For Profit Prison
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.
According to (Hoke, 2013)
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I feel as though the government should provide more money for programming in state facilities. In federal facilities there are numerous amounts of programming available to inmates to better themselves. If these types of programs were offered in the state facilities I believe there would be a huge decrease in recidivism rates. For example, in federal facilities multiple types of college or vocational courses are offered, so that inmates have trade skills upon their release. In state facilities that even offer college or vocational programming there are usually multiple stipulations that have to be met in order for the inmates to …show more content…
Overcrowding is a problem that is not only seen in for profit facilities, but in all facilities. If there was funding to provide more housing units for the inmates there would be less staff and inmate assaults. I feel that this is a huge negative factor in the for profit setting, it is bad enough that staff and inmate assaults happen as often as they do in state and federal facilities. If more staff are taken out of the equation, it increases the likelihood of staff and inmate assaults.
In conclusion, for profit prisons do just that, they look for ways to make a profit by cutting corners and providing less than adequate living conditions for inmates. This imposes a significant risk for many things such as, extreme overcrowding in the private facilities, lack of medical care, lack of nutritious meals, and decrease in the number of staff that are in the facilities. The staff get don’t get paid as much as they should for the amount of hours they put into the facilities also causing risks for the safety and security of the
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.
... 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).
Of course, that would be the logical thought to have, but as it turns out, it 's a little more complex than that. Expectedly, “the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.” (Adam Gopnik) In other the words, more inmates meant more money for the company. Over the last thirty years, the Corrections Corporation of America, a company whose main source of income comes from “having as many [prisoners] as possible, housed as cheaply as possible” saw the incarceration rates increase to “500 percent to more than 2.2 million people.” (grassroots) Well, let’s not get carried away, one could argue that the spike in incarceration rates can’t possibly be the private prison’s fault. They exist only to control and house the prison population, not to create it. Well, one would be right, the private prisons are not directly responsible; they are not directly making more criminals but what one doesn 't realise is that they play a pretty critical role in the
As we know the federal government spends a large portion of our budget on the maintaining of prisons. During the 2011 fiscal year it cost nearly $29,000 to house a prisoner in a state penitentiary per year as stated by the Federal Register. The funds that are estimated to keep a prison running end up running over the prediction causing them go over budget. We can account for this because according to The Price of Prisons|Oklahoma on Vera.org, here in the state of Oklahoma the Oklahoma Department of Corrections called for $441.8 million taxpayer dollars in the 2010 fiscal year. The actual cost for the maintenance of the prisons called for $453.4 million taxpayer dollars. This is about $11.6 million taxpayer dollars over the set budget for the year. This proves that there are too many things that need to be taken care of in these facilities. Much of the money went to paying employee benefits and to capital costs which is also stated in this article. Instead of using the money to pay for employee benefits they should be using it to pay for what the inmates need. This causes a strain on citizens because they are obligated into paying more taxes. The money being used on prison employee benefits could be going to other programs such as education and Social Security which would benefit more
The proponents of private prisons contend that private prison are a necessity because the criminal justice system is in crisis and governments do not have the willingness to spend public money building new prisons. According to Adrian Moore, Mr. Moore is the Vice President, Policy of the Reason Foundation, and this statement was published online “Private Prisons, Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost.” For the website reason.org on April 1998 Moore holds a Ph.D. in Economics
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.
Even though prison overcrowding may help prisons make money from its inmates. Prison overcrowding has resulted in an increased number of dangerous prisons, prisons are less sanitary, and the cost to house inmates has increased.
most of the units being understaffed, prison gangs and prison violence is hard to control in these type of
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
Private prisons are for-profit organizations where convicted criminals are confined by a third party contracted by government agencies for a net profit. Private prisons date as far back as the 1800’s, San Quentin being the first private prison in the U.S. Private prisons had its boom during the 1980’s, three major factor that contributed to the privatization of prisons; Ronald Reagan 's support for privatization, increase in prison population, and the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification program. Since then,the amount of private prisons across the U.S are continuously rising, a rate that starting to raise eyebrows. Between 1990 and now, the number of private corrections within the United States almost doubled, and inmate population grew
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?
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
The living environments at many private prisons deprives many inmates of basic needs. For example, “[o]ne way for-profit prisons to minimize costs is by skimping on provisions, including food.” In fact, a psychiatrist who investigated a private prison in Mississippi “found that the inmates were severely underfed and looked ‘almost emaciated.’” During their incarceration, prisoners dropped anywhere from 10 to 60 pounds.”
Prisons protect the public’s safety and keep the bad people out of the normal society. However, it may keep the horrible people away but it costs a lot when prisons do not solve the main purpose. When people are sent to prison, they are sent there just to die. Some inmates actually want to be rehabilitated so they can go back into the normal society. People around the world already thought of getting rid of prisons and making a different residence so that they can learn better ways of rehabilitation. If they did make this separate residence with the normal society like living styles, they would have a better chance of being rehabilitated. James Gilligan stated “ The only mystery is: Why is this program not being adopted by every jail and prison in the country? Why are taxpayers not demanding that this be done?”(2). Statistics show that in 36 months, 65% of inmates are rearrested and about 35% are reincarcerated. Prisons do not serve the main purpose and it just costs the taxpayers to pay taxes for something that does not even
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...