PHOENIX — State lawmakers refused Wednesday to limit the kind of criminals who can be housed in private prisons in Arizona.
On a 10-8 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Debbie McCune Davis to bar any private prison that houses inmates from another state from accepting prisoners who have committed murder, rape and various other serious crimes, or have a history of escape.
McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, said she wants to keep other states from exporting their most serious offenders to Arizona, where private companies are paid to incarcerate them.
But the wording would have placed similar restrictions on the ability of the Arizona Department of Corrections to contract with private prisons to house the same kind of inmates.
Sen. Robert Blendu, R-Litchfield Park, said the net effect would be to put the private prisons out of business in Arizona.
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Central to the debate is the safety of Arizona citizens.
McCune Davis cited an incident where an inmate from Alaska, rather than being returned to his home state after completing his sentence, was instead put into an Arizona nursing home. She said he assaulted two women in that home.
"They are not being returned to their home states," she said. "They are being dumped out into our community."
Sen. Tom O'Halleran, R-Sedona, said the proposal makes sense. He said Arizona does not send maximum-security inmates to private prisons in other states.
"We shouldn't be taking back people that we don't know who they are, we don't know what they've done at the other criminal institutions," he said. "No state should be sending their murderers to Arizona."
But Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, said Arizonans are in no danger because of the private prisons.
She said there are about 9,000 inmates in privately run facilities in the state, yet only two people have escaped, both of whom were soon recaptured.
Sen. Rebecca Rios, D-Apache Junction, said her objections to the proposal were based on pure economics.
"It has historically been the county and communities that have welcomed the prisons because they provide jobs and economic security to the community," she said.
Rios, whose district includes several private prisons, said they are the largest private employers in Pinal County and pay more in property taxes than anyone else.
Sen. Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, said that if private prisons can't take certain types of inmates, whether from Arizona or elsewhere, they will close. He said that will make the state less safe because the state can lock up more people in private prisons than it can in state-run prisons for the same amount of money.
"It has historically been the county and communities that have welcomed the prisons because they provide jobs and economic security to the community."
Sen. Rebecca Rios
D-Apache Junction
