-justice system, its
practices and performances;

• House Bill 2191 established a deadline for the Department of
Juvenile Corrections (DJC) to establish a privatization plan,
detailed the process DJC was to use to identify needs and
options, and required “Joint Legislative input into the request
for proposals process for privatization of specific beds.”

• Use prison privatization,
electronic home detention,
boot camps and similar
methods to see that the
system works efficiently.

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Both measures passed the House, but failed to make it through the Senate before adjournment.
Arizona, already one of the top three states
contracting for private prisons, was friendly
territory for privatization proponents. Sen.
Burns’ proposal for 4,200 new beds came
despite existing DOC plans to contract for
1,000 new beds in private facilities (an 18
percent expansion) by the year 2002.19 Her
proposal reflects the appetite of the private
prison corporations to expand their corporate
reach, and their success in using organizations
like ALEC to put forward legislative proposals
that would benefit the corporate coffers.

The Campaign Connection
In addition to working side by side with elected officials on ALEC’s task forces, private prison corporations
make direct financial contributions to many of these same legislators. Several prominent ALEC members
who have received campaign contributions from private prison corporations have supported private prisons
or “tough on crime” legislation.

ALEC MEMBERS GET COZY WITH PRIVATE PRISON CORPORATIONS
• Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who received ALEC’s Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award
in 1991, has said he is against more prisons. Yet in March 2000, he negotiated a $17.5
million deal for the state to lease and operate a private facility from an Oklahoma firm
through mid-2001.20 Wisconsin, with nearly 4,500 prisoners in out-of-state private prison
facilities (at a cost of $100 million in 1999), is the largest exporter of inmates in the country.
• Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, the 1997 recipient of ALEC’s Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award,
in March 1999 signed House Bill 131 authorizing the state Department of Corrections to
contract with private corporations for prison services.
• Idaho Sen. Sheila Sorensen, the state’s 1999 ALEC chairwoman, was one of three Idaho
lawmakers who attended the grand opening of CCA’s new Idaho facility in June 2000.
• California Sen. Ray Haynes, the first vice chairman of the 1999 ALEC Board of Directors
and ALEC National Chair for 2000, in 1995 sponsored Senate Bill 118. SB 118 authorized
the Department of Corrections to contract for 2,000 new beds in private community
correctional facilities, and to contract for the design, construction and operation of a new
private facility for an additional 2,000 medium- and minimum-security inmates.

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Section III: Courting Political Influence
A study of the overlap between the business of prisons and the public-policy process reveals a number of key
corporate players using the time-tested tactics of lobbying and campaign contributions.
In this tangled web of influence, business leaders may get elected and public officials may go to work for the
very businesses that have backed their political careers. Michael Quinlan, for example, former Director of
the Federal Bureau of Prisons, became Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of CCA/Prison
Realty. Not coincidentally, the company now holds many of the most lucrative recent contracts with the
federal government.
In many cases, however, these efforts do not yield immediate results but instead reveal a pattern of
investment meant to curry favor and produce victory down the road.
Industry leader Corrections Corporation of America, which is headquartered in Nashville, attempted in
1996 to make Tennessee the first state in the country to have a prison system run entirely by a private
company. CCA co-founder Tom Beasley is a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. Although
the effort did not succeed, the $22,000 that CCA put into the campaigns of Tennessee lawmakers that cycle
helped win them some long-term friends, including Governor Don Sundquist, an ardent proponent of
prison privatization.
CCA made another long-haul investment in 1996. Their candidate, Stephen Goldsmith (the mayor of
Indianapolis from 1992 -1999), who scored a $31,000 CCA contribution, failed in his gubernatorial bid,
but in 1999 became a top domestic policy advisor to Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush.21
Goldsmith is a strong proponent of privatization of all government services, including corrections.

Bullish on Prisons
Private prison corporations are not the only players in the push for privatized corrections. The overlap
between politics and business goes well beyond local and state-level contacts to the heart of Wall Street.
The New York investment house of Gilder, Gagnon, Howe and Co., for example, has a 6.4 percent stake in
CCA.22 Founding partner Richard Gilder is a major funder of conservative candidates; he donated more
than $360,000 during Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution. (His crony J. Patrick Rooney of Golden
Rule Financial is a major underwriter of ALEC and gave Gingrich $231,110.)23 Gilder also is a founder and
director of The Club for Growth, which raises funds for conservative GOP candidates, and promotes a
conservative policy agenda including privatization. Club for Growth board colleagues include Stephen
Moore, a Heritage Foundation Fellow who was the research director for President Reagan’s Commission on
Privatization.24

Lobbying
While their Wall Street backers endorse a broad privatization agenda, private prison corporations work
directly to consolidate political support for their growth. Paying top dollar for top lobbyists is common
practice.
In early 1996, CCA established a lobbying contract with John Ray, then still a Washington, D.C. Council
member. Shortly after hiring Ray, CCA bid on D.C.’s first corrections contract, and in December 1996 was
awarded a contract to take over the Correctional Treatment Facility, a 900-bed facility.25
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In 1997, CCA retained Ray’s new employer, Manatt Phelps &
Phillips, to lobby for proposed private contracts to house inmates
from the District of Columbia (whose corrections program had
just been federalized). Manatt, Phelps & Phillips reported
receiving $2,080,000 from clients CCA, EX-EM Inc. and The
Money Store that year.
Former New Mexico state representative and House majority
leader Michael Olguin was hired by Wackenhut Corrections Corp
to lobby the 2000 New Mexico legislature, for a fee of $10,000 for
the 30-day session. Wackenhut has contracts worth $25 million a
year for 1,500 inmates in New Mexico, where prison riots made
Wackenhut and privatization a hot political issue. Formerly an
ardent critic of prison privatization (Olguin said after the July 31,
1999, riots: “It’s time for the governor and his Republican
colleagues to fess up: Privatization is a dismal failure. New
Mexicans were deceived by Wackenhut, by Governor Johnson and
by the Republican Party.”26), he apparently changed his tune for
the 2000 legislative session.

LOBBYISTS WORKING ON
BEHALF OF CCA AND
WACKENHUT
(partial list)

• Alabama: Hal W Bloom Jr. of
The Bloom Group
• District of Columbia: John S
Wagster; Wise & Associates; J.
Mark Tipps, campaign manager
for Lamar Alexander’s
presidential bid and deputy chief
council for the Senate
Governmental Affairs
Committee’s special investigation
of campaign finance in 1997;
Michelle Bernard of Patton
Boggs, the second-largest firm in
DC; Eckert Seamans Cherin &
Mellott

Campaign Contributions

• Florida: L. Garry Smith &
Associates of Tampa Bay

In the late 1990s, as the private prison industry was rocked by
scandals, lawsuits, and ill-advised business strategies that resulted
in a massive slide in stock value, private prison corporations
rapidly increased their direct political contributions to key
candidates in states throughout the U.S.

• New Mexico: McBride-Mahr of
Albuquerque; Michael Olguin,
former House majority leader,
state Democrat Party chairman
and former critic of
privatization; Senate President
Manny Aragon

In 1998, 645 contributions to 361 candidates in 25 states (out of
a total of 43 states surveyed) were made by private prison
corporations or individuals closely associated with these
corporations. The total? More than $540,000. While this figure
appears small relative to federal elections, the total represents a
significant and growing effort by a handful of corporations to
ensure access to policymakers at
the state level at crucial moments.
In states where campaign budgets
still average $5,000 for state
representatives and $20,000 for
state senators, contributions of
$250, $500 and $1,000
contributions are meaningful.

• Tennessee: Betty Anderson, wife
of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh;
Lewis Donelson of Baker
Donelson Bearman & Caldwell,
finance commissioner under
former Gov. Lamar Alexander
• Idaho: Roy Eiguren
• Texas: Jerry Donaldson and
Patricia Shipton; Billy
McMillian; Mike Toomey and
Ellen Williams; Ronald Jackson;
James W Jonas III of Arter &
Hadden, whose fees are
$100,000-$150,00027

The industry’s total state-level
giving is comparable to that of groups like the National Rifle Association,
which gave $588,195 in 1998 to state candidates (but much less than
larger national industries, such as oil and gas producers, which gave $13.9
million, or gambling interests, which gave $7.9 million).
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8

Analysis of previous election cycles in the 1990s found a total of $222,898 invested by private prison
corporations through 542 contributions in 12 states. While comprehensive state campaign-contribution data
doesn’t exist for prior election cycles, what data is available clearly indicates that these corporations are
significantly increasing their pattern of contributing.
And while this report focuses on direct contributions to candidates, the limited data available on
contributions to political parties suggest that the amount spent on lobbying and political party donations
dwarfs candidate contributions at this time. For example, in 1998 private-prison corporations contributed
more than $370,000 to political party committees in Florida alone.

The Players
The majority of the investment in state-level elections was made by four private prison corporations
representing almost 90% of the industry’s market share.

Contribution Strategies
The industry made its political gifts strategically during the 1998 cycle, largely supporting incumbents and
candidates who emerged victorious from both parties: those candidates who could help with industryfriendly legislation in upcoming legislative sessions.

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Corporations like CCA made their contributions to candidates on both sides of the aisle in a pattern similar
to that of professional lobbyists, whose main interest is access rather than political philosophy.
For a more detailed analysis of contribution strategies by corporation, see Appendix A. The top recipients of
CCA and Cornell Corrections contributions are listed in Appendix B.

Targeting by State
The data shows a particular push by private prison corporations into the western region, with over 70% of
the total contributions going to candidates in western states (excluding Texas). California, the most
populous state and a hotbed of tough-on-crime activity, received the highest level of investment. There were
nineteen states in which no contributions from private prisons were found.

Targeting by Political Office
Gubernatorial candidates received a larger percentage of
contribution per candidate than did other types of
candidates: 24 candidates received a total of $111,985
during the 1998 cycle, for an average of $4,666.
Candidates who won received 68.7 percent of the total
and general-election losers, 17.1 percent.
Ninety-six state senate candidates received 178
contributions for a total of $185,000, with candidates
who won receiving 55.8 percent and general-election
losers, 11.5 percent. The total for elected officials who
received contributions but didn’t run in an election
(primarily sitting incumbents) was 27.5 percent of the
total. As a result, more than 83 percent of these
contributions went to lawmakers who would be
considering corrections policy in the next legislative
session.
Two-hundred sixteen House and Assembly candidates
received 337 contributions for a total of $176,733, with
89.6 percent going to candidates who won and 6.4
percent going to general-election losers.
Top contribution recipients for each of these types of
elected office are listed in Appendix C.

THE PRISON PAYOFF
10

Contribution Totals from
Prisons Corporations to
State Candidates, 1998
California
Alaska
Florida
Tennessee
Texas
New Mexico
Ohio
Iowa
Idaho
Georgia
North Carolina
Colorado
Hawaii
Indiana
Wyoming
Wisconsin
Kentucky
Arizona
Nevada
South Carolina
Illinois
Michigan
Kansas
Oklahoma
Missouri

$285,996
$ 50,275
$42,710
$41,300
$18,600
$14,000
$12,900
$12,850
$10,850
$8,000
$8,000
$6,800
$6,000
$6,000
$4,315
$4,200
$3,800
$3,705
$3,000
$1,000
$800
$725
$500
$300
$198

Section IV: Westward Ho!
Private Prison Corporations Stake Out New Territory
In the current round of prison privatization, corporations focused their initial efforts largely in the South.
With its 19th century history of convict leasing and long-standing antipathy to union organizing, it was
fertile ground for the corporations. The top corporations in the industry are all based in southern states:
Corrections Corporation of America in Nashville, Tennessee; Wackenhut Corrections in Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida; Cornell Corrections in Houston, Texas; and Correctional Services Corporation in
Sarasota, Florida.
In a little over a decade, private prison corporations established a strong foothold in the South. And while
they aggressively seek out new opportunities throughout the country, it is clear that they have targeted the
West for market expansion. California, Arizona and New Mexico have been the top targets, but in the past
few years private prison operators have succeeded in moving into Idaho and Montana (where new private
prisons opened in 2000), and made major forays into Utah and Alaska.
Along with this expansion has come an entry into the political realm, with over 70% of state political
contributions in 1998 going to Western candidates.

California: Getting Fat Off the Scraps
California’s unprecedented prison build-up during the 1980s created a veritable gold rush for corporations
and organizations who profit off incarceration. Since 1980 California has passed over 1,200 pieces of
criminal justice legislation, many of which lengthened sentences and created new “crimes.”
California has increased its incarceration rate by over 350 percent.28 As of August, 2000, over 160,000 men,
women and children were locked up in California correctional facilities. In 1980 the corrections budget was
$675 million29 but by the 1999 - 2000 budget year, that amount had grown to $4.6 billion30.
For years, corporate fortune seekers have had their eyes on a piece of California’s expansive corrections
budget. But now, the rush is becoming more intense. Although the current governor, the legislature and
state corrections officials have made it clear they
will house future inmates in public facilities
(Governor Gray Davis recently allocated $355
million for construction of a new prison and has
plans for another) the push for privatization
continues.

Investing in a Privatized Future
Private prison companies contributed more to
California candidates in 1998 than their
combined total to candidates in all other states —
more than a quarter-million dollars — with more
than 82 percent of that coming from Corrections
Corporation of America.
CCA has already invested $100 million in a new
2,300-bed maximum-security prison in California
City on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Originally,
the company anticipated that California’s
WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
11

exploding incarceration rates would result in a contract
with the state. But California, which built nineteen
new prisons between 1984 and 1994, maintained its
commitment to public operation of state prisons. In
December 1999, the California City prison had only
16 prisoners. Thanks to a new contract with the
Federal Bureau of Prisons to house federal inmates,
however, the big prison in the middle of the desert is
filling up.
The corporations have had reason to invest money and
effort in California. Former Republican Governor Pete
Wilson said in 1997 that the state would need an
additional 2,000 beds for inmates, and that private
prisons were the most cost-effective way to fill that
need. But Wilson couldn’t persuade Democrat and
Republican legislators to close a deal on privatization.
Nevertheless, the state had scheduled a competitive-bidding process for future bed-space in private facilities.
It was called off when inmate-population estimates came in lower than expected in 1999. The
announcement was the culmination of a long and continuing battle that has pitted private prison
corporations against one of the most powerful political players in the state – the California Correctional
Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) – and cost both sides hundreds of thousands in campaign
contributions and still more in lobbying fees during the legislative session.

The Political Muscle of the California
Correctional Peace Officers Association
The CCPOA, once a poor cousin to larger public
employee unions, has become one of the richest,
most influential forces in state politics over the past
twenty years. As California transformed itself into an
incarceration machine, the CCPOA grew in size from
2,500 members in 197831 to 29,000 members today.32
With an annual budget of $19 million and enormous
political clout, the CCPOA is one of the most
powerful forces in California politics.33
In 1998, CCPOA contributed more than $2 million
to campaigns, including $116,888 to Gov. Gray
Davis. The figures are far higher if contributions to
PACs and independent expenditures are added.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1998 the
CCPOA provided a grand total of $4.1 million in
campaign money, including $2.3 million to help
elect Gray Davis.34
THE PRISON PAYOFF
12

Jockeying for a Legislative Edge
Both sides of the privatization debate pursued broad legislation during the 1999 legislative session. CCA
reportedly paid $250,000 to two lobbying firms for the session and contracted with the prominent publicrelations firm of Burson-Marsteller.
Pressing the case for privatization in the 1999 legislative session was Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles,
who received $17,000 in contributions from private prison corporations in 1998. Polanco backed Senate
Bill 297 to require the state to develop a master plan for managing prisons in the most cost-effective way
possible; it was approved by the Senate and Assembly, but vetoed by Gov. Davis.
A bill that would have prohibited the state from contracting with private-prison companies, SB 1313, and
one that would have stopped local governments from contracting with private prisons, also were
unsuccessful. CCPOA, however, won a legislative ban (AB 1222) on importing prisoners to California from
other states.
But while the CCPOA has succeeded in preventing privatization of the state prison system, the business of
prisons in the state is big enough that private corporations can do well on the crumbs (e.g. community
corrections centers, INS detention facilities and federal prisons). And they can build political influence
while biding their time waiting for a more significant entry into the motherlode of the California
corrections budget.

Corporations Team Up to Push Privatization in Alaska
In 1996, private prison representatives eager to convince lawmakers of the merits of privatization flooded
the Alaska Legislature. The number one and number two corrections corporations in the country, CCA and
Wackenhut, teamed up with local businesses and hired prominent lobbying firms to further their causes.35

New Corporate Teams Vying for Private Prison Contracts
Corrections Corp. of America
+ Chugach Alaska Corp.,
an Alaska Native corporation

Corrections Group North
Wackenhut
+ Veco, a major oil-industry maintenance company
+ Allvest Inc., operator of prerelease halfway houses in Alaska

To prepare the turf, both groups had
invested nearly $200,000 into the
campaigns of lawmakers during
1996 elections. (Allvest Inc. alone
contributed nearly $120,000 to
candidates between 1990 and 1998,
with more than 75 percent going to
incumbents.)

The companies were all vying for a portion of the state’s $134 million corrections budget and a piece of a
proposed 1,000-bed, $100-million expansion project proposed by Anchorage Rep. Eldon Mulder. But their
lobbying efforts failed in the face of Gov. Tony Knowles plan, which focused on reducing the number of
inmates entering prisons, using half-way houses to ease prison crowding, and the long-term expansion of
existing state facilities.
WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
13

Despite this set-back, the potential for huge profits has kept private prison companies focused on Alaska.
They’ve made two major attempts to site private facilities in Alaska cities and numerous pushes at
privatization legislation. The citizens of Anchorage and Delta Junction were forced to go toe-to-toe with the
national corporations and their hired specialists. Citizens’ groups prevailed in both cases, but only after
divisive battles.

The Attempt on Anchorage
In Anchorage, Corrections Group North proposed using 40 acres in the city owned by Veco to build a 624bed facility at a cost of $60 - $80 million. Allvest President Bill Weimar, who was on the board of the
Downtown Community Council, and lobbyist William Bobrick, contributed more than $11,000 to
candidates running in 1996 for Anchorage Assembly, which had to approve zoning changes for the project
before it could move ahead.36
Despite its insider and financial advantages, Corrections Group North dropped its plan for an Anchorage
facility in the face of stiff public opposition, threats of lawsuits and the possibility of a public vote.

Down and Dirty in Delta Junction
A restructuring at Allvest in 1997 set the stage for a second major push to site a new private prison, this time
in rural Delta Junction, 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Weimar appointed Frank Prewitt, a former deputy
commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections, as the new president and CEO. Prewitt, who as a
corrections official opposed the move to private prisons, suddenly became privatization’s strongest
proponent.
Allvest’s move into Delta Junction in early 1998 followed an earlier announcement that the Army was going
to abandon Fort Greely in 2001 and give the facility and land to the city, providing Delta Junction could
find a good use for it. Allvest proposed turning a portion of the Fort into an 800-bed medium-security
facility. The plan called for a 20-year contract, with the state guaranteeing 800 inmates.37
In a hurried city vote, residents approved the Allvest plan 640 to 396.38 Four days later, Allvest supporters
and opponents testified before a legislative committee on the proposal. Although the committee took no
action, Rep. Eldon Mulder said he’d draft legislation authorizing the state to contract for the 800 beds (HB
53, enacted April 25th, 1998). Rep. Mulder received $2,500 in contributions from Allvest in the 1998
election cycle. In the 1996 election cycle, he received $2,600 from Allvest.39
Two weeks after the public vote and less than one after the legislative hearings on the proposal, Allvest
representatives began pressuring Delta Junction officials to sign a contract. Officials balked, primarily over a
clause that would have required the city to turn over all Fort buildings, “down to televisions, desks and
wrenches — along with more than 200 post homes,” to the Anchorage-based company.40
In June, the legislature approved Allvest’s plan for Fort Greely, and Cornell Corrections, the third-largest
private corrections contractor in the country, agreed to purchase essentially all of Allvest’s Alaskan assets
(including the five pre-release centers) for $21 million and help it complete the project.41
Over the next several months, a second advisory vote of city residents was held. Results showed that citizens
still favored the prison, but by a much narrower margin. Lawsuits proliferated on all sides. The city of Delta
Junction accepted a negotiated settlement with Allvest that ruled out competitive bidding but scheduled a
public referendum (planned for September 14, 1999) on the contract’s sole-source provisions. Allvest
challenged the referendum in court. In response to the lawsuit, Delta Junction officials voted to cancel the
contract and put the project out for competitive bids.42
THE PRISON PAYOFF
14

While the private prison companies
failed to establish themselves in Delta
Junction, they left the community
deeply divided over the issue. Several
city officials faced recall elections.43
Allvest’s merger with Cornell
Corrections ensures that prison
privatization will be an issue in Alaska’s
future. Cornell bought Allvest’s five prerelease facilities with a capacity of 540
beds in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Bethel
and the contracts that go with those
facilities. It also purchased the Parkview
Center and an additional building in
Anchorage, “for future development.”44

Private Prisons Move Into the Northwest
The move by the private-prison industry into the Northwest is a recent development, but one that has
proven, in several cases, to have had serious effects on the communities involved. Since 1999, Corrections
Corporation of America has opened two new prisons in the region, in Idaho and Montana. Cornell
Corrections was awarded a contract to build a private prison in Utah, but well-organized activists succeeded
in stopping that effort (see page 19).
Washington and Oregon are both states that have no private prisons, but have been exporting inmates to
private facilities in other states to ease overcrowding. Washington is home to a privatized, INS detention
facility operated by Correctional Services Corporation. In Oregon, a bill introduced in the 1999 session and
passed out of the Judiciary Committee would have created a Correctional Privatization Commission charged
with overseeing the move to prison privatization. That measure, Senate Bill 1247, was sponsored by Senator
Eileen Qutub, a long-time member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (see Section II for more
information on ALEC). The measure died when the Republican-dominated Legislature adjourned without
further consideration.

Hot Potato in Idaho
The private prison industry found a much more receptive market in Idaho. CCA became a major player in
Idaho after the 1997 legislature passed Senate Bill 137, which allowed the state to contract with private
corrections corporations. Subsequently CCA landed a three-year, $50-million contract to build and run a
facility slated to open in October 1999. State budget constraints and a dip in the prisoner population
delayed opening of the 1,250 bed prison until July, 2000, at which point Idaho prisoners who had been
housed in out-of-state facilities were brought back and housed in the new private prison.
CCA weighed into Idaho election politics publicly for the first time in 1998, supporting candidates with
more than $10,850 in campaign contributions and select legislative leaders with more than $4,350 in
political gifts. With the budget of the average House campaign in Idaho only $8,000,45 these contribution
levels were substantial. Several of the candidates had no opposition. (Appendix D lists CCA contributions to
Idaho candidates in 1998.)

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
15

The investments were a prudent measure. The 1998 Legislature would consider a request to increase the
state prison budget by $14.7 million, with more than half going to the private prison project, before the
prison was even built. CCA may have been anticipating a challenging session, and hence the relatively large
amount in contributions.

CCA Contract Scrutinized
In fact, the decision to award the new private prison contract to CCA proved controversial. The legislature’s
Budget Committee met in January 1998 to review the contract process, and cited a number of concerns.
Chief concerns expressed by the Budget Committee and others:46
• CCA was not the lowest bidder; in fact they were the fourth-highest bidder of the eight submitted. This fact alone means CCA may cost the state upward of $40 million more than the
next lowest bidder over the life of the contract.
• The bidding process raised questions. Operating on a 900-point system, only 300 points
were related to costs. Furthermore, while two teams scored the bidders, the results from only
one team were used to make the selection. That team was made up of Idaho Corrections
Director James Spalding and three of his staff. (Unlike corrections officials in many other
states, Idaho Corrections appears to favor privatization.)
• A June report to lawmakers had promised them a chance to review the proposals. They did
not get that chance. That statement was a misprint, according to Spalding.
Perhaps most troubling, the three-member prison board met secretly ten times between January 1997 and
January 1998, in apparent violation of the Idaho Open Meetings Law. The board gave Director Spalding a
20 percent raise after one closed-door meeting in January.47
The legislature funded the $51 million prison deal despite their misgivings. Gov. Phil Batt noted that he
wasn’t convinced the private prison would save the taxpayers any money (although he did think the
company could build a prison facility more quickly than the state). Over the life of the bonds issued for
construction, taxpayers will pay a total of $105 million for the facility. Operating costs are estimated at $16
million per year.48

Expansion Prospects Are Bright
While the opening of the new CCA prison in South Boise may have been delayed, its prospects for reaching
capacity and perhaps future expansion are bright. At a Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting late
in January 2000, the law enforcement director documented a dramatic increase in crime (primarily due to
increased arrests for drug offenses) and the need for a budget increase for more officers.
Corrections Department Director Spalding followed with even more sobering news. “Unless something
drastically changes, we will be coming to you with our master plan to expand our system in the next budget
year,” Spalding said. The top corrections official told lawmakers that the CCA facility would be full in less
than a year, and that a multimillion dollar expansion would be needed to keep up with demand.49

Moving Into Montana
Concurrent with the move of private prisons into Idaho was their move into Montana. As in Idaho, CCA
beat out their competition and landed a contract with the state to build and operate a new prison in Shelby,
Montana. As in other states, the entry of private prisons was enabled by state legislators who favored
THE PRISON PAYOFF
16

privatization and used model legislation developed by
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to
craft their pro-privatization bills.

Patience Pays Off
The move for prison privatization in Montana began
in 1995, when Rep. Ernest Bergsagel introduced
House Bill 304, authorizing the Department of
Corrections and Human Services and local
governments to contract for the design, financing,
construction and operation of regional correctional facilities. That same session, Bergsagel also introduced
House Bill 585 to create a “prison-site policy development committee” to review “prison-population
projections, needs, and future alternatives for developing and siting correctional facilities….” Neither bill
became law.
During the ensuing years, Bergsagel held a series of ad hoc meetings with legislators, corrections officials and
legislative staffers to discuss prison privatization. No minutes of the meetings were taken or records kept.
Just prior to the 1997 session, Bergsagel was named chairman of the newly formed House Select Committee
on Corrections. When the 1997 session convened, Bergsagel introduced House Bill 83 allowing contracts
with private corrections corporations, and House Bill 600, requiring corrections officials to prepare requestsfor-proposals to privatize management of the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. House Bill 600 died. But
House Bill 83 (Bergsagel credited ALEC for providing its model) easily passed the Legislature. On April 29,
1997, Gov. Marc Racicot signed it into law.

Prison Population Boom
The swift action on privatization was spurred by overcrowding within the existing Montana prison system,
which in 1996 held upward of 1,400 inmates in facilities designed for 850. Montana was also housing
prisoners out of state in private facilities. Much of the overcrowding was blamed on tougher-sentencing
legislation (such as making a fourth DUI a felony). Montana was one of the states praised in ALEC’s 1995
Model Legislation Scorecard for passing its “Habitual Offender/Three Strikes” bill, as well as its “Truth in
Sentencing Act.”
With the influx of new prisoners into the Montana prison system, corrections officials’ projections for future
prisoner population growth jumped, and so did their requests for huge budget increases. This pressure to
expand the prison system increased dramatically in 1996, shortly after Montana first contracted with the
Bobby Ross Group of Texas, a corporation providing private corrections services, to house 251 Montana
inmates in its Texas facility for $3.6 million a year.
The Bobby Ross Group proposed building a new private corrections facility near the existing Montana state
prison, but specified that it wanted to import prisoners from out of state to fill empty beds. Soon, the word
was out and Wackenhut, Cornell, CCA and some local groups – 16 in all – were jockeying to build or
manage private corrections facilities. CCA even extended offers to fly officials to other sites on its tab.50
Corrections Director Rick Day asked the 1997 Legislature for $103 million: $53 million in new funds for
overcrowding and $50 million to build additional prison cells. Rep. Bergsagel, pushing the idea of
privatization, said studies had shown that private facilities can charge $10 less per inmate per day than the
state prisons.
WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
17

With the passage of House Bill 83, construction of a private prison, as well as additional state facilities, was
assured. Corrections Director Day appointed a committee to oversee selection of the private prison
contractor. The selection was to be done in secret. Speaker of the House John Mercer and Senate Majority
Leader John Harp, both Republicans, objected.51 The 21-member committee appointed by Day was
comprised primarily of corrections staff: 15 corrections officials, two administration officials, one justice
official, a captain from Yellowstone County sheriff ’s office and a prison consultant who was a former
corrections department official.
CCA won the bid for the $25 million, 500-bed facility, with a four-year renewable contract, with extension
options of up to 20 years.

Prison Population Bust
The day after the governor signed the deal with CCA, Corrections Director Day reported that prison growth
had slowed and incarceration projections for 2000 were down significantly, half what was expected.52
Corrections had estimated that it would need $227 million from the 1999 Legislature, a 22 percent increase
over the 1997-98 biennium’s $154.4 million (and a 50 percent increase over the 1995-97 biennium’s $105.9
million).53 Prison population estimates, the basis
for an increased budget request, were questioned
by Budget Director Dave Lewis in light of the
1997 estimate changes, and the budget request
lowered. Officials from Corrections eventually
asked for an increase of only $29.7 million.
By the end of 1999, new or expanded stateoperated regional corrections facilities had been
opened in Glendive, Great Falls and Missoula,
along with the 500-bed private CCA facility in
Shelby. Prison capacity in Montana increased by
952 new beds. In September, 1999, Senator B.F.
“Chris” Christiaens declared that the state had
overbuilt its prisons; there weren’t enough
prisoners to fill the new beds. He predicted that
the CCA facility would cost taxpayers money,
because the state was obligated to fill the beds
contracted for at Shelby before filling the new beds in the state system. (Because those facilities were bonded
and approved by counties, Montana taxpayers are obligated to cover any losses caused by low prisoner
populations.)54
The Department of Corrections, however, projected a rise in Montana’s prison population. CCA spokesman
Steve Owen argued that tougher laws (e.g. mandatory minimums) were putting offenders in prison for
longer periods and that parole was more difficult to get (due to “Truth in Sentencing” legislation). Owen
cited these as the reasons corrections has become such a booming business. Senator Christiaens retorted that
the state’s attitude was “You build them, you fill them.”55
As of late August, 2000, the 500 bed CCA facility in Shelby housed 453 prisoners.56

THE PRISON PAYOFF
18

Utah: Activists Turn Back New Private Prison
Prison privatization has long had strong proponents among Utah’s elected officials, including Governor Mike
Leavitt (the recipient of ALEC’s 1997 Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award). But the state is also home to a
small group of organizers working against prison privatization. These private prison opponents garnered the
support of a broad range of community groups including likely supporters such as the ACLU and the Utah
chapter of CURE (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants), along with a few more surprising
constituencies like the Utah Sheriffs Association and the Church of Latter Day Saints. In the end, this well
organized, grassroots effort succeeded in stopping what many thought was a done deal, and kept Cornell
Corrections from setting up shop in the state.

Organizing Opposition
In 1998, Utah appropriated – without public input – $2 million seed funding for site evaluation for a 500 1000 bed private prison. In the spring of 1998, a small group of veteran activists formed the Citizens
Education Project (CEP) to fight prison privatization in the state. Working with coalition partners, CEP
pressured legislative leadership and the Department of Corrections to hold hearings on the privatization
plan. At the same time, they initiated an aggressive media campaign that resulted in scores of news stories
over a two-year period that raised questions about prison privatization. (See Section V for further details on
CEP organizing tactics.)
On March 19, 1999, Governor Leavitt signed House Bill 131 authorizing the state Department of
Corrections to contract with private corporations for prison services. But the controversy stirred up by
activists forced at least a partial reassessment of the private prison plan by the Utah legislature in the 1999
General Session. CEP led a successful effort to enact a bill which prohibits importation of out-of-state
inmates to any Utah private prison (a strategy to diminish the prospects of future corporate profits).

Taking it to the Grassroots
The decision to allow private prisons had far-reaching consequences in the communities that were
considered by the four corporations submitting bids. Enticed by promises of jobs, tax revenue and future
development potential, city officials worked hard to persuade their residents to support the corporations.

Communities Targeted by Private Prison Corporations
COMPANY

COMMUNITY

Cornell Corrections
CCA
Management Training Corp.
Wackenhut

Grantsville, Tooele County
Wendover, on the Utah-Nevada border
Fillmore, Millard County
Duchesne County

Prison companies were not the
only ones traveling the state,
however. CEP helped build
resistance at the grassroots level
by providing information and
advice to local activists in towns
being considered as sites for the
new prison.

Residents of Duchesne and Fillmore rallied against the prison proposals at public meetings, and some even
threatened lawsuits. Opposition in Wendover was less vehement, but its remote location and lack of hospital
facilities posed problems. Grantsville residents offered the least opposition. CEP worked with local activists
opposed to the private prison and coordinated legislative opposition and lobbying against the prison
proposals.
By early 1999, residents in Fillmore had forced a referendum and voted down the prison, and activists in
Duschesne County effectively blocked prison siting there.
WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
19

Cornell Kept Waiting
Although the initial $2 million appropriation had been withdrawn (and no new funds were allocated to the
prison), in June, 1999 the state awarded the bid to Cornell Corrections for a prison in Grantsville, where
many viewed the private facility as a source of new jobs. In September, 1999, Governor Leavitt’s Special
Projects committee received $7,000 in contributions from Cornell Corrections.57
In October 1999, as the legislative session neared, Utah Department of Corrections reported a marked
decline in crime statistics. The state still hadn’t delivered a contract to Cornell Corrections, and was saying it
likely would delay the opening until April, 2002.

With inmate numbers lower than anticipated, the state had an incentive
to send new prisoners to county-run facilities, which charged $43.07 a
day per prisoner versus the $62.84 Cornell had proposed. The Utah
Sheriff ’s Association reminded state corrections officials of prior
commitments to the county corrections agencies, which receive upward
of $12 million a year from the state. State officials had prior contracts
with Washington, Weber, Daggett, Beaver and Millard counties.
Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith told lawmakers, “This is critical
to us. We’ve got empty beds the state promised to fill.”58
Despite the reduced need and questionable economics, Gov. Leavitt’s
support for privatization has remained steadfast. Said a spokeswoman:
‘The governor’s position on privatized prisons has not changed.
Obviously, the need is not as great this year, but (Leavitt’s) general
philosophy of having privatized prisons has not changed.’59
The 2000 Legislature adjourned without appropriating any funds for the new prison. And Senate President
Lane Beattie (R-West Bountiful) asked the Office of the Legislative Auditor General to re-examine the
contract numbers to determine why the state would want to pay more than necessary to house inmates in a
private facility. Contract negotiations with Cornell, however, remained ongoing.
In July, 2000, a Utah Department of Corrections
spokesperson said that they had not canceled the
prison, and that there “may very well be a prison [in
Grantsville] by 2005, perhaps even before that.”60 But
by mid-August, plans for the private prison had been
completely scrapped in favor of renting bed space from
expanded jails in Beaver and Millard counties.
“The decision was made to abandon the privatized
prison and the basic reason for this is, it’s just not
fiscally attractive at this time,” said H.L. “Pete” Haun,
Director of the Utah Department of Corrections.61
Cornell Corrections received notice that the deal was
being terminated via a fax from the Department of
Corrections on August 15th.62 The opposition to
private prisons succeeded in Utah.
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Section V: Resisting Prison Privatization
Overview
There is a growing movement to stop private prisons in the U.S. Many different constituencies are opposed
to private prisons, for a variety of reasons. Key reasons for opposition include:
• The belief that incarceration is a unique responsibility of the state, and that privatized corrections essentially represent a “commerce in souls”;
• The conclusion that privatization does not save the state money;
• Loss of good jobs: staff at private prisons are largely non-union, and may be paid substantially less than state corrections officers;
• Concern for public safety: there have been numerous incidents of escape from private prisons
reported in the press;
• Concern for prisoner welfare: there have been numerous instances of prisoner abuse, in both
juvenile and adult private facilities reported in the press;
• Concern for prison staff: opponents of private prisons argue that the private facilities cut costs
in staffing and training, leading to an unsafe work environment for corrections officers;
• The conviction that privatization of prison systems reinforces the incarceration boom by
introducing the profit motive into incarceration;
• The belief that prison privatization results in a loss of government oversight and accountability for both prisoner welfare and public safety;
• Lack of public access: private prison corporations are not subject to the same open meetings
and open records requirements as the public sector.
Unions representing correctional officers have been in the forefront of the fight against private prisons. Most
of these unions support the harsh criminal justice legislation that has dramatically increased U.S.
incarceration rates over the past twenty years, but are opposed to prison privatization out of a concern for
jobs, worker safety, and public safety. Some unions are now beginning to question the public policy
decisions that have led not only to prison privatization, but to the explosion of the prison population in
both state and federal prisons.
Over the past two years, several unions have joined forces with community organizers and prison activists to
form the Public Safety & Justice Campaign (PSJC), which is coordinated by Grassroots Leadership, a nonprofit institution in the South which has a history of community organizing campaigns focused on
privatization issues. PSJC has built a coalition of unions, progressive organizations, and student and prison
activists to coordinate a campaign to end prison privatization in the U.S.
On the grassroots level, there is activity across the country in communities selected as sites for private
prisons. For many communities, fighting the siting of a private prison can seem like an overwhelming task
given the resources of the private prison corporations and the strong support of local business boosters. But
committed citizens can effectively halt the introduction of private prisons in their communities. The case
study that follows on the fight against Cornell Corrections in Utah offers a detailed look at how activists in
that state halted the construction of a private prison. In addition, the resource listings at the end of this
report provide contact information for key organizations and researchers working to stop prison
privatization. All of these resources are available to provide information and advice to local communities and
activists seeking to stop private prisons.

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
21

A Case Study in Organizing
Opposition to Prison Privatization
As the western state that’s seen the most organized grassroots activism in
opposition to private prisons, Utah provides a case study for organizers.
Steve Erickson, one of the co-founders of the Citizens Education Project spoke
with the Western Prison Project in June about their organizing efforts in Utah.
Following is an excerpt from that interview.
WPP: What was your organizing strategy in fighting the proposed private prison in Utah?
SE: The first thing we wanted to do was to focus attention on the fact that this decision had been made,
that the state was proceeding down a path of prison privatization without sufficient public debate on the
subject. The public was completely unaware of it. The legislature, in the ’98 general session, put about $2
million towards site evaluation for a private prison, and they appropriated the funding through the
Department of Corrections to begin the process. Now that would have been enough money only to have
the initial work done, short of construction, but that commitment was made by the legislature. It was made
without anybody knowing that it was going on.
WPP: Who was backing this process?
SE: Well, as we were to later find out, the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House, who quickly
became the former Speaker of the House for other reasons — those were the two main players in the
legislature — and the third main player was the governor, who was very supportive. There is, as in many
conservative states, a real philosophical allegiance and bent towards privatization of as many government
services as possible. That’s still the case in Utah.
WPP: You succeeded in generating an enormous amount of press on these issues. How did you work that?
SE: Well, I’ve been involved with press work going back to the MX fight in 1980-81 [the fight to keep MX
missiles from being sited in Utah], so I have a lot of press contacts and background. We worked together to
develop our script, our main points, how we were going to play it out, and what hot buttons to push with
the press and the public. It was critical to get the press on our side and help us create the issue. It didn’t
produce a groundswell of public outrage about private prisons, but it did give the politicians the jitters, and
that was crucial. It also brought out local folks, and so we were able to make connections with the grassroots.
These were folks from rural Utah whose towns were being targeted as possible sites for this first 500-bed
private prison. We worked quite a bit as advisors and sort of as lobbyists and press agents for local groups
who are out in pretty isolated, small communities where they don’t have access to power — which we have
here in the city.
WPP: How important was the local activism in fighting the prison siting?
SE: It was absolutely essential.
WPP: One of the challenges in prison siting fights in small communities is the issue of NIMBY — Not In My
Back Yard. How did you work with that?

THE PRISON PAYOFF
22

SE: We allowed it to play its own course at the local level. If they didn’t want it for reasons that could be
classified as NIMBY, we could work with that. We would prefer that they would take a philosophical stand
against the whole notion [of privatized prisons], and many of the individuals who were involved did. As
they became more educated about private prisons elsewhere in the country, they became much more
convinced that the whole concept is anathema to good government and to democracy and to responsible
criminal justice.
WPP: Do you think you played a major role in that education?
SE: Yeah, we sent lots of materials, primarily by e-mail. We tried to give them as much back-up information
as we possibly could, without killing them. I mean, these people have lives too. We tried to empower them
with information and then we provided the technical expertise in the area of lobbying and media. There
were some remarkable folks who just did a bang-up job. They were creative, they went out and built
coalitions within their communities, got hundreds of people to sign on petitions, forced it onto the ballot in
Fillmore, and won on the ballot by a substantial margin. They learned their own lessons in political activism
as they were doing it. Many had never done anything like this before, so we give a lot of credit to them. We
assisted, but we are not responsible for what they did…they get the credit for what they did at the local
level, not us. We were just a helping hand, an important helping hand, but they did it.
WPP: So the working relationship between CEP and the local activists was one of mutual aid?
SE: Mainly us aiding them, but in the end, they aided the whole issue which made it much more possible
for us to operate with more flexibility when it came to the political work that needed to be done. For
instance, it was a small group of people headed by Tom Chandler and Peggy Overson in Delta, Utah, which
is near Fillmore, who convinced their state representative, Mike Styler, that this was a bad idea. I know
Mike really well, he’s a farmer, and had sort of a pro-privatization mentality to start with, but he didn’t like
the idea of this prison deal, and he was convinced by his local constituents to become a player on the issue.
He’s the guy who carried the amendment outlawing the importation of out of state inmates to the private
prison to the legislation that passed in the ’99 session.
WPP: Who drafted that legislation?
SE: We worked with him on that draft. It passed as part of an amendment to a larger bill that was intended
to restrict private prisons. That bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously. So the lobbyists for
the private prisons — and there were a bunch of well heeled lobbyists, I’ll tell you — they were just caught
completely flat-footed and there was nothing they could do because that amendment was overwhelming.
WPP: You even got the Mormon Church to take a stand against private prisons, didn’t you?
SE: The Church never really came out, but the Church newspaper did. The Deseret News, owned by the
Church, doesn’t take a stand on a major issue in the state without getting at least the nod from the Church
hierarchy. Basically, they opposed private prisons as “commerce in souls.” And that’s their job.
WPP: As the campaign went on, what were the main organizing handles on this issue?
SE: Well, what we tried to do was to keep hammering the fallacy that this was a money saver, and that it
was inappropriate for government to relinquish responsibility to private corporations. So we really
hammered the immorality of the concept and the bogus cost-savings that politically drive these deals. We
tried to make the case, though I don’t know if we were ever quite as effective as we would liked to have
been, that this is not going to be profound economic development in rural communities, that the impacts
WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
23

are going to be such that they will outweigh the benefits. It was difficult to get that word out, so we focused
mostly on the media and the legislative politics in the fight, as opposed to trying to get the people of
Grantsville to reverse their support for the private prison.
WPP: Were there key turning points in the campaign?
SE: Yeah. One was that in ’99, they were struggling with balancing the budget. Utah’s had a real boom
economy for several years, but tax receipts started to slow down substantially heading into the ’99 session.
Corrections already had all these other problems that they had to finance, including the big issue that their
prison guards get paid substantially less than the guards who work at the county jails, and of course we
worked this one with the private prison issue. So Corrections had to go to the legislature and ask for a
greater degree of wage parity with the counties. At the same time, the counties were quite concerned, and
the sheriffs especially, that they were not getting the numbers of prisoners from the state to house in their
county jails that the state had promised.
WPP: In their over-built county jails?
SE: Yeah. What happened is that the county saw the state, and contracting with the state, as a way to build
large new jails that the state would indirectly help finance. For instance Beaver County, which is a tiny
county with only two significant towns in it — we’re talking about maybe 2000 people in each town, maybe
less — they built a 190-bed jail, when their average local jail population would cover between ten and
twenty, mostly for little things. The counties get a certain per inmate per day reimbursement for housing
state inmates at county jails. The counties have gone out and bonded at the local level for the money to
construct jails, far larger than they need to accommodate their local prisoners, and they use the state
reimbursements to pay off the bonds.
The points we were driving were two-fold. First, why are you building a private prison if you’re not filling
the jail space that’s already out there with the counties, and you’ve got the counties upset with you because
they’re not getting the income they need to pay off their bonded indebtedness? The second issue that we
hammered was, look, if you can’t keep personnel at your state prisons because they can go to the county jail
and get better pay, what’s going to happen when a private corporation comes in and tries to find additional
personnel to run that jail? They may be able to offer more in salary, but they are going to offer a whole lot
less in benefits and working conditions and therefore you are going to have staff turn over. And of course we
had all these examples from across the country where they had chronic problems with staffing in these
private facilities…so we just hammered that issue.
WPP: How did you finally make this a dead issue in the 2000 General Session of the legislature?
SE: I think in the end, what happened was the allegiance with the counties and the sheriffs pushed it over
the top. We kept raising so much fear, uncertainty and doubt about the stability of the industry, about the
track record of the industry, about the cost issues that it created uncertainty within the legislature when they
had a million other issues on their plate. So they just threw up their hands and said, “well, we don’t know
what to do with this mess.” And this is where it ended. They still could come back. This is a hydra-headed
monster — you cut off one head and the next head pops up. We can say with some degree of confidence
that this is a dead issue for now. We don’t know if two years from now it may come up again, but they
would have to go through another whole bidding process and start over.

THE PRISON PAYOFF
24

Conclusion
Prisons are big business in the U.S. today, and private prison corporations have worked assiduously to build
their market niche. While private prisons still represent a small percentage of the overall prison industry, they
exert an increasing influence on criminal justice policy. This report documents two of the primary ways this
influence is wielded. The involvement of private prison corporations in the development of model criminal
justice legislation through the conservative legislative support organization, ALEC, cannot be ignored. It is a
clear example of active corporate partnership in drafting legislation that, if passed, will directly benefit the
participating corporations.
The campaign contribution research documented in this report demonstrates further that private prison
corporations are seeking to increase their access to policy makers. There is a growing number of targeted
campaign contributions by these corporations to elected officials in key states, at key moments in their
efforts to secure contracts.
The private prison industry has recently suffered substantial losses in the stock market, and been subject to
damaging press exposés that have questioned their ability to operate safe and effective corrections facilities.
However, it would be a mistake to discount their growing political power. We must continue to question the
role of private prison corporations in the U.S. incarceration boom. While there have been many reasons
posited for the growth in the U.S. prison population, corporate interests have clearly been a significant factor
in promoting legislation that has dramatically increased the market in prisoners.
While this report examines the influence wielded by private prison corporations on state-level candidates and
legislation, additional research is needed on lobbying and soft-money campaign contributions by these
corporations, as well as their influence at the federal level.
This report is intended as a tool for the many activists throughout the U.S. who are working on prison and
criminal justice reform. Private prison corporations play a significant role in the promotion of criminal
justice policies that result in increased incarceration, and because of this, it is important that activists and
policy makers become fully informed about the involvement of these corporations in the legislative and
policy arena.

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
25

Resources
The following is a list of organizations and individuals who are key resources in the fight to end prison
privatization. This is not a comprehensive list, but represents a good starting point for activists. Those listed
are available, to varying extents, to provide background information, research, and legislative and organizing
advice to communities and activists seeking to learn more about the negative impacts of private prisons, or
to organize to stop a private prison. For a more extensive listing of organizations focusing on broader issues
of criminal justice, contact the Western Prison Project.
Public Safety & Justice Campaign, c/o Grassroots Leadership, P.O. Box 36006, Charlotte, NC 28236, tel:
(704) 376-9206, fax: (704) 332-0445, www.stopprivateprisons.org
Joshua Miller, Corrections Privatization Analyst, AFSCME, 1625 L Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036,
tel: (202) 429-5037, fax: (202) 223-3255, email: jmiller@afscme.org
Ken Kopczynski, Prison Privatization Researcher, Florida PBA/Communications Workers of America, 300
East Brevard St., Tallahassee, FL 32301, tel: (850) 222-3329, fax: (850) 561-0192, email: ken@flpba.org,
http://www.flpba.org/private/shamemap.html
Judy Greene, Justice Strategies, 199 Washington Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11205, tel: (212) 357-3316, email:
greenej1@mindspring.com
Stephen Nathan, Journalist & Researcher, Prison Privatization Report International, 12 The Ridgeway,
London, N3 2PH, England, tel/fax: ++ 44 20 8346 0794, email: stephennathan@compuserve.com,
http://www.penlex.org.uk/pages/prtprep.html
Tracy Huling, Justice Policy Analyst/Consultant, tel: (518) 634-2170, fax: (518) 634-2169, email:
galgirls@francomm.com, expert on rural prison siting issues
Not With Our Money Campaign, Kevin Pranis, c/o Prison Moratorium Project, 180 Varick St., 12th Floor,
New York, NY, email: Kpranis@nomoreprisons.org, http://www.nomoreprisons.org/nwom.htm,
coordinates campus-based organizing against Sodexho-Marriott Services, a major investor in private prisons
Alex Friedmann, Independent Researcher, P.O. Box 561, Antioch, TN 37011, tel; (615) 367-4537, email:
stein919@hotmail.com
Prison Legal News, 2400 NW 80th St., PMB 148, Seattle, WA 98117, tel: (206) 781-6524,
http://www.prisonlegalnews.org
Citizens Education Project, Salt Lake City, UT, emails: slceric@concentric.net, wweeks@aros.net
Western Prison Project, P.O. Box 40085, Portland, OR 97240, tel: (503) 335-8449, fax: (503) 287-5561,
email: wpp@teleport.com
Data Center, Ryan Pintado-Vertner, 1904 Franklin, Suite 900, Oakland, CA 94612-2912, tel: (510) 8354692

THE PRISON PAYOFF
26

Matt Wuerker

Appendices

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
27

Appendix A:
Contribution Strategies by Corporation
Corrections Corporation of America
Of the major corporations contributing, CCA spread its largesse among the most candidates in the largest
number of states; candidates in California, however, received the lion’s share (64.5 percent of the
contributions, $234,496).
CCA made its contributions to candidates on both sides of the aisle in a pattern similar to that of
professional lobbyists, whose main interest is access not political philosophy. Democrats received a larger
amount of CCA contributions than did Republicans, $212,096 to $140,810. But CCA favored Republicans
with a larger number of contributions than it did Democrats, 156 to 110.
Winning candidates and incumbents from both parties were the primary recipients of CCA contributions,
with a 89.2 percent or $315,106 going to elected lawmakers who likely would face criminal-justice and
prisons legislation in their next legislative session.
Cornell Corrections
Cornell Corrections, the next largest-contributing prisons contractor at $110,575, gave contributions to 84
candidates in four states, with the majority of the funds being split between California ($51,500) and Alaska
($50,275).
Cornell’s contributing was somewhat more partisan than that of CCA, with Republicans receiving 97
contributions for a total of $62,850 or 56.8 percent, and Democrats receiving 78 contributions for $47,725
or 43.1 percent. Winning candidates and incumbents on both sides of the aisle received $96,575 from
Cornell, or 87.3 percent of its total.
Other Corporations
All other private prison contractors gave a total of $83,143 to candidates in 17 states, with candidates in
Florida receiving the bulk, 86 contributions for $36,910; 12 candidates in Texas received a total of $11,850;
and 5 in New Mexico received $10,000. In Wyoming, where the average House race is won on about
$5,000, corrections contractors gave 57 contributions totaling $4,315.
Contributing by this group of corporations — Correctional Services Corp. ($34,378), Wackenhut
Corrections ($33,325), and US Corrections ($4,300) — was decidedly partisan. Republican candidates
received 135 contributions for a total of $54,630 or 65.7 percent, while Democrats received 68
contributions for $28,513 or 34.2 percent of their total.

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
29

Appendix B:
Top Recipients of Private Prison Industry Contributions, 1998
Corrections Corporation of America
State/Year

CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
TN98
CA98
NC98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
CA98
TN98
IA98
CA98
IN98
CO98
CA98
OH98
GA98
OH98

Recipient

Bustamante, Cruz M
Davis, Gray
Figueroa, Liz
Polanco, Richard G
Karnette, Betty
Johnson, Ross
Hertzberg, Bob
Sundquist, Don
Hurtt, Rob
Basnight, Marc
Leonard, Bill
Villaraigosa, Antonio R
Baca, Joe
Brewer, Marilyn C
Ortiz, Deborah V
Burton, John
Lay, Blake
Lightfoot, James
Lungren, Dan
Obannon, Frank L
Owens, Bill
Stirling, Dave
Taft, Bob
Taylor, Mark
Ungaro, Patrick

Party

Office

District

D
D
D
D
D
R
D
R
R
D
R
D
D
R
D
D
R
R
R
D
R
R
R
D
D

LTG
G
S
S
S
S
A
G
S
S
A
A
S
A
S
S
S
G
G
G
G
AG
G
LTG
S

SW
SW
010
022
027
035
040
SW
034
01
063
045
032
070
006
003
25
SW
SW
SW
SW
SW
SW
SW
033

Status

No

Total

W
W
W
W
DNR
DNR
W
W
N
W
W
W
W
W
W
DNR
N
N
L
DNR
W
N
W
W
PL

4
2
1
2
8
3
2
5
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
5
2
1
1
6
1
2
1
2

$31,996
$25,000
$20,000
$15,000
$14,500
$13,250
$12,000
$10,500
$10,000
$8,000
$6,000
$6,000
$5,500
$5,500
$5,500
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000
$5,000

K E Y
PARTY:
D = Democrat
R = Republican
OFFICE:
LTG = Lieutenant Governor
G = Governor
S = Senate
A = Assembly/House
DISTRICT:
SW = statewide
All others are district numbers
STATUS:
W = general election winner
N = general election loser
L = primary loser
DNR = did not run
No = number of contributions
Total = total of all contributions
aggregated

Cornell Corrections
State/Year

AK98
CA98
AK98
AK98
CA98
AK98
CA98
AK98
CA98
CA98
A98
CA98
AK98
AK98
CA98
CA98
AK98
AK98
CA98
CA98
CA98
AK98
CA98
AK98
CA98

Recipient

Knowles, Tony
Karnette, Betty
Ulmer, Fran
Barnes, Ramona
Lungren, Dan
Hodgins, Mark
Burton, John
Foster, Richard
Johnson, Ross
Leonard, Bill
Lightfoot, James
Villaraigosa, Antonio R
Cissna, Sharon
Mulder, Eldon
Ackerman, Dick
Baugh, Scott R
Donley, Dave
Harris, John
Hertzberg, Bob
Hurtt, Rob
Polanco, Richard G
Rokeberg, Norman
Runner, George
Taylor, Robin
Aanestad, Sam

Party

Office

District

Status

No

Total

D
D
D
R
R
R
D
D
R
R
R
D
D
R
R
R
R
R
D
R
D
R
R
R
R

G
S
LTG
H
G
H
S
H
S
A
G
A
H
H
A
A
S
H
A
S
S
H
A
G
A

SW
027
SW
22
SW
9
003
38
035
063
SW
045
21
23
072
067
J
35
040
034
022
11
036
SW
003

W
DNR
W
W
N
N
DNR
W
DNR
W
N
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
N
W
W
W
L
W

15
6
11
9
1
7
2
6
2
2
1
2
5
4
2
2
4
4
2
2
2
4
2
4
2

$6,375
$6,000
$5,500
$5,000
$5,000
$3,200
$3,000
$3,000
$3,000
$3,000
$3,000
$3,000
$2,500
$2,500
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$2,000
$1,500

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
31

Appendix C:
Private Prison Industry Campaign Contributions by Legislative Office, 1998
Gubernatorial Races
The top recipients receiving political donations from private prisons corporations were:
Democrat Gray Davis of California, $25,000 total (all from Corrections Corp of America)
Republican Gary E Johnson of New Mexico, $13,000 ($4,000 from CCA and $9,000 from Wackenhut Corrections)
Republican Don Sundquist of Tennessee, $10,500 (all from CCA)
Republican Dan Lungren of California, $10,000 ($5,000 from CCA and $5,000 from Cornell Corrections)
Republican James Lightfoot of Iowa, $8,000 ($5,000 from CCA and $3,000 from Cornell)

State Senate Races
Top recipients were:
Democrat Liz Figueroa, California SD 10, $21,000 ($20,000 from CCA and $1,000 from Cornell)
Democrat Betty Karnette, California SD 27, $20,500 ($14,500 from CCA and $6,000 from Cornell)
Democrat Richard Polanco, California SD 35, $17,000 ($15,000 from CCA and $2,000 from Cornell)
Republican Ross Johnson, California SD 35, $16,250 ($13,250 from CCA and $3,000 from Cornell)
Republican Rob Hurtt, California SD34, $12,000 ($10,000 from CCA and $2,000 from Cornell)

House and Assembly Races
Top recipients were:
Democrat Bob Hertzberg, California AD40, $14,000 ($12,000 from CCA and $2,000 from Cornell)
Republican Bill Leonard, California AD63, $9,000 ($6,000 from CCA and $3,000 from Cornell)
Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, California AD45, $9,000 ($6,000 from CCA and $3,000 from Cornell)
Republican Marilyn Brewer, California AD70, $5,500 (all from CCA)
Democrat Tony Cardenas, California AD39, $5,500 ($4,500 from CCA and $1,000 from Cornell)

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
33

Appendix D:
CCA Campaign Contributions to Idaho Elected Officials, 1998
CCA contributions to the 1998 campaigns of Idaho legislative leaders included: 63
• $750 to Sen. Sheila Sorensen, $500 to Rep. Celia Gould and $250 to Rep. Jerry Twiggs, all
of whom ran unopposed
• $750 to Senate Majority Leader James Risch
• $750 to Senate Assistant Majority Leader John Sandy
• $500 to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Denton Darrington
• $250 to Rep. Hod Pomeroy, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee
• $250 to Rep. Dan Mader of the House Appropriations Committee
• $100 to Senate Minority Leader Marguerite McLaughlin
• $250 to Sen. Cecil Ingram
• $250 to Rep. Dolores Crow
CCA also contributed $500 to the campaign of Attorney General Al Lance.

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
35

Appendix E:
Political Contribution Data Source
States Surveyed in May 2000 by the Institute with Status Detail
STATE YEAR

AK
AZ
CA
CO
FL
GA
HI
IA
ID
IL
IN
KS
KY
MI
MO
NC
NM
NV
OH
OK
SC
TN
TX
WI
WY
AL
CT
MA
ME
MN
MT
ND
NH
NJ
NY
OR
PA
RI
UT
VT
WA
WV
AR
DE
LA
MD
MS
NE
SD
VA

98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
8
98
98
98
98
99
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98
98

CONTRIBUTIONS

$ 50,275
$3,705
$285,996
$6,800
$42,710
$8,000
$6,000
$12,850
$10,850
$800
$6,000
$500
$3,800
$725
$198
$8,000
$14,000
$3,000
$12,900
$300
$1,000
$41,300
$18,600
$4,200
$4,315

OFFICE

SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Partial
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Leg
SW & Leg
Leg
SW & Leg
Partial
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Partial
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Partial
Partial
Leg
SW & Leg
SW & Leg
Partial
SW & Leg
Leg
SW & Leg
Leg
Leg
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA

COMPLETENESS

STATUS

Researching
Complete
Complete
Researching
Complete
Researching
Researching
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Researching
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Researching
Researching
Researching
Researching
Complete
Researching
Complete
Researching
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Complete
Researching
Complete
Researching
Complete
Researching
Researching
Complete
Complete
Researching
Complete
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA

$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
$ In Report
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No $ Found
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail
No Data Avail

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
37

KEY
OFFICE
SW & Leg: Statewide Offices and Legislative
Leg: Legislative Only
Partial: a Partial Data Set
COMPLETENESS
Researching: The database was substantially
complete, but being verified (additions and
changes possibly made post prisons report)
Complete: The database had been researched
and posted to the Institute's web site and any
changes would be updates, which would add
data, or major corrections.
STATUS
$ In Report: States where prisons-industry
contributions were found.
No $ Found: States in which no industry
contributions were found.
No Data Available: States where either data
wasn't available or states with off-year elections in
which no contributions were reported.

Endnotes
Business Week, December 17, 1990.

1

Joseph Sweat, “Joe Sweat Gets the ‘Sunny Side’ from CCA”, Tennessee Politics, Sept. 12, 2000, www.tennpolitics.com.

2

Michael Wilson, “Oregon’s New Prisons Create Plenty of Openings for Corrections Officers”, The Oregonian, July 20, 2000.

3

The Perpetual Prisoner Machine, Joel Dyer, Westview Press, 2000.

4

Ibid., pgs. 196-7.

5

Ibid.

6

Private Adult Correctional Facility Census, 12/31/99, Dr. Charles W. Thomas, Private Correction Project.

7

State Statutes and Regulations Governing Private Prisons, Jan. 28, 2000, ACLU Private Prisons Watch.

8

Securities & Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America 10-K, March 31, 1999.

9

Abt Associates Ind., “Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current Practice,” July 16, 1998, Summary p. 3.

10

ALEC Members’ Scorecard for the 1999 Legislative Sessions, November 1999.

11

Inside ALEC newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 5, Sept. 1999.

12

ALEC web site, www.alec.org, Criminal Justice Task Force, July 19, 2000.

13

ALEC 1995 Model Legislation Scorecard, July, 1995.

14

ALEC Report Card on Crime and Punishment, October 1994.

15

ALEC press release, “Every Ten Minutes, A Pennsylvanian Falls Victim to a Violent Crime,” Jan. 28, 1994.

16

“PA Approves 30 crime bills; Sen. Hughes isn’t impressed.” The Philadelphia Tribune, Nov. 10, 1995, 5A; “Pennsylvania Gov. Ridge
Releases $87 million for expansion of prison and juvenile detention facilities,” PR Newswire, Oct. 30, 1995, State and Regional Pages.

17

“PA Approves 30 crime bills; Sen. Hughes isn’t impressed,” The Philadelphia Tribune, Nov. 10, 1995, 5A.

18

Abt Associates Inc., “Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current Practice,” July 16, 1998, pgs. 30-31.

19

Associated Press, “Gov, Chavala Spar on Prison,” Capital Times, June 1, 2000.

20

“W.’s Whiz Kid,” National Review, Sept. 13, 1999.

21

Disclosure Incorporated, 2000.

22

www.clubforgrowth.com.

23

Ibid.

24

Deirdre Shesgreen, “Prison firm locked up clout,” Legal Times, Aug. 18, 1997.

25

Michael Coleman, “Olguin Quits Dem Party Position,” Albuquerque Journal, Jan. 18, 2000, C3.

26

“Lobby Watch,” Texas Lawyer, April 21, 1997, p. 7; Duren Cheek, “Prison companies will pitch services at hearing this week,” The
Tennessean, July 14, 1997, B1; “Leading lobbyists in Alabama,” The Montgomery Advertiser, July 7, 1997, 2A; “Lobby Registrations:
Lawyers & consultants,” Political Finance & Lobby Reporter, Oct. 22, 1997; Judy Sarasohn, “Special Interests,” The Washington Post, Oct.
21, 1999, A27; Michael Coleman, “Olguin Quits Dem Party Postion,” Albuquerque Journal, Jan. 18, 2000, C3.

27

Justice Policy Institute, “From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: How Prison Building Affects Higher Education & African American Enrollment
in California,” October, 1996.

28

Ibid.

29

California Department of Corrections, “CDC Facts,” www.cdc.state.ca.us.

30

CCPOA, “Historical Highlights of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association,” by Lance Corcoran, www.ccpoa.org.

31

Jennifer Warren, “When He Speaks, They Listen,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2000.

32

Ibid.

33

Dan Morain, ‘Private Prison Has Everything but Prisoners,” Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1999.

34

Ralph Thomas, “Friends and Foes of Private Prisons Lock into Debate,” Anchorage Daily News, March 4, 1996, B1.

35

Peter Goodman, “Group Wants to Build 624-bed Site in South Anchorage,” Anchorage Daily News, March 28, 1996, A1.

36

Natalie Phillips, “Private Prisons Grow to 132,” Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 10, 1998, A1.

37

Natalie Phillips, “Prison Plan Wins Vote,” Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 18, 1998, A1.

38

The National Institute on Money in State Politics, Alaska 98 database.

39

Natalie Phillips, “Town Takes a Long Look at Prison Bid,” Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 4, 1998, A1.

40

WESTERN PRISON PROJECT • WESTERN STATES CENTER
39

Natalie Phillips, “Halfway Houses Sell; Private Prison Firm Allvest OK deal; Price Undisclosed,” Anchorage Daily News, June 1998, A1;
Securities and Exchange Commission, Cornell Corrections 10-K, March 3, 1999.

41

Associated Press, July 23, 1999, “Second Lawsuit Filed over Fort Greely Prison Vote,” State and Regional Sections; Associated Press, Feb.
16, 2000, “Lawmaker, Delta Junction officials clash,” State and Regional Sections.

42

Associated Press, “Delta council members face recall,” April 9, 2000, State and Regional Sections.

43

Securities and Exchange Commission, Cornell Corrections, 10-K, March 30, 2000.

44

Michael Wickland, “Idaho prisons seek 14.7M budget hike; New private prison would get lion’s share of the increase,” The Lewiston
Morning Tribune, Sept. 5, 1998; 5A.

45

Mike Barenti, “Panel to review prison bidding,” The Idaho Falls Post Register, Jan. 16, 1998, A1.

46

Gene Fadness, “Budget Committee members grill representatives of private prisons,” The Idaho Falls Post Register, Jan. 17, 1998, A1; The
Idaho Statesman, (Editorial) “Why didn’t the lowest bidder get the private prison contract?,” Feb. 8, 1998; Betsy Russell, “Prison Board’s
Secret Meetings Questioned; Wide-ranging subjects discussed in private despite law’s narrow limits,” The Spokesman-Review, April 9,
1998, B1; Ken Miller, “Corrections firm donates to campaigns,” The Idaho Statesman, Oct. 15, 1998, B1.

47

Betsy Russell, “Big House will be No Fun House,” The Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 23, 1999, A1.

48

Bob Fick, “Spaulding: New prison space to be sought next year,” Associated Press, Jan. 26, 2000, State and Regional Sections.

49

“Private prison recruitment efforts may be premature,” Great Falls Tribune, Editorial, Dec. 4, 1997.

50

Mike Dennison, “Process to choose prison site to be secret,” Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 26, 1998, B1.

51

Kathleen McLaughlin, “Prison growth slower than expected,” Helena Independent Record, July 24, 1998, A1.

52

Bob Anez, “Corrections asks for huge increase,” Great Falls Tribune, Associated Press, May 13, 1998.

53

Erica Curless, “Montana’s First Private Prison About to Open,” The Missoulian, September 5, 1999.

54

Ibid.

55

“State, Local Officials Say Financial Concerns Shouldn’t Affect Shelby Prison,” Billings Gazette, Associated Press, August 28, 2000.

56

National Institute on Money in State Politics databases.

57

Greg Burton, “Low Inmate Rolls Put Private Prison on Hold,” The Salt Lake City Tribune, October 26, 1999, A1.

58

Associated Press, “Beattie balks at paying $63 a day per inmate,” Feb. 23, 2000, State and Regional Sections.

59

Joe Borgenicht, “G-ville, contractors left holding the bag, Fate of Timpie Valley Prison Uncertain,” Tooele Transcript Bulletin Online
Edition, July 4, 2000.

60

Robert Gehrke, “Private Prison Plans Scrapped,” Deseret News, Associated Press, August 16, 2000.

61

Ibid.

62

National Institute on Money in State Politics, Idaho ‘98 Contributions Database.

63

THE PRISON PAYOFF
40