What Is Private Prison Privatization?

The modern private prison first started and was established publicly in 1984 when Hamilton County, Tennessee had awarded the correction corporation of America (CCA) a contract to take over the facility. This was the first time the country had ever contracted out the complete operation of the jail to a private operator. The 1980s, brought in a new era of prison privatization. With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the “war on drugs” and prison overcrowding, increased use of incarceration and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. Resulting from it all they had to begin expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, private-sector

They house out of state inmates to make extra money and charge a per diem or a monthly rate for each prisoner. CCA tried to gain full control of all the prison system of Tennessee but they were declined due to the opposition from public employees, disagreement and the skepticism of the state legislature. After the initial defeat at first, CCA still ended up successfully expanded and has other for-profit prison companies. “As of December 2000, there were 153 private correctional facilities (prisons, jails and detention centers) operating in the United States3 with a capacity of over 119,000 (Cheung, 2004).” Some people believe and set an argument that the privatization can save the government money and that the profit can help. Although there has not been much proof of this out of all the research to today says that there is no real difference. After numerous studies it still can’t be proven if it saves money and if it does how much it saves. (Cheung, 2004) says; “Proponents’ Arguments: Proponents contend that cost-savings and efficiency of operation place private prisons at an advantage over public prisons and support the argument for privatization. Research to date, however, casts doubt on the validity of

“Gerald Gaes gives a specific numerical example involving Oklahoma, a high-privatization state, where a difference in overhead accounting can alter the estimate of the cost of privatization by 7.4% (Volokh, 2014).” Private prisons were most commonly smaller than the federal or state prisons so they can’t hold up to the same amount of prisons. There being, there has to be a lot more of them. “The first private contract to house adult offenders was in 1984, for a small, 250-bed facility operated by CCA under contract with Hamilton County, Tennessee (Seiter, 2005, pp. 162-165).” As of 2008 there was 126,249 state and federal prisoners held in a private prison, accounting for 7.8 percent of prisoners in general. So the private prisons quickly stepped up and made the prisons bigger to account for more prisoners. It is expected that private correctional operations will continue to grow and get stronger, due to a number of factors. With that being said the growth in the number of state and federal prisoners has slowed down in the past two to three years, there is still expected to be a huge increases in the number of inmates being held and with state and federal revenues down due to the recession, very few jurisdictions are constructing new prisons. Tightening the government’s budget forces them to look for other ways to make up for the