Title: Examination of Privatization in the Federal Bureau of Prisons
Series: Solicitation
Author(s): NIJ
Published: National Institute of Justice, April 1999
Subject: Privatization, prison industries
11 pages
23,000 bytes

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
National Institute of Justice

National Institute of Justice
Solicitation

EXAMINATION OF PRIVATIZATION IN THE FEDERAL BUREAU
OF PRISONS

APPLICATION DEADLINE: July 13, 1999

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U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531

Janet Reno
Attorney General

Raymond C. Fisher
Associate Attorney General

Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General

Noel Brennan
Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Jeremy Travis
Director, National Institute of Justice

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For funding and grant information contact:
Department of Justice Response Center:
800-421-6770
 
Office of Justice Programs
World Wide Web Site:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov

National Institute of Justice
World Wide Web Site:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij  

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Examination of Privatization in the Federal Bureau of Prisons

I. Introduction

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) requests proposals to conduct
research and evaluation concerning the private operation of the Taft
Correctional Institution.

The Congress has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to
undertake a prison privatization demonstration project (Conference Report
to Accompany H.R. 3610, Making Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations
for Fiscal Year 1997, P.L. 104-208, September 28, 1996). To ensure the
independence and objectivity of the research and evaluation component,
BOP has provided funding to NIJ. NIJ will competitively select and
oversee a research team to conduct rigorous research. Proposed research
must address issues that are important to the Congress as well as be
conceptually and scientifically important. 

In particular, this study must address two primary topics of interest, cost
and performance. (Issues surrounding these topics are discussed below.) It
is therefore expected that the successful applicant will be strong in both
cost comparison and program evaluation, which may suggest collaboration
between researchers with complementary expertise in these areas. Of
special interest is the development and testing of models explicating
specifically how and why--and not just whether--privatization conveys
advantages.

NIJ will convene an expert panel that will provide the research team
selected with assessments of their proposed methodologies and analysis
plans as well as their interim and final products. In addition, this research
will be conducted in consultation with BOP and the private prison
contractor. 

Specific details of this consultation will be determined at a later date.

NIJ will award one cooperative agreement for up to $675,000 with a
period of performance of up to 40 months. Proposals must be received by
NIJ no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on July 13, 1999. The page limit for the
proposal narrative is 30 double-spaced pages.

II. Background 

The use of private firms to operate correctional institutions has grown
greatly in the U.S. since the mid-1980's. An annual survey of private adult
facilities has shown an increase from about 3,000 prisoners in 1987 to
more than 85,000 in 1996. BOP is responsible for a significant portion of
adult prisoners in private prisons. 

This growth in prison privatization has fueled the interest not only of
correctional administrators and researchers, but also of the Congress. In
the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement
Act of 1997 (Pub. L. No. 105-33 1201(c)(3)(A)), Congress mandated that
the Attorney General "conduct a study of correctional privatization,
including a review of relevant research and related legal issues, and
comparative analysis of the cost effectiveness and feasibility of private
sector and Federal, State and local government operation of prisons and
corrections programs at all security levels." 

In response to this mandate the National Institute of Corrections issued a
cooperative agreement with Abt Associates, Inc. to conduct the necessary
research (Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current
Practice, Douglas McDonald et al, Abt Associates Inc., 1998). This study
surveyed heads of correctional agencies in all States, BOP, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (53 of 55 jurisdictions
surveyed responded). It focused on privately operated adult prisons (as
opposed to jails or detention centers) and found that the 53 responding
agencies reported that privately operated facilities held a total of 52,370
prisoners on December 31, 1997. Ten jurisdictions accounted for 41,965
of this total, with BOP reporting the largest number of privately held
prisoners: 9,951 (ten percent of its total population). 

The work by Abt Associates, Inc. has benefitted this solicitation by
identifying key issues and laying broad groundwork upon which the
presently solicited research can build. There is an explicit expectation that
the research to be conducted under this solicitation will not duplicate the
Abt Associates, Inc. study but rather will focus upon the specific
requirements of this solicitation. 

In connection with the fiscal year 1997 appropriations for the Department
of Justice, the Congress directed BOP to conduct a demonstration project
to assess the effectiveness of having a private contractor operate one of its
facilities. The Senate Report stated, "A demonstration project is needed to
give the administration and Congress an opportunity to monitor safety and
operational concerns..."(Senate Report 104-353 to Accompany H.R. 3814,
Departments of Commerce, Justice and State Appropriations Bill, 1997,
August 27, 1996).  This solicitation is for research and evaluation of the
privatization of the Taft Correctional Institution (TCI) to address that
directive. 

In June 1997, BOP competitively awarded Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation the contract to operate the low-security institution with
attached minimum-security camp at Taft, California. This facility had been
designed, financed and constructed by the BOP. In December 1997, Taft
received the first Federal inmates and by September 1998 the number of
inmates was close to rated capacity. All Taft prisoners are adult males; on
December 31, 1998 there were 1,753 in low-security and 483 in minimum-
security.

The selected evaluators of Taft will have the opportunity to take advantage
of two facts. First, Taft is only one of four low-security prisons that were
built by BOP and activated at about the same time. All four institutions
have the same physical plan for the low-security portion, although there
are differences in terms of whether a minimum-security camp was also
included. Where the minimum-security camps exist, the physical plants
are the same. The comparable Federally-operated prisons are FCI Elkton,
Ohio, FCI Forrest City, Arkansas, and FCI Yazoo City, Mississippi. (BOP
currently has 24 low-security and 14 minimum-security facilities, for
which BOP reports performance data on a monthly basis.)

Second, BOP uses management information systems to monitor its
institutions, including Taft. The data come from a variety of sources. Most
of the data are taken from automated BOP databases that track inmates and
staff. Subjective data giving staff assessments of various aspects of
institution life are provided by an annual staff survey. The management
information systems identify the performance measures that are most
important to executive staff at BOP; however, the measures may require
statistical adjustment to permit appropriate comparisons across
institutions. 

Considerations of the relative advantages of prison privatization typically
hinge on two key dimensions, cost and performance. Simply stated,
proponents of privatization argue that private contractors can operate
prisons at a lower cost than can government agencies and can provide
equal or better services to inmates. These are the central dimensions to be
addressed in research conducted under this solicitation. However, there are
a number of issues that make arriving at solid conclusions on these topics
less than straightforward. In 1996, the U.S. General Accounting Office
reviewed five studies of privatization deemed to have the strongest designs
and methods among those published between 1991 and mid-1996 and
concluded that "because the studies reported little cost difference and/or
mixed results in comparing private and public facilities, we could not
conclude whether privatization saved money." (GAO (1996), Private and
Public Prisons: Studies Comparing Operational Costs and/or Quality of
Service (Report to Subcommittee on Crime, House Judiciary Committee,
GAO/GGD-96-158, Washington, D.C: US GAO)).

The Abt Associates, Inc. report mentioned above discusses many issues
limiting the usefulness of prior studies. Public/private comparisons are
usually not straightforward and are often misleading. Public and private
facilities may not be sufficiently comparable in terms of the background
characteristics of prisoners incarcerated in the comparison institutions, the
size of the prison, the labor-efficiency of the building design, and the level
and quality of services provided. Public and private organizations also use
different accounting procedures, including different treatment of capital
spending and overhead costs. In many jurisdictions, some costs of
operating prisons and jails are borne not by the correctional agency but by
other agencies or government accounts and overlooking these expenditures
may undercount actual costs substantially. Private firms may not always
bear all the costs of imprisonment; some services might be performed by
the public correctional agency and the costs should be included as costs to
governments of participating.

Studies have generally failed to develop a coherent model of institution
performance in terms of cost and quality of operations or to make explicit
those factors that must be controlled to make institutional comparisons
meaningful. Too much focus has been given to final outcomes, without
attention to measuring intervening factors that might be linked to those
outcomes. 

Comparisons of public and private prisons will benefit by controlling as
rigorously as possible for other factors that influence prison outcome
measures in addition to indicators of management performance and by
specifying exactly how prison market forces operate to produce long and
short term gains. To the extent that public/private differences are obtained,
it will be important to identify factors accounting for them. 

Research proposed in response to this solicitation is expected to delve into
the "black box" of prison operations to articulate what, why, and to what
affect public and private prisons do differently, if anything. Articulating
the underlying hypothetical processes will allow better evaluations of
quality and assessments of whether practices can be altered to provide
better quality at a lower cost. Proposed research is expected to be based on
explicit models incorporating cost and performance and utilizing statistical
adjustment as needed to enhance the appropriateness of comparisons
across institutions.

NIJ will award a cooperative agreement to the successful applicant and
will provide oversight to the research team to ensure the independence and
objectivity of the research. In addition, NIJ will convene a panel of experts
who are objective and represent a variety of perspectives (researchers and
prison administrators from the public and private sectors). The research
team will be expected to support and cooperate with the efforts of the
expert panel. The panel's tasks will include:

1) Reviewing the awardee's research methodologies and analysis plans;
under the cooperative agreement to be reached by NIJ and the awardee, the
awardee will require NIJ approval before proceeding with major elements
of the project. 

2) Reviewing interim and final products. 

3) Possibly suggesting to NIJ enhancements to the study (to be
separately funded), as the study develops. 

III. Areas of Research Required

The research to be conducted under this solicitation must fully support
BOP's reporting requirements to the Congress. The legislative mandate
raised explicit questions about the extent to which contract obligations
were fulfilled, the extent to which basic safety and management standards
were met, and cost comparisons of privately and publicly operated
facilities. These topics represent the starting point for the solicited study. 

Beyond these basic questions, this research should, to the extent possible,
advance our understanding of prison privatization, its benefits,
disadvantages and consequences, and methods for assessing these issues.
Although this study's generalizability will be somewhat limited by its
focus upon BOP, it provides an opportunity for insightful and innovative
research into an issue of great and increasing importance. 

Proposed research must go beyond simple assessment of the contractor's
compliance with contract obligations or superficial cost/benefit analyses.
The successful application will reflect an understanding of pertinent
issues--those discussed above and others identified by the applicant.

The period of performance for this award is up to 40 months. In light of
the urgent interest in this topic by the Congress, it is not viable to release
study findings only at the completion of the study. Rather, substantive
interim reports to NIJ are required, allowing BOP to provide periodic
findings to the Congress. The applicant may propose interim reporting
periods in keeping with the research timeline, but an interim report must
be submitted no later than the end of the project's Month 12 (calculated
from the date of the award). 

Applicants should describe in detail how they will address the issues
discussed above in assessing the privatization of Taft. There are two
required main components, cost analysis and performance assessment.
While these two dimensions represent different considerations and analytic
approaches, they are clearly interlinked. An analysis that simply examines
cost issues without also exploring the impact of varying cost may have on
performance would not be adequate. A third component, assessment of
prison climate and attitudes of staff and inmates, is of interest if it can be
included within budget. 

Initial estimates of cost and, to the extent possible, performance are of
particular interest and should be the focus of an interim report due no later
than the end of Month 12. In all likelihood, these analyses will be
continued throughout the study. Long-term, in-depth, and detailed
performance assessment is expected to continue; this assessment should
address both proximal measures such as quality of service delivery and
more distal measures such as safety. 

As discussed above, the utility of cost analyses and performance
assessments will depend in large part upon models explicating how
privatization might affect operations, costs, or performance. The optional
strategies to measure elements such as the climate within prisons and staff
and inmate satisfaction may be useful in adding important explanatory
depth to such models.

It is currently expected that all relevant information from BOP's and
Wackenhut's management information systems will be made available to
the researchers. It should be noted, however, that Wackenhut has
somewhat less data than BOP. NIJ will work with the researcher to
facilitate the collection of comparable data from Wackenhut. Applicants
should describe how they would propose to collect additional needed data.
The selected researcher will be given an opportunity to examine all
information currently collected and to assess what additional information
will be required. After the research team has been selected, NIJ will work
with the researcher, BOP, and Wackenhut to conclude an agreement
governing data sharing in order to facilitate the collection of the required
information. 

BOP and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation have agreed to a framework
that will allow side-by-side cost comparisons by discipline or functional
area. The template, to be designed by BOP and Wackenhut, is expected to
maximize understanding of the differences and/or similarities of the public
and private sectors, and will be provided to the research team selected.

NIJ anticipates awarding one cooperative agreement, for up to 40 months.
The total award is expected to not exceed $675,000.

Interested applicants may receive a copy of the Abt Associates, Inc. report,
details regarding the BOP management information systems, and notes
from a focus group meeting held on the topic, 'Privatization of Corrections
Seminar,' sponsored by NIJ in 1998, by calling the DOJ Response Center
(1-800-421-6770). For additional information, applicants should contact
Laura Winterfield of NIJ at (202) 616-3482 rather than either BOP or
Wackenhut. 

IV. Disclosure of Outside and Financial Interest 

In this research, objectivity is crucial. To the extent that applicants or their
sponsoring organization have done or are doing work in this area, they
must provide documentation of this work. For those applicants with such
awards, the funding source, end-dates, and an abstract of the work should
be appended. Further, those applicants should detail what measures will be
taken to ensure the objectivity of this research effort. Applicants who are
selected as possible finalists for the award will be required to disclose
confidentially financial holdings of both the principal investigator(s) and
the principal shareholders of the institution(s) sponsoring the researcher(s)
to ensure that there are no potential conflicts of interest. Periodic updates
may be required throughout the grant period at the discretion of NIJ. An
applicant may be required to remove any researcher from this project if a
conflict develops during the course of the review of these submissions or
the subsequent evaluation of the project. 

V. How to Apply 

Those interested in submitting proposals in response to this solicitation
must complete the required application forms and submit related required
documents. (See below for how to obtain application forms and guides for
completing proposals.) Applicants must include the following
information/forms to qualify for consideration:

o Standard Form (SF) 424--application for Federal assistance

o Assurances

o Certifications Regarding Lobbying, Debarment, Suspension and Other
Responsibility Matters; and Drug-Free Workplace Requirements (one
form)

o Disclosure of Lobbying Activities

o Budget Detail Worksheet

o Budget Narrative

o Negotiated indirect rate agreement (if appropriate)

o Names and affiliations of all key persons from applicant and
subcontractor(s), advisors, consultants, and advisory board members.
Include name of principal investigator, title, organizational affiliation (if
any), department (if institution of higher education), address, phone, and
fax 

o Proposal abstract

o Table of contents

o Program narrative or technical proposal

o Privacy certificate

o References

o Letters of cooperation from organizations collaborating in the research
project

o Resumes

o Appendixes, if any (e.g., list of previous NIJ awards, their status, and
products [in NIJ or other publications])
Disclosure Form*

Proposal abstract. The proposal abstract, when read separately from the
rest of the application, is meant to serve as a succinct and accurate
description of the proposed work. Applicants must concisely describe the
research goals and objectives, research design, and methods for achieving
the goals and objectives. Summaries of past accomplishments are to be
avoided, and proprietary/confidential information is not to be included.
Length is not to exceed 400 words. Use the following two headers:

o Project Goals and Objectives:

o Proposed Research Design and Methodology:

Page limit. The number of pages in the "Program Narrative" part of the
proposal must not exceed 30 (double-spaced pages). 

Due date. Completed proposals must be received at the National Institute
of Justice by the close of business on July 13, 1999. Extensions of this
deadline will not be permitted.

Award period. The award period for this cooperative agreement is
expected to be 40 months. 

Number of awards. NIJ anticipates supporting One cooperative
agreements under this solicitation. 

Award amount. An award up to $675,000 will be made available for this
NIJ solicitation.

Applying. Two packets need to be obtained: (1) application forms
(including a sample budget worksheet) and (2) guidelines for submitting
proposals (including requirements for proposal writers and requirements
for grant recipients)

To receive them, applicants can:

o Access the Justice Information Center on the web: 
http://www.ncjrs.org/fedgrant.htm#NIJ

or the NIJ web site:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/NIJ/funding.htm 

These web sites offer the NIJ application forms and guidelines as
electronic files that may be downloaded to a personal computer.

o Request hard copies of the forms and guidelines by mail from the
National Criminal Justice Reference Service at 800-851-3420 or from the
Department of Justice Response Center at 800-421-6770 (in the
Washington, D.C., area, at 202-307-1480).

o Request copies by fax. Call 800-851-3420 and select option 1, then
option 1 again for NIJ. Code is 1023.

Guidance and information. Applicants who wish to receive additional
guidance and information may contact the U.S. Department of Justice
Response Center at 800-421-6770. Center staff can provide assistance or
refer applicants to an appropriate NIJ professional. Applicants may, for
example, wish to discuss their prospective research topics with the NIJ
professional staff.

Send completed forms to:

Examination of Privatization in the Federal Bureau of Prisons
National Institute of Justice
810 Seventh Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20531
[overnight courier ZIP code 20001]

SL 000354

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