Utah has had its share of bad experiences with private prisons. Back in the mid-1990s, six Utah inmates escaped from a private facility in Texas. Three of them simply walked away in the fall of 1995, and three more disappeared four months later. Killers and child molesters were among them.
And now three violent criminals have escaped a private prison in Arizona that is being run by a Utah company. They apparently did so with the help of a fourth person who threw tools over a fence to help them. They simply cut their way through two fences and walked away. Two of the four, a man and woman some are describing as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, are still on the loose. The murder of an Oklahoma couple has been connected with the four escapees.
Private prisons offer many enticing benefits to politicians dealing with tight budgets. They keep costs low through a competitive bidding process. Large prison companies can save money through economies of scale. They typically save on construction costs, as well.
But the Arizona case demonstrates a huge downside. The most recent escapes were so similar to the ones 15 years ago in Texas that they seem to demonstrate little change in security or practices through the years. The inmates apparently were able to time the predictable movements of guards. An alarm apparently malfunctioned, and reports are that the guards were not allowed to carry weapons and were not trained as law enforcement officers. The three inmates were not discovered missing until a head count hours later. Their escape, as that of their predecessors 15 years ago, was simple and required little elaborate planning.
Perhaps it is a natural human inclination for leaders to assume that once a prison has been privatized, it no longer requires much official scrutiny. Arizonans are now left to question why violent offenders are housed in such lax facilities and how the profit motive may have contributed to an atmosphere not nearly as secure as it ought to have been. State Attorney General Terry Goddard has asked for a moratorium on using private prisons until questions can be answered.
But this is not Arizona's problem alone. The escaped criminals have terrorized much of the West, including Yellowstone National Park during its peak tourist season.
We have consistently argued against the idea of relying on private prisons to do something that ought to require the utmost public scrutiny. Prisons perform a function vital to public safety and ought to remain public and accountable. If they are privatized, it should be done in a manner that ensures strict oversight of security functions. Even when prisons are privately run, it is the public officials, not the private providers, who ultimately remain accountable when things go wrong, and the public that suffers.