Research Paper on Private Prisons in the US

Introduction

Due to the increase of offenders and the need to have them confined there has a been a demand for prison facilities. The government has in a bid to reduce expenditure and increase efficiency decided to contact one of its services to the private sector. Prisons are some of the departments that have been delegated to the private industry believing that the bureaucracy reduces and they will live up to the set standards. This paper is a brief history of private prisons in the United States.

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A private prison just like one owned by the government is meant to hold convicts who have sent behind bars for various offenses. These convicts will be behind bars for a given duration depending on the sentence given to them by the jury (Eisen). While at these places they undergo corrections and at the end of their term behind bars they are to become good citizens upon release. They are meant to instill the right behaviors that and become upright, law-abiding citizens. According to Godsey (120), the only difference between public and private is that whereas the state operates the former, the latter is run for profit making by private companies on behalf of the government. Due to the rising number of incarcerated individuals, there was the need for an expansion of these facilities and hence the contracting.

Private prisons date back as far as after the American Revolution when there was a need to take care of prisoners. At the time the United States intended to take prisoners and hold them in the colonies, but the idea was opposed. Therefore Eisen asserts that there is little option other than to have the private sector assist in this sector. The first such facility was found in San Quentin, but the government later transferred its ownership fro the private sector. There as a time in the 80s when some of the services of prison facilities were contracted to the private sector with the overall management being a reserve of the state (Godsey 281). Over time due to the successes of the private sector in these services the overall control of some of the facilities was left entirely to them. They were to maintain standards that were similar to the ones that were run by the government.

The idea of privatizing some of the government services stated in several other areas. With development, the government saw it fit to test the running of some areas like medical services and food production to the private sector. With time this was extended to other fields as well such as vocational training and inmate transportation. This was to culminate with leaving the entire process under the private sector. The rising prison populations have triggered this especially since the enhanced War on Drugs (Godsey 84). This led to rising costs of holding these inmates and the overcrowding of some of the facilities. There was an urgent need for a solution to the problem this found its answer in contracting some of the facilities fully to the private sector.

These prisons have not been without a mixture of benefits and drawbacks. They have saved both state and federal systems the massive funds needed to run them. They have reduced the overcrowding associated with the few that were under the control of the respective governments. Eisen argues that since the ones running them are doing it purely for profit causing a conflict of interest as they are supposed to need reforming the inmates as the primary objective. Therefore they may not work towards effective programs aimed at reducing repeat offenders. Private prisons may refuse to accept expensive prisoners beating the sense of realizing savings for the state and federal systems.

Conclusion

Based on the critics then it is the policy to end their contracts and hence the governments have embarked on a program to stop them. By the time the current agreements end, they will not be renewed. The private prisons would have served their purpose the little time they existed.

Works Cited

Eisen, Lauren-Brooke. Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration. , 2018. Internet resource.

Godsey, Mark. Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions. University of California Press, 2017. Print.