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Private Prisons

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The Negative Effects of Private Prison Corporations in the United States The United States government had been working closely with private prison corporations for over three decades. Private prisons were first constructed to help the U.S. government house an ever-expanding prison population, and to relieve the government of some expenses. Today, these privately owned facilities have stirred up controversy with the questionable results of their formation. While it can be difficult to compare private prisons to public prisons, several researchers conclude that private prison corporations are harmful to society in the United States because they hinder economic stability, establish systems that negatively impact prison staff and inmates, and …show more content…

By establishing a corrections facility near small towns, prison staff and other individuals are expected to move closer to their place of employment. In turn, local businesses anticipate more customers and the local economy is supposed to benefit. However this benefit is not being observed. In fact, the construction of private prisons can produce the opposite result and hinder the stability of small-town economies. This is due to the fact that many private prison employees are transferred from other prisons operated by parent corporations, and they commute to their new place of employment instead of moving closer to it. According to finding by Gregory Hooks from Washington State University and other researchers, this also hinders the growth of businesses and economies of communities surrounding private prisons (Hooks et al. …show more content…

Dina Perrone of Rutgers University and Travis C. Pratt of Washington State University compared the performance of private and government-run corrections facilities. When reviewing prisons in Louisiana and Florida, “the private prison had more escapes than its counterpart” (Perrone and Pratt 309). When comparing facilities in Tennessee, “the private prison had more injuries on staff and inmates than the public prison,” and when comparing two private prisons and one public prison in Florida, “[the] private facilities in this study also had a higher rate of assaults on staff than did the public facility” (309). Scott Camp and Gerald Gaes of the Federal Bureau of Prisons conclude, “Can the private companies find a way to pay these workers less, yet still maintain adequate skill levels or at least skill levels supplemented by technology? To date, the overall answer to this question is no,” (Camp and Gaes 17). Private prisons create unsafe working environments by cutting costs where funding might be needed the

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