Private prisons are secure correctional facilities operated by an organization which contracts with the government to provide security housing and program for adult inmates. The government hires different private organizations to run the facilities for them. Prison privatization has been prevalent in America since 1825 starting in Frankfort, Kentucky. Due to an increase number of arrests during the 1980s, the government found that more prisons needed to be made. Private prisons were the answer to eliminating the issue of overcrowding in public prisons at the time. Private prisons have become a very controversial topic being that many people do not agree with private corporations being responsible for inmates.
According to Joel (1988) There
…show more content…
are various types of privatization including contracting out specific services, leasing of inmates to private companies to generate good and services, owning and maintaining alternative to correctional facilities, contracting for the private operation of existing prison or jail, and financing construction and operation of a new jail or prison. Contracting out specific services would be hiring private corporations for medical care, food, or laundry services. Leasing inmates to generate goods would entail prisoners working in workshops operated by these corporations. These inmates would work in workshops within the prison making materials, or helping out a company with packing. The companies would solely rely on inmates to make their products for them. Halfway houses run by private corporations are popular alternatives to correctional facilities. These halfway houses strive to help prisoners smoothly transition back into society towards the end of their sentence if they are eligible for the program. Private construction companies have gotten prisons to agree to long term leases so that the state does not have to come out of its own budget and prisons can be built much faster. Many argue about the pros and cons to prison privatization.
One of the most advantageous factors to private prisons are that they are built much faster than public prisons. Being that state officials do not have to use their own budget and can rely strictly on a leasing program from construction companies, many more prisons can be made. Private prisons have also been found to be more cost effective. Operating costs are much lower being that these corporations have the resources to buy supplies in bulk. According to Private Prisons Pros and Cons (2014) being that more companies are merging into the privatization business, there is increased competition. This increase in competitors causes these corporations to improve the quality of their services provided to inmates. Disadvantages include cutting corners to remain cost effective, forgetting about the best interest of the prisoners, and a growing dependency on private prisons. In order for any business to remain profitable, they must minimize their expenses. One might argue that while these corporations are attempting to remain cost effective, they are also cutting corners. For example, guards’ training may be reduced to two weeks. According to Private Prisons Pros and Cons (2014) Many fear that these businesses do not have the inmate's best interest at heart. It is assumed that they are more concerned with maintaining profitable and they may be sacrificing the safety of the prisoners in the process. Prisoners are seen as assets and the companies do not want to lose them so early release programs are usually not offered. Lastly, a growing dependency on prison privatization would mean that these corporations will eventually be in full control of the prison system. If they do gain control of the system, there is a greater chance that every prison will be run in a “for profit”
manner.
Solitary Confinement is a type of isolation in prison which a prisoner is segregated from the general population of the prison and any human contact besides the prison employees. These prisons are separated from the general population to protect others and themselves from hurting anyone in the prison. These prisoners are deprived of social interaction, treatments, psychologist, family visits, education, job training, work, religious programming and many other services prisoners might need during the sentence of their imprisonment. There are roughly 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement but 25,000 are in long term and supermax prisons. According to the Constitution, “The Eighth Amendment [...] prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment”(US Const. amend. VIII). Solitary confinement is suppose to be the last straw for inmates to be in. If they don 't follow it, they can be on death row. Taxpayers pay roughly $75,000 to $85,000 to keep prisoners in solitary confinement. That is 3 times higher than the normal prisons that taxpayers pay for them to be in prison. Solitary confinement was established in 1829 in Philadelphia for experimentation because officials believed it was a way for
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
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).
“FREEZE! Get on the ground”! All the words someone running from the police hears. He fears their presence because he knows that if he is caught he will be sent to one of the many overpopulated prisons in America. There he will struggle with doing everyday tasks due to the enormous numbers located within the prison walls. Prison overpopulation should be an utmost priority on every individuals concerns due to the fact that with this massive increase it negatively affects our legal, social, and economic environment.
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 correctional system is based on helping offenders become part of society and not commit any crimes. Many prisons begin the correcting criminals since they are inside the jails, but many prisons do not. Prisons provide prisoners with jobs inside the prison where they get very little pay close to nothing and many have programs that will help them advance their education or get their high school diploma. There are various programs prisons provide to prisoners to help them get a job or have a skill when they are released from prison. In contrast, prisons that do not provide programs or help to prisoners rehabilitate and enter society again will be more likely to commit another crime and go back to jail. The Shawshank Redemption prison did not
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
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 number of Americans that are in prison has elevated to levels that have never been seen before. Prisons in the US have always been crowded ever since the first prison was invented (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The first prison in the US was the Walnut Street Jail that was built in Philadelphia in 1773, and later closed in the 1830’s due to overcrowding and dirty conditions (Jacobs and Angelos 101). The prison system in modern US history has faced many downfalls due to prison overcrowding. Many private prison owners argue that the more inmates in a prison the more money they could make. In my opinion the argument of making more money from inmates in prisons is completely unconstitutional. If the private prisons are only interested in making
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”
The future for private prisons or “prisons for profit”, seems to be at a steadily declining rate as many of these companies and buildings are filing for bankruptcy and are not starting to improve. At first private prisons were seen as a very great idea to not only invest in but own and now people are starting and actually taking action against these horrific places. People think criminals may not have feelings but in fact they are very unstable and are more subject to change than any person in a community. Furthermore pushing ideas into the future people are protesting and exposing private
Don Hutto, Tom Besley, and Dr. Robert Crants “wanted to invent an approach that benefited others and they wanted to do so while working in the govenement institution they valued. “(CCA 2013) The trio created the first private prison, brining “cost savings, technology and design innovations to government.” (CCA 2013) Corrections Corporation of America started in 1980, they industrialized the prison industry, they were able to “build, operate, design, finance, tailor solutions based on precise needs, population, budget, policies, and procedures of correctional facilities.”(CCA 2013) Not only did they industrialize the industry they specialized in the prison