Privatization Of Prisons

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The states and federal government are struggling to budget all of their money so they are looking to save money by privatizing the prisons. By privatizing the prisons the government will be saving money by not having to take care of all the inmates in the prison. But the responsibility of taking care of the inmates would be transferred from the government to the companies that are running the private prisons. This looks like a simple way of cutting costs but at what expense. “Accountability is diluted to the vanishing point when the government delegates the running of prisons to for-profit companies.(Turck, 2016)” The privatization of prisons in America has become a pretty big topic of discussion. The main reason for the push for privatization …show more content…
The goal of privatized prisons are to make money by spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prison its self. Unlike our criminal justice system that wants to see change in inmates so they will not have to come back to prison and can be a productive member of society. But for profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group incarceration is a $70 billion gold mine (Whitehead, 2012). Corrections Corp of America made a proposal to prison officials in 48 states to buy and manage public prisons at a low cost but they want at least 1,000 beds and have the state agree to maintaining a 90 percent occupancy rate for at least 20 years (Whitehead, 2012). The first problem is that they want to pack more people into a smaller space to save money. Secondly, to maintain a 90 percent occupancy rate for at least 20 years means that private prisons are pushing for states to create stricter laws to get more people locked up in prison. A couple of laws aimed at increasing the prison population three-strike laws that mandates sentences of 25 years to life for multiple felony convictions and “truth-in-sentencing” legislation thats mandates that those sentenced to prison serve most or all of their time (Whitehead, …show more content…
We already got a preview of the corruption from the scandal “kids for cash” in 2009, The Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation paid two judges to jail youth and send them to their private prison (Whitehead, 2012). That ruined more than 5,000 kids lives. Now just imagine if our prisons system was privatized would you trust our justice system that gets paid for people that go to jail? I know I sure wouldn’t and that is why I think we should not privatize our

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