In 2013 a paper from authors, Kish and Lipton discuss the title: Do private prisons really offer savings compared with their public counterparts? The purpose of this article is to shed light on the privatization as far as the cost savings. The authors point out the key points of cost saving are: The construction of a private prison is typically faster since voter approval is not required. The reduction of staff members is one way of reducing cost. The author states the problem being, the measurement and similar comparison of facilities plague research in this field. Matching prison facilities and populations is challenging. Medical costs are large part of the budget in a prison. The full cost of such contracting is difficult to evaluate and can be ignored by studies. Another problem to comparing private and public prisons is the lack of access to private prisons budget information. There are differences in accounting systems, which make it more difficult in uncovering the true cost of the private facilities. Studies also focus on male prisons and not all types of facilities (Kish and Lipton, 3013). The author touches on the fact that it is hard to get information on the budget and accounting of a private company. However, in Florida the management of the contracts of private prisons were placed under the oversight of a state committee.
Author Debra Miller states in her article, Private prisons-Grade incomplete, that the former director of the federal bureau of prisons raises questions concern the cost savings of private prisons. The purpose of this article is to inform the public that the cost savings may to be accurate. The claim that 15 million was saved is unsupported. The former director of prisons, M...
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Every civilization in history has had rules, and citizens who break them. To this day governments struggle to figure out the best way to deal with their criminals in ways that help both society and those that commit the crimes. Imprisonment has historically been the popular solution. However, there are many instances in which people are sent to prison that would be better served for community service, rehab, or some other form of punishment. Prison affects more than just the prisoner; the families, friends, employers, and communities of the incarcerated also pay a price. Prison as a punishment has its pros and cons; although it may be necessary for some, it can be harmful for those who would be better suited for alternative means of punishment.
In 1814 Francis Scott Key described America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Does that still hold true today? The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, yet houses roughly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. That means it has 751 people in jail for every 100,000 in population. If you only count adults one in every 100 Americans is locked up. In 2012 the U.S. spent 677,856,000 billion dollars on national defense, that’s nearly 7.5 times the amount spent on education. If more money was spent on education there would be a better chance that people won’t end up incarcerated. About half of the prisoners in the United States are sentenced for non-violent crimes. The population of federal prisons has increased
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 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
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 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 than in government run prisons. It was also stated in this study that “for profit prisons”
For county jails, the problem of cost and recidivism is exacerbated by budgetary constraints and various state mandates. Due to the inability of incarceration to satisfy long-term criminal justice objectives and the very high expenditures associated with the sanction, policy makers at various levels of government have sought to identify appropriate alternatives (Luna-Firebaugh, 2003, p.51-66). I. Alternatives to incarceration give courts more options. For example, it’s ridiculous that the majority of the growth in our prison populations in this country is due to people being slamming in jail just because they were caught using drugs. So much of the crime on the streets of our country is drug-related.
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.
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.
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...
Governor Greg Benson wants to outsource the states medium security prisoners. Outsourcing would mean send inmates in the states prisons out of state to serve their prison sentence. We would be sending these inmates who aren’t just a number; they are fathers, sons, and grandchildren to prisons in states such as Texas or Georgia. He says this will help with over crowding and will save New Hampshire tax payers money. Shipping inmates out of state will hurt the community’s of New Hampshire, it won’t save much money, and is a bad idea.
The lack of rehabilitation programs and other activities are a huge downside to the private prison system. Prisoners need a rehabilitee program to help them get ready for when they are out of the prison. According to Lisa Wade, PhD, “Likewise, there’s no motivation to rehabilitate prisoners; doing so is expensive, cuts into their profits, and decreases the likelihood that any individual will be back in the prison system.” Private prisons want prisoners to come back to their cells again. Therefore they cut the budget of the rehabilitation programs, so rehabilitate prisoners will not get the full treatment. Unfortunately the prisoners who have not received any sort of rehabilitation program or activities in which they are reintroduce to life outside of prison, will reenter in a matter of months. The private prison programs are not as fully efficient as the government prisons, according to Lisa Wade, PhD, “state prisons are much more likely than private prisons to offer programs that help prisoners: psychological interventions, drug and alcohol counseling, coursework towards high school or college diplomas, job training, etc.” According to the research of Cassandre Monique Davilmar, there have been similar studies that show that “private prison inmate groups had a greater
Many believed that the US state’s soaring expenditures and special interest politics are pushing states towards record budget deficits, causing a lack of funding towards education, health care, the poor, and even state correction system (Petersilia 2008). It is paramount that out government find ways to utilized government spending wisely towards all the principles mentioned, even towards state correction systems. Our government needs to put individuals in place to analyze prison systems and find ways to resolve the issues with recidivism. From the data collected, the government could learn the best methods of utilizing funding towards innovative programs to help with reform and