Public And Private Prisons: Article Analysis

The United States is regarded as a country of innovation and progress. However, the prison and disciplinary systems in the U.S. fall short in several aspects. With the highest incarceration rate in the world, one might expect American prisons to be prepared for providing quality care and rehabilitation for inmates. Unfortunately, this is not the reality - with a growing number of privatized prisons, the quality of life for inmates and their families is dissipating. The U.S. prison system is in desperate need of reform; closing down private prisons will help in alleviating monetary pressure, reducing abuse reports, and lowering the rate of reincarceration in individuals. Prison reform should be seen as a priority, as nonviolent offenders are suffering far more than they should, and are purposely conditioned to be reincarcerated after their release. Private prisons are rapidly growing in the U.S. to keep up with a growing number of inmates. With the rising number of prisoners, prisoner abuse levels are also rising exponentially. This is due to the fact that private prisons are a booming industry that exploits prisoners for profits. Private prisons may seem beneficial at a glance; however, they enforce lax regulations and are notorious for overcrowding and “barbaric” conditions. Prisons should rehabilitate nonviolent offenders in

At the expense of the young, to the detriment of the poor, and on the backs of the immigrants is the means by which the private prison companies have constructed a business that trades freedoms for profit but more concerning is to what ends these freedoms are being exchanged. The advancement of the private prison system has changed the face of the prison industry as we know it. Because little attention has been given in the media to the private prison industry, they have been able to expand their influence and their revenue by means the average American would consider unscrupulous. Private prisons came about to act as the solution to a problem facing federal prisons, overcrowding, which was created due to the war on drugs, but in acting as a solution to one problem they created another one that could be more problematic than the one it intended to fix. Proponents of private, for profit, prisons claim that it is a better alternative than federal prisons because they can provide the same service for less and save taxpayers money in the process. They also contend that the service they provide would help to stimulate the economy. However, privatization of America’s prison systems will contribute to an increase in the incarceration rate and unfairly target certain demographics of the population, which could lead to psychological trauma affecting the people of those demography’s that it

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.

This is a relatively new industry and it is startling to imagine how much power they will have in another 30-40 years. They have already managed to manipulate the fourth amendment. At this rate, your simple municipal violation might turn into an arrest record in the future. One possible sign of things to come happened with a Texas man, Jory Enck. He was thrown in jail for allegedly not returning a GED study guide to the public library.

As state budgets throughout America become tighter because of rising costs, many are looking at private prisons as a way to reduce the cost in detaining inmates. Just like everything else in America there has to be a debate about it. There are those that are for the privatization of prisons and those that are against it. James A. Fagin introduced this topic in his text book CJ2013; he discussed the major selling point of private prisons, and the problems that states are faced with.

The privatizing of the prison systems, around every country is a huge revenue source the overcrowding and use of prisoners as a profit tool and; it simply isn’t meant for rehabilitation, but as a tool for cheap labor, convicting the innocent, and monetary gain. Prison this is the place where all the lowlifes go the scum, rapist, and desperate marauder’s that stalk in the night. Prison is in the place where the bad people go away from society to serve a potential life sentence for one’s crimes or for years on end all the while trying to correct their deviant tendencies. Yes, we all see prison as a place for reform of the morally corrupt to become better through the lesson of freedom and most rights taken away. To be put into a harsh environment

Privately owned prisons began to emerge in the mid-1980s. These prisons emerged because of the ideological imperatives of the free market, the huge increase in the number of prisoners, and the substantial increase in imprisonment costs. (1) Proponents of privatized prisons put forward a simple case: The private sector can do it cheaper and more efficiently. Corporations such as Correction Corporation of America and Wackenhut promised design and management innovations without reducing costs or sacrificing quality of service. (1) Many interest groups comprised of correctional officers, labor works, and a few citizen groups strongly oppose the privatization of the prison system. I will identify four

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).

There has been a great deal of debate in the public and private sector regarding the development and operation of private prisons since Congress instructed the Attorney General through the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997 (McDonald, Fournier, Russell-Einhourn & Crawford, 1998) to

Before discussing the privatization of the penal institutions, we should understand some of the history of the penal system. Going back to 1790 in Philadelphia, “ the Walnut street jail was converted from a simple holding facility to a prison, it is commonly referred to the nation’s first prison.” ( Bohm, Haley, 2012, p.358.). I have enjoyed learning how the criminal justice system has shaped our country in the last 200 years. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss the privatization of the penal institutions and the factors that support it.

The United States have been using private prison for many years. The use of private prisons has steered up a huge controversy worldwide. The main two private prison companies are CAA and the Geo Group, Inc. The idea for the use of private prisons is that the government will save more money. However, the evidence has been mixed over the years on whether the use of private prisons saves money or not. There have been cases where private prisons have cost more than state prison. Also, the use of private prisons has been associated with various cases of health issues and acts of violence. This problem qualifies as a criminal justice issue because of the amount of money that private prison companies are receiving from the amount

Although the government sees this step as a cost cutting measure, this change has not come without its problems also its detractors. Even so, privatization of prisons and the services it takes to operate them seems to be the way of the future for the corrections

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

Conversely a considerable amount of people are proponents of private prisons in their community due to the alleged economic benefits that derive from them. NPR reported in 2011 on a town that not only welcomed a GEO Group prison, they desired it,

Prisons have been around as long as we have, but there is a new phenomenon on the horizon known as privatized prisons. This is making headlines because of all the controversy it causes. Proponents of privatized prisons say that it reduces cost, and saves a lot of money in the budget. On the other hand, opponents of this say that it reduces prisoner rights, and takes away employee benefits, among other things. Although privatizing prisons leads to fewer costs for the government, it decreases the worker’s benefits, and even sometimes eliminates them, and it creates a culture of needing to incarcerate more and more people on increasingly petty crimes.