Should prisons be privatized?
Prison privatization is sustained by claims that facilities that are privately operated are cost effective at ensuring the provision of services compared to public institutions. Other evidence show that this assertion is not supported while others do. In addition, when turned into a for-profit industry, a few challenges will accompany incarceration centers. The following points argue for and against prison privatization
Fiscal savings through cost containment: People who support private prisons assert that the private sector is saving the available resources through great efficiencies.
Safety and services: Advocates claim that prison privatization has been successful in other industries with equal, if not superior service quality and that the same is a fact for prisons.
Politicization of prison privatization: An overreaching philosophy that drives development is that prison privatization is normally preferred to be public ownership due to the purported effectiveness of private markets.
Costs: An advantage, however, of using private rather than public prison in housing inmates is the costs involved.
The other benefit that motivates governments to prefer private prisons involves the fact that corporations serve as insulations from liabilities from claims through both inmates and prison employees.
Fiscal savings through cost containment: The claims underlying this point is supported by the reports that show that private prisons have cost savings, mainly through limited salaries as well as benefits through providing employments mostly for nonunion employees (Lundahl et al., 2009). It is argued that governments are in a position to benefits in the short term when directly selling correction facilities to public-private initiatives, instead of solely depending on government funding. However, most observers have suggested that this benefit, for the most part, is deceptive.
Safety and services: Despite the claims made by advocates of privatization, most private organizations undergo challenges of attempting to minimize costs while at the same time offering every service necessary in maintaining safety in prisons. The main purpose of this is that the two most expensive aspects of incarceration –personnel and programs—are the services that often receive moderately limited finance when containing costs.
Politicization of prison privatization: The overreaching philosophy that drives development is that prison privatization is normally preferred to be public ownership due to the purported effectiveness of private markets. The evidence, however, does not support such perspectives, and the main concern revolves to the for-profit organizations' financial intentions which are summed up in Correction Corporation of Americas' Annual report in 2010. In addition, private prisons are known to heavily spend on independent lobes and direct contributions to both federal candidates and the state.
Costs: Prison privatization is generally conducted by states as well as federal governments in order to minimize the cost of housing prisoners. The main reason for privatization is reducing costs while maintaining the quality of services. Several researchers have questioned the cost-benefit analysis that the States asserts in favor of prison privatization and additionally raises concerns of in regards to the perverse incentives formed by prisoner quotas constructed in prison management contracts (Nathan, 2003). Essentially, the way in which private prisons avoid cutting costs is problematic from the public safety perspective, public policy, and human rights. In other well-documented cases, prisoners have escaped as a result of lax security as well as poorly trained staff.
Insulation from liability for claims: Because companies are often insured to cover claims normally accounted for when bidding with the government, the arrangement is beneficial for both public and private organization. Corporations need to pay taxes to the government, which is also a cost-effective incentive for using private prison structure.
Should parole be abolished?
Among the most controversial issues in parole, today is whether it should be abolished. This, however, is not the first time in history that abolitionists have argued against parole. The following points argue for and against parole abolition
The fiction behind parole
Since parole’s emphasis on predictions often misleads defendants as well as citizens of the reason of criminal sentencing, what should be done is ending the fiction behind parole and the safety of the community, similar to what was done 20 years ago by the Congress after abolishing of parole for federal cases. Sentences are primarily based on the seriousness of the crime and the criminal history of the offender.
The three-strike law
When parole is abolished there would be a reduction in the need for the ‘three strikes' law. The three-strike law approach might be intuitively intriguing, but there are a few problems in some practices. In case someone commits three felony check-kitting crimes gets life imprisonment, while another with rape conviction is simply charged. Limiting three strike laws to violent offenses would not quite count.
Review of pardon petitions
When abolished the board of pardons and parole would refocus its resources on a review of pardon petitions while considerable doubts would be formed eventually in regards to the fact of a guilty verdict. More proactively, the General Assembly needs to consider a proposal that is adopted elsewhere in enhancing the reliability of witness identification process in order for electronic records of the suspect to preserve and promote testing of DNA evidence in time.
Abolition of parole of release
On the other hand, even though most people argue that parole should be abolished entirely, more common call for the abolition of parole of release or other reforms and most of this suggestion involve retaining some form of community supervision. For instance, Travis (2002) has argued that parole release should be abolished but that it should be released with Universal post-prison supervision with limited conditions that are tailored to the needs and risks of people.
Discretionary parole
However, Reitz (2004)argues that discretionary parole needs to be brought back and cites evidence that people released through discretionary parole are highly likely to complete their parole terms successfully than those released on mandatory parole. Reitz additionally argues that the significance of the research on ‘what works’ and depending on evidence-based practices, which research has shown to be effective.
References
Lundahl, B. W., Kunz, C., Brownell, C., Harris, N., & Van Vleet, R. (2009). Prison privatization: A meta-analysis of cost and quality of confinement indicators. Research on Social Work Practice.
Nathan, S. (2003). Prison privatization in the United Kingdom. Coyle, A., A. Campbell and R. Neufeld (eds) Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatisation and Human Rights, London: Zed Books.
Travis, J. (2002). Beyond the prison gates: The state of parole in America.
Reitz, K. (2004). Questioning the conventional wisdom of parole release authority. The Future of Imprisonment in the, 21.
