Issues with Prison Privatization
To deal with the increasing population of prisoners in the early 1990’s many state governments across the country have outsourced many of their prison and jail operations to private firms (Logan, 1992, p. 579). This is done to save costs, with private prisons claiming to house lower level prisoners for less money than state run facilities. However, whether or not these claims are valid is still up for debate. Because privatization of the prison system is a relatively recent development, there is very little definite information detailing whether or not these prisons are as cost efficient as state prisons. It is also unknown whether or not private prisons are as well operated and maintained as when they were
The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has already been accused of providing substandard services by the state of Nevada, who ended their contract with CCA as a result of their findings (Mason, 2012, p. 3). The fact that one of the major players in the private prison industry has already been found to provide substandard care for its inmates should raise some questions about their continued and growing involvement with the prison system. Instead of ignoring this issue it needs to be determined whether or not private prisons are a threat to the safety and well being of inmates, prison staff, and communities as a whole. If it is indeed determined that substantial care and overall safety issues prevail then it is definitely time to reconsider the practice of prison privatization. It is proposed by some that private prisons make “global, unsubstantiated, speculative claims which are rarely addressed with concrete evidence” (Camp & Gaes. 1999, p. 1-2). However, concrete evidence needs to be collected and properly analyzed in order to determine whether private prisons are better or worse than public prisons. Unfortunately, this kind of evaluation has been made difficult, if not impossible, due to the fact that private prisons are consider to be privately run businesses. Therefore they are not required to document the same things as state prisons, such as injuries or fights. This conveniently keeps all accounts that might be used to discredit private prisons out of the realm of public discussion, as well as scholarly research and
Should prisons in the United States be for profit? How do for profit prisons benefit the United States? Would inmates rather be in private or public correctional centers? What kind of affects does this have on taxpayers? What are the pros and cons of profit prisons? These are many of the questions that are brought up when discussing for profit prison systems. There are different perspectives that can be taken when it comes to talking about for profit prisons. This paper will discuss some of the ways that the United States has started to become for profit and why it has happened. Finally, this paper will give an opinion of whether or not for profit prisons should be dominant over public facilities.
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...
... 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).
The United States is a nation with the largest prison population and crime rates in the world. When the governmental controlled facilities were in a deficit where they lacked funds and space could not house the inmates, private prisons were developed. Along with the solution of private of prisons, the controversy concerning the funding of health care, recovery and other expenses have been one of the fundamental concerns for the American Justice System. Both the private and public facilities came together and join a partnership where the government facility agreed to bear the expenses of healthcare and other medical exams, and the private facility would find spaces and funds to house inmates. However, to continuously gain profit, the sentencing
Muhlhausen, D. B., Dyer, C. C., McDonough, J. R., Nadlemann, E., & Walters, R. (2006). Do prisons protect public safety? In C. Hanrahan (Ed.), Opposing Viewpoints: America’s prisons (pp. 16-48). Detroit: Bonnie Szumski.
There are over 2.3 million persons within the” Prison Industrial Complex”. The “Prison Industrial Complex" is used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry (Herzing, 2005). The interest of industry within the state prisons of Illinois has led to the selling of inmate healthcare rights to many private companies. The privatization of healthcare within the prison industrial complex is unconstitutional and perpetuates unethical treatment of persons who are incarcerated. These private companies are not being held accountable for the lack of treatment and negligence of providing services within state prisons.
When the average person thinks of a prison, what is often the thought that comes to mind? Perhaps an environment of reform is envisioned, or maybe a place for punishment. Maybe someone sees them as modern leper colonies, where countries send their undesirables. It could be that prisons are all of these things, or they could be none. With these ambiguities in the general definition of a prison it is easy to say that the everyday person could have no real critical perspective on what they truly are. That being said, if the average person were presented with Angela Davis’s perspective, and the perspective of many scholars, they may be shocked to learn what prisons truly are. This perspective presents prisons as a profitable industrial complex very similar to the military industrial complex. Like the military industrial complex, in the “prison industrial complex,” investors make large amounts of money off the backs of imprisoned inmates. It is interesting to note how similar these two systems are, with closer analysis; it seems to me as though one may have developed from the other. On another note, the prison industrial complex also appears to have a correlation with the globalization of labor; which makes it possible to assume that one contributed to the development of the other here as well. However, where the prison industrial complex’s roots lie is not as big an issue as the simple question of the morality of the practice. A person can know the history of the issue all they want but the important matter is addressing it.
The past two decades have engendered a very serious and historic shift in the utilization of confinement within the United States. In 1980, there were less than five hundred thousand people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails. Today we have approximately two million and the numbers are still elevating. We are spending over thirty five billion annually on corrections while many other regime accommodations for education, health
private prisons than in government run prisons. It was also stated in this study that “for profit prisons”
Private prisons in the United States, came about in the early 1980s when the war on drugs resulted in a mass wave of inmates, which led to the lack of the prison system’s ability to hold a vast number of inmates. When the cost became too much for the government to handle, private sectors sought this as an opportunity to expand their businesses through the prison industry. Since the opening of private prisons, the number of prisons and inmates it can hold has grown over the last two decades. With the rising number of inmates, profits have also substantially grown along with the number of investors. But what eventually became a problem amongst the private prison industry was their “cost-saving” strategies, which have been in constant debate ever
Zito, M. (2003, December 8). Prison Privatization: Past and Present. International Foundation for Protection Officers. Retrieved from http://www.ifpo.org/articlebank/prison_privatization.html
The goal of private prisons is to be more efficient and runs cheaper than the average public operated prisons. In a public prison, it cost a lot of money for the inmates to be taken cared of, so the plan was to have a prion that is not own by the government, but instead was owned by a owner who would guarantee to run their prison facility for less money, and still provide the same qualities and care as a public prison. However, that isn’t the case now. Private prisons are falling short on actually fulfilling those aspect and requirements. In fact it is relatively hard to determine if there is any difference in the qualities between a private facility and a public facility. The only difference so far is that a private prison is not own by the government and therefore it is more of a business own by an owner who most likely runs...
Fenwick states…’Prison conditions have steadily deteriorated, while at the same time, prison populations have dramatically increased throughout the Western world, in many cases leading to unsustainable overcrowding. This has led, in turn, to further deterioration in conditions. These structural circumstances coincide with the rise and spread of the economic strategies associated with globalization, including reduction of state budgets and privatization of state functions. Not surprisingly, elements of the private sector seized on the opportunity for profit presented by this “crime-control/ fiscal-crisis contradiction.” (Fenwick, C. 2005).p.258.
The prison system in the United States was not always like it is today. It took mistakes and changes in order to get it to the point it is at. Some people think that prisons should still be being changed while others feel that they are fine the way they are. It is hard to make an argument for one side or the other if one does not know about the history of prisons as well as the differences between prisons structures and differences in prison management. Knowledge of private prisons is also needed to make this difficult decision.
Shelden, R. G. (1999). The Prison Industrial Complex. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from www.populist.com: http://www.populist.com/99.11.prison.html