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Should all prisons be managed by private enterprise?
By Evan SycamniasThe prison institution remains fundamentally as the means by which a ‘just' society can deter, punish, and rehabilitate it's offenders. Until recent years, it's power has been bestowed by society, and directed by government empowered bodies. Present day society, and it's introduction of privatized institutions has seen the development of new direction being placed on the prison structure. No longer are deterrence, punishment, and rehabilitation of offenders the only goals. Privatization now seeks to also gain financial balance from the incarceration of it's offenders. The consideration that future inmates be responsible for the costs of their incarceration, as well as paying recompense to their victims by the fruits of their labors while incarcerated, brings a new dimension to the public debate. This debate is intended to allow for the ironing out current faults within public prisons (over crowding and recidivism), but in doing so, suffers negative criticism and resistance, primarily from groups and organizations concerned with the future of federal and state correctional employment (unions) and those that would champion prisoner's rights.
Privatization in America
Privatization is surprisingly not a new concept. During the mid 1800s, the United States of America leased several of their institutions (including the Louisiana State and New York Auburn penitentiaries) to private investors who in turn contracted prisoners to other private businesses as labor. The duration of this activity was short lived, due to the large amount of greed bred corruption that took place, and the fierce opposition by other business entities who claimed unpaid workers caused "unfair" competition. But today's private prisons work on a completely different level to the early models, with new features that look rather promising.
The Costs Involved
The cost of crime is relative to the ever increasing crime rate. During 2003, it was estimated to cost over six billion dollars a year in construction, just to keep up with the inmate population growth. This figure did not include the cost of employing fifty thousand guards, nor the additional tens of thousands of administrators, health, education and food service providers. By allowing private firms to take over, cost associated to these expenses would not be generated directly from tax payers pocket, allowing governments to better use their revenue to improve services to other public areas in need of assistance. Further more, such industries reduce costs associated to public prisons through reduced waste and increased productivity, in order to be more competitive. Costs associated to bedding in a government run minimum security prison have been recorded to run up to twice as much as that of private developments. Whilst other studies of the Corplan Corrections, Wackenhut and CCA institutions have noted savings of twenty percent off construction, and five to fifteen percent off management costs. In direct opposition, lobby groups believe that the profit motive will undermine the cost reduction activities by inevitably causing the cutting of corners, leading to poor or unsafe conditions. Not only is there no evidence to support this theory; but interviews with prisoners and staff alike, who were in the position to compare both facilities, stated they were more comfortable in the privatized prisons.
Showing a Profit
Profit is the prime motivation behind all honest industry. Prison privatization is no exception. Because of this fact, fast food giants like Kentucky Fried Chicken have taken up the position of financial backers to such institutions. For this reason, a huge conflict of interests can arise. The purpose of prisons is not only to remove an offender from society and punish them (which in itself would cause more problems than it would solve) but to also rehabilitate them and to reduce the recidivism rate. By reducing this rate, privatized prisons are in effect reducing their supply of profit producing customers. "It is in the material interest of these companies, therefore, to not produce prisoners who have ‘paid their debt to society', but ones who will continue to pay and pay on the installment plan". By creating a situation where the prisoners are responsible for the costs involved in their incarceration, through on site industry, the price tag for incarceration could be drastically reduced, thus increasing the profit margin. The only other option available in this instance would be to contract such facilities to non profit groups, such as faith based organizations. Professor Richard Moran was noted stating that "a private, non-profit foundation is in the best position to organize a prison around a set of principles intended to reshape criminals into honest, productive citizens". The fact that reshaping criminals into honest and productive citizens has, over all, been a dismal failure due to the static and non-productive nature of the inmates time in prison, no such activity has taken place.
Other critics have voiced their worries that contractors may engage in ‘lowballing', a technique that works by under-biding competitors in order to obtain government approval, and then later when they are depended on for their services, increase their costs to ridiculous amounts. Worse yet, contractors stand the possibility of becoming bankrupt, leaving the government without any correctional capacity. As to the ‘lowballing' strategy, it's realism is lacking simply because no private organization can expect to raise it's fees higher than that of a reasonable profit margin without inviting an onslaught of it's competitors.
One element of obvious advantage to the privatization of this industry, revolves around the fact that private industries have a tendency to allow greater management flexibility, which in turn is meant to create better response times regarding issues of innovation, expansion, staff promotions and terminations. Public prisons have in past been very much stuck in their ways, unable to keep up with technological advances or the changing needs of the individual staff and inmates within the walls. Dealing effectively with these changes is paramount when it comes to handling incidences of outbreaks and riots, and has proven to reduce such incidences. While it remains unclear as to whether or not contracted prison guards would have the right to strike, the absence of such a right has not stopped public guards from engaging in walk outs, which, at one stage in a union sponsored coordinated action, saw 7 American penal institutes in complete chaos. In terms of escapes, the experience of private jails and their counter parts has been equal. Though incidences like those that took place at the Prince George County (U.S.A.), where eleven prisoners where mistakenly released, has never happened in private institutions.
AccountabilityThe issue of accountability is very much in a stalemate when it comes to which of the two organizations would be best. Critics of privatization tend to believe that the incidences that occur within prison will be isolated from the public's view, and thus not subjected to those same political controls that are faced by the government prisons. Proponents reply that "contracting increases accountability because the government is more willing to monitor and control contractors than it is to monitor and control itself. Contractors - just like their government counterparts - are accountable to the law, to government supervisors, and ultimately, to the voting public through the political system. In addition, they are accountable, through a competitive market, to certain forces not faced by government agencies. They are answerable to insurers, investors, stockholders, and competitors. As a mechanism of accountability and control, the force of market competition is unmatched".
"Economic theory implies that if there were better markets to buy, sell and rent prison cells, the problems of funding and efficiently allocating prison space would decrease". The privatized prison system is based in such a way as to exploit these opportunities by introducing factories behind bars, reducing their own costs and allowing for prisoners to earn and pay their own way, whilst also putting back into the society they effected with their initial actions. Public prisons to a degree already do exactly this through such industries as plate making for motor vehicles, but by no means to the extent of privatized prisons. In 1997, the American private sector prison industry had nearly 100 private firms employing two thousand four hundred inmates manufacturing goods ranging from circuit boards to bird feeders, allowing for prisons to retain fifty six percent of all earned to cover room and board, taxes, victim restitution and family support. Any skills that convicts acquire from this kind of work can later be used to ease their process of re-integrating back into society.
It should also be noted that privatization can lead to other methods of criminal control other than jail. These includes the use of electronic monitoring and surveillance through the use of bracelets, allowing for criminals to be detained within their own dwelling. Obviously these methods cause even greater concerns to the general public than that of privatized prisons, but due to the limited size of this document, it shall not be covered.
The privatization of prisons is an interesting concept, and holds many positive features that deserve further investigation. The concept will undoubtedly flourish - but much care is needed in regulations, to assure that society's interests come before those of the corporations, and not developed by hucksters with the soul intention of turning a quick buck causing the sacrifice of quality. It should also be remembered that for each positive point, there will be an equal amount of rebuttal to counter its benefits, just as there is with public prisons. There is no potential problem with private prisons that is not matched by an identical or closely related problem within government based institutions. "It is primarily because they are prisons, not because they are contractual, that private operations face challenges of authority, legitimacy, procedural justice, accountability, liability" and so on. A possible consideration would be the combination of both systems, creating a union with safeguards, quick response times, technological changes, safety catering, educating and training inmates, whilst addressing the issue of morality within our legal system.
Bibliography
Foucault, M, "Discipline and punishment", Penguin Books, 1977
Logan, C, "Prison Privatization: Objections and Refutations", http://www.ucc.uconn.edu, 1997
Sloane, D, "Private and Public Prisons", GAO, 1996
Smith, P, "Private Prisons: Profits of crime", Covert Action, 1993
William, A, "Cost effectiveness and comparisons of private versus public prisons", Baton Rouge, 1996
Author Unknown, "Crime and Punishment in America", NCPA Policy Report No. 219, 1998
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