The purpose of The History and Politics of Private Prisons in America is to examine the history of the movement, establish how politics affects it, and provide practitioners, politicians, academics, and students with alternative thinking about the value of privatizing prison management. In the first two chapters, author Martin P. Sellers provides a brief history of incarceration and surveys the current privatization movement in the United States, identifying its roots in economics, politics, and administration. Chapter 3 identifies the many political, economic, social, and administrative arguments against privatization and attempts to explain how these arguments developed. In chapter 4, Sellers analyzes three private prisons, comparing them to three public prisons, to determine which group is more efficient at providing prison services, particularly health and education services.

A quarter of a century has passed since the Thatcher government launched one of its most controversial reforms: privately run prisons. This book offers an assessment of the successes and failures of that initiative, comparing public and private prisons, analyzing the possible and claimed benefits of competition, and looking closely at how well the government has managed the unusual quasi-market that the privatization push created. Drawing on first-person interviews with key players and his own experience working in prison finance, Julian Le Vay presents the most valuable look yet at the results of prison privatization for government, citizens, and prisoners.

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.

Prison privatization has been more common in the last 20 years. In 1980s, under the perception of "nothing works" of rehabilitation, a severe problems occurred in corrections because of get-tough policies. That is, prison crowding. To solve prison overcrowding quickly, private prisons have emerged. Nowadays, the number of inmates confined in privately operated correctional facilities and the number of privately operated facilities has increased. The arguments over private prisons are divided. Some agree and others disagree with prison privatization. Advocates say many merits, meanwhile others doubt such merits. Therefore, this study evaluates whether governments should increase their use of private prisons using three criteria: Costs, services, and recidivism rates. This study has the limitation of available research. Because present prison privatization has only a short history, the number and areas of available research is limited. The second limitation is observation term. This study points out that it is necessary to observe private prisons for a long span. Therefore, this study recommends policy-makers establish the system to evaluate cost-effectiveness. This study also recommends that policy-makers consider recidivism rates as a criterion of effectiveness in order to keep the quality of services in private prisons. This study also recommends researchers conduct research in order to help policy-makers to do that. Now, there is no significant difference in recidivism rates between private and public prisons with few exceptions. Private prisons are neither better nor worse than public prisons. Therefore, this study concludes that governments should not increase their use of private prisons so immediately.

American prisons and jails are overflowing with inmates. To relieve the pressure, courts have imposed fines on overcrowded facilities and fiscally strapped governments have been forced to release numerous prisoners prematurely. In this study, noted criminologist Charles Logan makes the case for commercial operation of prisons and jails as an alternative to the government's monopoly. On philosophical, economic, legal, and practical grounds, Logan argues a compelling case for the private and commercial operation of prisons. He critically examines all objections raised by opponents, and concludes that while private prisons face many potential problems, they do so primarily because they are prisons, not because they are private. Historically, the record of private ownership and operation of corrections facilities has been bleak--ridden with political corruption, physical abuse of prisoners, and the single-minded pursuit of profits. This study demonstrates that this need not be the case. Critiquing the tendency to contrast private prisons with a hypothetical ideal, Logan instead compares them with existing public institutions, arguing that the potential problems attributed to private prisons are experienced by their public counterparts. The work examines ten sets of issues, including the propriety, cost, security, and quantity of prisons, to set out a strong case for the viability of proprietary prisons.