{"id":2060,"date":"2011-05-07T10:20:05","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T14:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/private-prisons-are-a-public-safety-problem.html"},"modified":"2011-05-07T10:20:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T14:20:05","slug":"private-prisons-are-a-public-safety-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/private-prisons-are-a-public-safety-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"Private prisons are a public safety problem"},"content":{"rendered":"They don’t save money and they do increase escapes.\nJustice shouldn’t be for private profit at public expense.\n

\nW.W. wrote in The Economist 24 August 2010 about\n\nThe perverse incentives of private prisons<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nLAST week authorities\n\ncaptured two fugitives<\/a> who had been on the lam\nfor three weeks after escaping from an Arizona prison. The convicts and\nan accomplice are accused of murdering a holiday-making married couple\nand stealing their camping trailer during their run from justice. This\ngruesome incident has raised questions about the wisdom and efficacy of\nprivate prisons, such as the one from which the Arizona convicts escaped.\n<\/blockquote>\nArizona, the place \nGeorgia just copied<\/a>\n\n\nwith an anti-immigrant law that will provide\ninmates for private prisons.\n

\n

\nMother Jones reporter Suzy Khimm,\n\nwriting at Ezra Klein’s spot<\/a>, observes\nthat the portion of Arizona’s prison population now residing in privately\nowned and operated facilities is 20% and growing. “Nationally,” Ms Khimm\nnotes, “there’s been a similar surge in private prison construction\nas the inmate population has tripled between 1987 and 2007: Inmates in\nprivate prisons now account for 9% of the total US prison population,\nup from 6% in 2000.” Should we welcome this development?\n<\/blockquote>\nWhy would this ever make sense?\n
\nThe dominant argument for private prisons is that they will save taxpayers\nmoney, as for-profit owners have an incentive to seek efficiencies\nbureaucrats overseeing government institutions lack. Anyway, that’s the\ntheory.\n\nAccording to the Arizona Republic<\/a>, the reality is that private\nprisons in the Grand Canyon State so far cost more on a per-prisoner\nbasis than do public institutions. Some experts contend that firms in\nthe prison business reap profits by billing government for rather more\nthan their initial lowball estimates while scrimping in ways that may\nmake prisons less secure.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo they don’t even save money.\nBut they do make\npots of money for private prison companies\nand their investors.<\/a>\nPots of tax dollars that you and I pay for their private profit.\n

\nThe writer goes on to spell out why it would actually be worse if\nprivate prisons did spend less tax money than public prisons:\n

\nFrom an economic point of view, we should expect firms that compete\nfor and rely on government contracts, such as weapons manufacturers\nand prison operators, to maximise the spread between the amount billed\nand the actual cost of delivering the service. If contractors can get\naway with providing less value for money than would the government-run\nalternative, they will. Moreover, contractors have every incentive to make\nthemselves seem necessary. It is well-known that public prison employee\nunions constitute a powerful constituency for tough sentencing policies\nthat lead to larger prison populations requiring additional prisons and\npersonnel. The great hazard of contracting out incarceration “services”\nis that private firms may well turn out to be even more efficient and\neffective than unions in lobbying for policies that would increase\nprison populations.\n<\/blockquote>\nPolicies like the anti-immigrant law Georgia just passed.\nPolicies which would be even worse if private prison companies could accurately claim to save money.\n

\nDoes the writer’s warning sound familiar?\nA very similar warning was sounded back in 1961:\n

\nIn the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition\nof unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the\nmilitary-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of\nmisplaced power exists and will persist.\n

\nWe must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties\nor democratic processes.\n<\/blockquote>\nWe didn’t listen well enough to\n\npresident Eisenhower back then<\/a> and now we spend more than the next\nten nations combined on the military.\nDo we really want to make the same mistake with the prison-industrial complex?\nWe already imprison more people than any other country in the world\n(per capita and total).\nDo we now want to lock ourselves into that failed pattern by\nhanding it over to private profit?\n

\nAs the writer concludes:\n

\nit is hard to see the expansion of a for-profit industry with a permanent\ninterest in putting ever more people in cages as consistent with either\nefficiency or justice.\n<\/blockquote>\nJustice shouldn’t be for private profit at public expense.\n

\nWe don’t need to spend tax money on a private prison in Lowndes County\nespecially when our schools are failing.<\/a>\n

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