In 1984, and
amid a wave of scandals concerning the overcrowding of prisons with
ever-increasing numbers of Drug War convictions, the United States began its
experiment with private incarceration. It began simply, with a minor contract with
the state of Tennessee to handle a prison in Hamilton County; the contract was
given to a then-unknown Corrections Corporation of America. The decision was
originally thought to be an innocuous one – after all, prisons have an
established history of using contractors to outsource basic administrative
tasks such as medical services and food preparation. From 1985 onward, private
prison corporations such as CCA and the GEO Group have expanded vigorously, entering
markets in several other states, all while championing a case of efficient
prison administration, cutting costs, and easing the budgetary burden of the
state legislatures.
This expansion has been, in large part, the
result of an extensive lobbying campaign that private corrections firms and
consultancies have employed to influence the preferences of both legislators
and the general public. From the perspective of CCA and GEO, these efforts have
been wildly successful. From 1990-2009, federal and state public prison
populations have doubled, whereas private prison operators have seen a 17-fold increase in the number of inmates given to their
charge. Advocates of privatization urge that such success is indicative of
state legislatures recognizing the apparent benefits of contracting out
corrections, but the data is inconclusive that efficiency gains made by the
public-private transition are very meaningful, if they exist at all. The
above-referenced link discusses a New York Times analysis of a University of
Utah study and subsequent state investigations that found that, in some cases,
private prisons save states only pennies per day in housing costs, and those
that do save meaningful amounts of money do so by engaging in a worrying
practice of only contracting for healthy inmates and providing fewer and
lower-quality medical and rehabilitative services.
Indeed, one cannot understand the staggering
growth of private prison contracts without acknowledging the substantial degree
of influence that private prison lobbyists exert on the legislative process.
From creating a labyrinthine series of “consultancies” and PACs to influence lawmakers at every level of
the executive and legislative process, funding the campaigns of conservative and small-government
legislators, drafting laws that limit judicial discretion and
pursue incarceration even for minor infractions, to out-and-out corrupting judges
to incentivize them to imprison for longer terms, private prison corporations
and their supporters at ALEC have created what some term a prison-industrial complex. The goal of this partnership between
those charged with maintaining the public safety and those that benefit from a
robust and thriving prison population? A seemingly endless chain of
incarceration, an increase in predictable profits, and the wearing down of
legal protections that frustrate their goals.
Needless to say, a prison-industrial
complex – even if unintentionally – threatens the basic protections of due
process and fairness of trial upon which the entire criminal justice system
relies. The intersection of money and politics always creates, as it should, a
suspicion of impropriety – of those using nonpublic back channels and significant
resources to secure legislative concessions that would never have been allowed
if the subject of public spectacle. Private corrections is now a multi-billion
dollar industry, and some of that
money finds its way back into the hands of those charged with maintaining the
integrity of the system upon which it depends. The perverse incentives for a
legislator to draft harsher sentencing guidelines, for a prosecutor to push for
less leniency, and for judges to give it are too apparent to ignore. Even with
regulatory safeguards, the economic and financial realities of private prisons
will corrupt.
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