Download or read book Private Prisons and Public Accountability written by Richard Harding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private prisons have become an integral part of the penal system in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. There already are over 100 such prisons in these countries, and with the number of prisoners continuing to increase rapidly, the trend toward privatization seems irreversible. In this context, Richard Harding addresses the following issues: the contributions, positive or negative, that private prisons make to providing custody for offenders; whether or not private prisons stimulate improvement within the public prison system; and the difficulties with the regulation and accountability of private prisons.This book sets out to explore the contribution of private prisons to custodial practices, standards, and objectives. Many experts believe that, properly regulated and fully accountable, private prisons could lead to improvement within the public prison system, which has long been degenerate and demoralized. Harding sees the total prison system as a single entity, with two components: public and private. He relies upon extensive fieldwork and draws upon published literature as well as in-house documentation, discussions with public and private authorities, and a range of government documents.Key issues covered in Private Prisons and Public Accountability are: overcrowding, program delivery, prisoners' rights, quality of staff, and financial control. This volume will be a significant addition to the criminal justice literature, but it will also appeal to sociologists, policymakers, and scholars interested in the privatization of various institutions in our society.
Download or read book Measuring Prison Performance written by Gerald G. Gaes and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2004 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaes and his distinguished co-authors offer a comprehensive analysis of public vs. private management of prisons, a competition that originated with the introduction of private facilities into the criminal justice system in the 1980s. The authors measure prison performance with the technique of multi-level modeling for simultaneous measurement of the individual and the institution. Their work points the way to improved penal policy and accountability, and will be a valuable resource for public administrators, policy analysts, corrections personnel and criminologists. Visit our website for sample chapters!
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 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 Privatizing Correctional Institutions written by Gary W. Bowman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-14 with total page 146 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 The History and Politics of Private Prisons written by Martin P. Sellers and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Private Prisons and Public Accountability written by University of Sydney. Institute of Criminology. Public Seminar and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Information Brief Comparing Costs of Public and Private Prisons written by Florida. Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Tale of Two Systems written by Alexander Volokh and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private prisons are on the rise. Privately operated juvenile facilities -- mostly community-based group homes or halfway houses -- and federal adult halfway houses have been common in the United States since the 1960s. In 1979, private firms began contracting with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain illegal immigrants pending hearings or deportation. Private, large-scale investment in the construction and management of conventional prisons and jails dates from the mid-1980s. Prison privatization has been driven not only by the growing support among lawmakers and the public for private provision of traditional government services, but also by exploding prison populations resulting from stricter drug and immigration laws and changes in sentencing procedures. By the end of 2000, there were 87,369 state and federal prisoners in private detention facilities in the United States -- 6.3% of all state and federal prisoners, and 22.7% more than in 1999. Of these, 15,524 were federal prisoners (10.7% of all federal prisoners) and 71,845 were state prisoners (5.8% of all state prisoners). The use of private facilities is concentrated in the South and the West. Texas and Oklahoma have the greatest numbers of inmates in private facilities; only six states -- Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, which combined account for approximately one-fifth of all state inmates -- house over 20% of their prison population in private facilities. Privatization has been less widespread in local jails than in state prisons -- only about 2% of jail beds are private -- but jail privatization has been called the “next frontier” of privatization. Comparative studies on the cost and quality of private and public prisons give reason to be cautiously pleased with private prison performance. The empirical evidence is consistent with economic theory, which predicts that with privatization, costs will fall and quality (however defined) may rise. The idealist could ascribe the satisfactory performance of private prisons to the power of market incentives; the cynic could point out that given public prisons' bleak history and patchy present, private prisons perform satisfactorily compared to a rather low baseline. Each would be right. Public prisons are not the most accountable of government systems; in fact, under certain circumstances, private prisons may be more accountable. In the qualified immunity context, recent Supreme Court decisions such as Richardson v. McKnight and Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko have held private prisons to at least as high a standard of constitutional protection as public prisons. Judges' and juries' greater skepticism of private agencies than of government may also make private prisons more accountable; moreover, government oversight of private prisons may be less deferential than government oversight of its own operations. In addition, private prisons have substantially greater market accountability because they are concerned with winning new contracts and renewing old ones, and with avoiding both adverse publicity and drops in stock price. The continued promise of private prisons requires three concurrent innovations. First, evaluators must develop a rich set of performance measures, and prison data must be gathered and publicized. Second, the government must implement performance-based contracts that tie compensation to actual results. Finally, the government should maximize the efficiency gains from privatization and minimize opportunities for capture by institutionalizing competition between public correctional departments and private prison firms and making contract monitoring independent of both the public and the private sectors.
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 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 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 Privatizing Prisons written by Professor Adrian L James, Professor and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1997-07-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes public, for the first time, a full account of the development of the privatization of prisons, centred on the only full-scale empirical study yet to have been undertaken in Britain. After providing an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and Australia, the authors go on to describe the first two years in the life of Wolds Remand Prison - the first private prison in Britain. They look at the daily life for remand prisoners, assess the duties and morale of staff and compare the workings of Wolds to a new local prison in the public sector. The authors conclude by discussing some of the practical and theoretical issues to have emerged from contracting out, ethical issues surrounding the whole privatization debate and implications for the future of the prison system and penal policy.
Download or read book Private Prisons written by John J. DiIulio and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Privatizing Prisons written by Adrian James and published by SAGE Publications Limited. This book was released on 1997-08-11 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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 639 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 Private Security Public Order written by Simon Chesterman and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private actors are increasingly taking on roles traditionally arrogated to the state. Both in the industrialized North and the developing South, functions essential to external and internal security and to the satisfaction of basic human needs are routinely contracted out to non-state agents. In the area of privatization of security functions, attention by academics and policy makers tends to focus on the activities of private military and security companies, especially in the context of armed conflicts, and their impact on human rights and post-conflict stability and reconstruction. The first edited volume emerging from New York University School of Law's Institute for International Justice project on private military and security companies, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies broadened this debate to situate the private military phenomenon in the context of moves towards the regulation of activities through market and non-market mechanisms. Where that first volume looked at the emerging market for use of force, this second volume looks at the transformations in the nature of state authority. Drawing on insights from work on privatization, regulation, and accountability in the emerging field of global administrative law, the book examines private military and security companies through the wider lens of private actors performing public functions. In the past two decades, the responsibilities delegated to such actors - especially but not only in the United States - have grown exponentially. The central question of this volume is whether there should be any limits on government capacity to outsource traditionally "public" functions. Can and should a government put out to private tender the fulfilment of military, intelligence, and prison services? Can and should it transfer control of utilities essential to life, such as the supply of water? This discussion incorporates numerous perspectives on regulatory and governance issues in the private provision of public functions, but focuses primarily on private actors offering services that impact the fundamental rights of the affected population.
