Corporate Lobbying : Detention Watch Network

A prison is a building made up of hard, cold, concrete walls and solid steel bars in which individuals, known as inmates, are physically confined and deprived of their personal freedom. This is a legal consequence that is imposed by the government to lawbreakers as a punishment for a crime they have committed and for the protection of the community. A private prison is much like a public prison except people are incarcerated physically by a “for-profit” third party who has been contracted by a government agency. These private prisons enter into an agreement with the government, and the state pays a monthly amount for every prisoner who is confined in the private facility. In both public and private prisons, incarceration cannot be imposed without the commission and conviction of a crime. Even though public and private prisons may seem to be the same in several aspects and are used to serve the same purpose, there are numerous differences between the two. At one point the Obama administration opted to put an end to private prisons; on the other hand, the Department of Homeland Security and current President Donald Trump fought for them to stay in place. The U.S Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons will realize that keeping private correctional facilities in place is a huge mistake; therefore, will opt to phase out such facilities and will stick to housing inmates in the public state-run prisons.

United States throughout history has tried many different ways to deter criminals from committing crime. One of the more famous polices enforced was the Three Strikes sentencing laws, and other “get tough” approaches. In 1994, the Three Strikes sentencing law was first established (Couzens, J. Richards and Tricia A. Bigelow). The law stated that any defendant convicted of any new felony, having been convicted before of a serious felony to be sentenced to state prison for twice the term otherwise given for the crime. If the defendant was convicted of any felony with two or more prior strikes, the law mandated a state prison term of at least 25 years to life (Couzens, J. Richards and Tricia A. Bigelow). In California and Washington, the three strike law was adopted and in both states showed contradictive results. It has become a very controversial form of deterrence and is widely debated if the three strikes sentencing laws actually deter criminals from committing crimes.

Thesis: Private prisons actually exacerbate many of the issues they were designed to solve by incentivizing increased incarceration, and at the same time they produce lower value than regular prisons while ultimately costing more, such that private prisons should be abolished and incarceration should remain exclusively public.

Between 1993 and 1995, 24 states and the federal government adopted some form of the three strikes law, which reduced judicial discretion practices and mandated severe incarceration periods to those who were convicted of three or more felonies (Peak, 2012). The rational of the three-strikes you are out law was an attempt to protect society and deter crime by targeting repeat offenders such as murders, rapists, and child molesters by locking them up for long periods of time. The law was built around a political push in the early nineties adopted around public perception that the prison system was lenient on criminals and society needed to get tough on crime. While the three-strike law was intended

His article, “Putting a Price on Justice,” displays the rates and statistics of the elevated incarceration rates. Johnson Lero correlates the statistics with the increased cost of America’s prison system. He argues that there are numerous solutions to decrease both the cost and rates. There are many prisoners incarcerated that are nonviolent and are facing charges just like a violent prisoner. Lero states that this is happening because most judges, who do not pay for prison, are elected in office and avoid taking any risks that can harm their reelection. The judges conclude to send any possible threats to prison. The judges also do not pay for prison and Lero presents a solution that if each county had to pay for the prison, the nonviolent criminals could face other charges than being imprisoned. With less individuals being incarcerated creates a lower cost for prison. Johnson Lero’s article is useful for a research paper through the use of presenting issues with our current prison system and creating other solutions that can be beneficial to everyone. This article is also useful to support an argument in contradiction of America’s prison

enrich people and corporations. Private Prisons is the State being actively involved in the trafficking of the freedom of human beings for a profit. In order to protect their profits, Private Prison corporations require the State to agree to a minimum occupancy rate which means that the State has a contractual agreement to imprison people. That means that the State agrees that every day a certain percentage of their people will be in jail. The State will make sure the police will work to ensure that these quotas are met and that the corporations are profitable. The incentive is no longer public safety, but profits and contractual obligations. The

Summary: This article speak about The Three Strike Law having good and bad effects on the United States. This source discuss when offenders stay in jail longer it mean that justice is being served. The articles also had a lot of negative thigs to say about the law, and it spoke about people think it destroys the flexibility of the court because each court and judge is different. Many citizens feel that it is causing a one fit all effect on the court , and they believe that is not how it should be. Also they feel that the rule give unreasonable punishments for certain crimes, and they feel that way because a 18 year old person can steal something more than once and get 25 years to life in prison. Many feel that it is not reasonable for somebody their age to get that much

In the world today, the United States has 2.2 million people in jails or prisons, which is a 500% increase over the last thirty years. This makes the United States have the highest number of people who are incarcerated in the world today. One issue with the criminal justice system is the emergence of private prisons. In 2010, one out of every thirteen prisoners was being held in privately operated prisons (Mason, “Dollars and Detainees”). Private Prisons are prisons that are for profit which I find to be outrageous. There are many problems behind the model of private prisons. For example, the more inmates that are housed in the private facilities the more money the corporations make, therefore, these corporations want the inmates

I have explored the negatives and positives of the private prison industry in the United States in addition to the impact privatizing prisons has had on inmate quality of life and inmate population sizes. While private prisons possibly provide a limited amount of cost savings to the taxpayer, the net impact of the private prison industry on the U.S. is negative. The history and idea of private prisons has been around since San Quentin was a private for-profit prison in 1852 (“Private Jails in the US,” 2017). The modern idea and practice of privatizing and profiting from prisons has been around since the early 1980’s when, “the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit (Pauly, 2017).”

Such as they can cut corner by skimping on food, staffing, medicine, education, and other services for convicts (Peter, 2013). These cuts could impact the guards which can be poorly trained, ill-equipped and often have to deal with brutal guards. These cost of minimizing could result in decreased levels of security at the prison but also could lead to being understaff. In addition to the lack of savings, opponents of privatization cite evidence showing that private prisons are poorly run compared to public prisonsEven when privately owned prison are required to maintain rehabilitation programs, they still have a financial interest in ensuring that the programs are operated at minimal cost and, more importantly, they have no stake in the success or failure of such programs. (Peter,

Privatization – Privatization, as defined by the textbook, is “the movement toward the wider use of private prisons” (Schmalleger 448). This movement began in the early 1980s and was slow to cat on, however it has since grown at a rapid pace. In 1986, only 2,620 prisoners could be found in privately run confinement facilities. But by 2012, privately operated correctional facilities serving as prisons and jails held over 130,900 state and federal prisoners across 31 states and the District of Columbia. The largest growth came in the federal sector, with a 784% increase in the number of federal inmates held in privately run facilities between 1999 and 2010 (from 3,828 to 33,830). Today, the privatization of prisons refers to both the takeover of existing public facilities by private operations and to the building and operation of new and additional prisons by for-profit prison companies. Many of the new prisons, additionally, are built to house out-of-state inmates and depending on the jurisdiction. The local, state, or federal government is then charged a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner. In terms of private prisons, these are defined as for-profit type prisons which is a place in which individuals are physically onfined or incarcerated by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prisons companies typically enter into contractual agreements with government that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate, either for each

Private prisons were first implemented in order to combat the effects of overcrowding and the increasing cost of maintaining public prisons (Mennicken, 2013; Jones & Newburn, 2005). While private prisons have been successful in that regard, there are various other concerns, ranging from prison and punishment being a job of the state to the corporate approach private companies have towards prisons. By their very nature, private companies run for profit, and those that own prisons work the same way, unlike state owned prisons whose main purpose is punishment and rehabilitation. In order to combat this problem, the state introduced strict guidelines that private prisons had to follow, any step out of the line would be dealt with a fine or the retraction of rights to the prisons (Mennicken, 2013).

The United States prison system has undoubtedly changed over the last several decades. One of the more significant changes has been the increasing use of private prison facilities to hold American inmates. There are several problems associated with this including, misaligned incentives of the private companies, leading to poor conditions, and prison labor issues. Although there are problems with the private prison industry, they are not irreversible. There are solutions that can and should be considered to ensure that private companies are not exploiting the people they are contracted to hold. Abolition and regulation are certainly plausible options to reforming the private prison industry. At the end of the day, reforming the prison-industrial complex altogether is incredibly important, as there are human beings behind those cell walls. It may not be plausible to reform the entire system all together at once. Rather, we should start with reforms to one portion of the system, in this case the private prison industry, in order to improve the system as a whole.

The privatization of today’s prisons and the companies involved are much different than those depicted by the ‘chain gang’ and ‘Cool Hand Luke’ movies of the past. These private companies operate based on the contracts they signed with the local, state and federal governments. These contracts do provide measures or incentives to insure that the food, care, conditions and services provided are of quality and humane. (White, 2001) Since the local, state and federal governments have not been able to keep up with the increased prisoner population explosion, the rising construction and health costs, nor provide the necessary upkeep on the out-of-date and eroding current correction facilities, so they have turned to private companies to provide it all. (Duitsman, 1998) A total of 158 private prisons operate in over 30 states. Most fall in the South and Western states with Texas leading all states (43), followed by California (24), Florida (10), and Colorado (9). (Austin &

“it is primarily because they are prisons, not because they are contractual, that private prison face challenges of authority, legitimacy, procedural justice, accountability, liability, cost, security, safety, corruptibility, and so on. Because they face no problems that are both unique and insurmountable, private prisons should be allowed to compete (and cooperate) with government agencies so that we can discover how best to run prisons that are safe, secure, humane, efficient and just”. (Logan, C. 1990)