Critical Perspective on Prison Privatization

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occupancy of these prisons falls below the set rate, the state is required to reimburse the CCA using its own tax dollars. This aforementioned practice presents a predicament for society. The notion of guaranteed occupancy rates presents a troubling conflict of interest within the justice system. In this sense the justice system, with its fundamental purpose being to lower crime rates and provide social reformation, has allowed privatization to implement a required minimum number of prisoners that the state must sentence yearly. This illustrates how the Prison Industrial Complex rears its ugly head, readily corrupting the judicial system through the promise of revenue, commoditizing its citizens’ freedom to the highest bidder.

The final trepidation with the political and judicial practices of privatized prisons is the potential for bribery. There are numerous examples of private correctional facilities illegally compensating local judges in exchange for heightening the sentences of petty crimes/offenses. The most notable example is the “Kids-For-Cash” scandal in Pennsylvania. Two corrupt judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were sentenced to 28 and 17 years in jail respectively for accepting $2.5 million dollars in bribes and kickbacks from the co-owners of several privatized prisons. In exchange, they were responsible for the criminal sentencing of 3000 juveniles for reasons as trivial as trespassing in vacant buildings or creating fake MySpace accounts (Democracy Now, 2014).

Scandals such as “Kids-For-Cash” have appalled a country founded on the principles of freedom, revealing that a colluding group of individuals within the private prison industry could marginalize citizens for private profit. Privatized prisons with their associated political lobbying, and vested judicial interests pose a slippery slope for the future of societal rights and freedoms.

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The Paradox of Cost Cutting and Safety as an Ethical Concern

The practice of cost cutting is a central tenet of privatization. Given the competitive nature of the private prison industry in the US, private correctional facilities must constantly explore options to decrease costs and bolster margins in order to be profitable. However, it is crucial to determine, “whether the improved financial stability of these converted prisons is being achieved at the expense of operating efficiency” (United States General Accounting Office, 1996). If the reduction in operating costs is resulting from compromising the essential services within the penitentiary, it indisputably results in negative externalities to the inmates, employees, and society as a whole. This trade-off between cost cutting and basic safety is central to the Prison-Industrial Complex as the improper balance of the two can prove to be fatal. Cost cutting in private prisons presents several dilemmas, focused on the jail’s ability to ensure the safety of citizens as well as the well-being of its inmates.

As the privatization of prisons has become more frequent in recent history, so too have the accusations of inhumane conditions, and increased violence within their walls. Cost cutting activities in private prisons are often focused on essential services, namely the quality and supply of nutrition, lowered standards of sanitation, and the understaffing of employees. Cost cutting behavior becomes an ethical issue when it begins to infringe upon the basic human rights which even inmates are entitled to. Matthew Zito, a former private prison guard reveals in a tell-all article that:

Conditions for prisoners were appalling and often lead to death due to a combination of poor food and water, insanitary conditions, disease, accidents, overwork, lack of medical care, and beatings at the hands of the guards. (Zito, 2003)

In the specific case of the East Mississippi Correctional Facility, prisoner suicide was not uncommon. Inmates were subjected to live in a rat-infested cesspool, lacking everyday living

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requirements, with inmates denied the access to physical and mental healthcare (Filipovic, 2013).

Cost cutting has directly resulted in the culture of fear and violence within private prisons. Privatized prisons are renowned for being understaffed, experiencing high employee turnover due to low wages. The guards at these institutions often lack proper training and are notorious for breeding the violent culture within the walls. It is commonplace for guards to use fear to motivate inmates, allowing inmates to fight one another and engaging in physical and sexual abuse of prisoners (Associated Press, 2014). A penal system that endangers the individuals within it, treating inmates as less than human, is counterintuitive to the principles of justice and reformation on which the system was founded. A historical study conducted by the United States Department of Justice exploring the violent nature of private prisons disclosed that frequency of assaults was significantly higher than in public, government-run prisons. Inmate-on-guard assault was 49% higher and inmate-on-inmate assault was 65% higher than in the public penitentiaries (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001). Private prison corporations do not have the monetary resources to operate their prisons in an ethical and safe manner. Whether it is the inhumane conditions or the culture of violence, the negative externalities accompanying private prisons cannot be neglected in the pursuit of profitability.

Revealing the dangers and concerns that lie on the inside of private prisons is only half of the problem of conducting operations at minimal cost. The laissez-faire nature of private prison security lacks the ability to safeguard citizens to the standards of public prison, putting society at an unnecessary risk. Despite prison escapes decreasing in frequency in today’s society, every escape from a private penitentiary has been the result of overstretched operational capacities. According to a U.S. Department of Justice report, the CCA frequently accepts inmates that are above the security capabilities of their facilities. To demonstrate the

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ramifications of this practice, one can examine a particularly disturbing example of a CCA prison in Youngstown, Ohio:

Under the terms of the contract, all inmates transferred to the facility were to be classified no higher than medium security. However, maximum security inmates were transferred to the facility.” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001)

This institution consequently experienced a series of assaults, escapes, and homicides. This occurrence epitomizes the lack of equilibrium between profit and safety demonstrated by private