Number of state and federal prisoners, in 2010, in government-run prisons: 1,389,909
Number of state and federal prisoners, in 2010, in private prisons: 119,566
The steepest rise in inmates as a percentage of population was between 1980 and 2000, as a consequence of mandatory-minimum and war-on-drugs laws passed in the 1970’s and 1980’s. These developments occurred before private prisons housed even the small percentage of inmates that they do today.
Private prison lobbying may be impeding roll-back of harsh sentencing laws. It was not a significant factor in adopting them.
The state wouldn’t spend any money to build and maintain them. Federal prisons are paid for by the Federal government.
But if you look at where prisons (in general) are located, they tend to be in depressed areas. That’s not just because you want prisons away from rich people: a prison brings with it many hundreds of jobs, which probably pay really well compared to working retail or similar employment. Absolutely, no question, prisons can be an economic benefit to its area.
People seem to forget that the penal system in the US goes in cycles. It alternates between being “softer” on criminals and then increasing punishments when there’s a public perception of too much crime. We are simply living in one of the “harder on crime” periods.
What will end this won’t be a realization that human rights are being violated, but the cold economic calculations which will make it clear that states and the federal government simply can’t afford to maintain high levels of elderly felons in their systems. After all, prisoners in the US legally must have access to health care and the costs of that care are going to continue to increase even as state budgets become more constrained.
In the state where I live, the lowest level of felons (Class D) are now supposed to be no longer housed in state prison, but in county-level jails. The state is doing this in part to satisfy federal court rulings about prison overcrowding, but also in part to shift the responsibility for these offenders health care off to the local levels.
Private prisons aren’t going to solve this problem as they have the same constraints that public facilities do, plus they are more vulnerable to civil litigation if they fail to adequately house and care for prisoners.
A cite has already been posted that debunks your assertion. While all things are cyclical, the prison population has not seen an increase this large, or sustained, going back to 1925.
There has been a massive expansion of incarcerating illegal immigrants that I don’t think you are factoring in here. Not sure if it’s discussed in the article I posted above or another I read this morning. I will double check when I am not posting from my phone.
Yeah, but what do immigration detention centers have to do with the prison population? When the OP talks about the prison population, I’m pretty sure that’s a measure of people who have been convicted of crimes. I don’t think that would include people who are detained for immigration violations… so I don’ think that quote/cite is actually on the same topic as the rest of this thread.
I disagree. Mandatory sentencing laws created the market; CCA was created to exploit it. And based on what I know about Tom Beasley and T. Don Hutto, their first priority was to exploit the system. Their second priority was to exploit the system even more. Oh, and Tom Beasley had strong political connections (anyone remember Lamar Alexander? Don Sundquist? Ed Blank? Hubert McCullough?).
Want proof that CCA intended to make obscene profits and do little else? [Here’s some:
T. Don Hutto, another founder of CCA, has a history that suggests he is far more interested in exploiting prisoners, and unlawfully punishing them, than anything else (from the same citeas above):
I admit I’m having a hard time finding clear evidence online of efforts by all these people to lobby for harsher sentences, but their connections and relations to others involved in sentencing efforts is clear and unambiguous.
Torture, summary executions and corporal punishments have been removed from the US penal system as legal forms of punishment. That alone was a huge step forward as those treatments are still common in many nations around the world.
This explains the flow of prisoners through the system
Most crimes are unsolved is the salient point which can be taken away from this. While prisons are now full, imagine how many more would have to be built if most offenders were incarcerated.
Here’s a criminology study that shows prison got far more crowded when people got tired of recidivism and politicians started taking “get tough” attitudes.
Here’s a .pdf which overs the high costs of incarceration
While there has been an increase in incarceration, the health and assorted costs of keeping people incarcerated are growing, not shrinking, making it a less practical solution.
Because the crime rate was reduced by more incarceration and longer sentences. A significant portion of the persons prone to commit crimes cannot because they’re locked up.
Too high a price to pay for a low crime rate, IMO, but we are getting what we pay for.
I suppose, but the title of the thread is Prison-Industrial Complex of which detention centres certainly are part of. It’s a big part of their revenue.
While that may seem logical it’s not factual. Crime rates have gone down and have been historically lower in many countries that don’t have the crazy incarceration rates of the USA.
So, the war on drugs seems to have created an environment where the private prison industry could emerge to serve an untapped market. Is there any change on the horizon with regard to the war on drugs, such as recent relaxing of marijuana laws in some states, that may have an impact on our incareration rates?
It seems to me privatly run prisons will not benefit from rehabilitating prisoners. You want repeat customers, after all. If you can set up conditions that increase the recidivism rate, you will likly profit from it.
Just speculating, but I would not be surprised to hear that reahbilitation is not the first priority in this system.
