Private Prisons Pros And Cons

These companies are not well regulated and costly, and support legislation that benefits their income. They have no incentive to rehabilitate, in fact just the opposite, and are therefore wasting lives trying to earn more money. The abolition of private prisons in the United States is a necessary course of action to ensure the maximum health of the

Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration–The Problem of the United States In America, the private prison industry was made for necessary profit based off of the management of prisons by large, private companies. In David Shapiro’s insightful report “Banking on Bondage”, he discusses the logistics of the United States prison system, saying “In America, our criminal justice system should keep us safe, operate fairly, and be cost-effective”. Today, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran.

Private prisons were constructed as a response to the overcrowding in federal prisons during the 1980s; many people speculate whether or not private prisons are good or bad. Critics argue that private prisons like any business are driven by profit, and prisons profit from the amount of criminals they are able to contain which gives the private prisons and their shareholders incentive to keep the prison population high and expenses low. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency estimates that over the next ten years state and federal expenditures on prisons will amount to $351 billion6. These government subsidies along with the support of private prison shareholders allow the prison industrial complex to keep their power and influence

Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.

Since 1970, our prison population has risen by some 700% - an increase far outpacing rates of population growth and crime1”. The reason America has so many incarcerated people is not because Americans commit more crimes or the police are just better at finding criminals,

Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.

By the government allowing corporations to buy, and build new prisons gave that much more of an incentive to keep the prisons flowing with inmates. According to Vicky Pelaez “Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one.” (6) Once you get trapped inside this prison machine they can and will work for cents a day.

The prison-industrial complex is a corrupt political system that consists of overpowered politicians whose sole ambition is exploiting poor, uneducated, and under-privileged Americans to make money. Although, it wasn’t initially the purpose when Rockefeller started the war on drugs, but he started something bigger than he could’ve imagined at that time. The prison system has been proven to be ineffective, and costly waste of resources. However, it probably won’t be abolished due to the cash flow that it brings to some of the largest corporations in the

In chapter 13 of Corrections in America, the author describes the history of private-sector involvement in corrections and identifies its advantages. The author also describes how prison inmates were considered slaves of the state. Overall, this chapter compares gatekeepers and rainmakers. A private sector correctional facility is any prison, for-profit prison, detention center, is a facility in which juveniles and adults are physically restricted, housed, or interned by a nongovernmental organization which is constructed by a public-sector government agency.

This caused a rapid increase in prison populations across the country. Unfortunately the system was not completely prepared for the astronomical influx of prisoners, which caused other issues to arise that needed attention. Lack of resources, space, and qualified personnel became new problems that had immediate impacts to prisons, counties, and states. Moving farther from this practice has both positive and negative impacts. Prison populations are no longer growing exponentially and are beginning to recede, which in turn can cause states to shift away from privatizing prisons.

Those who find themselves sentenced to time in a penitentiary, jail, or prison are at risk of either being broken or strengthened by the time they spend behind bars. There is a great debate of whether or not the prison system in the United States is positive or negative. The following will briefly highlight the positives, negatives, and possible alternatives for our nation's prison system. First, there is a long list of negatives that the prison system in America brings. The prison system is filled with crime, hate, and negativity almost as much as the free world is.

The overall goal of the government is too, regulate prison systems and protect inmates/ prisoners. There is always room for improvement. Recently prison reform has been debated, as people are questioning the humane treatment of prisoners, and are curious here there tax dollars are going. The constitution covers various rights regarding prisoners to ensure their safety and wellbeing. The structure of all persons are controlled by the government, they run public, private, and state prisons.

First, there are not enough staff to monitor the inmates in private prisons. The reason is because labor costs is controlled by reducing number of staff, wages, and fringe benefits. The reduce in staff has caused inmates to lose their lives. Secondly, many workers within these facilities are inexperienced with key corrections

developed—the first institution in which men were both “confined and set to labor in order to learn the habits of industry” (LeBaron, 2012, p.331). Although prisons had been designed to enforce and promote punishment, retribution and deterrence, they have also fallen into the conceptual belief that they were in many instances, nothing more than a sweat shop for the socially-undesired. At this point in history, there was very little reform and an immense lack of regulation for prisons or for the proper way they should be ran. Finances. In modern-day calculations, prison labor has been rather beneficial to the U.S. government, bringing in an average of 1.6 billion dollars in 1997.

There has constantly been a fight between whether or not private prisons should be legally allowed in America since 1984, when the first private prison was created. Although some private prisons may help with jobs within the prison, rehabilitation and benifiting “the inmates with some acquired skills that they could use during their reintegration process that [helped] welcomed them back to the society” (logan, 1990). Despite numerous advantages of private prisons, such as cost effectiveness and relieving public prisons of overcrowdedness. A variety of disadvantages exist that ultimately hinder the process of privatization. For instance; neglected prisoners, patrens turn into profit, and do not always keep staff training up to date.