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Privatization Of Private Prisons Essay

1221 Words5 Pages

To: Dr. Amirkhanyan
From: Feroze Hasan
Date: 04/04/2023
Subject: Analyzing the contracting initiatives related to privatizing prisons
Brief overview

Private prisons are often viewed as controversial. The privatization of prisons has many supposed benefits but also presents many weaknesses. While “proponents of privatization argue that by having private, for-profit businesses run jails and prisons, taxpayers end up paying less for incarceration of inmates” (Cincinnaticriminalattorney.com). However, “opponents argue that cost savings haven’t manifested as promised and that private prisons have a detrimental impact on society by failing to focus on rehabilitation of inmates, but instead on warehousing offenders in exchange for a fee per inmate.” …show more content…

Many states allowed private prisons and prison privatization because “costs and overcrowding problems are the driving force behind the privatization phenomenon.” (Heritage.org). According to some sources, “it costs a private prison about $45,000 a year to house a prisoner, compared to the general cost of about $50,000 annually per inmate in a public prison, resulting in roughly $5,000 in savings per year.” (thecrimereport.org). “However, the Bureau of Prisons study found just a 2 percent average difference” (Cincinnaticriminalattorney.com). The difficulty in comparing these two prisons was highlighted in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that analyzed multiple studies on this topic, according to GAO, “these studies offer little generalizable guidance for other jurisdictions about what to expect regarding comparative operational costs and quality of service if they were to move toward privatizing correctional facilities” (GAO.gov). From this, we can see that there is little to no financial benefit from having private prisons and that having this system does not benefit the governments that chose to privatize …show more content…

public prisons is the experience of the prisoner is different. “according to a study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, whatever savings they have achieved have been mostly eclipsed by the fact that private prison inmates typically serve longer sentences” (Thecrimereport.com). Another reason why private prisons, are popular is because “Private prisons use non-union labor compared to state-run facilities that typically employee union personnel” (Cincinnaticriminialattorney.com). This means that prisoners are exploited and there is an incentive to keep prisoners longer to maximize

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