Private prisons have a negative effect on states and local governments. Unfortunately, the number of private prisons has been increasing since their inception in 1983 causing further problems. For-profit prisons offer no real benefits and are bad investments for states. Furthermore, private prisons beleaguer communities with high turnover rates that hurt local economies. The demands of these institutions put an excessive burden on the local community’s infrastructure. Similarly, private prisons strain the county and city legal systems. More often than not, spin-off industries and economic benefits promised by the for-profit correction industry fail to appear. Additionally, private prisons are allowed to cherry pick the least expensive inmates, leaving the more expensive inmates for the state. A number of studies financed by the private prison industry give the misconception that they save states money. More importantly, the need to make a profit is an incentive for private prison industry officials to engage in nefarious activities. Private prisons are correctional institutions ran by for-profit corporations. They claim to cost less than prisons ran by the state, while offering the same level of service. In fact, the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison corporations, states that their business strategy is to provide quality corrections service while offering a better value to their government partners at the same time making a profit (CCA 2010). However, opponents of private prisons say they do not save states money because of their hidden cost. At any rate, more than a few states have found private prisons to be advantageous. For one reason, many states are facing massive deficits and are l... ... middle of paper ... ...e-new-american-gold-mine/>. Setti, Christopher. "Prisons and Their Effect on Local Economies: The Colorado Experience." University of Colorado, Denver 2001st ser. XLVII.3 (2001): 1-9. Print. Shapiro, David. Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration. Rep. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2011. Print. Smith, Abbe. "Undue Process." The New York Times 31 Mar. 2013: BR21. Print. Urbina, Ian. "Despite Red Flags About Judges, A Kickback Scheme Flourished." The New York Times 28 Mar. 2009: A1. Print. Wilder, Forrest. "Jailbait." TexasObserver.org. 20 Oct. 2006. Web. 12 Sept. 2013. . Yeoman, Barry. "Steel Town Lockdown." Mother Jones. May-June 2000. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
This paper will focus on the privately owned prisons in the U.S.A., compared to the government owned prisons, whether they are owned by the state and /or federal governments.
... law, government supervisors and to the public through the political system available. (Austin and Coventry, 2001). The private prisons are also answerable to the insurers, investors, competitors and the stockholders. Competition from other competitors therefore acts as a better mechanism for control which is not experienced by public prisons. The problem of funding and allocating space efficiently in the prisons would decrease if there were better markets that sell, buy and rent the prison cells. The private prisons are based in such a way that they have introduced factories behind the bars allowing them to reduce their costs and allowing the inmates to earn some money and pay in their own way and give back to the community where they resided. The public prisons do this to some extent which however cannot match that of the private prisons. (Silverman and Ira, 2001).
According to a study conducted by James Blumstein, the director of the Health Policy Center at Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, private prisons saves at least $15 million a year. The cost of housing an inmate in a private prison facility is cheaper than traditional government funding prisons. However, the idea that private prisons benefit the U.S is under speculation. But if one were to conduct a research on privatization of prisons, the results would show that America indeed saves money every year for each inmate housed in a private facility. For example, according to the New York Times, Richard A. Oppel Jr. said that “the state is required to provide medical and mental health services to inmates regardless of the severity of their condition and medical costs averaged up to $2.44 a day more for state inmates than privately housed inmates.” In comparison, Scott Glover also said on Central news that the medical costs daily per inmate are cheaper in private prisons, at $57.97 as opposed to $60.66 The reason is only healthy inmates would be chosen to house in these private facilities. Moreover, companies can save because the inmates who work, are full time, so they would not have to worry about job health insurance, unemployment benefits, and other checks such
Stickrath, Thomas J., and Gregory A. Bucholtz. "Supermaximum Security Prisons Are Necessary." Supermax Prisons: Beyond the Rock. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Facility, 2003. Rpt. in America's Prisons. Ed. Clare Hanrahan. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
The US Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. After spending $5.2 billion on prison construction over the past fifteen years, California now has not only the largest but also the most overcrowded prison system in the United States. The state Department of Corrections estimates that it will need to spend an additional $6.1 billion on prisons over the next decade just to maintain the current level of overcrowding. At least 37
There are many citizen concerns, including the premise that private prison companies lobby governments to increase punishments and penalties to fill their facilities. Mr. Geoffrey Segal writes “It is unlikely that private prison firms are going to sway policy in favor of greater incarceration when such polices are obviously already very popular with the general population” in his online article published also on The Reason on November of 2002, Mr. Segal is the director of privatization and government reform at Reason Foundation. witha B.A in political science from Arizona State University, and a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University. The prison system as an industry, according to Randy Gragg privately owned prisons are starting to flourish again, Mr. Gragg is the editor-in-chief of Portland monthly, he wrote the article “A High-Security, Low-Risk Investment: Private Prisons Make Crime Pay” for Harper’s magazine on August 1996 Mr. Gragg is a Harvard University graduate of the school of design, and the national art journalism fellow at Columbia University. The
The number of Americans that are in prison has elevated to levels that have never been seen before. Prisons in the US have always been crowded ever since the first prison was invented (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The first prison in the US was the Walnut Street Jail that was built in Philadelphia in 1773, and later closed in the 1830’s due to overcrowding and dirty conditions (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The prison system in modern US history has faced many downfalls due to prison overcrowding. Many private prison owners argue that the more inmates in a prison the more money they could make. In my opinion the argument of making more money from inmates in prisons is completely unconstitutional. If the private prisons are only interested in making
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
The justice system in the United States is supposed to serve justice to individuals who are have been harmed and punish those who have broken the law. There are some judges who have stock in GEO Corp. and the CCA, and when a criminal is in front of them for sentencing, instead of sending them to a state-run prison, they are sending them to private one’s which they have stock in. By having private prisons now an option for housing criminals, county judges are “helping” their communities by adding a huge surplus of income coming into their county, but have found a way to make more of their own money since they hold stock in these private companies.“ bonds issued for prisons since the late 1980s is approximate $90 million—a vast sum for a county with an annual budget of only $5 million,” (Abramsky, 2004). Many of these judges are making money off of their own cases that they are presiding over and are making money in a racketeering business, which is now in the millions of dollars.“ As a state, we have done a poor job of monitoring the program and have made no real attempt to find out what taxpayers are getting for their money.”(Epstein, 1). There are many states that are like the idea of private prisons because it helps bring revenue to their communities but have no idea of what is actually going on inside, and how only a few people are making money off of these private
A private prison or for-profit prison, jail, or detention center is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically have contractual agreements with the governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in that private facility. Private prisons have been part of the system for quite some years now, specifically for involvement in corrections. Private for-profit prison management started rising in the 1980s, they represented a qualitative shift in the relation between corrections and private business. The question is there really a difference between private and public facilities, since the two are suppose to be different when it comes t cost and efficiency, also are the private facilities being run as a correctional facility at all?
At the forefront of the privatized prison debate is retention and rehabilitation. Using the name “corrections” in regards to our prison system has become ironic. Privatization of prisons works against this namesake goal of correction and rehabilitation for those in prison. Instead the goal now of prison is not to protect the public or help those incarcerated but instead to generate capital. Corporations CCA and GEO advertise to its investors the truth of high prison retention in making for great profits. When individuals leave and go back to prison after they get out because they are not capable of handling life outside of the system they have lived in so long
The most problematic conclusion about Mass Incarceration, whatever the causes or practices, is that currently America has had the highest national prison rates in the world; furthermore, the rates of minorities (particularly African Americans) are extraordinarily disproportionate to the rates of incarcerated Caucasians. Despite the overall rise in incarceration rates since the 1980s, the crime rates have not been reduced as would be expected. Researchers, activists, and politicians alike are now taking a closer look at Mass Incarceration and how it affects society on a larger scale. The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of Mass Incarceration for a better understanding of its importance as a dominant social issue and its ultimate relation to practice of social work. More specifically the populations affected by mass incarceration and the consequences implacable to social justice. The context of historical perspectives on mass incarceration will be analyzed as well as insight to the current social welfare policies on the
Frist off there is not evidences that the use of private prisons saves money. The use of private prisons dose have a positive impact in the state government staying in its budget. Private prisons help to lower some of the cost that the states have with prisons. If done correctly this could help the states to improve their economy. There are lots of ways that the private prisons try and same money. The article Durkheim, Punishment, and Prison Privatization shows some of the ways private prisons try and save money. The private prisons receive property tax abatements, tax rebates, and other benefits form the government. this helps the private prisons make money. When it comes to the employees of the of the private prisons the cheapest way is taken. On average the employees of the private prisons earn considerably less and have worse retirement packages their public counter parts. This has a negative effect on the economy because the workers aren’t going to be spending money because they don’t have any. The private prisons also look for the cheapest option when it comes to programs. This dose one or two things to the with the quality of the prison. The cheapest option can be to make sure that the prisoners do return to the prison. By focusing on this the quality of the prisons would be improved because people are not being rehabilitated. The insurance of prisoners becoming productive member
The main argument that those who are in favor of private prisons make is that they are cheaper to the taxpayers than regular prisons. “Researchers