Paper Example on Incarceration and Detention of Immigrants

Introduction

The definition of the concepts detention and incarceration is the role of the department of justice. Hence, incarceration entails a long-term holding of an offender who is already convicted of a given crime. Detention, on the other hand, is the temporary confinement of an offender pending the hearing or investigation in his/her case. The main purpose of the detention is to ensure that the offender is safe, secure and treated humanely before the finalization of his case. The private companies invest in providing detention and incarceration services to the illegal immigrants. They perform specific roles in the detention of special classes of immigrants. For instance, the Correction Corporation of America (CCA) assists by detaining and incarcerating the undocumented immigrants. Specifically, the facility holds some of the destitute segments of the illegal immigrants. Today, the facility holds around 25000 illegal immigrants (Greene, Judith, and Mazon, 1). Private prisons became of great interests to American during the beginning of Trump era in which immigration cases were very strict and many inmates increased drastically.

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Private prisons were marred by problems in the past regime due to different reasons. First, the human right lobbyists have argued that the businesses were illegitimate because they promoted the legalization of legal business. For this reason, there has been a tug of war between the private prisons and the public interest groups. In the early 1990s, there were serious allegations of prisoner abuse lawsuits, problems of management and dwindling contracts in the private prisons (Greene, Judith, and Mazon, 2). This made the CCA brush with insolvency at that time.

Moreover, there has been an outcry about the working conditions together with the inmates' affairs within the private prisons. For instance, there have been complaints that the health facilities in the private prisons were not up to standards. This is because there is inadequate health training to the health experts working in these facilities. Another problem associated with these facilities is the poorly trained correction officers. Some of these correction officers are also unauthorized (Ackerman, Alissa R., and Furman, 258). This makes the inmates in private prisons to be more maladjusted than the public counterparts. The inmates from private facilities are hence, more prone to antisocial behaviors as compared to their counterparts in the public faculties.

Conclusion

To address these problems, the private prisons should employ the personnel through government approval. This means that the government should vet any privately employed prison personnel before awarding any tender to the facility. Integrity in the private facilities can only be installed through strict measures of prevention rather than reaction. Hence, the facilities must demonstrate high levels of integrity by employing publicly accepted people before they get the tenders. To address the problems of dwindling contracts, the private facilities should be made financially liable for any losses incurred in case the contracts dwindle. A contract between the state and a private institution should be very open and up for scrutiny by the public because it entails the use of public money. If the private prisons act ignorantly or irresponsibly so that they lose the contracts, they should be in a position to account for the public cash lost in the process of awarding them the contract. This should take place through strictly instituted legislations regulating the awarding of tenders to the private companies.

Work Cited

Ackerman, Alissa R., and Rich Furman. "The criminalization of immigration and the privatization of the immigration detention: implications for justice." Contemporary Justice Review 16.2 (2013): 251-263.

Greene, Judith, and Alexis Mazon. "Privately Operated Federal Prisons for Immigrants: Expensive. Unsafe. Unnecessary." Retrieved July 18 (2012): 2013.