The Adam Foss's video lecture was informative. I was impressed how his desire for prestige and power had changed because he realized that his decision as a young prosecutor could damage a person for life. However, I agree with him in his point of view that the Criminal Justice System needs to be reform by providing resources to help in understanding why and what gave the defendant the mindset to engage in criminal activities. Nevertheless, our prison system is not equipped to create a productive system because of its negative environment only just remake some of them into a career criminal. This is what I have seen and had many inmates to share with me during my assessment interview. Therefore, as Mr. Foss has stated if the Criminal Justice…
The article written by Donald Cohen talks about how Americans, citizens and policy makers alike, feel that the privatization of prisons is worsening the criminal justice system. The article stated about a consensus that mass incarceration is not safe nor beneficial for our communities. This conflicts with the interests of corporations, such as CCA and GEO, who would benefit in the increase of incarceration rates. Private prison corporations currently play a part in multiple aspects of the criminal justice policy process. A new campaign called ‘Programs Not Profits,’ is advocating for the money that go to private prisons and investing it in more job training, substance abuse treatment, and mental health care. ‘Programs Not Profits’ is only one…
When people think of prisons, they imagine that the occupants inside deserve to be there. That a person is doing their time for a crime committed. When it comes to privately owned prisons, the time doesn’t always fit the crime.…
Privately owned prisons began to emerge in the mid-1980s. These prisons emerged because of the ideological imperatives of the free market, the huge increase in the number of prisoners, and the substantial increase in imprisonment costs. (1) Proponents of privatized prisons put forward a simple case: The private sector can do it cheaper and more efficiently. Corporations such as Correction Corporation of America and Wackenhut promised design and management innovations without reducing costs or sacrificing quality of service. (1) Many interest groups comprised of correctional officers, labor works, and a few citizen groups strongly oppose the privatization of the prison system. I will identify four of these groups that oppose private prisons,…
(2) Culp, Richard F. 2005. "The Rise and Stall of Prison Privatization: An Integration of Policy Analysis Perspectives." Criminal Justice Policy Review 16(4):412-42.…
First, we have the safety concern that critics bring up when the topic of private prisons is mentioned. Secondly, we have the dependency issue they bring up when talking about data relating to the industry’s growth in the last decade. Finally, we have the issue of keeping inmates locked up in order for the private prisons to make more money. Since private prisons are in the business of making money, they are always tempted to cut corners to turn a greater profit each quarter. They do this by hiring people who are not properly trained when compared to a staff member who is employed by a publicly prison ran by the state. In fact “private prison employees receive 58 hours less training than their publicly employed counterparts” (Mason). A nationwide study found that “assaults on guards by inmates were 49 percent more frequent in private prisons” (Smith). The study also saw that inmate-on-inmate assaults were “65 percent more frequent in private prison” (Smith). Given these statistics, those who are critics of private prisons have a valid reason for concern. These statistics allow for critics to show that there is a strong possibility that the lack of training given by private prisons. Leads to a higher risk of violence within the prison walls. Since their staff members are not adequately trained to handle the duties they are required to perform on a day to day basis. Furthermore, dependency is an issue…
In the past 3 years it shows from studies done around the country that 67% of inmates have gotten released and 57%of inmates have gotten arrested again either for the same crime they committed or for a new crime. In the past 30 years it has shown that sentencing has become more of longer sentences for punishment then for rehabilitation to help. Due to that a lot of prisons and jails have become over crowded. And less and less inmates have received the attention that they need to stop them from committing crimes. Honestly who wouldn’t want 3 free meals a day and roof over their head and not have to pay for anything? A lot of people don’t have places to go or things to eat so committing a crime and getting caught gives them…
Criminal justice stakeholders affected by various social, political, economic, and institutional forces throughout the last five decades have implemented policies that have increased reliance on incarceration and its punitive purpose. In contemporary criminal justice reform efforts to scale back mass incarceration, some of the most active stakeholders have been this year’s presidential candidates, the for-profit prison industry, and community-based organizations.…
Private prisons scattered across the country house tens of thousands inmates. The companies behind some of the largest private prisons claim they are lifting the weight of taxpayer dollars funding federal prisons. In a billion dollar industry, many find it hard to believe that they’re not working for their own best interest. Humans rights organizations across the country have challenged the corporations behind the industry. These groups argue that this system doesn’t work to rehabilitate prisoners, but rather set their inmates up for failure; reaping in more profit for themselves.…
In society today, it is commonly known that crime rate has increased dramatically by the years. This is where many of us look for ways to solve such issue. It is the last place anybody would want to be in. but unfortunately we have hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions around the world. Thousands in just the United States, Those are prisons. Just hearing that word makes us think bad things right away. Murder, theft, violence, and everything bad that happens in this world. We live in a world where prisons and jail are very important and almost every country, state, county, or city must have at least one. Prisons now are much more crowded than they were 20 years ago. The number of inmates in just the United States has doubled between the years of 1992 and 2011. The question many of us should ask ourselves is why do we need prisons? Are prisons effective in any way? Are prisons causing economic issues? Are prisoners getting proper treatment while incarcerated?…
The main goal of private prisons is to make profit disregarding the necessities of the inmates. Privatization provides bad health services to the inmates, lack of opportunities to get an education, undertrained staff, insecurity, and a high recidivism rate. The United States has the largest incarceration rate in the entire world, and this is due to the prison-industrial complex (PIC). The more defendants are sent to private prison, the more profit they and other businesses make. This is a political influence where the private prison, and certain businesses such as: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut Securities (GEO) benefited from it.…
Since the early 1980’s the private prison system in the United States has expanded immensely. This is mainly due to lobbying between corporations and politicians including big investors gaining record high profits within Wall Street. Through such lobbying this movement has been baptized as the Prison Industrial Complex where the main goal is making money by sending individual bodies to the confinements of the prison system. With the U.S. prisons housing approximately more than 2 million inmates through the federal, state and private prison systems, we must ask ourselves; What is the true purpose behind the creation of the private prison industry and how it’s affected on our society?…
Everyday 2,220,300 inmates live their lives in prisons throughout the United States. That’s 0.91% of the adult population, or 1 in 110 (Glaze 2013). What if you were next? The thought would scare anyone and the flaws in the system pose a threat to low income individuals and minorities. The sole purpose of the Justice System is to deliver justice for all, by only convicting and sentencing the guilty, while preventing offenders from reoffending. The system was designed to protect the innocent. What if that was not the case? In fact, Out of the 733,000 people held in local jails at this time, 2/3 of them have not been convicted and many are there simply…
These examples highlight the tough on crime rhetoric that has captured the U.S. over the past several decades, which has led to a demand for more beds for inmates. Private prisons have attempted to meet this demand through contracts with states to hold convicts. A private prison, according to Paul Ashton and Amanda Petteruit is, “a facility managed by a for-profit organization through a public-private partnership with a government contract,” (5). They explain these contracts allow private institutions to take over the operations of state-run prisons or their own private buildings. The private prisons charge a daily rate per inmate to run the facility and to turn a profit (Ashton and Petteruit 5). Therefore, private prisons have the incentive to maximize the number of prisoners and the amount of time each inmate will occupy prison beds because the state pays them for their services on a daily basis, (Christine Link et al.…
To begin, the use of private prisons save the state money, Private prisons allow the state to save money, Public prison endorse money from the state, on the other hand private institutions do not. “Ira P. Robbins, an American University law professor who studied private prisons for the American Bar Association, agrees that private companies can build prisons faster and operate them less expensively than state or local governments.” (Potter, B 1991. Richmond Times- Dispatch). A member of the Legislator said that “Private Institutions operate at a cost 10 percent less than the state does…”(Carlson, J 2007 Topeka Capital Journal.)This quote supports that we should keep them…