Jarrett 1

Myasia Jarrett

Dr. Yanessa Page

ENG112-11

05 March 2019

Private Prisons and their Effect on the Country and the Inmates they Serve

To most, private and public correctional institutions are synonymous; they don't know the

difference between fully publically funded prisons and public-privately funded prisons.

Conversely, it’s important to note that not all prisons at the present time are run by private

entities. To those who do know, it's based on morality while others based it on pure economics.

The concept of "cruel or unusual publish" is enacted by those who are against private prisons and

their treatment of inmates. Private institutions or for-profit prisons is a place in which individuals

are incarcerated by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. At the root of it all,

are private prisons the moral and economical route to house America's troubled? This report will

explore various matters linked to the privatizations of prisons and how it affects our nation with

cost and inmate retention.

Those who are for private prisons try to convince the public, and lawmakers, that it

makes pure economic sense to privatize correctional institutions and that inmates are a special

case. Inmates and their behavior need to be corrected, and as such, are not to be offered the

spoils of living a free life. The opponents yell "strawman" and compare private prisons to public

prisons. The concept of prison is simple. You are removed from the public, “rehabilitated,” and

then you are released into the general public with the hope that you have become a better person
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out of it. These institutions were publically funded and became a sinkhole of funds for the

country and cities across the country. This is where the concept of "private prisons" became a

tantalizing proposition.

The first private prison was established in 1852 where the San Quentin prison was

privately owned, before being state owned. The first modern private prison was created in 1984

by the newly formed Correctional Corporation of America, who took over a county jail and

juvenile detention center in Tennessee. (Pauly) With that, the CCA runs the jail "with less staff

than the public sector would have needed." (Shahshahani) This is an attractive place for

investors, where they can run a prison for a profit. With that, private prisons hire fewer

employees, paying and training them less than the government employees do, Tara Joy stated in

The Wesleyan Argus. This leads to higher employee turnover and decreased security in prisons.

A Justice Department report found that at the Youngstown, Ohio, private prison, run by the

Corrections Corporation of America, 80 percent of the corrections officers had no previous

experience in corrections, reported by Elaine Jones. This inexperience can be fatal in emergency

or high-risk situations.

The CCA is certain of hiring less staff than a government ran prison will significantly

help with overall costs of the prison. So far there still remains debate over the comparative cost

of public and private prisons. A study by Scott E. Merryman at the University of Oregon reports,

that the results suggest that privately run facilities are able to operate at a lower cost due to less

demand for labor. This reduction in labor demand combined with the generally lower wages of

correctional officers in private facilities translates into lower variable costs for private prisons.
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Research suggests that governments can save money through CCA partnerships; other research

finds that the cost difference is negligible. The issue of whether private prisons are a net gain or

loss is incredibly nuanced. According to Harris Kenny, the average cost of housing a medium

security inmate in a public prison in 2010 was $48.42 compared to $53.02 in a private prison

from some studies, they find that there is "no indication that private prison services are superior

to those of public prisons, as measured by inmate recidivism." (Spivak, Sharp) While others

deride that "Elimination of politically motivated resource allocation has unquestionably been the

principal benefit of privatization around the world" but does allude to the fact that government

corruption can still play a large number "about the design of privatization programs." (Shleifer)

This surge in investment was combined with a political push by President Ronald

Reagan, who wanted to privatize a lot of federal offerings, as well as the war on drugs which

imprisoned many people on drug-related charges. (FindLaw) These privately-run prisons boasted

cost savings for the government and were championed by many as improving the US deficit. Per

the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, they found that private prisons can save up to

$15 million a year. The Department of Justice also found that private institutions had the ability

to provide a better quality of services than tradition prisons. These benefits came at a significant

cost. As an incentive to bring more private dollars to fund prisons, privately funded and ran

institutions are provided federal dollars based on the number of prisoners they house. The more

individuals incarcerated in their prisons, the more money they receive from the government.

(Pratt, Maahs) In the University Wire Ryan Nowrouzi states that private prisons function on a

money-first and inmate-second model. He also expresses these prisons are not interested in

inmate rehabilitation. Instead, they are incentivized to not only recruit more inmates but to retain
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those already in prison for a longer period of time. Those that oppose private prisons champion

the fact that this is a conflict of interest. They state that private prisons are theoretically

incentivized not to rehabilitate and correct their prisoners' behaviors because recidivism rates

would be lower, and as such, the companies who own the private prisons lose money. Studies

from the University of Wisconsin system have shown that prisoners who are being held in

private prisons may serve sentences that are up to 7% longer than prisoners who are in public

prisons serving a similar sentence. This is directly correlated to the profit-potential that each

prisoner provides the organization that is overseeing the incarceration. The inmate, who supplies

profit for the company, would no longer be an inmate, and would not provide profit anymore.

Maximizing profit is the fundamental goal of any for-profit company. If the company is unable

to do so, the company perishes.

Given the apparent staying power of the CCA and the private prison industry, it is worth

considering how to ensure that private prisons deliver a socially desirable service to our nation.

Private prisons are controversial due to an array of factors above, like cost efficiency, inmate

retention, and staffing. As said before, there are multiple sides and opinions on this specific

topic. And today, it remains an important issue considering stock prices for CCA surged

following Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections. We as a nation must stay updated and

know what is going on day to day.

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Annotated Bibliography

Camp, S. D., Gaes, G. G., & Saylor, W. G. (2002). Quality of prison operations in the US

federal sector: A comparison with a private prison. Punishment & Society, 4(1), 27–53.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14624740222228455

FindLaw. (n.d.). Private Jail in the United States. Retrieved from

https://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/private-jails-in-the-united-

states.html

Jones, Elaine R. "Private Prisons Profiting at the Expense of Women of Color." The New

Crisis, vol. 108, no. 2, Mar, 2001, pp. 16-19. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.cpcc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/199629536?acc

ountid=10008.

Joy, Tara. “The Problem with Private Prisons.” The Wesleyan Argus, Feb 02, 2018.

http://wesleyanargus.com/2018/02/02/the-problem-with-private-

prisons/?utm_content=buffer83bd7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&ut

m_campaign=buffer

Kenny, Harris and Leonard Gilroy. “The challenges of Comparing Public and Private

Correctional Costs.” Annual Privatization Report, Dec 2013. https://reason.org/wp-

content/uploads/files/comparing_correctional_costs.pdf

Nowrouzi, Ryan. "Who Benefits from Private Prisons? Not Inmates." University Wire, Nov 01,

2018. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.cpcc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2127822380?acc

ountid=10008.
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Pauly, M. (2016, July). A Brief History of America’s Private Prison Industry. Mother Jones.

Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/history-of-americas-

private-prison-industry-timeline/

Pratt, T. C., & Maahs, J. (1999). Are Private Prisons More Cost-Effective Than Public

Prisons? A Meta-Analysis of Evaluation Research Studies. Crime & Delinquency,

45(3), 358–371. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128799045003004

Shahshahani, A. (2016, November 28). Opinion: The US must stop using private prisons. Al

Jazeeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/11/stop-

private-prisons-161126142726748.html

Shleifer, A. (1998). State versus Private Ownership. Journal of Economic Perspectives,

12(4), 133–150. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.12.4.133

Spivak, A. L., & Sharp, S. F. (2008). Inmate Recidivism as a Measure of Private Prison

Performance. Crime & Delinquency, 54(3), 482–508.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128707307962

Taylor, P., & Cooper, C. (2008). ‘It was absolute hell’: Inside the private prison. Capital &

Class, 32(3), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/030981680809600101