Under ‘realignment,’ private prison firms look to the counties

(Editor’s Note: Second of two parts. Part I can be viewed here.)

In 2019, California outlawed private prisons. By the time the ban went live in January 2020, the world’s biggest private prison contractor, the Florida-based GEO Group, lost $223 million in contracts with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

The new law, AB 32, authored by then-Assemblymember Rob Bonta, an Alameda Democrat, was approved handily by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, and many Californians thought that the cancellations of private prison contacts meant that the state would be rid of the prison profiteers.

But that was not to be.

While CDCR did cancel the contracts it had with private prison contractors to run lock-ups in the state and house inmates out-of-state, the private prison companies did not go away.

The companies’ programs include  “community corrections,” reentry services, counseling, rehabilitation programs, and electronic monitoring of offenders now on probation or parole.

That’s because the counties played an increasingly larger role in private correctional services, in part because of state-approved “realignment,” which shifted state prison inmates to the counties’ custody to comply with federal orders on prison overcrowding.

The legislation enables private prison contractors to be paid public money to provide an array of correctional services. These are largely at the county level, and the companies  continue to receive state money through the state-county realignment system approved a decade ago in AB 109, which the Legislature approved and Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law

The companies’ programs include  “community corrections,” reentry services, counseling, rehabilitation programs, and electronic monitoring of offenders now on probation or parole.

In reviewing hundreds of contracts, Capitol Weekly found that CDCR holds over $200 million in contacts with private prison corporations, with GEO Group having the largest amount — $184 million. CoreCivic, the other major private prison corporation, has about $22.6 million in contracts.

In addition, there is $46.7 million that GEO earns and $21.8 million that CoreCivic earns specifically from AB 109-related contracts with the counties. The two companies, the world’s largest private prison operators, receive a total of about $275.5 million annually, or nearly the same amount that the companies earned before the private prisons were abolished in California.

As with GEO and CoreCivic’s CDCR contracts, the private prison contractors can contract with the counties because the services it provides are exempt from AB-32’s ban.

Through Public Records Act requests to all 58 of California counties, we obtained and reviewed over 500 county contracts with private contractors.

The data shows that GEO Group (GEO), mostly through its BI Incorporated (BI) subsidiary, and CoreCivic, through its subsidiary Correctional Alternatives, hold tens of millions of dollars in contracts with 22 of California’s 58 counties, paid for with state public funds.

From 2016 to 2020, the counties of Fresno, Glenn, Imperial, Kern, Lassen, Marin, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Orange, Plumas, San Benito, San Francisco, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, and Ventura have paid GEO or its BI subsidiary at least $46.7 million in state taxpayer’s money to provide services to state offenders serving probation in the counties.

Correctional Alternatives, a CoreCivic subsidiary, holds only one contract with a California county, San Diego. From 2016 to 2020, San Diego paid Correctional Alternatives $21.8 million to run a residential reentry center, paid for with public funds.

As with GEO and CoreCivic’s CDCR contracts, the private prison contractors can contract with the counties because the services it provides are exempt from AB-32’s ban.

GEO’s relationship with California’s counties is 10 years old; CoreCivic didn’t get involved with San Diego County until 2013.

Their relationships came about through a series of corporate acquisitions and the passage of AB 109, California’s prison realignment bill, which was viewed as the state’s solution to its decades-long prison overcrowding crisis.

While California was fighting the Coleman and Plata orders, the Legislature was starting to address the state’s prison overcrowding crisis.

That crisis sparked major legal battles: 1995’s Coleman v. Wilson and 2001’s Plata v. Davis.

Coleman found that CDCR unconstitutionally denied inmates quality mental healthcare. Plata alleged that inmate medical care was unconstitutionally inadequate. In negotiations, CDCR agreed to provide a minimum level of inmate medical care.

Failure by the state to fulfill its obligations under the Coleman decision and the Plata agreement spurned the court to place CDCR’s health care and mental health care systems into federal receivership. Arguing that prison overcrowding was the cause of substandard care, Coleman and Plata plaintiffs also requested a federal three-judge panel be convened for the purpose of capping California’s prison population. The two cases were combined as Plata vs. Brown.

In 2009, the court ordered that the state to submit a plan to reduce its prison population. Though the state’s second plan was approved by the court (after the first was rejected), California appealed the order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While California was fighting the Coleman and Plata orders, the Legislature was starting to address the state’s prison overcrowding crisis. In February 2009, San Francisco’s state senator Mark Leno introduced SB 678.

Failure to provide adequate services, largely due to the counties’ lack of resources, fueled the imprisonment of large numbers of probation violators.

Leno’s legislation, crafted with input from county probation departments, established a Community Corrections Performance Incentive Fund (CCPIF). CCPIF funding was intended to “[improve] local probation supervision practices and capacities,” with the goal of reducing “the percentage of adult probationers sent to prison for a probation failure.” The CCPIF would be funded by the savings to the CDCR that resulted from SB-678’s reduction in recidivism.

Before SB 678, the counties were expected to fund services for at least 200,000 adult felons on probation. Failure to provide adequate services, largely due to the counties’ lack of resources, fueled the imprisonment of large numbers of probation violators. One legislative analysis of SB 678 concluded that such recidivism accounted for “forty percent of new admissions to state prison.”

According to one chief probation officer, SB 678 was not only crucial to reducing the state’s prison population, but it was the start of California’s probation departments’ shift from punishment to prevention, from “contain and capture” to using “evidence-based practices” to put prior offenders on a “productive path.”

Additionally, “widespread political support and early success of SB 678 opened a door for the state to craft more substantial changes to the structure of the criminal justice system, leading to California’s 2011 Public Safety Realignment and subsequent reforms,” per professors Mia Bird (UC Berkeley) and Ryken Grattet (UC Davis).

One of AB 109’s main provisions is the shifting the responsibility for housing non-violent, non-serious, non-Three Strikes offenders from the state to the county.

In May 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs in Plata, ordering California to reduce its prison population.

The state Legislature did not wait for the Plata decision to act on prison overcrowding. On Jan. 10, 2011, AB 109 – the prison realignment bill – was introduced in the Assembly. In mid-March, the bill had cleared the Legislature and, on April 4, it left Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk with his signature.

One of AB 109’s main provisions is the shifting the responsibility for housing non-violent, non-serious, non-Three Strikes offenders from the state to the county in which the inmate’s crimes occurred.

AB 109 also expanded the list of which offenders in both the state and county systems were eligible for home confinement and electronic monitoring.

On the surface, making the counties responsible for “their offenders” and expanding electronic monitoring seem like little more than a reform on paper. However, AB 109 also started to “realign” California’s criminal justice system from an emphasis on punishment to rehabilitation.

Though the counties were free to choose either confinement or probation, they were encouraged to go the route of rehabilitation.

The counties were ordered  to establish local Community Corrections Partnership (CCP), made up of “the chief probation officer of the county, a chief of police, the sheriff, a county supervisor or the chief administrative officer for the county, and the head of the county department of social services,” as well as leaders of community-based organizations (CBO).

The CCP was responsible for coming up with a plan on how to deal with the influx of prisoners that were coming from the state. While a certain percentage would be house in county lock-ups, many would be eligible for home confinement with electronic monitoring and/or probation.

Though the counties were free to choose either confinement or probation, they were encouraged to go the route of rehabilitation (probation) over incarceration (confinement). According to a 2014 report by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, post-AB 109, 28 counties move toward or maintained a stress on rehabilitation. Twenty-one counties shifted towards or stayed with incarceration. Nine counties continued to mix the two.

Counties choosing to emphasize probation were to use “evidence-based practices” – “supervision policies, procedures, programs, and practices demonstrated by scientific research to reduce recidivism among individuals under probation, parole, or post-release supervision.”

Whatever the county’s preference, on-the-ground realities often dictated where a county spent its AB 109 funding.

Evidence-based practices (EBP) included “day reporting centers, drug courts, residential multiservice centers, mental health treatment programs…victim restitution programs, counseling programs, community service programs, educational programs, and work training programs.”

AB 109 stated that EBP and electronic monitoring was to be done by “local public safety entities directly or through community-based public or private correctional service providers.” These mandates would be paid for with state finds provided through AB-109 and SB-678.

Talking to over two dozen people involved with CCPs at the county-level, this reporter found that most partnerships would prefer to meet their responsibilities in-house or to use CBOs rather than rely on “private correction service providers,” i.e., for-profit companies. This was also the majority opinion of those I talked to on the state level.

Whatever the county’s preference, on-the-ground realities often dictated where a county spent its AB 109 funding.

Counties that lacked the resources to provide services themselves had to contract out. If a county did not have local CBOs experienced in working with “individuals under probation, parole, or post-release supervision,” they had to contact with private for-profit companies.

If a county wanted to use electronic monitoring for home detention or supervised post-release, their only option was to contract with “private correctional service providers,” as private companies are the sole contractors for electronic monitoring.

BI also provided remote alcohol monitoring services for its clients, mostly probation departments.

In April 2011, private prison giant GEO Group (GEO) – as part of a 10-year run of acquisitions – purchased B.I. Incorporated (BI) for $415 million cash, an acquisition which positioned GEO to profit from California’s prison realignment. Though GEO had been doing business with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since 1994 (first as Wackenhut), the company did not have an in with California’s counties. BI did.

Founded in 1978, BI became the corrections industry leader in electronic monitoring. At the time of GEO’s purchase, BI was tracking “more than 60,000 offenders on behalf of approximately 900 federal, state and local correctional agencies located in all 50 states.” It was the sole provider of electronic monitoring services for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

BI was into more than electronic monitoring. It also provided remote alcohol monitoring services for its clients, mostly probation departments. Additionally, BI provided “community-based reentry services for approximately 1,700 parolees on behalf of state and local correctional agencies at 26 non-residential day reporting centers across the United States.”

At the time of its acquisition, BI already had relationships with many California counties, relationships that would expand GEO’s activities in the state, though mostly under the BI label. By 2016, the world’s largest private prison contractor was doing business with 21 of California’s 58 counties, specifically to provide services ordered under AB 109 and funded by state tax payers.

In April 2012, Correctional Alternatives signed what was to grow to a 11-year, $47.9 million contract with San Diego County.

From 2016 to 2020, the counties paid GEO Group and its BI, Incorporated subsidiary at least $46.7 million in state funds. At least $38 million of the total was earmarked toward day reporting centers and reentry services in Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Orange, Shasta, Tulare, and Tuolumne counties. The remaining $8.6 million went towards electronic monitoring and remote alcohol monitoring. Most of these contracts are active today.

Like GEO, CoreCivic had been doing business with CDCR since the 1990s; however, that relationship did not extend to San Diego County. Correctional Alternatives did. It was founded in San Diego in 1987, and had been dealing with the county since 1995.

In April 2012, Correctional Alternatives signed what was to grow to a 11-year, $47.9 million contract with San Diego County to run its residential reentry center, a program the county used to fulfill part of its obligations under AB 109, thus paid for with state funds.

A little more than a year after Correctional Alternative landed its multi-million dollar San Diego County contract, CoreCivic bought the company for $35 million cash, part of a three-year spending spree on firms which owned residential reentry facilities.

GEO Reentry Services (GRS) – GEO’s division dedicated to “community corrections” – gives itself high praise for the job it is doing. In a 2017 report on its Kern County operations – a report that uses 2013 data provided by the county – GRS reports a “significant reduction in recidivism for probationers who participated in [GRS’s day reporting center] programming. In fact, 70% of graduates did not recidivate, compared to 51% of participants, and 47% of offenders in the control group.”

GRS says that using “evidence-based practices…to lower recidivism rates…[by addressing] criminal thinking to change behavior at a fundamental level, so that former offenders may successfully reintegrate into the community” is at the heart of their mission.

Others are skeptical

‘These companies have set themselves up to read the tea-leaves of what is coming,” says Caroline Isaacs of the American Friends Service Committee—Arizona. “They’re saying, ‘We’re selling whatever governments are buying. So now you want rehabilitation, sure, we’ll tell you that we do that.’

She adds: “Literally, they market themselves as providing ‘alternatives to incarceration’ Whatever it is that have call it – reentry facilities, day reporting centers… – whatever it is to get a shoulder in the door.”