In the United States, the privatization of prisons has seen a rapid increase over the past several years. Contracted with the federal government, these for-profit institutions have garnered the interest of many states across the country. In fact, according to “The Sentencing Project,” a movement seeking equity in the United States criminal justice system, “The federal prison system experienced a 125% increase in use of private prisons since 2000 reaching 34,934 people in private facilities in 2015” (The Sentencing Project). This sudden boom in the privatization of prisons has been met with hostility by many individuals, testifying that these facilities do not serve the public’s interest and are counterintuitive to the general mission of prisons. …show more content…
While many prisons in the United States are government-owned and geared towards this rehabilitation, for-profit and privatized prisons are geared more towards making a profit instead of reforming offenders. Even more alarming, this greed is obtained in a rather disgusting way. According to Amy Cheung, writer for “The Sentencing Project,” “In a March 1997 Securities and Exchange Commission filing, CCA acknowledged that ‘the rate of construction of new facilities and the Company's potential for growth will depend on a number of factors, including crime rates and sentencing patterns in the United States.’ Thus, higher profits require more inmates. And because most private prisons operate on a per diem rate for each bed filled, there is a financial incentive not only to detain more inmates but also to detain them for a longer period of time” (Cheung 4). In 2011, Mark Ciavarella, a Pennsylvania judge, was bribed millions of dollars in order to convict juveniles and have them incarcerated specifically in private prisons, thereby allowing them to profit off the exploitation of children convicted for petty and minor offenses. According to The Guardian, “The Pennsylvania supreme court overturned about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea” and “Ciavarella...filled the beds of the private lockups with children as young as 10, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes” (The Guardian). This twisted mechanism of incarceration shows that privatized prisons will stop for nothing in order to convict and imprison as many individuals as possible, without regard for the methods in which they do so or the