The United States holds a mere 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but with around 2.2 million prisoners according to a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, it holds almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. On Aug. 18, 2016, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the Justice Department would end its use of private prisons. According to Yates, “They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report… they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”
Though this is a welcome policy shift in reducing the vast prison population of the United States, the Justice Department’s decision to end its usage of private prisons does not extend to the state level — according to the Washington Post, this policy would only affect 22,000 inmates in the federal system. For-profit prisons carry grave ramifications, and states should follow the example set by the federal government in ending their reliance on private prisons.
An Aug. 2016 Federal Bureau of Prisons report found contracted prisons had “more frequent incidents per capita of contraband finds, assaults, uses of force, guilty findings on inmate discipline charges, and selected categories of grievances,” with three-quarters of contract prisons having more safety- and security-related issues. In addition, private prisons confiscated up to eight times more contraband compared to BOP prisons, a fact which the Justice Department determined to be “…especially harmful, among other reasons, because they can allow inmates to continue to operate criminal enterprises during incarceration.” The BOP’s report found that private prisons had a 28 percent higher average of inmate assaults, more than twice as many staff assaults and 17 percent more use-of-force incidents.
Private prisons are benefited by a high rate of recidivism. The United States has an exceptionally high rate of recidivism among the prison population, with almost two-thirds of released prisoners and three-fourths of released prisoners being rearrested three or five years after their release. Research from Anita Mukherjee of the University of Wisconsin, School of Business found no reduction in recidivism rates when using private prisons, indicating that the benefits touted by private prisons, such as higher efficiency and better results is tenuous at best.
The need for inmates in private prisons formed the driving force behind one of the most publicized scandals in the American judicial system, known as the “kids for cash” scandal. The New York Times reported that former judges Mark Ciaverella and Michael Conahan were convicted and sentenced to jail for 28 and 17.5 years, respectively, after accepting money from Robert Mericle to impose harsh sentences against juveniles in order to send them to Mericle’s facilities. Publicized in the full-length documentary “Kids for Cash,” the scandal is only one of a few incidences displaying the negative effects arising from reliance on privatized prisons.
The Corrections Corporation of America, MTC Management & Training Corporation and the GEO Group — three of America’s largest private prison suppliers and operators — have spent millions to influence legislators to pass “tough-on-crime” legislation in an effort to drive up their own prison populations for the sake of profit. A 2010 NPR report found the American Legislative Exchange Council — which included these three corporations — lobbied state legislators in Arizona to pass the controversial Arizona State Bill 1070, a bill which enacted some of the strictest immigration laws in the country and provided great benefit to the private prison industry, before much of its provisions were struck down in Arizona v. United States.
Private prisons are less safe, more likely to suffer from security incidents and encourage (and lobby) for harsher policies to put more and more Americans in jail for the name of profit. Although an argument to privatize certain industries can be made, there are certain facets of society which cannot afford to undergo privatization due to the demonstrated possibility of corruption, of which one is the prison system of America. The federal government’s decision to drop private prisons is the right one. It’s time for the states to follow the U.S. government in rejecting a decades-long practice which has failed to serve the American public properly.
William Wong is a Viewpoint writer.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | 6 days agoOur independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | April 17, 2024In addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
EDITORIAL: Pedestrian safety is an institutional imperative
By Editorial Board | April 15, 2024Amid a national crisis of pedestrian safety, Charlottesville and the University are also struggling to properly maintain pedestrian safety.
