Small, Medium, Large…Or Extra-Large: Privatization and Penal Expansion

Abstract

A surprisingly neglected feature of the literature on so-called mass imprisonment is the number not of prisoners but of prisons. This brief piece presents data on Europe showing that having a low imprisonment rate is associated with having a high number of prisons per capita. This makes sense when we look at high imprisonment countries: the countries that use prison the most also have the biggest prisons. The paper explores this relationship through consideration of the role of that the private sector might have on determining the typical capacity of prisons. The private sector brings incentives for constructing ever larger correctional facilities, but this is part of a broader emergence of a market ethos in criminal justice generally. I conclude by challenging both the efficacy of large prisons and the unexamined claims that bigger is better because of economies of scale and efficiencies of centralisation.