Private Prisons: A Cost-Effectivity Analysis

For-profit prisons reduce public costs in three ways.

According to the Harvard Family Research Project, in looking to the viability of a program, the government examines cost effectiveness as one of the primary means of deciding whether or not to promote the use of a private industry. Therefore to determine if they should be banned or not, private prisons should first and foremost be evaluated on a cost-effectivity analysis.

Firstly, through reduced employee costs. Elena Kantorowicz of Erasmus University explains: “[that] the main source of costs saving [whether it be in private or public prisons] is through reduced prison personnel. [In private prisons you] employ less workers, and with more flexible recruitment and firing conditions [therefore]

Therefore the concept of innovation must be thoroughly explored to see the benefits that private prisons are accountable for right now and could be accountable for in the future. Ira Robbins of the American University Law Review, “With maximum flexibility and little or no bureaucracy, new ideas (like testing new philosophies) and routine matters (like hiring new staff) can be implemented quickly within private prisons. Overcrowding - perhaps the major systemic problem facing corrections today - can be reduced simply through innovation.” Peter Greenwood of the RAND corporation also explains that private prisons are more likely to innovate as compared to public prisons. He expounds, “Because innovators are not found in government, but in business, it is time to get the government out of the prison business. Government can give us bigger, newer prisons but not better prisons, more effective programs, or better personnel without various incentives, which they lack. If the operation of our prisons were contracted out, private enterprise can step in. Private prison managers would be free to innovate, to use the latest technology and management techniques as in any profit-motivated service industry.” One example of this is provided by David Cardwell of the NY Times who writes that, “[private prisons] build solar panels and are looking into making energy-efficient lighting and small wind turbines.” In the long-term, Adrian Moore of the Reason Public Policy Institute explains that in the long-term, “the success[of private prisons] hinges on delivering the same product as the government but at lower cost, or a better product at a cost effective price, they turn to new management approaches, new monitoring techniques, and administrative efficiencies—in a word, innovation”This logically shows how private prisons are self-incentivized to achieve more innovative methods to remain