With more than one million people behind bars, the United States imprisons a larger share of its population than any other industrialized nation. This has precipitated a serious overcrowding problem with federal and state prisons currently operating well beyond capacity. Conventional efforts appear unable to cope with the increasing shortage of beds or with inadequate rehabilitation services. A bold solution is required; increasingly it is being seen to reside in the private sector. This timely volume explores the issues of private versus public financing, construction, and management of medium-and high-security prisons. Private prisons are not a new concept in the United States. They have existed in several forms since the eighteenth century. The opening chapters evaluate historical cases of prisons for profit, examining the concerns of labor, abuses of inmates, and the source and resolution of disputes between private and public sectors. These chapters argue that the experience gained through privatization does not justify current opposition from civil libertarians or labor unions. Chapters dealing with the modern contracting out of complete management and limited services document the growing trend toward privatization and instances of public/private partnership in prison industries. The assembled evidence indicates clearly that privately run prisons have shown significant cost savings and good quality of provision for prisoners while still being profitable. However, the authors caution that these promising results must be reinforced by public safeguards in the contracting stage and monitoring to assure good service and security. With the American prison system in disarray, the public interest demands that government look beyond the public or private identity of those who wish to provide correctional services and focus instead on who can provide the best services at a given cost. It is essential to state that correctional services should attain several objectives and not merely cost minimization. The analysis and recommendations presented here will aid in the task. "Privatizing Correctional Institutions "will be of interest to law-enforcement officials, public policy analysts, penologists, and criminologists.

This timely volume explores the issues of private versus public financing, construction, and management of medium-and high-security

When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration—to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America. From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

This report discusses the findings of a nationwide study on the use of private prisons in the United States. The number of these prisons grew enormously between 1987 and 1998, with proponents suggesting that allowing facilities to be operated by the private sector could result in cost reductions of 20%. The study examined the historical factors that gave rise to the higher incarceration rates, fueling the privatization movement, and the role played by the private sector in the prison system. It outlines the arguments, both in support of and opposition to, privatized prisons, reviews current literature on the subject, and examines issues that will have an impact on future privatizations. The report concludes that, rather than the projected 20-percent savings, the average saving from privatization was only about 1 percent, and most of that was achieved through lower labor costs. Nevertheless, there were indications that the mere prospect of privatization had a positive effect on prison administration, making it more responsive to reform.

After an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice worldwide, the authors go on to describe in depth the first 18 months in the life of Wolds Remand Prison, the first private prison in Britain.

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.

An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.