The Republican majority in the Arizona House just voted to approve a budget, a compromise with Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, that critics say underfunds education, health care and public safety. But the most shocking item in the budget proposal is a plan to transfer $50 million from funds intended to help homeowners facing foreclosure to the private prison industry. Worse, some Republican legislators want to "save money" by removing auditing and oversight from private prison contractors.

Nearly two years ago, a trio of inmates escaped from a low-security Kingman, Ariz., private prison run by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. Before the escapees were caught three weeks later, they had carjacked and murdered a couple vacationing in New Mexico. That horrific incident brought much-needed scrutiny to private prisons in Arizona, and a state investigation found glaring security lapses at the Kingman facility, including malfunctioning alarms and poorly trained guards. This happened at the height of the 2010 election season, when all the Republicans were running on S.B. 1070 and national journalists revealed the close connections of Republican lobbyists and key Brewer advisers to the private prison industry. In 2012, politics and profit appear to trump public safety yet again in Arizona.

The proposed $50 million windfall to private prison contractors comes out of Arizona's $97 million share of the lawsuit settlement over fraudulent banking practices. Arizona's housing market is still struggling to rebound, and we recently beat Nevada for the dubious distinction of "foreclosure capital of America." That makes diverting those funds to private prisons an even worse idea.