People matter more than numbers: organized efforts against prison privatization in Florida

Abstract

As the American prison population increased, so did the correctional labor force. Correctional officers in the United States have gained increased professionalism and strong representation since the 1980s. Meanwhile, many states have pushed to privatize state-run prisons in order to dampen correctional spending. Although a substantial amount of research has been conducted on the comparison of costs and qualities of confinement in public and private prisons, correctional officer labor has so far not been examined. In Florida, Senate Bill 2038, proposing the single largest expansion of prison privatization in US history, was defeated in February 2012 in the state Senate mainly as a result of lobbying by state correctional workers. By investigating the question of correctional labor from a critical perspective and by comparing salary levels, work benefits, training, and education opportunities in public and private prisons in Florida, the professionalism of correctional officers in state-run prisons vs. the working conditions their counterparts face in private facilities is contrasted. The findings suggest that adverse working conditions for correctional officers in private prisons may negatively impact correctional costs and efficiency in the longer term.

Keywords:

• correctional officer labor
• professionalism
• prison privatization
• Florida
• neoclassical economic thought
• Marxist theory

Notes

1. According to the American Correctional Association (ACA), the different job titles for ‘correctional security staff’ that engage in the direction supervision, custody, and control of inmates are majors, sergeants, case managers, and correctional officers (ACA, 2011).

2. The term ‘professionalism’ in corrections can include such preferable individual characteristics as technical competence, organizational efficiency, but also such individualistic and altruistic characteristics as typically associated with older professions in law and medicine. Former Justice Brandeis was cited by the ACA as having described a ‘profession’ as first an ‘occupation for which the necessary preliminary training is intellectual in character, involving knowledge and to some extent learning as distinguished from mere skill; second, it is an occupation which is pursued largely for others and not merely for one’s self; third, it is an occupation in which the amount of financial return is not the accepted measure of success’ (Levinson, Stinchcomb, & Green, 2001, p. 126).

3. Prison facilities that are not included in the number of correctional facilities but house inmates are work camps, boot camps, stand-alone work/forestry camps, treatment centers, work release centers, and road prisons.

4. The private prison companies in Florida, CCA, Geo Group, and MTC were contacted by either email/phone or both ways for the purpose of this research, but all three companies refused to specify the entry-level salaries for their correctional officers.

5. According to the FLSA of 1938 as amended (29 U.S.C. §201 et seq.), any non-exempt employee must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per workweek, a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay.