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| State inmates returning from Kentucky prisons |
| By Indianapolis Star |
| Published: 03/21/2005 |
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J. David Donahue not only left the Kentucky Department of Corrections to take over Indiana's prison system; he's bringing more than 800 Hoosier prisoners with him. Reversing the Indiana Department of Correction's stance under Democratic administrations, Donahue is telling state lawmakers that housing the prisoners in empty Indiana prison beds is cheaper than contracting with a private prison in Kentucky, even if more officers must be hired. "Primarily, it's driven by economics," said Donahue, a former top executive with a Louisville, Ky.-based private prison operator. "We have available capacity that we need to use." By early February, the administration had returned 222 Indiana inmates from Kentucky jails, which had housed each of them for $35 a day. More recently, the Daniels administration served notice that by the end of May it will move 611 others from the 656-bed Otter Creek Correctional Facility at Wheelwright, Ky. State officials are canceling a contract with Corrections Corp. of America, which built and staffs the private prison. The contract had been expected to last through January 2011, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The state's contract with the corporation had been projected to cost $10.8 million this year. That's roughly $45 a day per inmate when the prison is full. Indiana officials had said the price of keeping an inmate in a Hoosier prison was $55 a day. But Donahue recently told the Senate Appropriations Committee that, with more than 2,000 open beds, the state should look instead at the incremental cost of housing each additional inmate. DOC officials estimate they can save nearly $8 million a year by hiring 57 additional prison workers and opening three vacant cellblocks at the Miami Correctional Facility near Bunker Hill. Donahue said moving an inmate into an unused bed there would cost just $11.47 a day. Past estimates failed to factor in that the cost of serving each inmate declines as vacant bunks are filled, Donahue said. Members of the Senate budget panel were caught off guard by the administration's much lower cost estimates, calling them "new math." "It was cheaper to leave them in Kentucky," said Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Meeks, R-LaGrange. "That was the understanding I had." But Donahue's boss, Gov. Mitch Daniels, said he couldn't be more pleased. "It's a multimillion-dollar savings," Daniels said, "and it never made sense to me to hire citizens of other states when we could hire Hoosiers to guard prisoners in space we already have." |
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