There are many things in the marketplace that are arguably better done by for-profit companies than by government agencies, but outsourcing prisons was never a good idea.
Starting in 1984, the federal Department of Justice began using private companies to house convicted criminals in the hopes of saving money. That work has now grown into a $5 billion dollar a year industry that pits profit against inmate safety.
Today, there are over 130,000 inmates across the country supervised by private contractors. A recent memo by the Justice Department found that private prisons are not as safe or as well run as government-run prisons, and have excessively high rates of assaults and injuries to both inmates as well as prison guards.
The report cited that private prisons “simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” the memo by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates states.
The memo concludes that private prison contracts should either not be renewed when they expire, or they should be significantly reduced in scope. The DOJ has over 30,000 federal inmates under private care.
Last month, the DOJ did not renew a 1,200 bed contract and is reducing an upcoming contract award from 10,800 beds down to 3,600 beds. The memo states that the DOJ hopes to reduce the inmate population in private prisons by 50% by May 2017.
Private prisons are not a new concept. The new United States of America began contracting out prison duties to house inmates immediately after the Revolutionary War. The practice was also used after the Civil War when plantations and businesses needed to replace newly freed slaves. Convict leases, as they were called, were issued by the government to businesses to increase their labor force by using inmates. That was the real beginning of the prison industry system in America.
The “war on drugs” of the 1980s created such a burden on the prison system that privatization looked like a quick fix to deal with hundreds of thousands of new inmates convicted on drug charges.
The first contract was given in 1984 to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for the management of a prison in Tennessee. Since then, several other private companies have contracted for state and federal prisons. And several large banks, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America, now own shares in some of these private prison operators to cash in on the hugely profitable market.
But a profit at who’s expense?
Several studies have shown that there are, at best, no savings from privatizing prisons, or at worst, increased costs. And worse, they highest prison populations and rates of repeat offenses after release occur in states with the highest percentage of private prisons. Louisiana, for example, has the highest per capital prison population in the world, and the vast majority of its prisons are privately run.
Research also shows that privatization leads to mass incarceration. Well, that makes sense. Private prisons make money housing inmates, not rehabilitating them and reducing recidivism. They have a perverse incentive to maintain and grow the inmate population.
For years, prisons have been criticized as warehousing people without enough focus on helping inmates better prepare for release and reintegration back into society.
In 2004, the California prison system became the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to emphasize its work to help improve the chances of inmates rejoining society as productive citizens. With prison overcrowding, reducing repeat offenders also helped reduce state spending on new prisons.
Reducing prison costs by helping inmates get educated, learn a skill, or get off drugs is a good investment. Permanently warehousing 2.2 million people in the US is not. And allowing private companies to profit off of the misfortune of others is even worse.
The State of Illinois banned private prisons in 1990. New York did in 2000. Now the federal Department of Justice has made the move.
It’s time for all states to end the practice of providing a private market for jailers, and to take away the profit incentive for companies to promote higher rates of incarceration that has devastated communities of color across the country.
Prison destroys lives, families, and communities.
No one should profit from that.