Private Prisons Pros And Cons

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

It is a contract between the governmentally controlled facility, where the private facility will bear responsibility for management and finance while the government will focus on sentencing, health care and drug treatments. According to the text, Corrections in the 21st Century by Frank Schmalleger, private prisons were outlawed during the early 1900’s but it came back into action when public prisons were over-populated and in a financial deficit. Many turned to private investment where the owner would regulate the facility while charging for each bed. Indeed, the business flourished and expanded to what we know today as private prisons. The three leading private facilities in the United States are Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation of America and Cornell Corrections Inc. The Corrections Corporation of America was the first private facility to develop and their goal was to lease beds to the government because their prisons were over populated. “Nearly ten percent of the United States prison have been privatized, housing almost 200,000 thousand inmates” (Barber, Corrections Project

According to a study conducted by James Blumstein, the director of the Health Policy Center at Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, private prisons saves at least $15 million a year. The cost of housing an inmate in a private prison facility is cheaper than traditional government funding prisons. However, the idea that private prisons benefit the U.S is under speculation. But if one were to conduct a research on privatization of prisons, the results would show that America indeed saves money every year for each inmate housed in a private facility. For example, according to the New York Times, Richard A. Oppel Jr. said that “the state is required to provide medical and mental health services to inmates regardless of the severity of their condition and medical costs averaged up to $2.44 a day more for state inmates than privately housed inmates.” In comparison, Scott Glover also said on Central news that the medical costs daily per inmate are cheaper in private prisons, at $57.97 as opposed to $60.66 The reason is only healthy inmates would be chosen to house in these private facilities. Moreover, companies can save because the inmates who work, are full time, so they would not have to worry about job health insurance, unemployment benefits, and other checks such