Ever since I learned of the private prison phenomena I have been uncomfortable with it. I have been wanting to write about it for a while now, but with the news released today, I now have a good opportunity to do so.
As far as I'm concerned, private prisons are one of the worst ideas ever. The concepts of 'profit' and 'incarceration' should never intertwine. It is precarious, dangerous, and is just as foolish as the medical industry being a 'for profit' one... or the military industrial complex.
One reason why this is such a horrible idea is that it incentivizes incarceration - corporations that run the prisons have an invested interest in having and retaining prisoners. What is the motivation to rehabilitate the inmates? There isn't any. Lost inmates = lost revenues. These are revenues, I might add, that still come at taxpayer expense. Where a private prison wants to collect as many tax dollars as possible in order to maximize profits, a state run prison is the opposite, it is in the state's interest to rehabilitate inmates so as not to drain more precious tax resources on repeat incarcerations. Now the state run prison system has a long way to go, and I am in no way claiming that it is a perfect mechanism, I am merely pointing out the extreme dangers in the profit motive in this situation.
A good example of this was a news story last year that didn't get too much attention. It's a story of a couple of judges in Pennsylvania who plead guilty to accepting kickbacks from a corporation that ran a juvenile detention facility in exchange for sending inmates their way. Many of these kids were guilty of nothing more than making childish comments on Myspace, or throwing a piece of ham at their step-dad at the dinner table. I believe this also demonstrates why the concept of electing judges in this country is also a bad idea, but that's an argument for another time.
Then there is the story that came out today. An inmate was brutally beaten by another inmate while the guards just watched. Now this can happen in any sort of prison, true. What is disturbing about this story is the allegations of denied medical care to cover up abuses, and in the case of this particular inmate, he was taken out of the hospital (against the advice of his doctor) in order to be treated in the "cheaper" in-prison facility. This particular prison has been referred to as "Gladiator School" because of it's reputation for unnecessary violence. The company, CCA, has had incidents all over the country, including allegations of sexual abuse - in one incident hundreds of female inmates were ordered to be transferred to a state run facility because of abuses that occurred under the watch of CCA.
Private prisons are just a terrible idea.
I think we need something like an "outraged" or "terrified" button on the bottom along with "cool" "interesting" and so on. But I suppose that might run the risk of increasing hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly should make people more than nervous, however, that we are willing to turn into businesses for profit the two most dangerous and disturbing (if perhaps necessary) elements of our nation. The military and the prisons. At least a society can argue that the existence of prisons and armies is a distasteful but necessary duty but how is it not disgusting for businesses to make a PROFIT out of violence? How do we make the jump from "sad duty" to "good investment"?