BOP was established in 1930 to provide progressive and humane care for federal inmates in the 11 federal prisons in operation at the time. Since then, BOP’s mission has evolved into protecting society by controlling offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens. At the end of fiscal year 2006, there were over 114 federal prison facilities located throughout the country at four primary security levels—minimum, low, medium, and high. BOP facilities are given a security designation based on the level of security and staff supervision the facility is able to provide. According to BOP, minimum security facilities, also known as Federal Prison Camps, have dormitory housing and limited or no perimeter fencing; low security Federal Correctional Institutions have double-fenced perimeters and mostly dormitory or cubicle housing; medium security Federal Correctional Institutions have strengthened perimeters (often double fences with electronic detection systems) where inmates are mostly confined to prison cells; and high security institutions, also known as United States Penitentiaries, have highly secured perimeters (featuring walls or reinforced fences) and multiple- and single- occupant cell housing. BOP also maintains administrative facilities, which are institutions with special missions, such as the detention of pretrial offenders; the treatment of inmates with serious or chronic medical problems; or the containment of extremely dangerous, violent, or escape- prone inmates. Administrative facilities are capable of holding inmates at all security levels. According to BOP population data, at the end of fiscal year 2006, BOP’s total inmate population was approximately 193,000 inmates, of which about 43 percent, or 83,000, were long-term, adult male inmates confined in BOP, private, or IGA low and minimum security facilities. About 52,000 (27 percent) of the total inmates were confined in medium security facilities, and approximately 18,000 (about 9 percent) were in high security facilities. Additionally, approximately 21 percent of the 193,000 total inmates, or 40,000 inmates, were females, juveniles, inmates in halfway houses, inmates in home confinement, or inmates confined in BOP’s administrative facilities. See figure 1 for a breakout of these populations. A methodologically sound cost comparison analysis of BOP and private low and minimum security facilities is not currently feasible because BOP does not gather data from private facilities that are comparable to the data collected on BOP facilities. BOP is not required under federal contracting regulations to gather data that would enable a comparison, and although BOP has not evaluated the cost of collecting additional information, BOP officials maintain that it could increase the price contractors charge BOP for contract services. However, without comparable data, BOP is not able to analyze and justify whether confining inmates in private facilities would be more cost-effective than other confinement alternatives such as constructing new BOP facilities or renovating existing BOP facilities. Such an analysis would be consistent with OMB requirements, which call for agencies to identify and evaluate various alternatives when making decisions about the acquisition of capital assets (e.g., office buildings, hospitals, schools, and prisons). We determined that it is not currently feasible to compare the cost of confining male federal inmates in low and minimum security BOP and private facilities because data needed for a methodologically sound comparison are not currently available. Our review of BOP documentation showed that BOP collects basic cost data on a per inmate basis across BOP and private facilities. For BOP-owned and -operated facilities, BOP maintains per inmate costs that include salaries, employee benefits, equipment, and utilities. For private facilities, BOP maintains the negotiated per inmate contract price, award fees, and deductions made as a result of the performance-based contract terms. However, these cost data are not sufficient for doing a methodologically sound cost comparison. As we reported in 1996, any comparative study of private and public prisons should not only be based on operational costs but also on an analysis of similar facilities—including the design, capacity, security level, and types of inmates and quality of service—and on sufficient statistical controls to measure and account for any differences among facilities. Otherwise, any comparative analysis of operational costs could be skewed. For example, one study we reviewed as part of our 1996 report did not assess quality of service as part of the cost comparison between private and public facilities and, as a result, could not conclude whether the levels of service affected the differences in costs. According to BOP officials and private contractors, BOP and private facilities have different characteristics and provide different levels of service. Thus, statistical methods would need to be used to account for these differences once cost data were collected to determine the impact they have on the operating cost of the facilities. Using guidelines established in our previous work, we sought to compare facilities with similar characteristics to ensure results of a comparison would not be skewed. However, we were unable to do so because the data needed to do the comparison were not available. BOP and private contracting officials reported that there are numerous differences among BOP and private facilities, including inmate population, program requirements, and economic differences within the different geographic locations of the facilities. According to BOP officials, private contractor facilities have fewer contractual requirements for programming, such as vocational training and release preparation courses, than BOP facilities, in part, because of the different types of inmates confined in the facilities. In general, BOP facilities confine U.S. citizens and programs are designed to teach inmates skills that they can use when they are released, such as job training skills, so as to help avoid their return to prison. By contrast, private facilities primarily confine criminal aliens—non-U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, who are serving time for a U.S. federal conviction. Programs that focus on preventing returns to prison are not required of private facilities because criminal aliens are released for removal from the country and are not expected to return to U.S. communities or BOP custody. Given the differences with regard to facility characteristics, statistical techniques such as analyzing the extent to which characteristics— including program differences—vary among facilities, would have to be applied to strengthen conclusions of a cost comparison analysis. For example, if BOP facilities provide more programs for inmates than contractors do, then comparable data on the number and types of programs across all facilities would be needed to adjust for this difference in order to conclude how the difference in programs affect operating costs. BOP maintains data on its own low and minimum security facilities and collects some similar facility data on private facilities, including the age of the facility, the citizenship status of inmates, and inmate population. However, BOP does not maintain comparable data on various aspects of private facilities, such as inmate-to-staff ratios, size of the facility, specific programs available to inmates, and whether inmates in private facilities are completing those programs. Because BOP does not maintain comparable data for private facilities on the differing facility characteristics that could affect costs, we could not determine the extent to which these facilities differed nor use statistical methods to determine the impact of these differences on costs. Since we could not control or adjust for such differences, the results of a cost comparison analysis conducted at this time would be skewed. With regard to quality of service, BOP also lacks sufficient data on measurements of safety and security for inmates, staff, and the general public for a methodologically sound cost comparison of BOP and private facilities. As we reported in 1996, a cost comparison analysis should include not just operational costs but also an assessment of quality to ensure that if a contractor is operating at lower costs than BOP, it is providing the same or a better level of service. We attempted to review numerous quality of service data—such as data that measure safety and security—so that differences could be accounted for by comparing data on what is achieved by these services. However, according to officials in BOP’s Office of Research and Evaluation, BOP does not maintain data on private facilities that we could use to compare quality of service across the different facilities. This includes the number of grievances submitted by inmates, the number of inmates attended to by health care professionals due to misconduct, staff turnover rates, and the experience level of the staff. As a result, we could not assess the trade-offs between the levels of services being offered and the costs of operating the facilities. While the contract requirements for the private facilities direct contractors to maintain some data on inmates in BOP’s central database system called SENTRY, according to BOP officials, the data private contractors enter are not necessarily consistent with those data collected on BOP facilities, and BOP officials stated that they cannot attest to the reliability or validity of the private contractor data. For example, BOP officials and private contractors we spoke with stated that although private contractors are required to report incidences of misconduct to BOP, neither could confirm if the private contractor system for categorizing or tracking incidences of misconduct is consistent with BOP’s misconduct categories. BOP further reported that program data were not comparable. For example, according to BOP officials, private contractors reported that inmates completed the U.S. General Educational Development program, when the program actually completed by the inmates was a Mexican equivalent of the program. Additionally, private contractors we spoke with told us that they maintain some facility characteristic and quality of service data, but the data are not maintained in the same format as BOP facility data and are not readily available because they are only maintained in hard copies at some of the facilities contractors manage.