Introduction
The correctional facilities industry is considered to be one of the most polarizing industries in the United States. This is due to the fact that the crime rate, coupled with levels of intense and reoccurring criticism, can positively or negatively affect the industry's landscape from a revenue point of view. This document will assist you in understanding the scope of the correctional facilities industry by providing a comprehensive overview of it’s components. The report contains an industry overview, information related to markets and drivers, the two tier system, prison privatization, and government regulations.
Industry Overview
The correctional facilities industry operates primarily through the leasing and managing of prisons
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The first state level private prison opened in Kentucky in 1986. The success of this prison led to a change in balance of state and federal prisons in the following years. The share of state prisoners held a private facilities increased by 3 percent in 1999 and increased to 19 percent in 2015. (Mumford et al., 2016)
Monopolized corporations in the private prison industry have very specific aspirations. They set out to achieve goals and maintain standards in areas that federal prisons cannot. These goals are set with hopes of proving to the United States government that the privatization of the prison industry was the correct course of action in the 1980s. Individuals who advocate for private prisons argue that the exclusion of governmental control in the marketplace leads to an improved prison
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These standards and legislations can lead to both positive and negative consequences for the industry from a revenue point of view. According to King, et al., 2013, prison occupation deals are a significant cause for the industry’s success. Deals between monopolized private prison corporations and the US government force private prisons to maintain up to 90 percent “bed occupancy” at all times. This incentive is signed with the goal of creating an “efficiency standard”. These deals have a direct correlation to revenue increases in the correctional facility industry. (Kaeble et al.,
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.
Private prisons have a negative effect on states and local governments. Unfortunately, the number of private prisons has been increasing since their inception in 1983 causing further problems. For-profit prisons offer no real benefits and are bad investments for states. Furthermore, private prisons beleaguer communities with high turnover rates that hurt local economies. The demands of these institutions put an excessive burden on the local community’s infrastructure. Similarly, private prisons strain the county and city legal systems. More often than not, spin-off industries and economic benefits promised by the for-profit correction industry fail to appear. Additionally, private prisons are allowed to cherry pick the least expensive inmates, leaving the more expensive inmates for the state. A number of studies financed by the private prison industry give the misconception that they save states money. More importantly, the need to make a profit is an incentive for private prison industry officials to engage in nefarious activities.
With the emergence of the Private Prison Industry it brought together the economy and punishment. Due to the term “prison industrial complex” came about to explain the growth in the prison population. The Prison industrial complex can be traced to January 3, 1973 when Nelson Rockefeller, who was the governor of New York, gave a State of the State address and demanded that all drug dealers to must be given life in prison without the possibility of parole (Harcourt, 2011:236). He did not specifically say prison industrial complex but started the use of big business in the criminal justice system. The prison industrial complex is a term that is used to describe the interests of the government and the interests of
... 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).
Stickrath, Thomas J., and Gregory A. Bucholtz. "Supermaximum Security Prisons Are Necessary." Supermax Prisons: Beyond the Rock. Lanham, MD: American Correctional Facility, 2003. Rpt. in America's Prisons. Ed. Clare Hanrahan. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
A private prison or for-profit prison, jail, or detention center is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically have contractual agreements with the governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in that private facility. Private prisons have been part of the system for quite some years now, specifically for involvement in corrections. Private for-profit prison management started rising in the 1980s, they represented a qualitative shift in the relation between corrections and private business. The question is there really a difference between private and public facilities, since the two are suppose to be different when it comes t cost and efficiency, also are the private facilities being run as a correctional facility at all?
25 September 1998 Smith, Phil, "Private Prisons Benefit" The Berne Collection. 1 December 1998 *Shakur, Assata, "Letter from Assata Shakur on the prison industrial complex" 25 October 1999. Schlosser, Eric, "The Prison Industrial Complex" The Atlantic Monthly. December 1998 Vol.
There are over 2.3 million persons within the” Prison Industrial Complex”. The “Prison Industrial Complex" is used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry (Herzing, 2005). The interest of industry within the state prisons of Illinois has led to the selling of inmate healthcare rights to many private companies. The privatization of healthcare within the prison industrial complex is unconstitutional and perpetuates unethical treatment of persons who are incarcerated. These private companies are not being held accountable for the lack of treatment and negligence of providing services within state prisons.
“Prison Overcrowding: The Problem.” American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC-American Legislative Exchange Council, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
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
The “Tough on Crime” and “War on Drugs” policies of the 1970s – 1980s have caused an over populated prison system where incarceration is policy and assistance for prevention was placed on the back burner. As of 2005, a little fewer than 2,000 prisoners are being released every day. These individuals have not gone through treatment or been properly assisted in reentering society. This has caused individuals to reenter the prison system after only a year of being release and this problem will not go away, but will get worst if current thinking does not change. This change must be bigger than putting in place some under funded programs that do not provide support. As the current cost of incarceration is around $30,000 a year per inmate, change to the system/procedure must prevent recidivism and the current problem of over-crowed prisons.
Lappin, H. G., & Greene, J. (2006). Are prisons just? In C. Hanrahan (Ed.), Opposing Viewpoints: America’s prisons (pp. 51-98). Detroit: Bonnie Szumski.
With the substantial increase in prison population and various changes that plague correctional institutions, government agencies are finding that what was once considered a difficult task to provide educational programs, inmate security and rehabilitation programs are now impossible to accomplish. From state to state, each correctional organization is coupled with financial problems that have depleted the resources to assist in providing the quality of care in which the judicial system demands from these state and federal prisons. Judges, victims, and prosecuting attorneys entrust that once an offender is turned over to the correctional system, that the offender will receive the punishment imposed by the court, be given services that aid in the rehabilitation of those offenders that one day will be released back into society, and to act as a deterrent to other criminals contemplating criminal acts that could result in their incarceration. Has our nation’s correctional system finally reached it’s critical collapse, and as a result placed American citizens in harm’s way to what could result in a plethora of early releases of inmates to reduce the large prison populations in which independent facilities are no longer able to manage? Could these problems ultimately result in a drastic increase in person and property crimes in which even our own law enforcement is ineffective in controlling these colossal increases in crime against society?
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...