Saving Money In Prison

Saving money comes at a price. In building a prison, the private corporation might pick a contractor for the wrong reasons. “Subcontractors are frequently chosen for the wrong reason –low cost-- without regard to the level of experience or expertise they may bring to the project, (Bowman, Hakim, Seidenstat 178).” These contractors may make some design errors that can be fatal to the prison staff and other inmates. Carcereal describes these errors, stating “If the cells were located at the corners of the dayroom, the guards could not see into them at all, (Carcereal 11).” The need for the correctional officers to be able to observe every cell far outweighs the need to save money. These cost-cutting mistakes can be fatal to everyone inside

During this time, state officials urged the private sector to become involved in the public sector by easing the legislation restricting big corporations’ involvement in the public sector. This change began with the monetary crisis the government has been experiencing. By outsourcing the cost to run and build prisons, the government both saves money and expands the private sector at the same time. Sellers describes a definition of privatization that stems into two sections, the ideological approach, and the analytical approach. “In the ideological approach, discussion of privatization revolves around arguments of freedom of choice, freedom from government control, and the failures of the welfare state, (Sellers 35).” This ideological mindset puts the focus on the inmates and their health, rather than the financial issues within privatization. The analytical approach puts the emphasis on the “evaluation of program provision and production in terms of classical economic theory, especially efficiency theory, (Sellers 35).” This approach puts the value on the self-motive approach, the use of private prisons as a source of personal gain, rather than a source of reform for others. Howard P. Tuckman, the former Dean of Fordham University, classified the analytical approach into five different subcategories. These components are: “… a reduction in the size of the public sector, an introduction of greater

Privatization has existed since the 1980’s, and helps the government deal with the exponentially increasing numbers of those who have been sentenced to prison. Kicenski states “Between 1973 and 1997, the number of people behind bars rose more than 500 percent and today, state and federal prisons along with local jails house more than 2.2 million inmates … (Kicenski 1).” This number if inmates is only increasing as time passes and the number of available cells is decreasing just as rapidly. Private corporations can build and run prisons faster than the government can, so outsourcing to them seems to be the best idea. The corporations achieve a profit and the available prisons will start to not be exceeding their capacity as often. Private prisons also run at a lower cost than their public counterparts. The corporations running the prisons tend to outsource to other companies, and thus reduce government costs. Operating the prisons appears to cost less in a private prison as well. Although it appears private prisons spend the same monetary amount on labor as their public counterparts, private prisons make up for that with their supply costs. Buying in bulk from outside sources lowers the cost