Originally published on the CGS blog on October 7, 2013.
The United States holds five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s inmates. This is not a reflection of crime rates so much as incarceration policy. The American criminal justice system is in dire need of reform, and first thing to go should be the private prison model. For-profit prisons are keeping incarceration levels at a record high and holding us back from creating a healthier society. As a supposed champion of global human rights, it is ill-advised for the U.S. to permit its own system to clash so strongly with social welfare.
Here’s what’s wrong with the U.S. prison industry:
1. It’s actually an industry.
Prison privatization took off in the 1980s when the War on Drugs and harsh sentencing laws dramatically increased incarceration rates and made costs problematic for governments. To deal with the costs, they began to contract the management and operation of entire prison facilities to private businesses. For-profit prison companies have since expanded; as of 2011, private companies hold roughly 130,000 prisoners and 16,000 civil immigration detainees. As states send people to prison, they fork over taxpayer money to private prison operators. In 2010, the annual revenues of the two top private prison companies alone–the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group–stood at nearly $3 billion.
2. It has a financial incentive to keep prisons full.
According to a report from In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and public contracting, about 65 percent of contracts between for-profit prisons and state or local governments include bed guarantees, or “lockup quotas.” These contractual clauses require the government to keep prisons full–usually at a 90 percent occupancy rate, though it can range from 70 to 100 percent. If judges and law enforcement don’t push enough people into for-profit prisons to meet the quota, taxpayers foot the bill for the empty cells.
“To keep their private business model successful, [for-profit prison companies] look to the children of tomorrow as the next harvest for their shareholders,” explains Justin Jones, a former head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
3. It has an incriminating record of corruption.
The Center for Media and Democracy documents substantial misconduct in CCA and GEO Group facilities, including prisoner abuse, civil rights violations, prison riots, sexual harassment, and medical neglect. One of the reasons is that cost-cutting practices of profit-motivated prisons lead to inadequate training, low pay, and high turnover of corrections staff, as well as systematic understaffing.
In 2008, it was uncovered that two Pennsylvania judges had committed hundreds of young offenders to private juvenile detention facilities in exchange for large payments from facility owners. The judges were investigated and convicted, as it is unlawful to take bribes to keep detention facilities full. It is, however, perfectly legal to lobby and finance campaigns for policies that do the same, which brings us to our next point about the prison system:
4. It has allies in government.
CCA, the leading private prison company, was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for over two decades. As ALEC member Dennis Bartlett once explained, “The organization is supported by money from the corporate sector, and, by paying to be members, corporations are allowed the opportunity to sit down at the table and discuss the issues that they have an interest in.” After ALEC meetings, legislators return to their home states with ALEC model legislation. Every year, hundreds of these model bills are introduced in statehouses across the country.
That’s whom we have to thank for mandatory minimums, truth-in-sentencing, and three-strikes legislation–just some of the policies guaranteed to put more people in prison for greater lengths of time and increase the amount of taxpayer money going to fund prisons.
5. It’s blocking important criminal justice reform.
The private prison model promotes harsh sentencing policies, which encourages symbolic or retributive punishments that lack the practical application of deterring crime or improving public safety in the long run. Prison temporarily incapacitates offenders, but can broaden their criminal network and teach them to commit crimes more successfully. When released, the stigma of the ex-con causes isolation from social groups, difficulty finding employment, and other obstacles to reintegrating into society, making criminals more likely to recidivate.
The profit motive of private prisons in particular diminishes efforts to rehabilitate offenders by changing behaviors, treating substance abuse, or teaching skills to aid reentry. According to a 2008 study of Oklahoma prisons, “private prison inmate groups had a greater hazard of recidivism than did public inmate groups.”[i] Meanwhile, our tax dollars are going to fund the costs of this useless venture rather than schools, communities, or other social controls that can help prevent crime.
Unfortunately, the social costs of mass incarceration don’t matter to CCA or GEO shareholders or Wall Street investors. As long as the private prison model exists in the U.S., we’ll be stuck in a situation of corporate power fighting human interest. This is a major threat to the credibility of the United States as a global leader in human rights.
[i] Spivak, Andrew L., and Susan F. Sharp (2008). “Inmate Recidivism as a Measure of Private Prison Performance.” Crime & Delinquency, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 482-508.
