Private Prisons For Profit

Privately owned prisons are prisons operated by private entities for profit. They can be owned by individuals or companies and earn money through unethical practices. These prisons are supposed to cut cost, which they do by providing dangerous living conditions, submitting workers (both convicts and prison employees) to unethical work conditions, understaffing, and underpaying (Blesset 9). By cutting cost owners of theses prisons thrive financially from the imprisonment of criminals which is unethical.

Across the nation, both local and federal prison systems have looked to private corporations to provide beds for

Businesses like CCA (Corrections Corp of America) are not like traditional prisons, they’re private prisons designed to make a profit off our imprisoned citizens and not only do they profit from full beds, but cut corners. Consequentially they are subjected to high turnover and incompetent and inexperienced staff.

As previously stated, private prison companies have to rely on the big prison population in order for them to make money because he main concern of these private corporations that run these facilities is money. Due to this, these companies will do whatever it takes to make sure the prison population increases so they can keep making money. Therefore, the private prison companies will lobby for laws to boost the prison population. Due to this financial motive they will do whatever it takes to make money. In the Corrections Corporation of America’s 2010 Annual Report they even stated the following:

But unlike federal prisons, private ones focus on maximizing gain rather than saving money, and maximizing gain becomes possible with the business practices aforementioned. Not only has the prison itself been privatized, but also the food and medical care. One company in particular is the Aramark Corporation who provides food to prisoners at a lesser cost. If there’s one thing not to be thrifty about, its food, and this proved to be true when there were serious cases of prisoners being mal fed reported all throughout the system. There were 65 reported cases in Ohio alone of food failing to be provided or running out of it, and 5 cases of maggots being found in the food. The Aramark Corp. has also changed their recipes to include cheaper and sub standard ingredients in their food. These prisons are failing to provide these prisoners with basic human care, because the fact that they’re in prison doesn’t change the fact they’re

Many companies like GEO Group have been knowing to indirectly support government bill that will lead to higher incarceration rate and harsher punishments for offenders. This clearly has affected the way current bills have passed and been vetoed. Government officials are being skewed in one direction or another, depending on how it affects them. For-Profit prisons are not the only large groups to have been known to do this, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco, have Spent millions Changing the votes of Repressive. This should not be allowed in government. It does not give the true opinion of those in office and does not support how the public feels. Certain groups of people suffer while others profit. But this is not the only issue with for-profit

arly in August, the Associated Press reported that America's three largest private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, Inc and Management and Training Corp spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts.

As can be demonstrated and exemplified from the statistics, it argued that, from approximately 300,000 inmates during the 1970 to above 2.3 million today, that to end, America can now account for having 25% of the world’s prison population (Jing, 2010; Price and Morris (2012). This gave room for the private prison industry to evolve into what it is today, due to the vast increase of prisoners. Worth to mention is that private prisons have become a cheap and easy solution to the continued increase in prison population which has caused social, legal, health and humanitarian challenges for the government of the united-states. Jing, (2010) argues that the major objectives for the privatization for the government is to reduce overcrowding, efficiency

Presently, there are seven privately run prisons in Florida. These corporations make donations to campaigns to increase the possibility of them winning the contract. For instance, the Geo Group donated 25,000 to Governor Rick Scott’s Inauguration festivities. In addition, Geo Group and Core Civic donated $2 million to various candidates and political parties.

Studies have shown that private prisons achieve none of these goals, and the reason is simple: private prisons operate under a fundamentally different regulatory structure that alters the choices -- and motives – of its participants. Indeed, unlike their federal counterparts, private prisons operate in a market economy where maximizing profits is vital to sustainability and thus a driving factor in corporate decision-making. Under basic economic theory, when operational costs exceed current and future estimates, corporations must identify ways in which to reduce such costs and therefore increase profitability. This is precisely what happened in the private prison context. Corporations such as CCA often underestimate the cost of operating private prisons in a manner that would increase safety and treat inmates more humanely. As a result, operators of private prisons made the deliberate choice

The U.S. prison system includes private prisons operated for profit by corporations contracted by the federal government (“Privatization Of”, n.d.). Years ago, the industry was heavily boosted by the “war on drugs” efforts of the Reagan

The average person probably assumes that state prison is a place for felons to do time for the crime they committed. They serve their time and are released to the public. Prisons are run by the state government. Tax payers pay for state prisons to operate. However, it is a totally different deal with privately run prisons. Prisoners are big business for some privately run facilities. Private prisons are facing overcrowding. However, they show little concern because most of those prisoners are outsourced to work for large companies. Seems like there is growing concern that there is a strong motivation to incarcerate even more prisoners because of the outsourcing profits earned by private prison industry.

America has roughly 2 percent of its citizens incarcerated, but has twenty-five percent of the world's incarcerated inmates. Along with this, are the numerous upheavals of corporations that make profit in the field of corrections. ‘For-profit’ corrections companies, such as CCA (Corrections Corp. of America), are subsidized by the government, costing less money to run than state-run or federal prisons. But to what extent do these companies go to make a profit? Well, these companies are in the sole business of making money. One of the ways they do that is squeezing as many people as possible into prisons (a term some researchers call “warehousing”). Other sneaky tactics includes wordy contracts with state penalization for incorrect inmate quotas

Although private prison companies have come onboard with managing prison alternatives, they are not at the forefront of it. Their interest is in keeping the status quo. These companies hold contracts that allow them to profit from all corners of America’s criminal justice system and alternatives threaten their influence. Today, many of the people who are convicted are exposed to the profit-seeking of companies every step of the way, from entering the system to being released. A good visual of this can be found here www.inthepublicinterest.org/private-companies-profit-from-almost-every/

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month.