In Texas, we had a prison system director named Andy Collins who involved himself and the whole prison system in a huge scandal(s) about 20 years ago, and the stink from that still hasn't gone away. It was super embarrassing. Collins signed contracts to purchase some soybean product that was supposed to resemble food from an ex-convict (from Canada, not TDCJ). He didn't use the required bid process, and was receiving kickbacks for the stuff. They bought so much of it that it sat in warehouses and rotted. The inmates just wouldn't eat it. (source: I was a TDCJ guard at the time). The current directors seem content with minor scandals, and are presently leaving the wide-scale graft to someone else. TDCJ has been pretty territorial in protecting their control over staffing, and the citizens of the state were happy to fund enough concrete and bars to prevent the state needing to use those kind of creative tricks in order to get more beds. The biggest scandal with prison privatization in Texas, as far as I am aware was the problem(s) I mentioned before with the Texas Youth Commission. That's not an argument for privatization though, our private prisons still suck; we just don't do much of it here. We're apparently very proud of having one of the largest prison systems in the world, and I think our public prison officials tend to see private prisons as a threat (at least until they retire and consult for them).
>You get some weird situations where public institutions use staff from contractors, rent buildings and buy in all their services.
Yeah, IIRC TYC had all of that, and while it was talked about, nothing was really done until the sex-scandal broke.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-great-texas-prison-...