California, this is an hour and 15 minutes. Everyone. Ening, im. Name is mina k i in the friday host forum, and im glad that marissa is not my editor. If i had to keep it to 50 words, my god. Welcome toonhs ogm thnfum nitprrataleth quti srodiorrot nime, d etr ivate prisons help or harm the criminal Justice System. This is an important question because private prisons have in making a comeback under president trump. They are poised to grow as well under his law and order approach, and also his immigration policies. Course civic is for really Corrections Corporation of america, or cca. We have a really incredible panel joining us tonight. Shane bauer, to my right, is a Senior Reporter for mother jones. He spent four months as a private prison guard and brought us a firsthand account of what happens in these prisons. He is also the author of sliver of light, about his imprisonment in iran. Welcome , shane bauer. [applause] and next to shane is jeannie a former undersecretary of California Department of corrections and rehabilitation, and a strong opponent of the death penalty. Jeannie woodford, thanks for coming. [applause] and lec santos flew in Alicia Santos flew in. She works with the u. S. Criminal Justice System. She recently wrote an extensive piece on the business of private prison transport and some of the horrific, literally horrific, conditions people face, being driven thousands of miles on private vans or buses. Thanks for joining us all the way from new york. [applause] i want to start by giving the audience some context alicia, of the u. S. Private prison population. The total prison population is about 2 million, is that right . What proportion of that is private . The 2 million includes people in jail, thats about 600,000 people. Not including the jail population, you have 1. 5 Million People in state or federal prison. 126,000,ose, there are based on 2015 numbers, held in a private facility. A private facility operated by one of the 29 states that operates those types of state prisons. It is about 8 of the total prison population. Those numbers dont include the number of people held in private immigration detention facilities. Those numbers are somewhere around 30,000 people total, with about two thirds held in private facilities. The majority of people in immigration detention are in a private facility. Jeannie, do you know what the figures are in california, in terms of how many california prisoners are in private prisons . So when i was with this California Department of rehabilitation, we had cap the state of 4500, and as a result of the threejudge panel decision, they had to reduce the number of inmates being held in california prisons that the state contracted with prisons outofstate to house inmates in excess of the cap. That number has been coming down but i believe there are still a couple thousand or a little more that are housed in private prisons in other states. What is theer, appeal of private prisons for states and local entities . What do they promise . Companies, andon their main arguments for their existence is that they save money. Cheaper, they are although there was recently a federal study by the department of justice that basically showed much, andost is not there are a lot of conflicting things. Some say they cause more in the end. There are issues in california where private Prison Companies wont take prisoners with serious medical issues, so that cost is essentially offset to the public prisons. There are a lot of hidden costs like this, that when you see the number of how much they are saving, it really isnt fleshed out. So when they say they save 17 per inmate per day, the statistic i have seen, its a little fuzzy. You. The main way they save money is through what they pay their staff. They are cutting a lot of corners, generally. Staffing is the main cost of running a prison. When you pay the staff less it cost less money. And you know that firsthand from working in a private prison, but before i get to that, i want to flesh out how private prisons get paid. Alicia santos, is it true that they get paid per in may they have, and per inmate they have, and also that they have occupancy requirements that they put on states or local governments . As far as i am aware, that per prisoner, per bed contract, in which there have been guarantees about what that population will remain at, so obviously that can lead to lobbying for certain types of laws that would keep that level the same, such as maybe not reducing mandatory minimums, because then you will have a more steady population of people, or lowering certain criminal penalties. That is how they have often been structured. Governmentsens if dont meet the occupancy requirements, and what kind of penalty exists, shane bauer . Generally the contract of the prison i worked at guaranteed any 5 occupancy rate, which means if it falls below 95 , the government will pay the rate as if 95 of the prisoners were there. So essentially taxpayers. Right, right. Basically what you are describing, Alicia Santos, is an industry that is incentivized to have as many people, or the demand for inmates, to keep the demand for inmates high, and it sounds like you are saying fight against laws that would reduce that prison population, such as fighting against reducing mandatory minimums or leniency or things like that. Jeannie, you are not in. Yes. Included in their annual report is exactly those statements, the threat if there is any change in sentencing laws, changes in Drug Enforcement laws, changes in immigration status, would influence, would affect their bottom line. They have to put that in their annual report, because they need to let people who buy their stock no what the risk is, and any progressive policies, there is a risk to their bottom line. How powerful ou are they as a lobby . They are incredibly powerful. They give lots of donations to candidates for office, and or have been lots of stories during the president ial campaign about the private prisons given money to rubio and other people running to become president. Their influence is pretty great. I just wanted to point out, too, that publicly run prisons also operate on incentives. For example, i was a reporter in upstate new york, and during the time it was reporting their, there was a huge effort to close prisons, and private prisons arent allowed in new york state, but that didnt stop it from being a very difficult thing to try to do. The unions were fighting really hard against it, the politicians were in their, they pushed really hard against it. I just want to point it out, that those types of things exist in Public Sector prisons, too, in the same types of horrific conditions. Which then raises the question, jeannie woodford, are state run institutions better than private prisons . It absolutely depends on the state, because of how much you put into your prisons that make the system good or bad, right . I think we are fortunate in california to have a governor who cares about Public Safety, who believes what we do inside our prisons matters to our communities, so there is an emphasis on rehabilitation. I know you mentioned earlier that you have just been in san quentin and saw the many programs. With our Current Governor and legislation those are being put all over california. Its better than other states, really depends on the public getting involved and interested in what happens inside prison systems. As the warden of san quentin, you are really focused on what you believe should be the mission of prisons, which is a rehabilitative function, correct . So what is the interests of a private prison, what impact do you think they have on the rehabilitative function of prisons . I think their bottom line is profit. I have been in some private prisons, and they only do what is in the contract. If theyre contracted to provide certain services, that is all they will provide, and they are not looking to improve Public Policy. They are not looking to evolve a system to make it better for the individuals in it, which makes it better for Public Safety in general. View, as ant of Public Servant having spent 30 years in the criminal Justice System here in california, i always thought of Public Safety more broadly, and i always believe that what we did inside our prisons had an impact in our communities. And i also believe that we needed to follow the science and the data, and that is why i implemented datadriven decisionmaking in the department of corrections through a program called comstat. I think that is what they should be about, evolving to follow the science of criminal justice. As a result of californias attitude toward that, we have seen some really vast improvements in our sentencing laws here in the state. As an example, keeping nonserious, nonviolent, nonsex offenders out of prison at the local level. We have a lot more to do, but that was a huge, huge step in california towards a better system. Shouldnt totally create that dichotomy between the state and the private, theuse the states run states are contracted and these private companies oversee from what i have seen, its not even an issue of companies doing what the contract requires. They dont even do that a lot of the time. The states dont have much of a means to enforce these contracts. I dont know of them writing into the contract penalties for contract they will say they can revoke contracts, but they dont do that. Its still the responsibility of the state that these prisoners are running this way, ultimately. There was an Inspector General report that basically sound that in private basically found that in private prisons there was a higher rate of assault, on prison staff and between inmates, and you were in a prison, you were in the correctional facility in louisiana, medium security. Did that play out in your experience . Were they unsafe . It did, yeah. The prison i was in was very violent. There were stabbings every week. And thered stabbings, are stabbings and all prisons, there is violence in all prisons, but when i left and looked at the data, there was not just more violence, but more use of force, and it comes down to the issue that it was way understaffed, for one. There were very minimal education programs. A lot of times i didnt get to go outside. When you say understaffed, what was the ratio . I would come in to work and there would be days where there were 25 guards for 1500 inmates. I worked in the unit with 350 prisoners with one other guard. We just had radios. Were not really doing much. And the medical is a lot worse. All this stuff adds up to this frustration for People Living of 44 living in a dorm then all day long, and people fight. Fights break out. There are a lot of drugs and contraband in prison, guards that make nine dollars per hour, try to make ends meet selling drugs. On top of that, when i was there, i was noting whenever there was a stabbing, i would write it down, the date. When i left, i texted the department of corrections to see how many of them the company reported. They are required to report all of them. In a twomonth period, i knew about ten or so, and in that tenmonth period, they reported five. And this is they werent all been reported. Right. And as journalists , we look for these documents, but the people writing the documents are lying so they are worthless. We cant know that unless they are there. So a few things. Part of the reason the staffing level is so low is why . Because its nine dollars per hour. You got paid nine dollars per hour to be a prison guard. Yet. And it was in a very poor town in louisiana, really rundown. Still, even though it was so poor, there were not a lot of people willing to work there for nine dollars per hour. The people that did work there, many of them were single moms that needed insurance for their kids, needed a job. In paid . 50 more than mcdonalds and walmart. This was a prison run by core civic . Yeah. What you are saying is that they paid you very little and cap Staffing Levels low to maximize their profit . So the prison itself, they wanted to hire more people, but they dont get to set the pay. That is all done at the Corporate Office in nashville. It kind of create this culture where everybody who works there is frustrated with the corporation. Everyone i met, other than the top level staff, inmates and staff, hated the company. They felt like they were all being used in some way so that these people they never meet can make money. The warden was trying to get a raise. There was a one dollar raise when i was there, but people come in, and the turnover is so great because people just its just not worth it. It is such a dangerous job. Given example. What did you have to do on a nine dollar per hour wage . What was the scariest thing that happened . We work 12 hour shifts, sometimes those turned into 14, 16 hour shifts, because there werent enough people to work, or we come in extra days. My job was basically to work in a unit and deal with the 350 prisoners. Let them out to eat, let them back in, lock them up. When they need something, they call for me, and i have to tell whoever it is, and we were supposed to count them multiple times per day. Were also supposed to, every half hour, go through these dorms and check on people. But that didnt happen, nobody did that. You mean they didnt follow through . No, no. They are making nine dollars per hour, they wont get fired unless they do something really egregious. The attitude is like, theres no incentive to do this work. Bother . And they will write it down in a book that it was done. It will look at the book, the books are in order, so its just perpetuated. Alicia, is what shane bauers describing a unique experience . Or do you think its fairly representative of what happens in private prisons . It is hard to say. Unfortunately i didnt have the experience shane had. Its hard to say. I would guess it is probably quite typical. When we wrote about Christen Press about prison transport companies, people are severely underpaid, taking these jobs out of desperation, pushed to their limits, and a lot of bad things happen. Youou report more and more, have the sympathy for everybody involved, the people working in the people being held in custody. Talk about prison transportation. What is it and why is it privatized, and why is that so appealing to states . So lets say you live in florida, and you fell behind on your Child Support in ohio, for example, and the District Attorney wants to bring you back to face a charge on that. To get you all the way and go back would be quite a large venture that somebody who works for the Law Enforcement would have to do, so instead they contract it out to a private company that does it for a very low rate. The way it works, the Companies Drive all around the country,s exact all across, picking up people. Sometimes they drive for weeks on end and nobody gets out of the van except to go to the bathroom the entire time. That leads to not surprisingly really, really horrible things happening to people. Medical crises, sexual assault, multiple deaths. The guards are driving, they hardly ever get to stop. They are very tired. We documented over 50 crashes, 12 of them where people died. We saw that there were many times women housed right next to men, even though under federal regulations they are supposed to be separate. So many escapes. We found at least 60 escapes since 2000, 18 went on to commit new crimes, so if you dont feel sympathy for the people in the van, maybe would concern you that people are getting out and committing new crimes once they escape the van. It was a big undertaking to figure this all out, because unlike private prisons which you can see and know exist, these drive across state lines, which makes it really hard to find, to it thes liable is company, the pickup . Like shane was saying, that people the Government Agencies that hire these people, they are not saying that we want any sort of standard about how these people are brought back to our custody. They hire the Cheapest Company and the company doesnt the cheapest way possible, and nobody is at fault for it. So yeah, it similars in a lot of ways. Can you describe one of these suspicious deaths on the transport vehicle . Yeah. One of the people, stephen galec, a father of three, he owned a Home Remodeling business. He succumbed to an opiate addiction for some time, and he fell behind on Child Support payments, and they locked him up. Thats the kind of person who might end up on the van. He was he was arrested for not paying Child Support. Thats right. He died under mysterious circumstances in the sense that there are multiple inmates on the van who say he died from a beating from the two guards driving the van, and others being held. By the medical examiner came back with inconclusive autopsy, and they are currently i believe the litigation is ongoing. He was one of our main stories because we had so much detail about what had happened, we could figure out the entire route and see how they crisscrossed all over. He had been begging for help for quite a long time before he actually died. There were multiple people you wrote about who would say they were experiencing stomach pain, some kind of medical issue, that the people who are driving the vans thought they were faking it. Sometimes, or there was one woman, denise isaacs, a woman in her 40s, a mother who had been complaining for a long time was aving she basically a lot of people are on medication and then their medication stops. It is not uncommon people start having a lot of medical distress while they are on the van. So yeah, that is the kind of thing where, in that case, the guards actually wanted to bring her to the hospital. Under their company policy, they had to call and ask for permission. The company said no. So they kept driving. I did this story with my coworker it took us eight months, two fulltime reporters, to figure this out. Research it can take to figure out this in