American prisons have major problems. Many are overcrowded, and others are in rapid physical decay.
Consequently, the federal government and state governments have tried to alleviate some of these problems by contracting prison out services to private firms.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the quantity of state and federal prisons increased by almost ten percent, primarily because of the increase in private prisons. In 2008, nearly eight percent of all prisoners were housed in private prisons, according to the bureau. Utilizing private prisons may seem like a panacea for the struggling U.S. prison system, but the evidence shows that the risks outweigh any potential benefits.
The arguments supporting prison privatization employ free market ideals, while the counterarguments refute the free market’s utility in this enterprise. Researcher Gerald Gaes examined some of the research on private prisons and highlighted the key arguments surrounding this issue. The arguments of those asserting the benefits of private prisons posit that privatization would lead to more cost-effectiveness, more of an efficiency incentive, more accountability, and better worker quality due to the profit incentive.
But others, according to Gaes, assert that costs would actually increase costs “because of hidden contract costs” and that efforts to reduce costs and increase profit leads to low-quality staff and other problematic cost-cutting measures. Gaes concludes that research on the issue is inconclusive, and that any potential savings would be negated by private firms’ profits.
Further research and reports have exposed the limits of privatization in regard to cost and public safety.
Researchers at the Utah Criminal Justice Center found the potential benefits to be inconclusive, and that “cost savings…are not guaranteed and appear minimal.” They also found that public prisons performed better in terms of worker training and public safety. Moreover, truth-out.org reports that private prisons are often subsidized by taxpayers, thus reducing the cost-effectiveness that private firms promise to deliver.
One state that hasn’t been seeing much of a benefit from prison privatization is Arizona. In 2011 the New York Times reported that research completed by the state’s corrections department found that outsourcing prison operations to private firms didn’t actually save the state any money.
More recently, a Quaker organization conducted research that also found the state to be overpaying for private prisons.
Not to mention, prison privatization has dangerous limits. In 2010, inmates at a private prison in Arizona escaped due to lax security, and two of them ended up murdering an elderly couple in another state. Seeing as how the prison staff are poorly trained and underpaid, this isn’t surprising.
In efforts to cut costs and raise profits, private prisons hire people with substandard experience, which results in poor security and high employee turnover.
Also, Truthout cited a study that attributed the high turnover to low pay and poor training.
Conversely, actual law enforcement officers who are well-trained professionals staff government-run prisons.
Poor staffing is also an issue, and New Mexico has recently fined a private prison company it contracts with due to a lack of adequate staffing.
So while private firms may perform optimally in many other arenas, their use in the prison system is dangerous and potentially inefficient.
Leonardo Poareo is a senior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.