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Emergence of private prisons
Prison Overcrowding in the United States
Development of private prisons
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Emergence of private prisons
Prison Overcrowding in the United States
Development of private prisons
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
For example the federal state, lease system and county governments pay private companies a fee for each inmate. Which means that they are able to keep prisoners as long as they want to keep their facilities filled. “Important evidence of the abuse that takes place behind the walls and gates of private prisons, it came to light in connection with a lawsuit filed by one of the prisoners who was bitten by a dog” pg. 96.
In chapter 13 of Corrections in America, the author describes the history of private-sector involvement in corrections and identifies its advantages. The author also describes how prison inmates were considered slaves of the state. Overall, this chapter compares gatekeepers and rainmakers. A private sector correctional facility is any prison, for-profit prison, detention center, is a facility in which juveniles and adults are physically restricted, housed, or interned by a nongovernmental organization which is constructed by a public-sector government agency.
The industry has much power in states that learn further right-wing in the political sphere; mostly due to the views of many regarding the restriction of the government power and preference for the privation of most all services. When prisons are privatized, profits then become the main purpose and as a result, those incarcerated in privatized institutions often suffer as a result; mostly in the poor food, labor conditions, and overcrowding. This issue of terrible conditions of these prisons doesn’t just influence the incarcerated, they instead affect society as they often fail at rehabilitation, even at a higher rate than public, creating more crime when those incarcerated are reintroduced into
Private prison began booming in the 1980s, under the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., however, it slowed down in 1990. When prison sales began to slow down in the 1990's, Clinton who was the acting president, wanted to cut the program but the Justice Department took over and began contracting private prison out to corporations again. Private prisons are the largest business in the prison industry. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Prisoners Series, a lineup of reports that contain prisoner data from the state and federal level, at the beginning of the 1980s, the prison population was just over 300,000 people
By the government allowing corporations to buy, and build new prisons gave that much more of an incentive to keep the prisons flowing with inmates. According to Vicky Pelaez “Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one.” (6) Once you get trapped inside this prison machine they can and will work for cents a day.
I feel in the context of abuse people should not be acused of their actions. Not because they dont have an alibi but because they dont need an excuse they need help from psychologists. I know from personal experience that when someone does you wrong or your abused you wanna lash out at the world thinking the world did you wrong. Prison IS NOT TREATMENT. Private prisons is a multi million dollar industry.
Mass Incarceration America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, outstripping Cuba, Rwanda, Thailand, Costa Rica and Ukraine. The United States is the world’s leader incarceration. There are currently five-thousand prison facility, which in habit over 2 million prisoner. There has been a 500% increase over the past thirty years. These numbers include, federal and state prison, and local jails. .
The presence of private prisons in America gives some groups in power an incentive to not unite the American people. These prisons exist on a capitalistic profit motive and are either required to hold a certain amount of prisoners to receive funding or are required to pay the government for every empty cell. Despite this, proponents of private prisons argue that they save the country money. While that may be true, they ruin American lives. The private sector that owns them has an incentive to lobby for mass incarceration, and unfortunately the people victimized by society are the most likely to be incarcerated and forgotten about.
In my honest opinion solitary confinement in the U.S. is not justified and only does more harm than good. Not only is it a rash punishment, but it is one of the worst kinds of psychological tortures that could be inflicted upon an inmate. Human beings are undoubtedly social creatures and without the mere contact of another person the mind decays and ultimately leads a person to anger, anxiety, and hopelessness. Psychologists also claim that solitary confinement and isolation in general also cause depression or the loss of ability to have any "feelings", cognitive disturbances, such as confused thought processes and disorientation, perceptual distortions, such as hypersensitivity to noises and smells, distortions of sensations, and hallucinations affecting all five senses, as well as paranoia and psychosis which often times involve schizophrenic type symptoms, and finally, the worst of all symptoms, being self-harm such as self-mutilation, cutting and even suicide attempts.
Prison privatization, dramatically increased in the 1980s under the Reagan and Bush administration. It is estimated that there are around 18 major corporations serving around 10,000 inmates in 27 States. The use of privatized contract firms is based upon improved efficiencies and cost reduction programs. The government alone could no longer cope with the long expansion of crime and need for more jail
Private prisons tend not to house costlier inmates, due to the higher cost of supervising them. Scott Merryman states that, from 1990 to 1995, the overwhelming numbers of inmates in private facilities were classified as minimum-security, and this condition is still relevant today. Public prisons consist of twenty percent maximum-security inmates compared to the five percent in private prisons. Also, public prisons have thirty-five percent of their inmates in minimum-security, while the private prisons have sixty-five percent of their inmates in minimum-security. There are states that have private prisons that choose not to have any high maximum-security inmates at all.
The privatization has a much more positive connotation due to its relationship with capitalism, yet thus far prison privatization has been a spectacular flavor but with considerable reform will be successful. While capitalism may be good for business, it does not appear to be a good fit for prisons. Many past studies and crimes against humanity have shown that the best-proven method to keeping a large number of people in order and under the control of their authority is by dehumanizing and using significant force as seen in the Stanford prison experiment. If private prisons were to employ such methods, it would decrease the number of guards necessary, but would certainly violate the rights of the inmates. Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) state that private institutes employ 33% fewer correctional officers
According to Department of corrections and rehabilitation there is approximately 2.3 million adult offenders currently detained and which consist of 316,229 prisoners which are overseen by correctional officers on an ongoing basis costing on an average of $49 per prisoner, additionally their current budget is approximately $11 billion, which is distributed between 33 state prisons, 40 camps, as well as 12 community correctional facilities. Furthermore, the male population is 93%, 7% are females, Hispanics represent 39%, 29% are African American, and 26% are Caucasian, moreover, there are 24,000 inmates currently serving life sentences and 680 on death row, as well as the 124,000 parolees of which there is a 51% return ratio for parole violations, thus resulting in prison over-crowding.
The prison population rate in the U.S. is 716 per 100,000 people. Unless someone has spent time researching this rate for different countries, the statistic probably doesn’t make much sense. Of the 222 countries and territories listed in the Tenth Edition of the ICPS World Prison Population List, 54% had rates below 150 per 100,000, and the world’s average was 144 per 100,000