Ghost Prisoners and Shell Games

Article by Julia Lutsky 

During the past decade Mississippi, like most other jurisdictions, engaged in massive prison building to accommodate the influx of prisoners brought about by “get tough” legislation. Now that prison populations have begun to decline nationwide, there are more beds than prisoners and a federal judge has returned $1.3 million the state was fined for overcrowding. The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) presently houses approximately 19,000 prisoners and had, at the beginning of September, a surplus of approximately 2,145 prison beds.

Prisons, however, are big business. They provide jobs in construction, service and maintenance as well as markets for service companies. Private prisons provide even more: a neat profit to those who can care for prisoners more cheaply. Consequently, the state legislature passed legislation on July 1st of this year mandating payment to ten regional jails and two private prisons for a minimum of 230 beds per regional facility and 900 in each private prison, whether or not there are prisoners actually occupying those beds.

Wayne Calabrese is president and CEO of the Florida-based Wackenhut Corrections Corporation which runs the Marshall County Facility, one of the private prisons considered in the legislation. Wackenhut also runs the Lauderdale County Correctional Facility. Calabrese commented that “We want to be sure that the price we gave the state, which was based on full or nearly full occupancy, is in fact what we receive.” The second private prison to which the legislation applies is the Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood; it is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), based in Nashville.

Both these companies actively campaigned to obtain the authorization and funding to run the prisons. Wackenhut’s local lobbyist, Al Sage, joined Calabrese and the two went from office to office at the statehouse cornering crucial legislators. Not to be outdone, CCA sent its local lobbyist, Spencer Medlin, to explain the needs of its facility to legislators.

Both state Commissioner of Corrections Robert Johnson and Governor Ronnie Musgrove opposed the legislation; Musgrove vetoed it when it crossed his desk earlier this year. The money should be better spent on classroom supplies, he contended. Senate Correction Committee Chairman Robert Smith also criticized the legislation as wasteful agreeing that the money would be better spent on education.  Musgrove’s veto was overridden at the end of March in both House and Senate by substantial majorities. Opponents of the legislation say it means moving prisoners from Parchman Penitentiary and other prisons to reach the required minimum. Johnson called funding private prisons when there are empty beds in state institutions a waste of taxpayers’ dollars and accused the legislature of playing a “shell game” that misuses state resources. “You can call it ‘ghost inmates.’ You can call it anything that you want to,” he told the legislators. “The fact remains that we’re paying for something we don’t need.”

Six of the regional jails hired their own lobbyist, Charles Weissinger, Jr., a lawyer and former state legislator who had helped to plan two of the regional prisons in the early 1990s. Weissinger urged Johnson to restore the full number of 250 prisoners to the regional jails, going so far as to say that the prisoners could be taken from the private prisons. Johnson was not swayed. According to a state legislature’s auditing agency report made in July, Weissinger will receive a minimum of $332,000 this year.

The cost of the legislation varies according to the source consulted: Johnson estimates it to be $2 million for the prisons and $4 million for the regional jails. On the other hand, the state House Appropriations Committee estimates it to be $5 million in toto. Attorney Ron Welch of Jackson has monitored the state’s prison overcrowding for some years and says that the state should be very careful when it comes to funding private prisons: he called guaranteeing the income of the private prison companies an example of the tail wagging the dog.

When the legislation went into effect the MDOC faced the possibility of moving some 500 prisoners in local jails and county work programs into prisons or regional facilities.

Upon receiving word of the proposed transfers from county programs, many of the 61 sheriffs whose jails would be affected were furious; they complained loudly to the MDOC and to Attorney General Michael Moore’s office. Sheriffs in Mississippi wield a great deal of influence in local and county politics and sizeable income is provided by the county work programs that would have to be sacrificed if prisoners are moved elsewhere. Last year, for example, prisoners performed work worth more than $1.9 million for Harrison County; they do such things as cleaning, painting and maintaining buildings and grounds; they cut grass, pick up litter and repair automobiles. They also work for non-profit agencies like Habitat for Humanity or the Humane Society. Harrison stands to lose 46 of its 72 prisoners. The income they provide the county would be lost if they are moved to make private prisons and regional facilities “cost effective” (read: profitable).

Perhaps fearing a retaliation from home district voters, a legislative report released in mid-June indicated that the MDOC did not need to remove prisoners currently in sheriffs’ work programs. It is unclear, however, from precisely where the prisoners will be taken to fill the newly created slots. Johnson remains of the opinion that some 250 prisoners must still be found to meet the numbers stipulated in the legislation.

That same legislative report also showed that it would be possible to set a far smaller minimum number of prisoners and that prisoners could be housed for considerably less than the amounts previously specified. AG Moore estimates that these new figures ought to save Mississippi taxpayers some $6 million annually. This is a difficult figure to believe, considering the original cost of the legislation was estimated to be between $5 and $6 million. What is evident, however, is that figures are being juggled to justify huge expenditures on items necessary to the pockets and political futures of individual legislators. Such legislators create machines designed primarily to perpetuate themselves in office. And in this case, by considering local economies and contributions to their own political coffers first and foremost, they are clearly putting the prison before the prisoner and laying the groundwork for a permanent “perpetual prisoner machine.”

Sources: Prison Policy News, Colorado Springs, Colorado;  Associated Press; The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi; The Sun Herald Online, Mississippi, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of Justice Matters.