Prisons go private.

Increasingly, privatization is being seen as an alternative to the traditional publicly run prison, offering a possible way to accommodate current calls for incarceration while keeping prison costs down.

"Privatization is increasing by about 25 percent to 30 percent a year," said Charles Logan, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, "even though it is still only a small percentage of the national total." The number of privately run prison facilities has jumped from less than five a decade ago to more than 30 today, according to a study by the Center for Law and Democracy in Washington, D.C. The inmates they house have increased from about 2,000 a decade ago to just under 50,000 today. That number is expected to rise to 65,000 by 1996.

"The private sector can do it less expensively because its motivation is entirely different," said Richard Crane, an attorney in Nashville, Tenn., and former counsel for the largest prison privatization firm in the country, Corrections Corporation of America.

Crane argues that because showing a profit is the only thing that matters to business, private prisons are more likely to be cost-efficient and able to do more with less money. That argument has proved so persuasive that Corrections Corporation now runs four prisons in Texas where it has entered into contracts with the state government promising to keep costs 10 percent below previous state-run prison budgets.

A recent study by the Tennessee General Assembly appears to support Crane's argument. Comparing two similar prisons in neighboring South Carolina, both built at the same time and each housing just over 1,000 inmates - one publicly run, the other private the study concluded that the privately run prison cost $150,000 less a year in operational costs than its public counterpart.

Privatized prisons have also won high marks from lawmakers and even prison advocacy groups for working with inmates to resolve conflicts and iron out complaints and problems before they lead to larger and sometimes deadly disputes.

Some experts believe that private management can also respond more effectively to the get-tough approach if that means keeping prisoners incarcerated for longer periods of time. "The longer you keep an inmate in prison, the more expensive it gets," said Charles W. Thomas, director of the Private Corrections Department at the University of Florida. "So, in that sense, I think privately run prisons can respond in a more cost-effective manner to the get-tough movement."

Thomas also contends that, as the get-tough movement produces more prison facilities, private management may also be seen as a more viable alternative simply because "the private sector has a much smaller lag time between the awarding of a contract to build a new prison and actually opening it, than the public sector does. On average, private prisons are up and running in about 12 to 18 months, while it may take up to 36 months for the public sector to do it."

But Crane, among other privatization supporters, opposes much of the new prison reform legislation coming from the states. "It's a bad management device," he said. "If you take away things like TV and weights and smoking from an inmate, you've essentially taken everything away from him - and that means this person is going to be a whole lot harder to control."

Of course, not everyone agrees that private prisons are the best way to go, with or without a get-tough movement. Jim Schmitz with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees faults private prisons for their "high employee turnover rates." Said Schmitz: "That is one of the pitfalls when all you do is think about the bottom line and saving money. You end up with a large number of underpaid employees in high-stress jobs who are frequently leaving. Because public employees get higher wages and benefits, they tend to stay with their jobs in prisons longer, which is less expensive overall."

Professor Logan, however, thinks private prisons can be both cost effective and tougher.

"The solution is to make things more strict, but not necessarily more harsh," he said. "If tougher prison time means less probation and parole, less discretionary release, all of which move in the direction of making the system more fair and consistent, then private prisons are a better way to go because one of the things they are most concerned about is having things run smoothly. They have proved that they can be tough, without inciting the prisoners to riot, which is a pretty important thing."