Implementation Barriers and Policy Design Deficiencies - Research Paper Example

t the idea of prison privatization would assist the federal government to cut down its prison management costs and improve the efficiency of prison management. On the other hand, private firms perceived this policy as an opportunity for further business expansion and therefore they involved in simple contracting services for the complete management of prisons. However, the proposed policy could not meet its aimed objectives due to a number of reasons. This paper will critically analyze the prison privatization policy and assess the degree and scope of its deficiencies using the evaluative and explanatory reasoning approach.

The US federal government has been experimenting with prison privatization for over 30 years. As McDonald, Fournier, Russell-Einhourn, and Crawford (1998) point out, privatization of prisons was publicly established in the United States in 1984 when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was contracted for the entire management and control of a prison facility at Hamilton County in Tennessee. As McDonald et al (1998) point out, it was the first time a government in the United States offered a compete takeover of a prison to a private operator; and subsequently in 1985, the CCA was further offered a contract to take over the Tennessee’s complete state prison system for $200 million.

It was a marked event in the US prison privatization history as this contracting declaration influenced other US states to research more on this practice. However, the Tennessee’s proposal was defeated by the skepticism of regulators and public employees’ strong opposition. Despite those initial struggles, since then CCA has well expanded its business in for-profit prison. Official data indicate that US private sector operates ‘153 correctional facilities including jails, prisons, and detention centers with a capacity of more than 119,000 as of December 2000’ (cited in Miller, 2010).

‘Evaluative and explanatory reasoning’ is a general policy