Prisons Privatization and CJS

Prisons Privatization and CJS

Privatization is the process of transferring control of the public sector to the private sector. The method may entail the sale of the public organization to private investors or eliminate the barriers to the entry of private firm into an industry. Privatization has been crucial in expanding access to services such as energy, water, education, healthcare, and transport. In the 1990s, the government approved America’s first private prison. The state decided the promise that privatization would ease the congestion on public facilities, reduce the general cost of running and maintain correction facilities through improved efficiency and improve the quality of services to inmates. A critical analysis indicates that privatization poses a hindrance to the realization of the objectives of the Criminal Justice System. Prisons should not be privatized to allow the government to provide sensible solutions to the challenges of the CJS.

Justice is too sensitive to be served for profit. If police officers received higher pay per arrest, the police would arrest more civilians for crimes that would have required nothing more than a verbal warning. However, the above example is not applicable since it contravenes the basic principles of justice. On the contrary, private prisons are paid more for the number of prisoners they receive. It is expected that being for-profit organizations, the companies would use their resources to ensure more arrests and successful convictions. In the 2005 annual report, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) declared that “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws” (Takei, 2013). If the state proceeds with the reforms, the correctional facilities would be forced to recommend fewer inmates for parole or pardon to maintain the high number.

Making private prisons available in America has raised several prisoners in the state. This shows that privatization of the prison has led to the arrest of innocent individuals for organization gain. This is reduced through maintaining prisons as public sectors other than private. Control should be by the government, and no organization should use it for his gain. Justice System reforms are aiming at reducing the incarceration level. This is through alternative sentencing and decriminalization of some offences that have been proven through research to have minimal impact on the public safety and social order. This cannot be attained when prisons are privatized.

The cost of maintaining private prison facilities are too high. This act will only be of benefit to business people who have invested immensely in the ‘incarceration sector.’ According to Washington University in St. Louis, the total cost of incarceration is about 6% of the national gross domestic product. Michael McLaughlin et al. (2016) insist that “while these costs do not appear on government budgets, they reduce the aggregate welfare of society and should be considered when creating public policy.”

Although the proponents of privatization of prisons have argued that the move would improve the efficiency of prison services by reducing the costs per head for each inmate, the reduction in price is valid to a great extent since private correctional facilities have radical cost-cutting strategies. On the contrary, the companies have often failed to deliver on their promises of higher efficiency. The lower costs are linked to the more mediocre quality of correctional services compared to run prisons publicly. Privately run prisons are characterized by poor human resource management such as “hostility to unions, bargaining rights, and any other impediments to the unrestrained exercise of management power.” This has resulted in a higher level of turnover and staffing efficiencies diminish prison quality in several ways, undermining staff confidence. Privatization, therefore, robs the taxpayers of their value for money.

Public prisons help a state in saving its capital. The government managed prison ensures that services to the prisoners are given at the right time, and they work much in providing that the critical principle of rehabilitating and correcting prisoners have been archived unlike in private prison. Public prisons give education facilities that help the inmates to acquire technical skills that would help them in their life after jail period. From the above discussion, my stand is that prisons should not be privatized. Instead, they should remain government property.