The Privatization of Prisons and Penal Policy - Essay Example

The Privatization of Prisons: The extent to which prison privatization has reduced the cost and increased the effectiveness of incarceration  Introduction The so called emergence of the moves towards privatization of prisons is not representative of the first experience of private involvement in imprisonment. The first private prisons were recorded to be in medieval England wherein prisons are operated to produce a profit. Prisons were owned by the Crown but were sublet to gaolers who were what we would now term "small businessmen". It is through a fee system that income was generated wherein prisoners are required to pay an admission fee and a release fee. Throughout the period that prisoners stayed there, they are charged for their food, water, bedding and other daily necessities based on a scale in accordance with their social standing which was used instead of their financial capacity (Faucult 1997, p 97). A variety of forms of this system which can be seen as an early and bad example of the user pays principle continued in England until the 1780s, when prisoners began to be sent to Australia (Faucult 1997, p. 98). The financial exploitation of prisoners was regular in France and the United States (US) all through much of the nineteenth century, but was significantly extended in the southern states of the US in response to the severe labor scarcity following the Civil War. In the US, convicts were either forced to work under state supervision on railroad construction, mining, lumbering and other areas where free labor was in short supply, or were subleased by the state to entrepreneurs who used them, fundamentally as slaves, on cotton plantations and in factories. Next to the United States is Australia when it comes to the participation to the era of privatization. The National Party government of Queensland decided to start the operation of the new prison located at Borallon, near Brisbane, controlled by a private company under a management contract. The current Labor government confirmed its decision immediately after coming to power and ever since placed its new remand and reception centre at Wacol, a Brisbane suburb, under private management. New South Wales is the only other Australian State to date to adopt prison privatization. The NSW Liberal Party Government has entered into contract with a private firm for the design, construction and management of a maximum security prison at Junee, which is scheduled to become operational in March 1993 (Logan 1997, p. 112). A private prison is an institution that is managed by a nongovernment entity on behalf of the state. Logan (1997, p. 113) defined it as a place of confinement management by a private company under a contract to a government. If not in a private prison, the inmates are incarcerated in the more orthodox government managed prisons. A United Kingdom chief inspector has once cleared that a private prison is not owned by the private sector, rather, it is a prison run on contract by a private company. Whether the private company manages a state-owned prison or also owns the physical structure itself, the observation above still remains true. The definitions above give two important points, one, the authority to hold and deal with prisoners comes from public law and not private arrangement. In addition to that, private prisons are considered to be an important part of the jurisdiction’s prison system. The first point is important to be emphasized so that one can be able to compare and contrast contemporary privatization with the statutorily unregulated deals which are related to leasing of convict labor that first came up in the United States in the early part of the 19th century (Smith 1993, p. 67). The next point that needs to be given attention is the fact that the state, when outsourcing or delegating service delivery, has not in theory gave up any component of its responsibility for system objectives, standards, legality, or equity. The notion of purchase-provider relationship in the jargon of organizational theory is also imposed and that the public sector agency purchasing services and the private sector that provides for them. This term however has the tendency to be difficult to understand since the state as a purchaser cannot and does by choosing to discharge this role in that way, avoid ultimate political, moral, and legal responsibility for what the provider does (Lipton, 1997, p. 68). The prisoners remain prisoners of the state. One urgent issue is whether the model in reality works that way, whether the accountability devices and regulatory structures are appropriately planned and efficiently applied. Can one say with confidence that the state remains vigorously and effectively involved as regulator, that the private prisons can keep on to be part of the active responsibility of the state apparatus, that the companies are fully accountable? There is a perspective that, however well synchronized, accountable, and successful, the particular regime turns out to be even if its results are better for prisoners and its standards more reasonable and its processes more transparent, prison privatization is nevertheless still intolerable. This is the primary moral criticism that imprisonment is an inherent state function that by definition cannot legally be delegated in any of its aspects to a non-state agency without undermining the very notion of the state and its responsibility to and for its citizens (Logan 1997, p. 115). For the proponents of this view, no data or evidence can ever be adequate to rationalize privatization. In this situation, nevertheless, it is regrettable that some commentators and operators rarely ride roughshod over this sympathy by unfolding the two dominant companies- Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) as private prisons 267 running prison systems. This is essentially mistaken; suggestive of the company has status and autonomy as principal. Both CCA and WCC and each of the other operators are contracted service providers for the state in the assortment of authorities both within the United States and in other countries where management of prison services has been contracted out. Since the failure of convict leasing, direct administration of adult prisons by the state was the norm until the latter part of the 1970s. That position though was quite dissimilar in relation to juvenile detention. McDonald said in his study that private, typically not-for-profit charities and organizations had played a long and illustrious role in operating facilities for juvenile offenders. McDonald has tabulated the numbers and the populations of both public sector and private juvenile correctional facilities in the United States for the period 1969-89 in his study (Lipton 1997, p. 69). This study showed an escalating private sector infiltration, to two-thirds of institutions and two-fifths of the population a position that consequently has been maintained and is proportionately far in overload of anything possible to be reached with adult imprisonment. Nonetheless, the privatization of adult prisons is numerically far more important, and it is truly private and for-profit rather than nongovernmental organization or voluntary sector. It is thus a more significant criminal justice system issue. It was in the 1970s that privatization reemerged in its new form and it is related at the onset to halfway built houses. After that, the Immigration and Naturalization Service began to contract out confinement of illegal immigrants to the private sector. This was little more than short-term ware-housing. At this phase the private sector had not yet broken into the serious end of detention-adult prisons. Progressively, nonetheless, private sector participation began to spread across the penal continuum. The breakthrough came in Texas in 1988, when the Department of Corrections announced that it would let contracts for four 500-bed, medium-security prisons for adult males. Two of the contracts were won by CCA, the other two by WCC. These two prisons finally opened in 1989. With these contracts the private companies could be said to have begun to launch their "penal legitimacy" status as operators of real prisons (Sloane 1996, p. 78). REDUCED COST AND INCREASED EFFICIENCY OF PRIVATE PRISONS Profit is the primary motivation behind the move to. For this reason, an enormous conflict of interests can take place. The function of prisons is not only to take away an offender from society and penalize them but to also rehabilitate them to lessen the recidivism rate. By lessening this rate, privatized prisons are in consequence dropping their supply of profit producing customers. It is in this motivation that companies would not want to produce prisoners who have paid their liability to society, but ones who will continue to pay and be able pay on the installment plan (Sloane, 1997, p. 78). The solitary alternative available in this example would be to contract such facilities to nonprofit groups, such as faith based organizations. Professor Richard Moran was noted saying that a private, non-profit establishment is in the best place to arrange a prison around a set of values proposed to reform criminals into honest, productive citizens. Despite this perfect potential, no such activity has taken place. In opposition to that, people argue that contractors may employ in ‘low-balling’, a technique that works by under biding competitors in order to get hold of government endorsement, and then later when they are depended on for their services, increase their costs to ludicrous amounts. Worse yet, contractors position the likelihood of becoming broke, leaving the government with no correctional capacity. As to the ‘low-balling’ strategy, its realism is missing simply because no private organization can anticipate raising its fees higher than that of a sensible profit margin devoid of inviting an attack by its competitors. Relative to the increasing crime rate is the cost of crime. In 1993, the cost was estimated to be over 6 billion dollars a year in construction, just to keep up with the population growth of inmates’ population. The figure stated earlier is not inclusive of the cost of employment of the fifty thousand guards, even the cost of tens of thousands of administrators, health officers and education and food providers. Cost associated to those expenses mentioned would not be generated from the tax payers’ pocket if private firms would be allowed to enter the arena. From there, the government would be able to use more wisely the revenue that should have gone to prison funds. In addition to that such industries decrease costs related to public prisons through reduced waste and will boost productivity, in order to be more competitive. According to Sloane (1996, p. 99) costs related to bedding in a government run least security prison have been recorded to run up to twice as much as that of private developments. In opposition to the arguments presented above, some lobby groups think that profit motive will undermine the cost reduction activities by unavoidably causing the cutting of corners, which would lead to poor or unsafe conditions. By itself, no evidence exists to support this theory; but interviews with prisoners and staff alike - who were in the place to contrast both facilities - stated they were more relaxed in the privatized prisons (Sloane 1996, p. 99). There are eight dimensions of prison quality, namely: security, order, care, activity, justice, conditions and management. A secured prison is one that is resistant in either outward or inward. One indicator of the lack of security is the number of escapes or even the attempts of the prisoners. External security also includes inward penetration of drugs and other contraband. Security inside the prison is also essential, and it includes control over prisoner movements within the prison facilities and internal movement of contraband such as food or dinnerware from the dining hall, drugs from the infirmary and even tools from the workshop (Smith, 1993, p. 75). Ratios of security staff to inmates and questions about security measures are applicable as input measures of security performance, as long as they complement rather than replace procedures of actual security results. As results, security, safety and order are noted more often than not by their deficiency and therefore be inclined to have mostly negative signs. To capture the constructive features of performance in these regions, they must be calculated in terms of procedures in addition to results. Prisons must maintain inmates and staff safe, not only from each other but from different environmental dangers as well. Therefore, institutional procedures of safety incorporated assault statistics, safety inspection outcomes and accidental injury reports. Prisons run on rules, and the capacity of prison administrators to enforce compliance in order to establish order is central to prison performance. Allowing for distinction in the nature of their populations, it is suitable to assess prisons according to their ability to stop disturbances, reduce inmate misconduct or else preserve order inside their walls (Smith 1993, p. 45). The term "care" is used here to cover the administrations of such personnel as doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, psychologists and dieticians. This is a difficult category to measure and group without errors of interpretation. In general, measures of stress, illness and demand for health care were given a negative interpretation while measures of supply were treated as positive. For example, freedom of movement and community exposure had negative implications under the heading of security, but they counted as positive amenities under the heading of conditions. The resulting findings of counteracting strengths and weaknesses are quite expected. Prison administrators cannot maximize all values at the same time. Quality of management is almost certainly the single most significant source of disparity in the first seven dimensions of quality of confinement. As such, there may be some repetition in assessing management as a separate part of prison performance. Nonetheless, it is better to over-measure than to under-measure. For instance such management-related variables as staff morale, absenteeism and turnover are noticeable indications of institutional stress and tension. Training levels may be both a source of quality and an outcome of quality. Therefore, different sorts of management information can be employed to measure as well as to clarify imprisonment quality. Good management is also a rightful end in itself. The public has an interest in seeing that the money it spends on incarceration is not wasted through over-staffing, high turnover or other management-related problems (Lipton 1997, p. 67). ADVANTAGES OF PRIVATIZATION OF PRISONS Management flexibility which leads to better response times regarding issue of innovation, expansion, staff promotions and terminations is one of the most obvious advantages to the privatization of prisons. Public prisons have in past been very much trapped in their ways, incapable to keep up with technological changes or shifting needs of the individual staff and inmates within the walls. These changes are helpful in managing incidences of outbreaks and riots, and have confirmed to lessen such incidences. While it remains uncertain as to whether or not contracted prison guards would have the right to hit, the absence of such a right has not blocked public guards from engaging in walk outs, which at one phase in a synchronized action, saw 7 American penal establishments in complete turmoil. In terms of escapes, the understanding of private jails and their counter parts has been the same. Though occurrences like those that took place at the Prince George County (U.S.A), where eleven inmates were mistakenly freed, has in no way happened in private institutions. The concern regarding the issue of accountability is very much in a stalemate when it comes to which between private and public would be best. Critics of privatization lean to believe that occurrences that occur within prison will be isolated from the public’s view, and thus not subjected to those same political controls that are faced by the government prisons. Proponents reply that contracting boosts accountability because the government is more enthusiastic to monitor and manage contractors than it is to monitor and control itself. Contractors are answerable to the law, to government supervisors, and eventually, to the voting public through the political system. Furthermore, they are answerable, through a competitive market, to definite forces not faced by government agencies. They are accountable to insurers, investors, stockholders, and competitors. As an instrument of accountability and control, the force of market competition is unmatched (Adams 1992, p. 53). The privatized prison system is based in such a way as to make use of these opportunities by introducing factories behind bars, reducing their own costs and permitting for prisoners to earn and pay their own way, at the same time as also putting back into the society they affected with their preliminary actions. Public prisons to an extent by now do precisely this through such industries as plate making for motor vehicles, but by no way to the degree of privatized prisons. The American private sector industry had nearly 100 private firms employing two thousand four hundred inmates manufacturing goods ranging from circuit boards to bird feeders, in 1991, tolerating for prisons to keep fifty six percent of all earned to cover room and board, taxes, victim compensation and family support. Any skills that convicts obtain from this kind of work can later be utilized to ease their process of reintegrating back into society (Adams 1992 p. 48). It should also be taken into priority that privatization can direct to other techniques of criminal control other than jail. These include the application of electronic monitoring and surveillance through the use of bracelets, permitting for criminals to be held within their own lodging. Obviously these methods cause even greater concerns to the general public than that of privatized prisons, but because of the limited size of this document, it shall not be covered. An assessment of the now rather extensive non-economic literature on prison privatization tells that criminologists, lawyers, sociologists, bureaucrats and activists writing on the subject typically entail themselves in economic considerations, either deliberately or involuntarily. The handling of the economic aspects of prison privatization is usually well handled and well integrated within the wider consideration of the issue. It is also distinguished that, in the fine tradition of the discipline of economics, the non-economists arrive at differing conclusions concerning the economic consequences of prison privatization (Adams 1192, p. 37). CONCLUSION Bearing in mind all the factors mentioned here, the best method for prison organizations would seem to be private. All the monetary benefits, security features, prisoner well being, and accountabilities make it an apparent choice. But the issue of morality seems to have been completely ignored. Should individuals, the peers of society move the duty for the ultimate sanction by which we calculate normative behavior, to those whose soul motive is profit? Has our society become one of opportunists, motivated purely by greed? By forcing inmates to work, is the arrangement not making the criminal pay back more than his crime required? Is it not probable to assume that the private prison approach is a indication or a response by private capitalism to the ‘opportunities’ made by society’s temper tantrum approach to the problem of criminality in the framework of free market supremacy? Sources Adams, K 1992, "Adjusting to Prison Life." In Crime and Justice: A Re-view of Research, vol. 16, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M 1977, "Discipline and punishment", Penguin Books. Lipton, D 1975, ‘The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment: A Survey of Correctional Treatment Evaluations”, New York: Praeger. Logan, C 1997, "Prison Privatization: Objections and Refutations", http://www.ucc.uconn.edu. Sloane, D 1996 "Private and Public Prisons", GAO. Smith, P 1993, "Private Prisons: Profits of crime", Covert Action. William, A 1996, "Cost effectiveness and comparisons of private versus public prisons", Baton Rouge. Author Unknown, 1998, "Crime and Punishment in America", NCPA Policy Report No. 219. Read More