Arizona Department of Corrections Director David Shinn
Arizona Department of Corrections Director David Shinn said Arizona communities would "collapse" without cheap prison labor,
during testimony before the Joint Legislative Budget Committee Thursday.
Shinn made the statement while answering questions about a Request For Proposal for a contract to run the Florence West prison.
Sen. David Gowan asked Shinn about the nature of the work the prisoners do at the Florence West prison.
In Arizona, all people in state prisons are forced to work 40 hours a week with exceptions for prisoners with health care conditions and other conflicting programming schedules.
Some prisoners earn just 10 cents an hour for their work."These are low-level worker inmates that work in the communities around the county itself, I would imagine?" Gowan asked.
"Yes. The department does more than just incarcerate folks," Shinn replied.
"There are services that this department provides to city, county, local jurisdictions, that simply can't be quantified at a rate that most jurisdictions could ever afford. If you were to remove these folks from that equation, things would collapse in many of your counties, for your constituents."
Defending the choice to keep state and private prisons open despite dwindling populations, Shinn told the legislators "while it doesn't necessarily serve the department in the best interest to have these places open, we have to do it to support Arizona."
"Without the ability to have these folks at far flung places like Apache, like Globe, like Fort Grant, even like Florence West, communities wouldn't have access to these resources or services, and literally would have to spend more to be able to provide that to their constituents," Shinn said.
Current private prison contract pays for beds, even if they are emptyThe state currently contracts with The GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies, to run Florence West, a minimum security prison that can hold up to 750 people.
Budget committee staffer Geoff Paulsen said the state had purchased the facility through incremental payments over the life of the current contract, with the intention of the state taking ownership in October 2022.
The facility was built in 1997.
After taking ownership, the state would either need to provide staffing for the prison, or contract staffing out to another private contractor.
Shinn told the committee at this point,
the state is in no position to run Florence West, citing 1,891 vacancies among corrections officers throughout the Department of Corrections.
"If the state were to take this over today, we would literally have to shut down functions and close programs," Shinn said. "We cannot support that level of activity without our partners."
As with most other private prison contracts in Arizona, the RFP to run Florence West guarantees the vendor a 90% occupancy rate,
meaning the state pays a per diem rate for 675 prisoners, regardless of how many people are actually incarcerated there.As of July 13, there were only 457 prisoners at Florence West.Rep. Kelli Butler asked Shinn why the state would agree to such a contract condition, in which the state would likely be paying for more than 200 empty beds.
"I cannot speak firsthand on the logic of why previous contracts were written that way," Shinn said. "However, I can assure you that we are looking at that very thing in this RFP process."
Rep. John Kavanagh said to get companies interested in bidding for the contract, it was necessary to provide a profit motive.
"You have to guarantee that they're going to have people there, and they're going to have a profit that they make, they're going to have income," Kavanagh said. "No one's going to enter into a contract when you can't guarantee the income that they expect. That's kind of based on basic business."
After more questioning from Butler, Shinn confirmed there were currently more than 5,000 empty beds in the Arizona prison system state-wide.
"So we do have the option of switching these inmates out of this facility and into other facilities and save a lot of money for the taxpayer," Butler said. "So I'm less concerned about whether or not this private prison company makes the profits that they want to make and more concerned about the taxpayer of Arizona."
When Butler asked "Why aren't we closing more prisons?" her line of questioning was halted by committee leadership for being outside the scope of discussion.
Butler noted
many of the people incarcerated at the Florence West prison are serving time for DUI's, and asked about their access to substance abuse programming.
"During the interim, I did some study about what the private prisons were providing in terms of substance abuse treatment," Butler said. She said she found that
13.9% of the people in private prisons received treatment. "That means the vast majority do not."
Butler asked if there was any language in the RFP mandating substance abuse treatment, but Shinn said he could not comment on specifics during the bidding process.
The most recent private prison contract in Arizona was awarded to private prison operator CoreCivic,
in a deal that is expected to generate millions in profits for the company. The five-year contract took effect on Dec. 29, 2021. The state will pay CoreCivic $85.12 per prisoner, per day for the contract, with the state guaranteeing a minimum 90% occupancy rate. The prisoners were relocated to CoreCivic's La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy from the state prison in Florence, which the state is closing.
An Arizona Republic investigation found that
Arizona lawmakers invested more in private prisons after record-high campaign contributions from the industry in recent years.
The Joint Legislative Budget Committee gave a favorable review to the Department of Corrections RFP process for the Florence West prison on Thursday.
Reader Comments
Did you know that the Barbary pirates captured more than 1.5 million European slaves? Know why there aren't any descendants of them? It's because they castrated all the men.
The prison systems provide legal slavery, but there is an immense amount of illegal slavery still going on. All those Yezidis ISIS captured became slaves.
This is fascism. A merger of state and corporate power.
None of the big corporations will allow you to think to choose and to have a free will. So we all live in a big fairy tale until we wake up and see the world for what it is - slavery never ended, it has only had some minor cosmetic changes so that we can be happy slaves and be proud of it.
Why would it be in the corporate state's interest to overhaul regulations? The regulations were put in place for one reason - to maximize profit.
When arrested, if you can't pay for bail, you will be convicted - guilty or not, does not matter. If you are not able to earn enough money, that means that you will of better use to the society in prison. That means that your value is too low.
Americans have had their heads up their ass a long time. TV PROGRAMMING MK Ultra. The weapon of choice for all entrainment programming around the globe.
Now it must all end. When its to expensive to continue the show they tear the curtain down in the land of OZ showing that there is nothing but a brick wall there. All was illusion.
Regarding the use of prisoners as slaves that has gone on since its inception in the U.S. and I imagine other nations too.
However, a more recent study looking at convictions in the state of Virginia during the 1970s and 1980s and matching them to later DNA analysis estimates a rate of wrongful conviction at 11.6%.
A 2014 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences made a conservative estimate that 4.1% of inmates awaiting execution on death row in the United States are innocent, and that at least 340 innocent people may have been executed since 1973.
Another study estimated that up to 10,000 people may be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in the United States each year.
Noble cause corruption
Police may become convinced a particular suspect is guilty but not have sufficient evidence to prove it. Sometimes they may 'plant' evidence in order to secure a conviction because they believe it is in the public interest, or that there is a greater good, in convicting this particular person. In other words, they believe that the ends (or the outcome) justifies the means. This is known as noble cause corruption.
Plea bargaining
Further information: Plea bargain
Another technique used by police is plea bargaining whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt. This generally occurs when the defendant pleads guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of several charges, in return for the dismissal of the main charge; or it may mean that the defendant pleads guilty to the main charge in return for a more lenient sentence.
Other issues
Withholding or destruction of evidence by police or prosecution
Fabrication of evidence or outright perjury by police (see testilying), or prosecution witnesses
Biased editing of evidence
Prejudice against the class of people to which the defendant belongs
Misdirection of a jury by a judge during trial
Perjured evidence by the real guilty party or their accomplices (frameup)
Perjured evidence by the alleged victim or their accomplices
Conspiracy between court of appeal judges and prosecutors to uphold conviction of the innocent
Fraudulent conduct by a judge: Judicial Misconduct
Ineffective defence counsel
Privatization of prisons creates a profit motive for having people in prison. The corporation is paid by the state, mostly for inmates incarcerated. The corporation uses the prisoners for labor. The basis for the corporation's success is putting more people in prison, regardless of what they did? I thought prison was for rehabilitation and education.
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Even Israel found the practice of private prisons to be quite evil and perverse.
In November 2009, an expanded panel of 9 judges of the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that privately run prisons are unconstitutional,
finding that for the State to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would
severely violate the prisonersโ basic human rights to dignity and freedom.