This book examines the current state of both the theory and practice of prison privatization in the United States in the 21st century, providing a balanced compendium of research that allows readers to draw their own conclusions about this controversial subject. This three-volume set brings together noted scholars and experts in the field to provide a comprehensive treatment of the subject of privatized prisons in the United States. It is a definitive work on the topic that synthesizes current thought on both the theory and practice of prison privatization. Volume I provides a broad-brush overview of private prisons that discusses the history of prison privatization and examines the expansion of the private prison industry and the growth of inmate populations in the United States. Volume II focuses on the corrections industry itself, providing essays that explore the business models, profit motivations, economic factors, and operations of the corporations that offer corrections services, while Volume III explores the political and social environment of prison privatization. Academics, practitioners, policy makers, and advocates for and against private prisons will find this work useful and enlightening, while general readers can use the unbiased information to draw their own conclusions in respect to the merits of prison privatization.

Gaes and his distinguished co-authors offer a comprehensive analysis of public vs. private management of prisons, a competition that originated with the introduction of private facilities into the criminal justice system in the 1980s. The authors measure prison performance with the technique of multi-level modeling for simultaneous measurement of the individual and the institution. Their work points the way to improved penal policy and accountability, and will be a valuable resource for public administrators, policy analysts, corrections personnel and criminologists. Visit our website for sample chapters!

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world—about 1 in 100 adults, or more than 2 million people—while national spending on prisons has catapulted 400 percent. Given the vast racial disparities in incarceration, the prison system also reinforces race and class divisions. How and why did we become the world’s leading jailer? And what can we, as a society, do about it? Reframing the story of mass incarceration, Heather Schoenfeld illustrates how the unfinished task of full equality for African Americans led to a series of policy choices that expanded the government’s power to punish, even as they were designed to protect individuals from arbitrary state violence. Examining civil rights protests, prison condition lawsuits, sentencing reforms, the War on Drugs, and the rise of conservative Tea Party politics, Schoenfeld explains why politicians veered from skepticism of prisons to an embrace of incarceration as the appropriate response to crime. To reduce the number of people behind bars, Schoenfeld argues that we must transform the political incentives for imprisonment and develop a new ideological basis for punishment.

The U.S. corrections system (CS) has gone through an unprecedented expansion during the last few decades. At the end of 2008, 2.3 million adults were in state, local, or fed. custody, with another 5.1 million on probation or parole. Of that total, 9% were in fed. custody. Globally, the U.S. has 5% of the world¿s population but 25% of its prisoners. Contents of this report: (1) CS Sector; (2) U.S. CS; (3) Incarceration Trends; (4) Prison Employment: Unions; (5) Prison Construction; Rural Prisons; Cost and Overcrowding; Financing; (6) Private Sector: Private Prison Co.; The Private Prison Industry: Corrections Corp. of America; Geo Group; Cornell Co.; Other Private Firms; Phone Service; (7) Prisons as Drivers of Econ. Development. Illus.