ENGL 102

October 8th, 2019

Annotated Bibliography

Research question: Are private prisons ethical? Does privatization of prisons lead to better

quality of confinement?

Thesis: The right to imprison other human beings should only be left up to the government. No

company should be allowed to profit off of the incarceration of other humans. For-profit prison

structures lead to abuse.

Camp, Scott D., and Gerald G. Gaes. Private Prisons in the United States, 1999: An Assessment
of Growth, Performance, Custody Standards, and Training Requirements. Federal Bureau
of Prisons, Mar. 2000, permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo22703/oreprcg2000.pdf.
The source was published by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2000. This is a research-

based study that gives data on private prison population rates, homicide rates, assault rates, and

other incidents. The data is crucial for my arguments because it shows the damaging affects

private prisons have on all involved and how they are getting even worse. The exigence is the

fact that private prisons mistreat inmates. The Kairos is the recent rise in the private prison

population. The main claim of the article is that the rapid growth in private prison populations is

harmful for both inmates and workers. The claim is that more inmates decreases safety in private

prison facilities. The article shows massive amounts of data on inmate populations, incidents,

escapes, homicides, assaults, and staffing levels. The warrant is that larger prison populations

leads to more violence and less safety and security. I believe this to be a very credible source

because it was written by two people with Ph.D’s and was published by the federal government.

Baliga, Shifali. “Shaping the Success of Social Impact Bonds in the United States: Lessons
 Learned from the Privatization of U.S. Prisons” Duke Law Journal, vol. 63, no. 2, 2013,
pp. 437–479. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23792929.
This is a peer reviewed source found from JSTOR. This is taken from the Duke Law

Journal, published by the Duke University School of Law. Duke University School of Laws is

one of the top law schools so I believe this source to be credible. This article was published in

2013. This article explains social impact bonds (SIB) which are commonly used in private

prisons. It also discusses problems that private prisons face and how the structure of SIBs can

mitigate those problems. SIBs and private involvement in government function comes with

challenges. Most SIBs involve investors that provide funding for the organization. That money

can influence what goes on within the organization. “Governments are less likely to use their

limited budgets to fund projects that serve historically unpopular groups such as the homeless.”

(Baliga 443) The government relies on SIBs and outside groups to fund prisons because the

common American people do not want to fund prisons. An important detail the article mentions

is that “both the privatization of prisons and SIBs inject private parties into traditional

government spheres.” This could be a problem because it could cause corruption in prison

systems. The article mentions that “rehabilitation programs lower recidivism rates, thus

potentially saving the government millions of dollars.” But, private prisons do not prioritize

rehabilitation programs, “its first priority is of accruing profit for its investors.” The exigence is

the problems with SIBs. The Kairos is the public outrage against SIBs and other problems that

come with private prisons. The stakeholders are the audience of the journal, which would be

lawyers and law students. The claim is that privatization of prisons can influence their priorities.

The data comes from the research done by the author.

Harding, Richard. “Private Prisons.” Crime and Justice, vol. 28, 2001, pp. 265–346. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/1147676.
 This is a peer reviewed source from a journal called Crime and Justice published in 2001

by the University of Chicago. Considering this source is published by a University I consider it

to be an academic paper of good standing. Private prisons have become integral to penal

administration in the United States, but private sectors can succumb to the same failures as the

public sector. The claim is that “the authority to hold and deal with prisoners is derived from

public law, not private arrangement.” (Harding 266) and “Imprisonment is an intrinsic or core

state function that by definition cannot legitimately be delegated in any of its aspects to a

nonstate agency without undermining the very notion of the state and its responsibility to and for

its citizens.” (Harding 266) This strong claim could lead to some bias but nonetheless the author

provides accurate data on the state of things. The first private prison was created in Texas in

1989, by the end of 1989, procurement contracts were in place for 44 secure adult prisons in 14

states with a capacity of 78,000. Multiple factors led to the growth of private prisons such as,

increasing incarcerated populations, overcrowding, concern about recurrent costs. “Private

prisons have managed to influence procedures, so they receive prisoners who are easiest to

manage.” (Harding 277). Private prisons do this so they will have the least amounts of incidents.

This article also explains the normal pattern of privatization, and how private prisons come to be.

Harding also explores the risks of prison regimes. This source is particularly interesting to me

because it mentions the escape of 8 juveniles from a CCA detention center in Columbia, South

Carolina. The data comes from multiple studies showing the rates of violence in private prisons.

Prisons should not be private because they influence quality of the prison. Private prisons need

to increase the quality of care they provide to decrease violence and reoccurring offenders.

Logan, Charles H. “Well Kept: Comparing Quality of Confinement in Private and Public
Prisons.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), vol. 83, no. 3, 1992, pp.
577–613. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1143839.
 This article comes from The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, published by the

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 1992. Though dated, it includes an in depth

look on the quality of conditions in private prisons as opposed to government prisons. This

article compares quality of confinement among three women’s prisons: private, state, and

federal. This is a very detailed article that discusses 8 dimensions of prison quality; security,

safety, order, care, activity, justice, conditions, and management. Logan explains how they

define each of the terms. On page 587 there is a table showing data comparing security within

the 3 prisons. Logan then goes on to analyze the results. There is also a graph that displays the

quality index scores for private, state, and federal prisons surprisingly, private prisons ranked the

highest in almost all categories. The one quality it did not have the highest score in was care,

showing that private prisons are more management oriented than rehabilitating. I believe this

article will be useful for my essay because I can compare the quality of prisons from then to now

and also discuss the history of private prisons in the United States. Since this article is mostly

data based, it has less of a chance of being biased.

Ramirez, Mark D. “African Americans’ Principled Opposition to Prison Privatization.” Journal

of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, vol. 13, 2015.

Article published by the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. Written by Mark D.

Ramirez, a professor of politics and global studies at the Arizona State University. “One of the

most significant changes in the contemporary criminal justice system over the past 30 years is

the exponential growth of the for-profit private prison industry. Currently, 30 states and the

federal government contract private companies to own and/or operate prison facilities. According

to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of inmates held in private prison facilities

increased from approximately 7,500 in 1990 to almost 129,000 in 2012” (Ramirez 217). This
article explores why private prisons began to flourish in the United States and how that affects

African Americans. “private prisons engage in a great deal of lobbying for legislation that would

increase the prison population and, consequently, their profit margin. The two largest private

prison operators, Corrections Corporation of America and The Geo Group, Inc., spent

approximately $20 million on lobbying expenditures and $4.8 million on political contributions

between 2003 and 2012 (Shapiro, 2011). Much of this money was to encourage the enactment of

new laws and increase mandatory sentencing laws across states” (Ramirez 220) The claim is that

most African Americans believe that private prisons unfairly target minorities and the date they

provide shows that most do indeed view them this way. The stakeholders for this article are

minorities who are unfairly threatened by private prisons. The warrant is that private prisons

need to stop focusing on minorities to decrease systematic racial injustices.

Tartaglia, Mike. “Private Prisons, Private Records.” Boston University Law Review, vol. 94,
2014.

This source was taken from the Boston University Law Review. This article is fairly

recent and was published in 2015. Though the article was written by a student, he had guidance

from professors so I believe it to be credible. This article “seeks to explain how practitioners and

advocates can ensure that private prisons provide cost-effective services of sufficient quality

when they contract to incarcerate individuals on behalf of government entities.” (Tartaglia 1690)

The article focuses on the two largest private prison industry competitors, the Corrections

Corporations of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, who “control the vast majority of the

private prison ownership and management market” (Tartaglia 1690). The first part of the article

“evaluates the current state of law and practice regarding access to information from private

prisons” (Tartaglia 1691). Tartaglia claims that there is a greater need for oversight in private
prisons due to their incentives to cut corners. Part 3 consists of recommendations for increasing

private prison transparency and oversight. The warrant is that more transparency in private

prisons could lead to more equality within them. One important quote from the article is “in the

cast majority of the United States jurisdictions, private prisons are not required to disclose

information pursuant to public record requests in the same manner as government prisons.”

(Tartaglia 1691) This means that private prisons are more secretive and can cover up more of

what they are doing than government prisons can. This also means that journalists and advocacy

organizations cannot utilize public record laws to expose private prisons. “Increased

transparency of private prisons could make up for shortcomings in oversight resulting from both

conditions generally applicable to corrections and to conditions unique to the industry” (Tartaglia

1692) “Over the past two decades, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) drastically

restricted judicial prison oversight and the ability of prisoners to file suit” (Tartaglia 1693).

Wessler, Seth Freed. “Private Prisons Fail.” The Nation, 30 Jan. 2017.

This article is not peer reviewed and instead comes from a political news publication.

This article is from 2017 and discusses both Obama’s and Trump’s effect on private prisons.

When Trump was elected, prison-company stocks went up. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for

attorney general was pro private prisons. Personally, I believe any article that includes something

about Donald Trump has an inherent bias because you either love him or you hate him. The

article addresses some of the problems that come with private prisons regarding their

understaffed and undertrained employees. The stakeholders in this article are the private prison

groups CoreCivic and GEO Group, the stakes are the inmates that they are supposed to be taking

care of. The claim is that private prisons fail. The data included in the article supports this claim

and exposes the flaws in private prisons. The warrant is that private prisons fail due to flawed
institutions. I am using this source because it shows more of a political side to prisons and how

politics can affect what happens inside them.

Aviram, Hadar. “Are Private Prisons to Blame for Mass Incarceration and Its Evils?” Fordham
Urban Law Journal, XLII, 2014.

This is a peer reviewed source written by Hadar Aviram. Aviram is a professor of law

and an author that frequently writes on prisons, so I believe she is qualified and credible to write

about private prisons. The claim of this source is that both private and public prisons adopt cost

minimizing structures that decrease the quality of their prisons. Prisons often take these cost

minimizing measures at the expense of prison conditions and inmate human rights. At the end

the article proposes that policymakers need to consider proper market incentives to regulate both

private and public prisons. This article has the least amount of bias because it addresses the

problems in both private and public prisons and does not describe one as better than the other.

The Kairos comes as the populations of prisons is rapidly increasing. The article provides a lot of

numerical data showing the conditions within prisons. The stakeholders are prison companies

that are supposed to be providing adequate care for the stakes, the prisoners.

state and its responsibility to and for its citizens.” (Harding 266)