Judge who sold juveniles to jails gets 28 yrs

[Benton]

(09-04-2015, 06:00 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: It saves the govt money if done correctly, and by that I mean not outsourcing all your jails but some number of beds you know will be filled, which makes govt-run jails more of an overflow to handle variances in the numbers of incarcerated individuals at any time.  Or it would probably be even better to outsource the overflow as private prisons not employing unionized govt workers with pensions have lower labor costs and can adjust many of their costs more easily.

The problem is when you want to set this up and a new prison needs to be BUILT, not you have huge CapEx that has to be billed....a rate that is lower on a per-head basis the more beds you fill, and also what might lead to closing of an older govt-run jail.

(09-06-2015, 09:32 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: So private jails are bad because of one corrupt judge and one corrupt jail?  

The issue with jails is that when they are ran by the public they must have Unionized workforce.   Then they have limitations on who can bid on other services.    This drives the prices up.  

bot sure how it's done elsewhere but here they charge you daily for bed, food, and clothing.   Not to mention how Aramark over charges for "luxury" items which the county gets their cut plus gets paid by Aramek for the proviledge to sell.   Plus they take a daily user fee out of the cantine accounts of the prisoners.

Not to say private wouldn't do some of these things but its easier to write tjings like this into the bidding process when contracting for services.

Guard salary is a bit skewed when you look up the average, which is around $37,000 for state guards across the country. It's skewed because just like any company, those at the top make considerably more. And they aren't typically in the union, they're the administration guys.

Starting salary for a guard, depending on state, averages between $19-24,000 per year. Those are the high priced union guys you two are referring to.

I work in a community with two prisons, both state run. One maximum security, one low/medium. Both start their guards at $9.58. That's about the same starting pay at the gas station near one of them (it hires cashiers for $8.50). And used to the guards would decline state insurance as it cost too much.

Anyway, that's part of why there's no cost savings with outsourcing prisons. The bulk of labor cost is in administration, the same guys who authorize and do the support work to make outsourcing possible are the same salaries that make up the bulk of employee pay.