Unable to fix the joint, cash-starved officials did the next best thing: they sold it last January, for a mere $52 million. Now the new owner, Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, is working overtime to bring the crumbling jail up to code. It’s the first time a prison has been sold outright (although under a lease-back agreement, ownership is supposed to revert to D.C. after 20 years), and the result could have a huge impact on dozens of urban prison systems that are flirting with privatization, from Texas to South Africa. Already, private companies supervise 60,000 inmates - a small but rapidly rising number.
Some prison reformers are outraged by the D.C. deal. They say CCA can’t possibly turn a profit in a system so far gone without slashing services. In fact, the company says its strategy calls for spending more, not less, on programs for the prison’s 850 inmates; it hopes to create a more peaceful prison with lower labor costs (which account for the bulk of the nation’s huge prison bills). Working that miracle so close to Capitol Hill would help spread the gospel of privatization. It would also be a personal coup for CCA chairman Doc Crants (Doctor is his first name - a family tradition). A Native American who left the reservation for West Point and Harvard, Crants now finds himself on the verge of becoming America’s warden. ““If we can make it there,’’ he says of D.C., ““we can make it anywhere.''
That much is undeniable. Even the central prison’s newly installed warden, Lonnie Moore, a 25-year veteran of the federal prison system, was stunned by the conditions he inherited in March. Moore has hired so many contractors to gut the place that he worries about inmates escaping in wheelbarrows. Because most of the inmates have a history of substance abuse, CCA is introducing a highly touted therapy program it claims is working in several of its other facilities. The company is laying out about $3.9 million for everything from new textbooks to jumpsuits, an investment it expects to recoup over the next several years. ““Everything that would make this a first-class institution is on the verge of going wrong,’’ Moore says with a sigh. ““I’m under the microscope here. I’ve got to get that trash out of the front yard. I’ve got to get those bushes pruned.''
Although labor unions endorsed the deal, only about 25 of the 148 guards chose to stay on; they traded in government pensions for shares of CCA’s sizzling stock. (Its value has jumped almost tenfold in the last three years.) With their help, the company plans to run the prison for about $1.9 million less per year than the District was spending. Some of that savings will be achieved by blasting through the cobwebs of government bureaucracy to buy cheaper supplies. But CCA expects most of the savings to come from the reduced work force and cuts in overtime. That’s where all the new programs come in. ““We don’t do it because we’re good guys,’’ Crants says bluntly. ““We do it because an inmate who is busy and filled with hope is easier to manage than an inmate who is filled with rage.''
Academics have been pushing the same philosophy for years. But critics say it’s only a matter of time before inmates suffer in order to boost the bottom line. ““Much of what you’re seeing is very sophisticated propaganda,’’ says Jonathan M. Smith, whose group, the D.C. Prisoners Legal Services Project, represents aggrieved inmates. He charges that CCA is already cutting its overhead costs at the expense of sick inmates, who aren’t getting their medicines fast enough. (Moore admits that some meds have to be shipped overnight from Nashville, but says all pharmacies grapple with the same delays.) Smith also accuses CCA of striking a secret sweetheart deal guaranteeing it a larger role in the capital’s prisons, no matter what happens at the central facility. Crants denies any covert pact.
CCA remains dominant in the field; with its entry into Georgia last week, the company now holds contracts with 18 states, plus Puerto Rico and the federal government. Only one of its competitors - the Florida-based Wackenhut - even comes close. Industry experts credit Doc Crants. A hulking man with a soft voice and dainty mannerisms, the 50-year-old Crants spent his early childhood on a Seneca reservation in rural New York. He got his grade-school education in a one-room school with an outhouse in back. After winning a coveted appointment to West Point, Crants served two tours in Vietnam and earned business and law degrees from Harvard. Until he co-founded CCA in 1983, his experience in prisons was limited to a one-day tour as a law student. He was building his own cable-TV fiefdom when he joined the fledgling CCA as its financial expert. Crants took over in 1987 and quickly made his mark. The company has doubled its profits in each of the last two years and now runs 59 prisons; Crants himself owns stock worth some $30 million. He and his 28-year-old son are now running a real-estate trust that will buy up CCA properties under a separate name. The company has also branched out into prisons abroad, and it’s a formidable political lobbyist at home.
Win or lose in the capital, there is still the larger question: should any prison be run for profit? Despite a nationwide trend toward privatization, the General Accounting Office concluded last year that it’s still not clear whether private prisons really save any money. And providers have faced their share of violence; CCA recently reopened a federal detention center for immigrants in New Jersey where inmates rioted two years ago after another private operator allegedly shackled them in leg irons. CCA has had its own problems. There have been escapes and riots on its watch, and the Supreme Court ruled last month that its guards - and, by extension, all private prison guards - could be sued by inmates. (Publicly employed guards are protected.) CCA and South Carolina recently agreed to part ways after inmates there claimed the company was mistreating them. ““It’s morally wrong, legally wrong and wrong as a matter of principle to run prisons for profit,’’ says Ira Robbins, an American University law professor. Perhaps. But then again, the way inmates have been living in Washington can’t possibly be right.
