Private Prisons - Ethical Issues

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THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY The United States has more incarcerated people than any other country in the world ‒ as of 2011, over 2.3 million prisoners were locked up in local county jails and in state and federal prisons (Fisher, 2011). With more than 50 companies operating within the federal and state criminal justice system, the privatization of incarceration has become a five-billion dollar business. Several of these for profit businesses include The GEO Group, PA Child Care, and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) (Fisher, 2011). The for-profit prisons came into being because 1) the traditional prisons were getting overcrowded leading to exceptionally high price rise for the government and 2) the private prisons claimed increased, business-like efficiency along with major cost savings (Hunt, 2008). The cash-strapped communities found this idea to be irresistible. Private prisons were paid according to the number of filled beds because of which these corporations constantly pushed for more inmates (Fisher, 2011). The very existence of a for-profit corporation raises an ethical issue: what are the implications of operating a prison on a purely profit motivation? A corporation has one bottom line and that is how to make as much money as they possibly can. There is no such thing as “enough.” It has a peculiar characteristic that it is legally bound to put its bottom line ahead of everything else, even the public good (Achbar et al., 2004). And what’s worse? The private prison corporations confess to this. They admit that their business model relies on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) stated: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing

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