Economics
Should Criminal Justice be Privatized?
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Pros: Why Prisons Should Be Privatized
Pros: Why Prisons Should Be Privatized
Private Prisons are the economically better option. Providing jobs and cutting costs are
all key aspects of supplementing economies.
The process of privatizing criminal justice as a whole is often debated, however, a major part of it, the correctional system, is partially private. Private prisons are more cost-effective than public prisons. According to a study from Cornell University, “the government saves on average $10,000 per year per inmate when sending a person to a private prison as opposed to a public one.” Furthermore, although private prisons help the government save money, they still generate more profit than the government’s own public prisons. According to the same study, private prisons make an average of “$15,000 dollars more per prisoner per year when a person is sent to a private prison as opposed to a public prison.” Due to this increased profit, private prisons are able to pay their inmate employees a higher minimum wage than public prisons. As stated in a publication from the Federal Probation, “the private sector paid $0.10 per day more than did the public sector for their average minimum wage.” Inmates housed in private prisons will get paid a higher minimum wage than those housed in public prisons. This higher standard of pay coupled with private prisons' increased profits and the government's reduced costs per inmate housed in a private prison creates an economically beneficial system for all parties.
Additionally, some private prisons are required to operate with lower budgets than public prisons which can save money for the government and taxpayers. For example, a Mississippi law requires private prisons to operate on at least a 10% lower budget than their public counterparts. On paper, this is ideal. When private prisons have to operate at lower costs, using them instead of state-run public prisons saves money. Even though this law does not exist in other states, private prisons historically are cheaper. At the end of the day, saving the government money and saving the taxpayers money is a priority.
Keeping the flow of money down between the people and the government can be highly beneficial for other parts of the economy. If there are fewer taxes, people are willing to be more active within the economy and when the government spends less, the budget deficit does not grow as quickly. The privatization of criminal justice is helping the government get less involved and helping the population keep more of their money.
Finally, private prisons require jobs to operate. Adding jobs to an economy is rarely a bad thing. Areas that are struggling economically or that are in need of many jobs can benefit greatly from the construction of private prisons. Similar to how Walmart employs a significant number of people in a given area, private prisons have the ability to create local employment opportunities. A man who started working at one of the private prison facilities said that the main employers in his area, which happen to be quite poor, were the lumber mill, Walmart, and, of course, the prison. The jobs aren't by any means high-paying or prestigious jobs, but they are jobs nonetheless. Even though they may not pay a lot of money, struggling areas thrive on high quantities of work. The more people are able to work, the more resources an area may have to start helping the people. Minimum wage jobs are the backbone of the American workforce, especially in poverty-stricken areas. Providing these jobs for many is the start of what many hope to be a process that leads to prosperity.
Cons: Why Prisons Should Not Be Privatized
Cons: Why Prisons Should Not Be Privatized
However, there are many drawbacks to the privatization of prisons that create lower living standards for inmates, create unsafe and violent environments in facilities, and undermine the purpose of the justice system.
First, in an effort to cut costs and increase profits for shareholders, private prisons create conditions that lower the living standards for prisoners through low-quality and inaccessible medical care and substandard wages for prison labor.
While private operators often boast the benefit of earning while in prison, the efficacy of employment is questionable, as inmates often earn only a few pennies to a dollar a day (Craig and Cummings). Additionally, the vast majority of prisoners cannot afford basic necessities with their prison wages, felt concerned about their safety, claimed to have received no formal job training, and report being forced to work or face additional punishment otherwise (70%, 64%, 70%, 76% of prisoners, respectively) (Global Human Rights Clinic).
There are also major issues with the quality and cost of healthcare in the private prison system. According to a survey conducted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, inmates in private prisons pay more for medical services than Medicare rates, a federal health insurance program for senior citizens. Additionally, private healthcare in private prisons incur higher death rates than public prisons (Szep, Jason, et al).
Another interesting study conducted within the Prison Policy Initiative shows how dangerous and immoral the healthcare system in private prisons is. Prisoners in private facilities have a $2-5 medical co-pay, which does not initially seem very expensive. However, taking into account the fact that incarcerated people earn as little as nothing to as much as 35 cents an hour, this fee is relatively expensive. If someone working a minimum wage job outside of prison was charged the same way that prisoners are charged, they would pay upwards of over a $1,000 for a single visit to the doctor--depending on the state. In other words, prisoners have to work and save for immoral and dangerous amounts of time before receiving medical attention. During that time when
Another adverse effect of private prisons’ aim of cutting costs is a poorly trained and paid workforce, which raises quality and safety issues.
Corrections officers in private corporations earn up to $23,850 less on average in annual salary compared to workers in the public sector, which does not give workers an incentive to provide quality safety services (Gotsch and Basti). This is mainly due to the fact that guards working at public prisons are typically unionized, while those at private prisons are not (Sigler). Additionally, for-profit prison contracts lack sufficient incentives for proper job training, leading to higher employee turnover rates in private facilities than in public facilities (Gotsch and Basti). The prisoner-to-officer ratios are also comparatively low, with some being as low as two officers for a couple of hundred inmates (Cotton). Because of the lack of monetary and professional incentives and the low prisoner-to-officer ratio, assaults in private prisons can occur at double the rate found in public facilities, and private prisons are less secure and more violent than public prisons (Camp and Gaes).
The issue of the quality of services at private prisons, while one of the most important, is also the most unlikely to change. This is because private prisons generate most of their cost savings from intentional reductions in quality and quantity of services in their workforce (White, et al.). Therefore, private prisons are likely to remain more violent and unsafe for inmates, further worsening living conditions.
Finally, private prisons are particularly problematic because they encourage longer sentences for more people, which undermines the purpose of the justice system--reintegration into society--and calls into question the true cost-savings of private prisons.
The private prison population has been growing at a much higher rate than that of public prisons (five times faster from 2000 to 2016) (Gotsch and Basti). While there are many factors that may have contributed to this large increase, some major contributors were private prison corporations themselves. These companies have been aggressive in their lobbying for policies that lead to harsher prison sentences (such as mandatory-minimums and three-strike laws) and policies that lead to the incarceration of more people (such as the criminalization of illegal immigration) (Craig and Pond Cummings). One of the largest private prison corporations, Core Civic, spent $3 million in 2005 and still more than $1.2 million in 2019, which reflects their firm intent to incarcerate more people for longer times (Craig and Pond Cummings).
Additionally, while there is a greater percentage of prisoners in private facilities that participate in educational or vocational programs (32% participation in private prisons and 22% in public prisons), private prisons provide fewer staff members to facilitate the programs (4.3 staff members versus 6.8 staff members per 100 prisoners) (Lukemeyer and McCorkle). These statistics suggest that, even if relatively more prisoners in private prisons take advantage of these resources, the programs are likely not effective or of high quality.
Because of the intense lobbying and the lack of rehabilitation efforts, private prison inmates are 17% to 22% more likely to recidivate than public prison inmates (Mamum, et al.). Additionally, the length of the sentences of private inmates has been on an increasing trend, as suggested by a 7% (or 90-day) increase in the sentence length from 1996 to 2004 (Mukherjee).
The delayed release of and increasing quantity of prisoners call into question the true cost savings of these institutions. With less training, officers and workers are less prepared to deal with any issues that arise. The chaotic environment of a private prison hinders efforts at rehabilitation and as the rate of recidivism rises, prisons have to spend more. Even with all these issues, the government is still outsourcing criminal justice to private companies. In the short term, privatization of criminal justice is effective but in the long term, costs will eventually catch up and it could end up costing more. In fact, the delayed release erodes half of the cost savings offered by private contracting and is linked to the greater likelihood of conduct violations in private prisons (Mukherjee). The additional days served do not lead to apparent changes in inmate recidivism.
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