I’ve never been to prison as a criminal, but I had the opportunity to participate in a jail tour last summer as part of my job as a legal assistant. It wasn’t particularly appealing. The ceilings in the guard towers were low, the inmates were rowdy, and the building was a collection of concrete, cameras, and closed doors. Altogether, bleak.
But while I wasn’t enthusiastic about touring the jail, I think it’s fair to say that most people believe we should have them. We want people who break the law to pay for it, with either money or time. And while politicians (on both sides of the aisle) today are notorious for ignoring laws they disagree with, most citizens still support some degree of law and order.
To this end, both the federal and state governments run prisons to house those awaiting a trial or serving a sentence. Sometimes, the government contracts with a private company to hold criminals. These private prisons are a source of debate among those in the criminal justice arena.
Last weekend, the prison policy debate intruded on my life for about an hour. I was debating in Louisiana and advanced through prelims with a winning record. In the first elimination round, I was pro on a resolution abolishing private prisons. Before the round, I didn’t know much other than that lots of people didn’t like private prisons. During prep, I learned why.
First, private prisons are violent. Studies on private prisons in Idaho and Mississippi showed the assault rates were much higher than those in publicly-run prisons. A quote I wish I’d had for the debate round came from a Mississippi judge. He called the prison company there “a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.”
The Department of Justice also found that “contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP [Bureau of Prisons] institutions.” That DOJ report also stated that private prisons often put inmates in solitary confinement against protocol. These studies provided the backbone of one of my main contentions.
My second contention was that private prisons increased the recidivism rate–the rate at which criminals re-enter the justice system. One of my buddies in prep found a report that looked at quite a few states. Examinations of Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Florida all showed that inmates from private prisons were more likely to re-enter the justice system than inmates from public prisons. In Minnesota, this rate was as high as 17%.
Finally, I cited research that private prisons were no less costly than public institutions. When I found it again for this post, I learned that it was probably from 1996. Oh well… But while writing this I also confirmed those findings: A Georgia audit found that private prisons cost more per person to run than public prisons.
That was prep. I won’t focus much on the debate. One of my opponent’s arguments was more procedural than pragmatic, and one was on overcrowding. He claimed that abolishing private prisons would overcrowd public ones, and I turned that argument by saying that private prisons increased re-incarcerations. Voila. I ended up winning.
But while the debate ended there for me, it will continue for everyone else, especially for those who have to deal with its real-world implications. For all intents and purposes, private prisons might really need to be shuttered. But maybe not. Maybe reform is preferable. Either way, I think something needs to change.
The Disgruntled Economist 