Should Prisons Be Privatized?

Should prisons be privatized?
Student Name
Institutional affiliation
Course Name and Number
Professor
Due Date
Should Prisons be Privatized?
America has two types of prison systems: public and private prison systems. Over the past few decades, the rates of incarceration in the US have been rising significantly, and at the same time, private prisons have been thriving due to their for-profit model. While public and private prisons are correctional facilities, the two vary in how they are funded and operated. On the one hand, all public prisons are owned and operated by the federal, state, or local government using taxpayers' money, each expected to determine who and how long one goes to prison (Mamun, Horn, & Chermak, 2020). On the other hand, private prisons are owned and operated by third parties who are paid by the state, local, or federal government. With the privatization model, private prison companies are hired to run a government-owned prison facility or receive inmates in their private facilities while charging the state, local, or federal government to house inmates. Evaluating the effectiveness of private correctional facilities over public prisons demands an objective analysis of factors including recidivism, costs, overpopulation, and rate of rehabilitation. Public prisons have clearer and more objective goals than private prisons when aspects beyond overpopulation are considered.
Private vs. Public Prisons
Public prisons were the norm in the US until the 1980s when the first private corporation came into existence. With the rising crime rate, President Reagan saw the need to have private prisons to alleviate critical issues, including low security and overcrowding in public prisons. Private prisons increased from the 1980s to 2017, and by 2017, 8% of the total incarcerated people were held in private prisons. As of 2017, the average cost of housing an inmate in the private sector was $53 compared to $48.42 in a public prison facility (Lamparello, 2016). Unlike private prisons, all public prisons are expected to account for how taxpayers' resources are used and restructure their public correctional facilities in order to remain accountable and transparent in all aspects. Since the introduction of private prisons, there is evidence that private prisons deny prisoners deemed to be costly, including those with physical and mental illnesses (Craig & Pond Cummings, 2019). Private prisons are not expected to publicly report how they operate, and this aspect has allowed them to hold prisoners' information private, thus limiting the transparency and accountability of the correctional system.
According to Henry (2019), private prisons are perceived as an alternative to public prisons for reasons including (1) reducing overpopulation experienced in public prisons, thus making facilities safer and secure; (2) transforming the broken public prison systems by reducing rates of recidivism; and (3) using innovative options to reduce the rate of re-imprisonment. The conditions in the private prisons are of higher quality than in public prisons when perceived through counselor's services, cleanliness, and staff competence (Marko, 2021). However, there is evidence that rates of violence are higher in priv...