The Benefits of Prison Privatization

Ben McChesney
Within the past couple of decades, the idea of contracting prison duties out to
private companies has steadily been increasing in relevance. Since the mid-1980s,
private prisons have become an increasingly viable alternative to state-run facilities,
offering their economic benefits and another option to help combat a ballooning
prison population. However, there are some issues that have risen when discussing
the topic. Is it morally responsible to allow the handling of human beings to become
a profitable enterprise? How can a company be trusted to manage the well-being
and rehabilitation of inmates when its motives would be based primarily on profit?
While the idea of prison privatization is still relatively new, what we have been able
to see over the past few years has given us some insight into answering these
questions. While the implementation of privatized prisons is not inherently bad in
theory, the actions of private prison companies have clearly shown that currently
private prisons are neither economically beneficial nor ethical in their treatment of
prisoners.
While prisons have contracted services such as food supply medical care to
private firms in the past, only recently have we looked to sell out entire prisons.
One of the biggest obstacles to the acceptance of private prisons is
determining whether the ideals behind the industry are morally acceptable. Many
questions have arose over whether company interests would come at the expense
of prisoner welfare, as well as the philosophical implications of making the
imprisonment of human beings a monetized industry (A Guide to Prison
Privatization). Firstly, it must be pointed out that in many cases, public prisons have

issues with the morality of prisoner care themselves, fighting vast overcrowding and
severe understaffing along with numerous cases of neglect and mistreatment over
the years. In a paper published through the Adam Smith Institute, a world-renowned
think tank located in London, University of Connecticut professor Charles H. Logan
points out that almost all entities, both public and private, are primarily driven by
their own self-interests. He then goes on to add that introducing prisons to in an
open market will potentially spur competition between private prison companies
vying for contract money. By being compared with both other companies and the
state, private prisons will be incentivized to provide facilities that provide both cost
efficient and high quality care for its inmates if they want to have any business.
Even the possibility of competition will help to make subpar prisons more
unacceptable in the eyes of the public, as the existence of a potential alternative
will allow them to be more critical and demanding of their expectations (Privatizing
Prisons: The Moral Case). These hypothetical benefits cannot be obtained with the
current state monopoly over prisons, which is one of the main appeals of prison
privatization. Professor Logan concludes his paper by stating that we cannot know
whether private prisons will have a positive impact on society without being able to
see such an impact and being able to compare it with that of state-run prisons, and
that prison privatization should not be judged solely on moral principle.
On the surface, it would seem that Logan was correct. The gradual
implementation of private prisons allowed states to see firsthand the assistance
private companies would be able to provide to otherwise overwhelmed prison
systems. In 2006, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had
reached the point where its prison system housed 172,000 inmates in what was
designed to hold 100,000. Over 15,000 inmates had also been places in areas not

designed for living such as gymnasiums and dayrooms. Worsening the issue, the
state had 4,000 job vacancies for state correctional officers that were not expected
to be filled for at least the next five years. As a result, California state governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger transferred inmates from 29 prisons into out-of-state private
facilities (Making Prisons Compete: How Private Prisons Enhance Public Safety and
Performance). Today, more than 4,000 inmates are housed in private prisons
throughout the state, with another 9,000 in out-of-state prisons (California Adds
Another Private Prison). Without outsourcing prisoners like it did, California would
have had no way of giving care to inmates that met basic Constitutional standards.
However, there have also been a myriad of issues that have risen when dealing with
the well-being of inmates in private prisons. In Alameda County in California,
hundreds of nurses who work for prison healthcare company Corizon are going on
strike as a result of the corporation failing to put enough nurses on duty or provide
adequate resources in order to give prisoners the care they require (This Is How Bad
The Health Care Is In Private Prisons). One nurse describes conditions where she
might be in charge of over 20 prisoners at once, all of whom needed to be
monitored very closely, as well as having to use broken or dirty equipment as well
as perform rushed procedures in order to keep up with a schedule designed to save
time and money. Another report by the American Civil Liberties Union released in
June of 2014 describes private prisons used to house illegal immigrants. It talks
about how at one Texas facility, almost 3,000 inmates live in 200-foot Kevlar tents,
each housing up to 200 men. Others described being placed in isolated cells for
months at a time for minor offenses or complaining about prison conditions (ACLU:
Shocking Abuse of Immigrants at Private Prisons). These are only a couple of the
many instances of mistreatment which have cropped up within the past few years,

and it is almost certain that there will be more to come in the future. Ultimately,
Logan was only partially right in his paper; while competition was implemented into
the justice system, it had little to no effect on the care (or lack thereof) of inmates.
While the morality of prison privatization is an important issue, the main draw
of the industry is in fact something else: money. In 2007, the United States' judicial,
policing and corrections costs totaled 228 billion dollars, which is a 171% increase
since 1982 (Justice Expenditures And Employment, 1982-2007 - Statistical Tables).
74 billion of those dollars went solely to corrections costs (Direct expenditures by
justice function, 19822007 (billions of dollars)). The price of keeping one inmate in
prison for a year can be anywhere from 15 to 60 thousand dollars. These everincreasing fees are costing American taxpayers 39 billion dollars a year (The
Economics of the American Prison System). As a result, private prisons have
presented their economic effectiveness as their most attractive selling point.