HMP Dovegate, from the Serco website. |
Updated 4/07/24
By Michael Liebowitz
A Connecticut prisoner for some 25 years, Liebowitz was formerly housed at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, CT. He has been a free man since November 2022.Sadly, Melissa Palmeri passed away on Sunday, March 24th. She was only 44 yrs. old. Her obituary can be read, here. Please consider making a ten-dollar donation to help Melissa's son, Vinny and Michael. Donate here.Along with Brett McCall, Liebowitz is also co-author of "Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime", available at Amazon. Dr. Stanton E. Samenow, PhD reviewed the work in a 3/12/21 article in Psychology Today magazine. In his review he writes, "I have found that Liebowitz and McCall are keen observers with a positive objective - to help others become more effective in helping people like themselves to change and become responsible human beings. This book is definitely worth a read." Michael's second book, "View from a Cage" is now in print.Liebowitz is also a regular guest with Todd Feinburg on WTIC AM 1080. Podcasts of Todd's segments with Liebowitz can be heard, here.
A Connecticut prisoner for some 25 years, Liebowitz was formerly housed at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, CT. He has been a free man since November 2022.
Sadly, Melissa Palmeri passed away on Sunday, March 24th. She was only 44 yrs. old. Her obituary can be read, here. Please consider making a ten-dollar donation to help Melissa's son, Vinny and Michael. Donate here.
Along with Brett McCall, Liebowitz is also co-author of "Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime", available at Amazon. Dr. Stanton E. Samenow, PhD reviewed the work in a 3/12/21 article in Psychology Today magazine. In his review he writes, "I have found that Liebowitz and McCall are keen observers with a positive objective - to help others become more effective in helping people like themselves to change and become responsible human beings. This book is definitely worth a read." Michael's second book, "View from a Cage" is now in print.
Liebowitz is also a regular guest with Todd Feinburg on WTIC AM 1080. Podcasts of Todd's segments with Liebowitz can be heard, here.
Remunerate Correctional Officials
and Employees Based on Results, i.e., Reduced
Recidivism
“There aren’t very many
occupations where the more an organization fails to achieve its overarching
objective the more its employees stand to make. Corrections is one of them. As the system is presently designed, the
earning potential of those who work in our nation’s prisons is tied directly to
high prison populations and high rates of recidivism. And so long as that remains the case, society
will continue to see the kind of abysmal results it has witnessed since the
advent of the modern correctional era.
“Prison systems should be
structured in a way that incentivizes reductions in recidivism. Presently they are not. Politicians and corrections officials may pay
lip service to the importance of reducing the number of offenders returning to
our nation’s prisons, but the fact is the system is set up in a way that
encourages high prison populations.
“Whether prisons are
operated by government officials or privately run, the incentive is to maintain
or increase prison populations. Not only
do substantial incarceration rates mean increased earnings for correctional
officers and other rank and file institutional staff (who are beneficiaries of significant amounts
of overtime) [but] private prisons get paid on a per inmate per diem basis. So the more inmates they house, the
higher the profits for shareholders. By
contrast, lower recidivism means lower earnings for most of those directly
involved, regardless of whether it is a publicly or privately-run institution.
“To be clear, we are not
suggesting that high rates of recidivism are a consciously pursued goal on
anyone’s part. We don’t see the problem
as a nefarious conspiracy. To ascribe
intention to any of this seems to us to grant too many people entirely too much
credit. What we are saying is that
people respond to the way in which things are incentivized, and that the
present arrangement is tantamount to disincentivizing the development or
implementation of meaningful strategies to reduce the rate of recidivism. Stated a bit differently, the present design
inadvertently rewards inaction. Simply
put: When one is likely to make more money from doing nothing than he is from
doing something – especially something as challenging as trying to motivate
offenders to undertake the work necessary to change – it isn’t hard to guess
which path he is going to take, i.e., the path of least resistance.
“In short, the policy of
paying prison staff regardless of results breeds apathy. Imagine for a moment if car salesmen were paid
even if they never sold any cars. How
hard do you think they would work to make sales if they had job security and a
steady income stream even though they didn’t get positive results? Well, when it comes to corrections, the
practice is even worse because the arrangement actually promotes behaviors
antithetical to the public interest. To
pay prison staff regardless of the results they produce is ultimately to
endanger public safety…
“High prison populations are
obviously much easier to achieve than low ones. All the former requires is that institutional
staff be uninterested in the behavior of offenders, unwilling to offer
correctives or encouragement, unconcerned with how their own behaviors
impacting the process, and un-invested in outcomes. The rest will, of course, take care of itself.
Under these conditions, a correctional
culture will more or less evolve that contributes to offenders coming in and
out of prison, unable to figure out how to break the pernicious cycle.
“Now that’s not to suggest
that criminal offenders are casualties of correctional apathy. Criminals are always and only casualties of
their own refusal to think. The choices
they make are theirs and theirs alone. But that doesn’t mean that society would be
justified in throwing its hands up in the air and decrying that nothing works. Efforts should still be made to get through to
criminal offenders and to provide them with the knowledge and guidance they
need to effectuate positive changes. Glenn Walters put it this way: ‘Thus, while I
am steadfast in my belief that offenders cannot legitimately use societal
injustice as an excuse for their criminal actions, neither can we as a society
realistically escape our responsibility by putting everything off on the
offender.’
“The only real way to
change the correctional culture in a fundamental way is to change the way in
which those who operate the system are compensated. Adding directives to the pile of directives
already ignored will accomplish nothing at all levels. The incomes that DOC (Department of
Corrections) employees are capable of earning ought to be tied directly to
three primary goals; one, preventing escapes; two, maintaining safety and
security in the institutions; and three, reducing the rate of recidivism.
“Of course, linking employee
remunerations to the attainment of an organization’s goals is not a radical
idea. Indeed, it is how the vast
majority of people earn their living, i.e., by producing positive results for
their employers. In the private sector,
employees who fail to contribute to their company’s bottom line soon find
themselves out of a job. And by the same
token companies that fail to turn a profit soon find themselves closing their
doors. Applying private sector
principles to the running of our nation’s prisons is basically what we are
recommending. The primary difference is
that whereas the goal of private companies is to make profits, the goal of the
DOC should be to reduce prison populations, and ultimately crime itself.
“Given that we advocate an
incentive structure that is results-based in the way it is for private
companies, it may be thought that we are advocating privatizing the prison
system. Absolutely not; at least not
based on the model of private prisons that currently exists. Under the present model, private prisons are
perhaps even worse than those run by the state. [Remember, in the U.S., private
prisons get paid based on how many prisoners they house]…
“Some studies have indicated
that the way private prisons generate revenue has led to offenders housed in
them serving even longer sentences than they would if they were housed in
state-run institutions. For example, a
study conducted by Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of actuarial
science, risk management and insurance at the University of Wisconsin –
Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, found that ‘prisoners in private
prisons are likely to serve as many as two to three more months behind bars
than those assigned to public prisons.’ And importantly, Mukherjee notes that
‘despite industry claims to lower recidivism rates,’ those housed in private
prisons are ‘equally likely to commit more crime after release.’
“According to Peter
Kerwin, the longer prison terms served by those in private prisons are fueled
by the ‘widespread use of prison conduct violations.’ In summarizing
Mukherjee’s findings, Kerwin notes that ‘prisoners in every demographic,
offense and sentence-length category accumulated more infractions if they were
assigned to a private prison.’ On
whole, inmates housed in private prisons ‘received twice as many infractions as
those in public prisons.’
“Although the evidence
suggests that the present American model of prison privatization is a failure
from the standpoint of reducing offender recidivism, Mukherjee states that ‘pay
for performance’ contracts have met with some success in the United Kingdom. In other words, reductions in recidivism have
been achieved among those inmates housed in private facilities paid on the
basis of results.
"Ultimately, pay for
performance is the basic model we are proposing. However, we are not suggesting that prisons
have to be privatized in order to implement this format. There are a number of ways this format could
work for government-run institutions. And although all the details would need to be
eventually ironed out, the central issue is that the compensation structure
would have to directly reward the men and women who work in prisons for
positive results. Perhaps bonuses could be awarded over an employee’s base
level pay for reductions in recidivism; the lower the rate, the higher the
bonus. Additional vacation days might be earnable as well to help reduce
employee burnout.
“Initially, this may sound
expensive, but consider that ‘it is estimated that each chronic offender costs
society about 1.3 million dollars over the course of the offender’s lifetime,’ and that the U.S. presently spends $70 billion a
year on corrections. Certainly it makes sense, given the
present state of affairs, to alter the way this money is allocated, if for no
other reason than to reduce the human costs that are inevitably associated with
unchanged offenders. In truth, however,
changing the way the correctional workforce is compensated would likely save
money as well as lives.
“What pay for performance
necessarily would do is fundamentally alter the way prison employees approach
their jobs, thus changing the prevailing correctional culture. The knowledge that the successful reform of
inmates was tied directly to one’s personal earning potential would make
correctional employees much more conscientious about how their actions or
inactions might be impacting results. Accordingly, they would be more apt to be
responsible and invested in the process …
“Of course, pay for
performance would have its limitations. Given that a certain percentage of the
offender population are incorrigible sociopaths, resistant to virtually all
correctional treatment, the rate of recidivism would bottom out somewhere well
above zero. And this would need to be
taken into account. The remuneration of
correctional employees should not be adversely affected because recidivist
rates could only be reduced so much. Which
is to say, so long as recidivism continued to decline or remained at some
yet-to-be-determined low point, those responsible for the low rates should be
financially rewarded …
“[The idea of remuneration
based on results is of course merely an inchoate recommendation.] There is much
to work out, and many difficulties to overcome before [it] could be effectively
implemented. And no doubt one of the main difficulties would be resistance from
those with a vested interest in the status quo. The loudest protests would likely come from
the correctional unions themselves. They
will most certainly deride [this idea] as impractical, undoable, and
implausible. But it seems to us those
are adjectives that more accurately describe sustaining the present state of
affairs.”
(The forgoing quoted material is from “Down the Rabbit Hold: How the
Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime” (proof copy), Ch. 6 “Reforming the
Reformers” pp 329 – 337 by Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz (2017).)
Subsequent to the
publication of “Down the Rabbit Hole”, while reading “Incarceration Nations” by
Baz Dreisinger, I came across “Serco”, a corporation based in Great Britain that runs two private prisons in Australia. (I would later discover that Serco has prisons
in other countries as well). Contrary to
America’s
private prisons, however, Serco’s contracts include incentives to reduce
recidivism. They are also cheaper to
operate than government prisons.
Given that McCall and I
advocated this concept in our book, I was highly intrigued. This was especially so because Dreisinger, a
critic of prisons who is perhaps particularly hostile to those which are
privately run, seemed to reluctantly approve of Serco’s institutions. Among other things, she writes, “Serco’s
London-based think-tank arm presents a series of seemingly attractive arguments.
Treating people more humanely ultimately
costs less, and private prisons are more accountable than government-run
prisons because contracts specify financial penalties for not meeting standards
of health and educational services. Private prisons are cheaper, Serco claims,
because of sound management, efficient staff levels, and flexible practices.“ I had to find
out more, so I had a friend get me some information about Serco off the
internet.
The information with which
my friend provided me came from two sources. The first was an article published by the Brennan Center for Justice, and the second was Serco’s official website. Like other sources I’ve seen, the Brennan
article mentions how private prisons in the U.S. get paid more for housing more
inmates, have roughly the same recidivist rates as government prisons, and aren’t
paid based on results.
The article notes that with
Serco things are different. They award
bonuses based on reductions in recidivism, and the author writes of a Serco-run
prison in New Zealand.
“Men who follow the rules, complete
educational and vocational programs, and keep a positive attitude can move from
the more traditional housing units into six-room cottages to prepare them for
life outside prison.”
From Serco’s website I
learned that in addition to Australia
and New Zealand,
Serco also “operate[s] six adult prisons (with a capacity to hold more than
5,400 prisoners) for the Ministry of Justice’s National Offender Management
Service and the Scottish Prison Service. “They also claim to have had “outstanding
successes in reducing prisoner re-offending”, although they don’t cite the
numbers.
The website goes on to say
that “By pursuing a rehabilitative approach to justice, with a focus on
addressing individual criminogenic needs, all with the key outcome of reducing
re-offending, we make offenders less likely to return to the criminal justice
system, helping to rebuild lives, reduce demand on governments and lessen the
financial and wider costs of crime to the communities we serve.”
While the bulk of what
I’ve read about Serco has been positive, it hasn’t all been so. For instance, a workers’ union has threatened
to sue Serco over pay and conditions. There have been riots in Serco’s prisons, and
an inspection by the Australian government claimed there was overcrowding and
poorly trained staff.
Ultimately, I don’t know
enough about Serco to determine whether its prison model is one I’d entirely
endorse. However, despite the few
instances of negative publicity noted above, the majority of what I’ve seen
seems promising. At any rate, I am
absolutely convinced that a prison system which pays based on results would be
vastly superior to the one we have currently.
Parts 1,2 and 3, along with the entire From Behind Bars series, can be seen, here.
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