The article "State considers private prisons," Jan. 12, provided comments from various stakeholders - the governor, the Legislature, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Each argued for or against the privatization of California prisons. Regretfully, none of the individuals quoted spoke for or about the consequences to taxpayers, the families of inmates, or even the inmates.

Prisons are supposed to provide two distinct and important functions: providing for the incarceration of those individuals who are a threat to public safety; and rehabilitating those individuals who want to and can be, which is even more important financially to every taxpayer. The prison system has abjectly failed to provide either as is demonstrated by the 70 percent rate of recidivism and the number of inmates who become repeat offenders. If any business had a product failure rate of 70 percent, it would be closed. Unfortunately, we cannot close our prisons.

The high cost of prisons is falsely attributed to the people that work in them, the correctional officers and medical staff, to name a few. The governor, in order to find a "quick fix" and to "retaliate against the union," suggests that the best way to reduce costs will be to open private prisons which pay their staffs less. As with all simplistic solutions, it sounds good in a sound bite, but it is doomed to failure.

The people who work


inside a prison represent a microcosm of society, some very good, some very bad, and most just normal individuals. But there is one thing which is common among prison staff - they are highly trained individuals who know 1) the law to ensure that inmates are not subject to illegal abuse; 2) how to deal with inmates that are cooperative and those that are not; 3) how to deal with the mentally or physically ill, and, perhaps most important, 4) when to use deadly force in an environment which can change from peaceful to extraordinarily dangerous in a secondKnowing that the state allows only the most highly trained individuals to hold such positions of authority not only protects inmates who want nothing more than to serve their time from predatory inmates, it also protects all citizens from the threat of crime spreading from the prisons by gang leaders into our communities. Working at a prison requires more than muscle and bulk; staff must know and understand constitutional standards of conduct for themselves and the wards of the state.

Prisons are Petri dishes for communicable diseases.

Maintaining the health and safety of all of us outside the prison requires constant diligence by the medical and correctional staff at each prison. We cannot expect the same from private prisons because of the expectation of profit. Also, private prisons house only the least dangerous inmates, leaving the state to continue to house the most dangerous, sick and expensive.

Private prisons charge less for the housing of inmates by reducing the cost of their operations. This has been accomplished by paying "guards" extraordinarily low wages which results in high staff turnover and more inmate complaints about health care and treatment by staff, as well as failure to provide rehabilitation programs. Inmate complaints become inmate lawsuits. Lawsuits result in judgments against the state, the awards of which are then paid by taxpayers. Because of these problems with private prisons, other states have withdrawn inmates from private prisons. Short term there are savings, long term the savings are eaten up by unexpected costs.

But perhaps the most important issue which must be faced is the question of do we as citizens want to give private prison guards the authority to use deadly force. These guards may well be given training on how "to shoot straight," but they will not receive the same training on when to use deadly force as is provided to California prison correctional officers. One wrongful death will provide a judicial award of more than one month's operational savings.

Only state-operated prisons can assure that dangerous inmates are properly segregated from society and from peaceful inmates to allow rehabilitation. Long term, once inmate population is reduced to judicially acceptable levels, it will result in lower recidivism. Lower recidivism means less money spent on prisons. We will only obtain that result with a well-trained, professional staff. We will only get what we pay for with professional employees, not "guards."

David Warren is a member of Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, a nonpartisan consortium of California taxpayers, business interests, and persons within the prison reform community who seek to improve public safety through meaningful and cost-effective measures which best utilize taxpayer dollars. He is a volunteer Jewish chaplain at a number of California prisons and a volunteer advocate in the state Capitol to reduce recidivism through rehabilitation and segregation of those inmates who want to succeed from those who do not.