One of Cook County Board President Richard Phelan`s chief critics made a pitch Wednesday for hiring a private firm to run County Jail.
The suggestion, said Commissioner Maria Pappas, was intended to save the county money, but it was also clearly aimed at undermining Phelan`s push for a new sales tax.
Pappas said the County Board ought to solicit proposals from the 14 firms nationwide now in the business of running correctional facilities and should hire such a company to operate a new jail addition that is expected to be completed in February 1995.
Pappas, a Chicago Democrat, said a private firm would save the county as much as 40 percent of what it now spends to operate the jail. She made the suggestion shortly after Corrections Corporation of America, the Nashville firm that runs 21 jails and prisons, made a pitch to a special board subcommittee Wednesday.
The 1992 budget for the Department of Corrections, most of which goes to jail operations, is $126.8 million.
The jail presentation gave Pappas another opportunity to tweak Phelan about the sales tax that the board president contends is vital and Pappas has maintained is unnecessary.
”It`s too soon to institute any tax until we look at cost effective measures,” said Pappas. ”We ought to give this a try because what we are doing now isn`t working costwise.”
The suggestion came a day before the County Board holds its second public hearing on the proposed .75 percent sales tax. The board is expected to vote on the tax in late May. Phelan has said it is needed in part to finance the criminal justice system, including the jail.
Phelan did not reject the proposal on Wednesday, but he also was not taking it too seriously.
Without directly criticizing Pappas, he implied that Pappas` proposal was politically motivated.
”I will take this at face value, but if this was a serious effort to save money, the person who should have been there was the sheriff,” Phelan said.
”I don`t know whether legally under the statutes we are allowed to contract out the obligations of the sheriff,” he said, adding that unlike Cook County Jail, most of the privately run jails and prisons are minimum-security facilities.
Sheriff Michael Sheahan was reportedly on vacation and could not be reached for comment.
Privately-built and operated prisons have become increasingly common nationwide as cities, counties and states have grappled with ways to cut costs.
Richard de la Houssaye, director of business development for Corrections Corporation of America, said his firm has repeatedly shown it can operate prisons at a far lower cost than government.
He cited a legislative study of prisons in Texas that found the daily cost of privately operating a correctional facility was about $29 per inmate compared with about $42 in state-run prisons.
But critics have frequently raised questions about the prudence of handing the jailhouse keys over to a private firm, citing concerns about whether security would be jeopardized and whether the firm would be willing to offer programs aimed at preventing offenders from returning to prison.
Commissioner Jerry Butler raised some of those concerns, but he was also skeptical about whether a private firm could run or build a prison more cheaply than the county. Butler noted that unlike the facilities that Corrections Corporation of America runs, most of which are in the South, the correctional officers at County Jail are unionized.
