The privatization of prisons and jails has led to mass incarceration, an issue that does not only effect those who are imprisoned, but also communities a whole. Prisons should no longer be private because it can create a need to put more people in jail for more profit. When money is an incentive, it can affect how law enforcement polices people. Also, when there are institutional biases against groups of people, and when individuals who work in law enforcement or related fields have biases, it can affect who is policed as well.
In colonial America, punishment for crimes was never imprisonment. People were fined, flogged, banished, and hung (Dolovich 450). In early American history, the private jails were paid for housing those who were waiting
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for trial, but private prisons and jails were rarely used during this time because of how expensive it was (Mason 1). This changed in 1790 when prisons became publicly run, and these pubic prisons contracted services from private businesses that provided transportation, food, and medical care (Mason 1). Once the war on drugs (a term coined by President Richard Nixon), and the harsh sentencing policies that came along with it were called into effect in the 1970’s, housing those awaiting trial in private prisons became more popular. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which was established in 1983, said that they had the ability to “build and operate state and federal prisons with the same quality of service provided in publicly operated prisons, but at a lower cost.” (Mason 2). By the end of 1987 CCA gained contracts in Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky to build more private prisons; and other corporations like Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now known as GEO Group) had gone into the prison business as well. Now CCA is the largest private prison company and with their top competitor, GEO Group, they had a combined revenue of over $2.9 billion in 2010 (Mason 2). The amount of money that can be made in this business is astounding however, jails and prisons must be filled with a large number of people to make a large amount of money. President Richard Nixon set the stage, with the term “War on Drugs,” for a series of laws and policies that would dramatically raise the prison population to a very high number. Statements like “we need total war in the United States against these evils that we see in our cities” and “we must wage what I call total war against public enemy number 1 in the United States, the problem of dangerous drugs,” were made by President Nixon, and encouraged the nation to see drug addiction as a crime issue instead of a health issue, and it was treated as such. Between the years 1970 and 1980, the prison population grew from 357,292 to 513,900 (DuVernay). President Ronald Reagan also showed how he was going to be tough on crime by having his wife be the face of the “Just Say No” advertising campaign. The campaign focused on children, and gave them a “catchy” phrase to say if they were offered drugs. While there were people in the U. S. who were addicted to illegal substances, the “Just Say No” campaign incited fear in parents and caused them to believe drug addiction plagued more of the country than it really did. This affected what citizens demanded from political figures, and in turn affected the policies and laws that were put into place. The Mandatory minimum law for crack cocaine gave a 5-year mandatory minimum of jail time for possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, even if it was a first offence (FAMM). This law was especially harmful to minorities because they had more access to crack cocaine than powder cocaine. The same punishment was not applied to those who were found with the same amount powder cocaine, which was used more by upper class white people. Between the years 1980 and 1990 the prison population grew from 513,900 to 1,179,200 (DuVernay). During this time the arrest rate for drug crimes more than doubled (Travis 47). President Bill Clinton also wanted to prove that he was a President that could protect the country.
Under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the death penalty was expanded to cover around 60 offenses; 100,000 new police officers were put onto the streets; money was given to fund prisons and crime prevention programs; and gave mandatory life sentence for those who had 3 or more serious violent felonies or drug trafficking offences (NCJRS). This stopped judges from using their judgement when sentencing people to prison and put small offenses on the same level as larger violent offenses. After this, the prison population sky rocketed and even led to some prison overcrowding issues. Between the years 1990 and 2000 the prison population grew from 1,179,200 to 2,015,300 (DuVernay). Today, one in four prisoners in the world are imprisoned in the United States …show more content…
(NAACP). Private prisons do have some benefits, and these benefits (especially the economic ones) are why most of the people who support private prisons, ignore the harm they are doing, or cause them to believe that the good outweighs the bad. Privately run prisons promised to hold prisoners but also promised to save the government money. Private prisons also have high quality services while still being able to save money (FindLaw). Because private prisons can provide stable employment to communities around them, they can provide a good economy to communities in need. Inmates can also benefit from private prisons; private prisons are said to provide their inmates and employees with high quality services. Private prisons claim to have more programs for drug abuse and academics, so inmates are more likely to enroll in these programs while at a private prison. Inmates are also said to be paid about 10 cents more for the work they do in private prisons verses not-for-profit ones. Private prisons also have reported to have higher moral in their employees and score higher on prison conditions, security, management, and safety (PrivatePrisons2) (Moore 7). Although all these things sound good, are private prisons really keeping Americans safe, saving them money, and providing the services they say they do? It’s thought that the more people we put in prison the less crime there would be, but that is not the case in the United States. The U. S. has the largest prison population in the world, and is still the country with the highest amount of illegal drug use (Branson). An article in the New York Times discusses how private prisons may not be saving as much money as they say. Studies in Utah showed that private prisons only provided tax payers with minimal savings, and in the state of Arizona, private prisons generally cost tax payers the same amount of money and sometimes $1,600 more than public prisons do (Canon). Arizona state’s data shows that private prisons can sometimes cost taxpayers more than state prisons do.
Private prisons pick which prisoners they house and often choose to house the prisoners that are less expensive, the healthy ones. This causes people to see private prisons as more cost effective because, state prisons have to provide medical and mental health services to prisoners no matter how much it costs. Medical costs for state prisons are a third higher than private prisons in Arizona and a state prisons in Florida, pay 50% more in medical costs than private prisons (Oppel).
Another study, by Christopher Petrella also studied how private prisons make sure they get healthy (less expensive) inmates. Petrella found that with-in contracts between the government and private prisons, there are “fourteen different exclusion criteria, including disabled or elderly inmates, those who were HIV-positive, or anyone with sensitive medical conditions and/or high risk diagnoses"
(Canon). Private prisons have also been called out on not providing the rehabilitation and educational services they claim to provide. In 1994 President Bill Clinton cut all financial aid for educational programs in state and private prisons. Once this happened the number of these educational programs dropped dramatically from 350 to 5, and later rose again to 12 in 2004 (Zoukis). An article in The Washington Post states that “… the federal prison’s most successful education and reentry program has “dramatically” shrunk in recent years, leaving more than 10,000 inmates on a waiting list for prison jobs and educational training,” (Horwitz). These programs provide inmates with tools they need to help them get jobs and/or go to school once they get out of jail. Once the funding from the government to fund these programs was cut, private prisons did not see fit for them to continue, because it would not generate income.
In the Antebellum Era, America undergos many reforms including a reform in their prison system. Imprisonment had been use rarely to punish criminals. Prisons were commonly used to incarcerate people being accused and awaiting for trials and debtors that had to pay their creditors. They did not want people to run away. Authorities did not used prison sentences for criminals, they enforced fines or inflict physical pain such as branding iron or pillory. Anyone convicted of a serious crime would receive extreme penalties such execution or banishment.
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
The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for a number of reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. The ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system is caused by mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism.
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...
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...
The system of the Prison Industrial Complex operates within the law. The law allows private companies to infiltrate the prison, while keeping prisoners in a subjugated position. The law, under the Eight Amendment obligates prison officials to provide prisoners with “adequate” medical care. This principle applies regardless of whether the medical care provided is by governmental employees or by private medical staff under contract with the government (Project, 2012). If prisoners believe they are being denied their constitutio...
Mass incarceration has caused the prison’s populations to increase dramatically. The reason for this increase in population is because of the sentencing policies that put a lot of men and women in prison for an unjust amount of time. The prison population has be caused by periods of high crime rates, by the medias assembly line approach to the production of news stories that bend the truth of the crimes, and by political figures preying on citizens fear. For example, this fear can be seen in “Richard Nixon’s famous campaign call for “law and order” spoke to those fears, hostilities, and racist underpinnings” (Mauer pg. 52). This causes law enforcement to focus on crimes that involve violent crimes/offenders. Such as, gang members, drive by shootings, drug dealers, and serial killers. Instead of our law agencies focusing their attention on the fundamental causes of crime. Such as, why these crimes are committed, the family, and preventive services. These agencies choose to fight crime by establishing a “War On Drugs” and with “Get Tough” sentencing policies. These policies include “three strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and juvenile waives laws which allows kids to be trialed as adults.
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
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”
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
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.
Longitudinal research has been conducted comparing the rate of violence in male and female prisons. It is important to do research on this topic because it does not only lead to the conclusion of where is violence prevalent, but focuses on other aspects as well. It focuses on the psychological, social, and sexual side of the inmate. This topic does not only focus on who has the highest rates of violence, but why does that sex have a higher rate. This topic looks deeper at the differences between male and female inmates and what causes them to have high rates of violence. Most people would say that male prisons have a higher rate of violence due to biological reasons. People tend to think that males are more aggressive therefore violence is prevalent in male prisons, yet there is a lot more to this idea.
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...
The use of prison as a form of punishment began to become popular in the early 19th century. This was because transportation to colonies had started to decrease; transportation was the removing of an individual, in this case an offender, from its country to another country; usually for a period of seven to ten years and in some cases for ever. During this time prison was now being used as a means for punishment, this was in response to the declining of transportation to colonies. Thus, instead of transporting offenders to other colonies they were now being locked away behind high walls of the prison. Coyle (2005). To say whether using prison as a form of punishment has aid in the quest of tackling the crime problem one must first consider the purposes of the prison.