Public Criminal Justice System: A Case Study

When it comes to the criminal justice system, the major impact of privatization has been the prisons. With the privatizing of correctional facilities, corruption can likely occur. PICO National Network (2011) uncovered very damaging evidence of corruption within the criminal justice system. PICO stated “Many Americans were shocked to learn that two Pennsylvania judges accepted ‘cash-for-kids,’ kickbacks from for-profit-juvenile detention companies in exchange for locking up young people for very minor offenses” (p. 2). This is just one example of what can come from privatization. One other aspect is the lack of oversight of the actual contract. There is no minimum required wage set forth for the workers. This can lead to underpaid, overworked employees that are tasked with guarding maximum security

As prisons grow in size, governments look for new methods to aid in cutting costs and increase efficiency. Over the last decade government run institutions have been replaced with privately funded, for-profit prisons. Although it is cheaper for governments to run contract based institutions this mass industrialization of the prison system has seen many issues with corruption, decreases in efficiency and even mistreatment and exploitation of incarcerated individuals. The prison system should remain under government control and in this essay I will discuss the faults and errors of for-profit institutions and why this system should not be overseen by private corporations.

Claiming that they would be a cost effective alternative, companies started managing and running entire prisons instead of the state. As a result, the population in private prisons increased by an astounding 1600%.

In America today, there is a trend in corrections of taking the duty of running prisons out of the hands of state and federal authorities and contracting it out to private organizations. Along with the drift to privatization is a plethora of research pertaining to the subject taking many different approaches to analyzing the effectiveness. The majority of research focuses on one of three areas. The first questioning whether or not it is cost effective to make the switch. The second being the ethical problems that can and have risen from the privatization of prisons. The third being a wide painting of the change and the implications it has on society as a whole.

According to Alex Tabarrok, privately managed facilities can have cost savings of 15-25% on prison edification and 15% on administrative expenses. Likewise, private prisons generate competition and exert pressure towards public prisons. They encourage public prisons to also innovate and lower costs. Other studies (Lundahl et al. 2009, page 392) argue, “prison privatization provides neither a clear advantage nor disadvantage compared with publicly managed prisons.”

Private entrepreneurs liked such arrangement, because it provided a massive pool of workers, which allowed them to deal indirectly with workers, because workers were under prison officials’ supervision. For instance, it sounds like an ingenious strategy for lowering firms’ production costs. However, the society is being extremely impacted by such mass incarceration. The popularity of private prisons has increased due to an economic benefit for the government and ultimately the taxpayers. In other words, the main focus of mass incarceration is economic benefits. There are several economic reasons that clearly explain the increasing number of inmates and its impacts in

580). Gran and Henry (2007-2008) argue that evidence of efficiency in private prisons provides questionable support, in part because of difficulty in comparing private and government-run prisons. They also state that while private prisons may be less expensive to construct and operate, those cost savings may be “the result of cost cutting by the private firms” (p. 176). Arguments against private prisons are more ubiquitous and include the following: • “The necessity for detailed contract development, monitoring, and regulation will be so significant that it will eat up any savings achieved through privatization;” • “The government will retain its legal liability and therefore will be liable for actions of contractors over which it has only limited

As the number of prisoners have constantly been rising at an exceedly fast pace, several governments around the world have embraced the use of private prisons. Private prisons are confinements run by a third party, through an agreement with the government. In the United States, it is estimated that there are over 1.6 million inmates, of that there are 8% that are housed in privately-operated prisons. While the other 92% are housed in the public prison system. Private prisons have existed since the 19th century. Their use increased in the 20th century and continues to rise in some states. When a government makes an agreement with a private prison, it makes payments per prisoner or vacancy in jail on a regular basis for maintenance of the prisoners. Privatization became involved due to the fact that prisons were becoming overpopulated. Public prisons contracted the confinement and care of prisoners with other organizations. Due to the cost-effectiveness of private firms, prisons began to contract out more services, such as medical care, food service, inmate transportation, and vocational training. Over time private firms saw an opportunity for expansion and eventually took over entire prison operations. However, now their security, how they treat the inmates, and their true cost effectiveness has come into question

In the course of the most recent 20 years, the U.S. correctional facility populace has qua-drupled, with someone.9 million people in the slammer in government and state penitentiaries, and local prisons by the year 2000. firms are looking for benefit making open doors from this prison populace. that corpora-tions are profiting by prison work: correctional facility privatization and prison exchange. we tend to in the blink of an eye survey key clarifications of detainment, re-port on this condition of prison privatization and correctional facility industrialization, look at the effect they require on sorted out work, and propose union routes in battling against the amplification of organization force inside the (D. E. (2002 inside the u. s., privatization should be comprehended as each a driving and main effect of financial procedure. The expanding dependence on advertised sorts of organization and organization self-direction in a portion of control by government is normally talked as "the new administration. " thirty The new administration is demonstrative of late changes inside the relationship between the business sector furthermore the state itself—changes that region unit resolute from world financial rivalry and option sorts of commonality amongst state and non-state on-screen characters, locally and transnational, as these have created in late decades (C. J. (2014).

Privatization of prison Overcrowding prisons, old facilities, and large budgets has been a growing major problem in our public correctional facilities. As our government needed to find a better way to build and maintain prisons, the government came to the idea and agreed with privately built prisons to save government and taxpayers money. These privatization of prison will encourage to cut corners, resulting in poor confinement for inmates and increase in incarceration. As these kind of contracts with the government are not seen as a promoting rehabilitation, or a way of reducing crime but it is a way of cutting cost. As prison are meant to punish, rehabilitate, deter crime, supervision of criminals and preparing offenders for re-entry into society.

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

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.

1. Privatization is the transfer of ownership of property or businesses from a government to a privately owned entity. In the case of the corrections system privatization is like when a government owned prison transfers to a private owned prison. Privatization can effect corrections and influence corruption in many ways. It effects corrections because money is a big difference between the two.

Private industries are able to offer the same programs that their government counterparts are able to plus more, all at a reduced cost to the taxpayer, who would ultimately pay the cost of incarceration, public or private. These programs, such as education, health, and vocational training, are meant to be overseen by federal regulators in order to ensure conformation with standards of quality, but more often than not, corners are cut in order to reduce costs therefor reducing quality. While this may be the case in private penitentiaries, other areas of privatization include community centers and other forms of alternative punishments. It is cheaper for a private company to monitor to whereabouts of an individual that hiring governmental personnel to do the same job, in terms of electronic monitoring, and there could be a higher offender to staff ratio due to the lower cost of the staffs

The United States has an incarceration problem that personifies issues throughout the entire criminal justice system. "The United States, with just 5 percent of the world 's population, currently holds 25 percent of the world 's prisoners" (Khalek). This issue runs deeper than just incarceration; it permeates every level of the criminal justice system, from incarceration to probation. Many states have turned to private institutions in an attempt shed operating costs, while also increasing effectiveness throughout the criminal justice system. These acts can include anything from providing treatment programs to full blown management of the entire prison system. Overcrowding at prisons and the rising costs associated with them has led many states to turn to some form of privatization within the criminal justice system. However, privatizing the entire correction system would not be beneficial for the state, from both an ethical and a public policy standpoint.