As mentioned earlier, the term "private prison" refers to any correctional facility that is operated by a private firm and contracted by the government, rather than operated by the state or federal government alone. The first prison was privatized in 1844 in Louisiana, nine years after it opened as a public prison. The facility was used for cheap labor, and to produce clothing for enslaved people, and conditions were said to be incredibly harsh after privatization.
As the United States grew, so did its prison population, and the facilities became overcrowded and difficult to manage. With the increase of prisoners, the privatization of prisons steadily increased over the next century and a half, especially in the South. Plantations were turned into prisons, railroads built labor camps to build more tracks, and mining companies used prison labor to mine coal. According to the 13th amendment, slavery is prohibited "except as punishment for a crime," so this model proved to be incredibly lucrative. Convicts were leased by the state to the companies to use for labor. This lasted from the Reconstruction era until the early 20th century when it fell out of practice.
However, the concept of prison privatization evolved greatly in the 1980s, due to the effects of the War on Drugs. First coined by President Nixon in 1971, the War on Drugs represents a concerted effort to curtail drug use nationwide by enforcing drug laws more strictly and implementing harsher penalties for drug-related crimes. The prison population drastically increased during the 1980s, when President Reagan ramped up drug enforcement measures. This explosion in the incarcerated population, combined with Reagan's efforts to privatize many areas of the government, led to a rapid increase in the number of private prisons in America.
Several private prison firms started during this time, including the Corrections Corporation of America (now known as CoreCivic) which took over a facility in Tennessee after being given a contract by the government. Efforts by private prison firms to purchase government-run facilities increased year after year and expanded to many different areas of the US.
What Percentage of Prisons are Private?
As of 2019, roughly 16 percent of those incarcerated in federal prisons and 7 percent of those in state prisons are held in privately owned facilities. This translates to a total of about 8 percent of the prison population of the US, or a total of 116,000 people. The private prison population has increased by 32 percent since 2000, while the overall prison population has only increased by 3 percent in that same time frame. However, the private prison population has actually decreased by 16 percent since 2012.
Private Prisons Pros and Cons
For many reasons, the efficacy of private prisons has been extensively debated in the public sphere and in the government. Many are in favor of the use of private prisons as a part of the carceral system for the following reasons.
Pros:
- Private prisons are more cost-efficient than public prisons, and much of the cost is assumed by the private firms, reducing the burden on American taxpayers. They can also be built more quickly.
- They provide more jobs in the community that they are built in, both through construction and operation.
- Some reports have shown that private prisons are less dangerous. It should be noted, however, that those convicted of violent crimes are usually sent to public prisons, since private prisons can choose which offenders to take in, based on the estimated cost of security.
Additionally, many advocates for prison privatization claim that most of the opposition is purely moral, and there is no way to avoid "profiting" from incarceration, as private contractors are often used in public prisons anyway.
On the other hand, prison privatization has fierce opposition in the United States.
Cons:
- Private prisons often have much less transparency than public ones, so there are often problems with the availability of food and healthcare.
- Due to the lack of transparency, private prisons are often not required to disclose how many people they are holding in solitary confinement, and many are subject to harsher conditions than they would be otherwise.
- Additionally, private prisons are much more prone to lawsuits, further adding to the cost.
- Guards are paid less, so there is more turnover than public prison guards.
- Private prisons have been known to have major security issues.
To put the last point into perspective, a prison escape occurred at a private facility in Arizona in 2010. Three people escaped from the prison, and subsequently carjacked and murdered a couple in New Mexico. They were eventually captured, and the inmates were moved to a higher-security public prison. Many problems were discovered regarding the security at the private prison, including a faulty alarm system, broken floodlights, and a lack of identification of the prisoners. The contract with the private prison was eventually terminated.
However, the biggest argument that is laid out by opponents of private prisons is that privatization leads to more people being incarcerated and an incentive for longer sentences. Private prisons require a certain number of people to be incarcerated in them to make a profit, meaning that if cells aren't filled, then either they lose money, or the state has to pay for an empty cell. Considering the already staggering number of people who are incarcerated every year in the United States, many people give vocal opposition to any prison model that incentivizes more incarceration. Since the majority of those held in private prisons are nonviolent offenders, often convicted of drug-related crimes, many believe that in order to save costs on the carceral system, fewer people should be incarcerated for nonviolent crimes rather than outsourcing the incarceration to a private company.
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