Download or read book Inside Private Prisons written by Lauren-Brooke Eisen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Prison Profiteers written by Tara Herivel and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “No country in history has ever handed over so many inmates to private corporations. This book looks at the consequences” (Eric Schlosser, bestselling author of Fast Food Nation). In Prison Profiteers, coeditors Tara Herivel and Paul Wright “follow the money to an astonishing constellation of prison administrators and politicians working in collusion with private parties to maximize profits” (Publishers Weekly). From investment banks, guard unions, and the makers of Taser stun guns to health care providers, telephone companies, and the US military (which relies heavily on prison labor), this network of perversely motivated interests has turned the imprisonment of 1 out of every 135 Americans into a lucrative business. Called “an essential read for anyone who wants to understand what’s gone wrong with criminal justice in the United States” by ACLU National Prison Project director Elizabeth Alexander, this incisive and deftly researched volume shows how billions of tax dollars designated for the public good end up lining the pockets of those private enterprises dedicated to keeping prisons packed. “An important analysis of a troubling social trend” that is sure to inform and outrage any concerned citizen, Prison Profiteers reframes the conversation by exposing those who stand to profit from the imprisonment of millions of Americans (Booklist). “Indispensable . . . An easy and accessible read—and a necessary one.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune “This is lucid, eye-opening reading for anyone interested in American justice.” —Publishers Weekly “Impressive . . . A thoughtful, comprehensive and accessible analysis of the money trail behind the prison-industrial-complex.” —The Black Commentator
Download or read book American Prison written by Shane Bauer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book America s Prisons written by Curtis Blakely and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader introduces the student to prison management. Particular interest is given the increased role of profit in the application of punishment. Profit and prison privatization are viewed within their larger context. As such, public and private prison operations are compared. Part of this comparison takes place through situating each sector upon an ideological continuum. This placement helps indicate the direction being taken by the contemporary prison. It further reveals that tomorrow's prisons may be less driven by traditional objectives and more driven by the notions of profit and efficiency.
Download or read book Privatizing Correctional Institutions written by Gary W. Bowman and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Prison Inc written by K.C. Carceral and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a first-hand account of life behind bars in a controversial new type of prison facility: the private prison. Privatisation is seen as a necessary and cost-saving measure, but not much is known about how these facilities are run, so this text provides a look inside a private prison by an inmate.
Download or read book Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons written by James Austin and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Prisons for Profit written by John D. Donahue and published by Economic Policy Inst. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines several aspects of the private prison debate: (1) How much scope is there for improving the technical and economic efficiency of incarceration through contracting-out to private prison entrepreneurs? (2) Will a fully developed corrections industry be sufficiently competitive to ensure that any efficiency gains are passed on to the taxpayers? and (3) Would contracting-out for prison management create the opportunity for private firms to exercise influence, illegitimately and inefficiently, over public decisions about corrections? This assessment yields the following major conclusions: (1) neither theory nor the limited data that exist suggest that the task of incarceration is very well suited to the advantages offered by profit-seeking organizations--chiefly, cost consciousness and an aptitude for innovation; (2) there are serious structural barriers to genuine competition for prison management contracts; (3) in general, the enterprise of incarcerating people has relatively little scope for technical progress in trimming costs; (4) even if private-prison corporations succeed in cutting costs, there is unlikely to be sufficient competition in any given community to ensure that the savings result in diminished government budgets for corrections; (5) there is a substantial likelihood that government contracts with prison corporations will fully protect neither the interests of the public nor the prison inmates; (6) although private prisons might not be as unaccountable or inhumane as some critics have predicted, neither do they offer anywhere near the advantages promoted by their advocates and agents; (7) incarceration today remains a symbolically potent public function; and (8) dismissing widespread uneasiness among policymakers about introducing profits into punishment and corrections requires far more compelling practical advantages than private prisons are likely to deliver. Six pages of notes are included at the end of the paper. (NLL)
Download or read book Private Prisons written by Charles H. Logan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1990 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers information on private prisons, provided by Charles H. Logan. Includes statistics on prison performance measures and public versus private prison quality, a bibliography on private prisons, and studies and reports on topics such as privatizing the prison system, increasing the privatization of prisons, and a comparison of the quality of confinement in public and private prisons.
Download or read book Private Prisons in America written by Michael A. Hallett and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the auspices of a governmentally sanctioned "war on drugs," incarceration rates in the United States have risen dramatically since 1980. Increasingly, correctional administrators at all levels are turning to private, for-profit corporations to manage the swelling inmate population. Policy discussions of this trend toward prison privatization tend to focus on cost-effectiveness, contract monitoring, and enforcement, but in his Private Prisons in America, Michael A. Hallett reveals that these issues are only part of the story. Demonstrating that imprisonment serves numerous agendas other than "crime control," Hallett's analysis suggests that private prisons are best understood not as the product of increasing crime rates, but instead as the latest chapter in a troubling history of discrimination aimed primarily at African American men.
Download or read book For Profit Prisons written by Duchess Harris and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For-Profit Prisons takes a close look at the side of the US prison system that relies on for-profit companies. It explores the history behind for-profit prisons in the United States as well as varying opinions about the ethics of for-profit prisons. Features include a glossary, further readings, websites, source notes, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.
Download or read book Punishment for Sale written by Donna Selman and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-16 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Punishment for Sale is the definitive modern history of private prisons, told through social, economic and political frames. The authors explore the origin of the ideas of modern privatization, the establishment of private prisons, and the efforts to keep expanding in the face of problems and bad publicity. The book provides a balanced telling of the story of private prisons and the resistance they engendered within the context of criminology, and it is intended for supplemental use in undergraduate and graduate courses in criminology, social problems, and race & ethnicity.
Download or read book Prison Privatization written by Byron Eugene Price and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Competition for Prisons written by Julian Le Vay and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Punishment for Profit written by David Shichor and published by SAGE Publications, Incorporated. This book was released on 1995-01-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shichor (criminal justice, California State U., San Bernardino) offers a review of the literature on privatization of prisons, of interest to researchers, policymakers, correctional officers, and advanced students. He raises fundamental questions about the functions of state and government, the limits of civil liberties, and the relevance of a util.
Download or read book Captive Market written by Anna Gunderson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel explanation for state prison privatization: that they do so to limit legal and political accountability for inmate lawsuits. One of the most controversial developments in the American criminal justice in the last few decades has been the development of the modern private prison industry. While there are many explanations proffered for the adoption of this policy--including partisanship, economic stress, unionization, and lobbying efforts by private prison firms--none fully explain why states privatize their prisons. In Captive Market, Anna Gunderson proposes a novel explanation for why states adopt this policy. She shows that states privatize prisons to limit legal and political accountability for inmate lawsuits, an unintended consequence of the legal rights revolution for prisoners. Evidence from an original dataset and interviews with private prison companies, government officials, and advocacy groups suggest that growing prisoner lawsuits are a significant driver of prison privatization in the United States. With over 160,000 inmates currently held in private facilities across the country, it is vital to understand the causes of this rise and the nuances of private prison policy, one with significant consequences for the American criminal legal system. An eye-opening account of an industry that many are aware of but few know much about, this book will reshape our understanding of the fundamental nature of the American carceral state.
Download or read book Profit and Punishment written by Tony Messenger and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. “Intimate, raw, and utterly scathing” — Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water “Crucial evidence that the justice system is broken and has to be fixed. Please read this book.” —James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author As a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger has spent years in county and municipal courthouses documenting how poor Americans are convicted of minor crimes and then saddled with exorbitant fines and fees. If they are unable to pay, they are often sent to prison, where they are then charged a pay-to-stay bill, in a cycle that soon creates a mountain of debt that can take years to pay off. These insidious penalties are used to raise money for broken local and state budgets, often overseen by for-profit companies, and it is one of the central issues of the criminal justice reform movement. In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Messenger has written a call to arms, shining a light on a two-tiered system invisible to most Americans. He introduces readers to three single mothers caught up in this system: living in poverty in Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, whose lives are upended when minor offenses become monumental financial and personal catastrophes. As these women struggle to clear their debt and move on with their lives, readers meet the dogged civil rights advocates and lawmakers fighting by their side to create a more equitable and fair court of justice. In this remarkable feat of reporting, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans.
