privately run prisons
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Privately run Prisons.
Prisons are more of a public good rather than a private good since they serve the public wholly and not individual consumers. This means that prisoners are not public consumers but involuntary subjects of the correction service. Public goods are arranged and financed by the government but are not necessarily produced by the state; this does not exempt the state from creating a supply and demand market. Where the demand is greater than the supply, and where the prices seem to be unreasonably high, then there is room for competition and emergence of new sources of supply. This theory is what is happening today in the criminal justice system. If asked, there has been a longstanding dissatisfaction regarding the quantity, quality and the cost of imprisonment towards criminal offenders.
Privately owned prisons have various ways of making money. One of the ways they make money is through striking deals with individual countries that have clauses guaranteeing high rates of prison occupancy (Ferro 25). A report on how private prison make huge profits shows contracts that are exchanged between the government and privately owned prisons whereby services such as creating inmate lockup quotas (Moore, 3); thus reducing the rate of taxpayers’ money being wasted on empty prison beds due to population decrease in the prisons as a result of low crime rates. Bearing this in mind, commercial prisons deliver quality services and at lower prices that benefit the taxpayer. Based on the independent comparison studies carried out, private prisons save approximately 13 per cent on operational costs. The other way private prisons make money is through having strong political ties, campaign contributions and through government lobbying. Through this method, these correctional corporations condemn the governments of having a monopoly over the corrections as they claim that they themselves can also run the prisons more efficiently and at a cheaper cost hence saving the taxpayer large amounts of money (Logan and Rausch 308).
According to Logan and Rausch, the prison supply with respect to current prices is unable to meet the demand with the resulting overcrowding when combined with the reluctance of the taxpayer to bear the burden of the cost of building and other added operational costs creates a huge dilemma for the penal system (303). A partial solution is sought after in privately owned commercial prisons that offer partial solution to this problem. It is in fact shocking that during the late 1900’s a new source of supply emerged to meet the ever growing demand for the unmet and poor demand. Recently, in UK and Us there has been a growing focus on similarities of the penal system and criminal justice between these two states. The governments of both nations have adopted a managerial approach towards the criminal justice system. This includes expanding the role of the private sector towards the penal system and developing risk based interventions.
In recent times, prison overcrowding is the most pressing issue as it becomes hard for one to specify the exact number of inmates since prison capacity is measured in various ways with the highest record reaching as high as 110 per cent its capacity (Logan and Rausch 304). In America, prison overcrowding has surpassed the budget for constructing new prison buildings and since the politicians that promised to deliver new prisons could no longer build them, then there is prison boom emerging with the strict crimes act enacted. The total prison population has almost doubled in the past ten years to almost half million prisoners and the existing buildings cannot contain such huge numbers. Since correctional institutions cannot handle the large numbers, their response is to overcrowd the cells with the ever flowing number of inmates and other recreational rooms, gymnasiums and basements of the prison. Overcrowding has led to deterioration of the physical conditions, poor management of the prisons and large numbers of sickness and deaths. In the long run, seeking private prisons becomes the only suitable solution to this problem.
Another reason for emergence of privately run prisons is due to the high cost of imprisonment. The cost of operating and building prisons is enormously high and in most cases, usually underestimated. The cost estimates for construction range differently with the region the prisons are situated, the type of prison and the needs of the program, and the use of prison labor (Cullen and Mackenzie 49). The American Department of Justice on average spends $26, 000, $46,000 and $58,000 to construct beds for minimum, medium and maximum security prisons respectively (Logan and Rausch 304). These estimates tend to be too low since the government ignores factors such as land rates, building codes, hidden costs and site preparation. In short, the costs of operating and constructing prisons are high, probably higher than the average taxpayer can ever imagine and when the state is provided with these figures, they tend to search ways of avoiding incurring extra costs in prison expansion Cullen and Mackenzie 64).
Based on the inability of certain states to efficiently run their prisons, contracting with the private sector seems to be the best solution. One goal of contracting is to inject some greater flexibility into the public sector, which is often in the private sector (Logan and Rausch 313-314). Flexibility is an important form of public policy administration. The concentration of decisions made amplifies the error, uncertainty and consequence of ignorance. Such contacts help improve the health care provision. During the late 1900’s 12 American states entered into contracts with private corporations to provide essential health care services to their entire prison facilities and in the end, this saved the taxpayers more than $14 million during the first year of adoption (Moore 6). Private contracting should not be mistaken as elimination of entire government services rather it should be considered as provision of some sort of cheaper services that serve as a comparative standard for measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of governmental services.
Summarily, the state, federal and local officials across the nations more so in UK and Us are faced with a real crisis when it comes to their jails and prisons due to the high numbers of prisoners and the lack of sufficient capital for constructing prison facilities. The rate of committing crime may be on the decline but the number of inmates on average spends more time in prison due to the strict penal system thus the issue of congestion is getting worse as time goes by. Privatization of the prison system can play a big part as an answer to this problem. Evidently, private prisons offer by far quality services as compared to government prisons and at a less cost. According to Moore (35-36), local and state officials in 25 American states as well as a number of federal agencies have turned to private prison operators for help in order to cope with the ever growing prison demands and the end results are always successful. Even though private prisons may not be considered as a lasting solution, they serve their intended purpose.
Works Cited
Cullen, Eric and Judith Mackenzie. Dovegate: A Therapeutic Community in a Private Prison and Developments in Therapeutic Work with Personality Disordered Offenders. Hampshire, UK: Waterside Press, 2011.
Ferro, Jeffrey. Prisons. New York: Facts on File, Incorporated, 2006.
Logan, Charles and Sharla Rausch. “Punish and Profit: The Emergence of Private Entreprise Prisons.” Justice Quarterly. < HYPERLINK “http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418828500088581” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07418828500088581>. Accessed December 11, 2013.
Moore, Adrian. “Private Prisons: Quality Corrections at a Lower Cost.” < HYPERLINK “http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Private_Prisons__Quality_Corrections_at_a_Lower_Cost.pdf” http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Private_Prisons__Quality_Corrections_at_a_Lower_Cost.pdf>. Accessed December 11, 2013.
