Pubdate: Wed, 23 Mar 2016
Source: Imperial Valley Press (CA)
Copyright: 2016 Imperial Valley Press
Contact:  http://www.ivpressonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1877
Author: Mary Sanchez
Note: Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star.

PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX MORPHS INTO TREATMENT-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Nancy Reagan's recent death was a reminder of the shallow moralizing 
of the Just Say No anti-drug campaign she once championed.

Thankfully, attitudes have changed. We're more attuned to the fact 
that untreated mental health issues are often a precursor to drug 
use. Nancy's slogan to fight peer pressure won't help much there.

Most people realize that the War on Drugs, begun under Nixon, has failed.

And there's growing public awareness that we've let our jails and 
prisons become warehouses for people who need treatment - and who 
needed it long before they took a criminal turn.

Mandatory sentencing guidelines have been changed, and the days of 
presidential administrations following the whims of a drug czar are over.

Incarceration rates are dropping. To most, this is good news.

But it's not if your business model revolves around keeping people locked up.

The for-profit prison industry has kept one step ahead of the trend. 
They got wise quick, sensing the winds shifting away from mass 
incarceration and toward the need to address mental health issues 
within the nation's prisons and jails.

For those familiar with the term "prison-industrial complex," meet 
its offspring - the "treatment-industrial complex."

A report released in February by Grassroots Leadership, a civil and 
human rights organization, rings some warning bells.

The report, "Incorrect Care: A Prison Profiteer Turns Care into 
Confinement," is part of a series of reports that has focused on 
reducing the nation's dysfunctional criminal justice system.

This latest installment takes an in-depth look at the privatization 
efforts in Texas, Florida and South Carolina. In particular, it goes 
after the shifting business models of for-profit prison operators 
Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, as well as 
spinoff rehabilitation companies like Correct Care Solutions.

The charge is that just as prisons are often not about 
rehabilitation, these new for-profit treatment places are not about 
helping people regain their mental stability and, therefore, their release.

The report also challenges the quality of care being offered, citing 
cases of violence and patient deaths.

One startling figure from the report: 50 percent of people in 
correctional facilities suffer from mental health and substance abuse 
disorders.

This compares to estimated rates of only 1 percent to 3 percent 
within the U.S. population.

Prisoners represent a huge market for mental health care. If the 
prison operator also has a side business in mental health care, a 
conflict of interest presents itself.

Under normal circumstances, a person can get out of prison after 
serving his sentence.

In fact, 90 percent of people who are sentenced do just that. But 
inmates can be placed by a judge into a for-profit mental health 
program in a prison - say, under civil commitment laws now on the 
books in about 20 states - and be detained there past the end of the sentence.

The operator has a clear incentive to keep a person there 
indefinitely, to increase the return on its investment.

The Grassroots Leadership report points out that these private 
operators offer cost savings to a state when the facility is full: 
Thus the cost per head goes down.

Assigning inmates to these facilities can be very appealing to 
lawmakers trying to balance tight budgets.

Potentially, it becomes even more alluring when a lobbyist with the 
industry is making a hefty donation to a re-election campaign.

A basic set of circumstances and decisions has set the stage in many 
states. Legislatures have cut public mental health budgets, resulting 
in understaffing and poor conditions in state-run facilities.

Community-based mental health programs are also being shorted. That 
leads to more untreated people who act out and then find themselves 
in a criminal justice system.

By virtue of their mental state, many of these people are not in a 
position to self-advocate for better care. Locked up, they are easily 
forgotten.

One question must continuously be asked by legislators, advocates and 
the taxpayers whose dollars are being spent: In a for-profit model - 
in which more inmates equals more revenue - what possible incentive 
does a rehabilitation company have to help people regain stability 
and rejoin society? If such an incentive doesn't exist and outweigh 
the profit motive, it's hard to see how private-sector rehab programs 
won't make matters worse.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom