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The Benefits Of Prison Privatization

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The American government has long touted its need to protect the American public as justification for some of its for questionable laws and acts: Japanese internment, the Alien and Sedation Act, and the Internal Security Act. Each time the question must be asked who is excluded from the American public; few people ever include convicts, yet many still argue those convicts have rights: some people argue capital punishment is never ok and should not be met with excessive force. The rights of prisoners have seen that as the US population of prisons grows to .8% of the total US population the cost of keeping these prisoners quickly explodes, as well, to an astonishing $80 billion. With such a gargantuan price, politicians, economists, and concerned …show more content…

Many find that it wrong that the correctional facilities of the country should benefit from prisoners and their families. One prison in Pennsylvania is known to have made a deal with a Judge that was sentenced to 17 years for unlawfully convicting Juveniles to a private facility in a “cash for kids” scandal. (Magee, Brian) Deals this egregious are obvious and are quickly reported or investigated, but had the judge increased sentence durations by a small percentage, odds are no one would be the wiser.
Private companies have only one goal: profit. There are only a few ways to increase profit including cutting costs, selling more product, or driving prices up. The most effective way to cut cost. At a prison in Youngstown one former guard said, two-thirds of his colleagues and they were hired at $1300 less than their government counterparts. That prison was home to the 2nd largest inmate paying lawsuit in American …show more content…

There is no reason to hold on to government held prisons if private companies want to compete for prison contracts. But with no motivation pushing these companies to respect their inmates, the companies will quickly violate any rights a prisoner has if it means they can increase their bottom line. There does not have to be a conflict between how much a company can make and how many of their inmates’ rights they respect. If government properly incentivized prisons to achieve the results they want then there is little doubt they will

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