History Of Prison Privatization

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Prison Privatization Erika J. Shorter University of Maryland University College CJMS 620 States have made an effort to save money by contracting services out to the private sector. According to Schneider (1999), public-private partnerships within the adult correctional system have been around since colonial times. However, the scope of support on the private sector and the policy project genres has had different variations. Early prisons contracted the inmates out to businesses for labor, with the cash compensating the cost prison operations. The involvement of the private sector within the prisons started as a common interest between reformers, public officials, and local businesses. In 1866, the State of Tennessee leased a…show more content…
Prisoners rioted in some states. Tennessee had to end the partnership with the furniture company within a year because the furniture factory was burned down by the inmates. Later, state officials decided to build branch prisons and lease the prisoners to local coal mining companies. This also ended in tragedy. The competition of the cheap labor that the prisons provided hurt the free miners economically. As a result, free miners broke into the prisons and released the inmates. Citizens in Alabama complained that leasing prisoners to private companies would demoralize the prison system. The concern was that the companies would make up bad reports about good workers to lengthen the sentence of the inmates (p.193). Because these contract agreements were subject to abuse, the federal government curbed the goods of prison labor being sold on the open market. By the beginning of World War II, the partnerships between the public and private sectors within the prison system were very scarce…show more content…
Data from published reviews of U.S. prisons between 1983 and 1998 were used. Twenty case studies on cost comparisons between private and public prisons were reviewed. The majority of the studies found that the private prisons showed substantial savings (p. 242). The authors evaluated the value and extent of experimental research on cost effectiveness of private versus public prison management. The study also measures the bearing of that research on the suppositions derived from the privatization sources. Their study focused on the operations of private prisons, which the authors refer to as the most controversial aspect of privatization (p. 224). The authors address the notion that supporters of prison privatization maintain that it is more cost effective than and just as effective in terms of safety and quality of services as state operation of correctional facilities. Advocates of privatization make these claims based on the notion that private companies can run correctional facilities cheaper than governmental agencies without compromising the quality of services and can feasibly even increase quality by using more up to date administration procedures and expertise, more lenient employment regulations and greater ease in the purchase of supplies and materials (p.
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