Private Prison Industry Research Articles

$ over Ethics: Higher Education and the Private Prions Industry, a Symptom of the Theology of Neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism’s impact on our everyday lives, culture, and institutions is powerful and ubiquitous. One might suspect that higher education, especially non-profit colleges and universities, would be less affected and more resistant to the expansion of market-driven logic and the hyper-capitalist ethos of neoliberalism, but much evidence points to college and university subscription to the tenants of this ideology and practice. This is especially the case as state policy leaders, particularly conservative and neoconservative Republicans, are aggressively disinvesting in higher education, reducing or removing completely governmental responsibility to ensure an educated population in favor of market-driven forces. While we provide a brief overview of the corporatized universities of today and its problematic nature, we focus on the impact of corporate donations on universities, with particular attention to the private prison industry’s intertwinement with higher education, and specifically the relationship between the GEO Group and Florida Atlantic University.

Serving the Public Good?—A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Private Prisons and For-Profit Incarceration in the United States

It is a well-known fact that the United States has a very high prison population compared to other countries, and that it is particularly the private prison industry that has been thriving. This industry is based on a for-profit ideology that aims to save money by cutting costs wherever possible, and that, based on their profit-orientation, has no interest in rehabilitating offenders, since they make money with every incarcerated person. This paper investigates these issues from a linguistic perspective and takes a corpus of texts collected from the websites of the two largest private prison corporations in the United States (CoreCivic and The GEO Group) as a starting point for a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The corpus comprises a total of 25,386 words and the analyses reveal that while both companies discursively background issues of violence, recidivism, and costs, they place a focus on the safety and security of their facilities and on their reentry programs for inmates. Thus, it is argued that the investigated corporations shift the discursive focus away from a negative discourse centering on violence and recidivism to a positive discourse centering on reentry and safety, which actively counters the findings that several researchers and journalists alike have revealed.

Cosponsoring and Cashing In: US House Members’ Support for Punitive Immigration Policy and Financial Payoffs from the Private Prison Industry

AbstractThe private prison industry is a multi-million-dollar industry that has increasingly profited from the detention of undocumented immigrants. As a government contractor, therefore, the industry has a natural interest in government decision making, including legislation that can affect its expansion into immigrant detention. In this article, we examine the relationship between campaign donations made on behalf of the private prison industry and an untested form of position taking—bill cosponsorship—in the US House of Representatives. We hypothesize the private prison industry will reward House members for taking positions that benefit the industry. We also hypothesize the private prison industry will also reward House members who incur greater political risk by taking positions out of sync with the party. To test our hypotheses, we focus on punitive immigration legislation that has the potential to increase the supply of immigrant detainees over the course of eight years. We find support for our second hypothesis, that private prison companies are more likely to reward House Democrats who cosponsor punitive immigration policies even after accounting for possible endogeneity. The findings have important implications regarding the relationship between House members and private interests.

Understanding Immigration Detention: Causes, Conditions, and Consequences

During the summer of 2018, the US government detained thousands of migrant parents and their separated children pursuant to its zero-tolerance policy at the United States–Mexico border. The ensuing media storm generated unprecedented public awareness about immigration detention. The recency of this public attention belies a long-standing immigration enforcement practice that has generated a growing body of research in the past couple of decades. I take stock of this research, focusing on the causes, conditions, and consequences of immigration detention in the United States. I also discuss critical tasks for future research, including ( a) examining the role of local governments, the private prison industry, and decision makers responsible for release decisions in maintaining the detention system; ( b) extending the field of inquiry to less-visible detainee populations and detention facility guards and staff, for a fuller understanding of detention conditions; and ( c) investigating not only direct but also indirect consequences of detention.

Privatized corrections

Research SummaryIn this article, I look at some of the statutory and case law that has shaped the evolving regulation of the private prison industry. I also examine some critical gaps in legal issues regarding private contractors that manage prisons, jails, and detention facilities. The privatization of justice encompasses all for‐profit firms that make money in the prison‐industrial complex. Critical unanswered legal questions run the gamut from whether it is legal for corporations to pay undocumented detainees to work inside detention centers to whether it is legal for a private probation company to extend a probationer's supervision.Policy ImplicationsThe United States has never fully wrestled with many of the questions that private prisons raise. As private firms stretch across state lines contracting with the government at the local, state, and federal levels, their authority and accountability is not always settled law. Additionally, moral considerations have infrequently made their way into America's jurisprudential history in grappling with issues around privatizing corrections, raising possibilities of future litigation focusing on ideological grounds.

Immigration Detention, Inc.

This article addresses the influence of economic inequality on immigration detention. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains roughly 350,000 migrants each year and maintains more than 30,000 beds each day. This massive detention system raises issues of economic power and powerlessness. This article connects, for the first time, the influence of economic inequality on system-wide immigration detention policy as well as on individual detention decisions. The article begins with a description of the systemic impact that for-profit prisons have had on the federal immigration detention system, by promoting wide-scale detention. The resulting expansion of detention has led to ever-increasing profitability for the private for-profit prison sector, which allows the companies to exercise even more influence over policymakers to achieve yet higher levels of detention. The influence of wealthy private prison corporations also affects the very nature of immigration detention, leading to the use of jail-like facilities that are the product offered by the private prison industry. The article then describes the mechanisms by which economic inequality dictates the likelihood and length of detention in individual cases. The detention or release decisions made by DHS in individual cases must account for the need to keep numerous detention beds full to satisfy the contracts made with powerful private prison companies. DHS regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space full. The article presents data, obtained from immigration authorities, regarding detention and bond patterns at a specific detention center that demonstrate this point. The research finds an inverse relationship between the number of newly arriving immigrants in the detention center and the bond amounts set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During times when new arrivals were few, the amount required to be released from detention on bond was high; during times when there were many new arrivals, bond amounts were reduced or set at zero. The article also presents another way in which economic inequality affects the likelihood of detention at the individual level. Release and detention are largely controlled through the use of monetary bond requirements, which must be paid in full. The regular use of financial bonds as the exclusive mechanism for release means that those migrants who are most able to pay are most likely to be released, without regard to their likelihood of absconding or endangering the community. Wealth thus determines detention rather than an individualized determination of the necessity of depriving an individual of liberty. The article urges that the role of economic inequality in immigration detention raises troubling issues of democratic governance and the commodification of traditional governmental functions. The current system also leads to an unjustifiable redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Looking at immigration detention through the lens of economic inequality offers new lines of theoretical inquiry into immigration detention. It connects the discussion of immigration detention to scholarly critiques of for-profit prisons and the privatization of state security functions more generally. It also brings a new perspective to prior work in the immigration and criminal justice contexts, questioning the fairness and utility of requiring payment of monetary bonds to obtain liberty from detention. The article concludes with recommendations for reform. These reforms would help to sideline the influence of economic inequality in immigration detention decision making.

Correction: Immigration Detention, Inc.

This article addresses the influence of economic inequality on immigration detention. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains roughly 350,000 migrants each year and maintains more than 30,000 beds each day. This massive detention system raises issues of economic power and powerlessness. This article connects, for the first time, the influence of economic inequality on system-wide immigration detention policy as well as on individual detention decisions. The article begins with a description of the systemic impact that for-profit prisons have had on the federal immigration detention system, by promoting wide-scale detention. The resulting expansion of detention has led to ever-increasing profitability for the private for-profit prison sector, which allows the companies to exercise even more influence over policymakers to achieve yet higher levels of detention. The influence of wealthy private prison corporations also affects the very nature of immigration detention, leading to the use of jail-like facilities that are the product offered by the private prison industry. The article then describes the mechanisms by which economic inequality dictates the likelihood and length of detention in individual cases. The detention or release decisions made by DHS in individual cases must account for the need to keep numerous detention beds full to satisfy the contracts made with powerful private prison companies. DHS regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space full. The article presents data, obtained from immigration authorities, regarding detention and bond patterns at a specific detention center that demonstrate this point. The research finds an inverse relationship between the number of newly arriving immigrants in the detention center and the bond amounts set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During times when new arrivals were few, the amount required to be released from detention on bond was high; during times when there were many new arrivals, bond amounts were reduced or set at zero. The article also presents another way in which economic inequality affects the likelihood of detention at the individual level. Release and detention are largely controlled through the use of monetary bond requirements, which must be paid in full. The regular use of financial bonds as the exclusive mechanism for release means that those migrants who are most able to pay are most likely to be released, without regard to their likelihood of absconding or endangering the community. Wealth thus determines detention rather than an individualized determination of the necessity of depriving an individual of liberty. The article urges that the role of economic inequality in immigration detention raises troubling issues of democratic governance and the commodification of traditional governmental functions. The current system also leads to an unjustifiable redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Looking at immigration detention through the lens of economic inequality offers new lines of theoretical inquiry into immigration detention. It connects the discussion of immigration detention to scholarly critiques of for-profit prisons and the privatization of state security functions more generally. It also brings a new perspective to prior work in the immigration and criminal justice contexts, questioning the fairness and utility of requiring payment of monetary bonds to obtain liberty from detention. The article concludes with recommendations for reform. These reforms would help to sideline the influence of economic inequality in immigration detention decision making.

PRIVATIZING PUNISHMENT: TESTING THEORIES OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE PRISON AND IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITIES

AbstractThe transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contemporary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any understanding of the public's preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we test several theories that potentially explain opinions toward privatizing carceral institutions: the racial animus, business is better, conflict of interest, and problem‐escalation models. These models are tested with original data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. The data show that opinions toward the privatization of carceral institutions do not neatly fall along partisan or ideological divisions but are explained by beliefs about racial resentment, corporate ethics, and the potential ability of private companies to provide services cheaper than the public sphere. The results hold important implications for how we understand the future of private carceral institutions in the United States.

Locked in. The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform. By John Pfaff. New York: Basic Books, 2017. - Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. By Philip Goodman, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Locked in. The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform. By John Pfaff. New York: Basic Books, 2017.Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. By Philip Goodman, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.Virtually every public conversation about American punishment begins with the quintessential chart: a timeline of incarceration rates, stable until the early 1970s, then alarmingly rising through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, until a slight decline in the late 2000s. This striking visual aid goes hand in hand with a story: after several decades of following a rehabilitative punishment model (albeit not without some serious discontents), the Nixon administration made crime a national issue and zealously pursued punitive policies-partly in response to the reality of rising violent crime rates, and partly in a top-down, politically motivated effort to target the civil rights movement and African Americans. The fed- eral government funneled funds into municipal police departments and kicked the war on drugs into high gear, resulting not only in skyrocketing incarceration rates and overcrowding prisons, but also in shameful racial disparities among those caught in the system's clutches. The standard invariably also involves the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), highlighting the role of the private prison industry and commercial interests in the growth of incarceration.That this narrative has been so successfully disseminated out of academia and into the progressive conversation about incarceration was evident in the last U.S. elections, in which both Democratic can- didates addressed police violence, racial discrimination, and the fate of private prisons. But this has been, in some ways, the victim of its own success, and in recent years several important works have highlighted its problems and inaccuracies. Naomi Murakawa (2014) and Elizabeth Hinton (2016) have highlighted the role played by liberal democrats in the rise of mass incarceration, looking at Nix- on's presidency as a continuation, rather than a shift, of policy pri- orities and practices. James Forman (2017) and Marie Gottschalk (2014) have complicated the simplistic of racial disparities. The two new books reviewed here-Locked In by John Pfaffand Breaking the Pendulum by Philip Goodman, Joshua Page, and Michelle Phelps-go a step further, offering fundamental revisions of the very premise of the incarceration story.Pfaff's main objective in the book is to marshal simple but con- vincing data analysis to show that, not only does the story incorrectly explain mass incarceration, but also leads us astray in directing our reform efforts toward highly salient but ulti- mately less important issues (112). Pfaffidentifies two main cul- prits-the first of which is the war on drugs. Contrary to commonly made assumptions, shows Pfaff, drug-related offending contributes relatively little to the incarceration population. He attributes this error to a reversed causality: drug enforcement might follow, rather than cause, violent crime. Moreover, his data complicates some of the commonly made racial critiques of drug enforcement policies (an effort in which he echoes Gottschalk and Forman's works.). Pfaff's analysis rings true and important, though he too readily dis- misses the importance of reforming the drug system for the sake of those caught in the federal system. It is true, as Pfaffsays, that reforms pay too much attention to the federal criminal justice sys- tem, which focuses much more heavily on drugs than state systems do (13) but incarcerates merely 12% of U.S. prisoners; but the flagrant injustices of the federal system, atypical as they may be, merit attention in and of themselves (Lynch 2016). He also easily ignores a considerable body of scholarship that specifically addresses criminal justice in the states precisely because local con- text is important, such as Barker's three-state comparison (2009), Gilmore's analysis of California (2006), Perkinson's analysis of Texas (2010), and Lynch's analysis of Arizona (2009). …

Hidden corporate profits in the U.S. prison system: the unorthodox policy-making of the American Legislative Exchange Council

Using a leaked document trove containing 800 model bills, we analyze the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) hidden corporate profit making in the prison–industrial complex. We find that ALEC seeks to expand the private prison industry in three ways: (1) promoting greater use of private prisons, goods, and services, (2) promoting greater use of prison labor, and (3) increasing the size of the prison population. ALEC’s efforts to increase the prison population by expanding definitions of existing crime, creating new crimes, enhancing enforcement of existing crimes, amending the trial process to increase the likelihood of incarceration, and lengthening prison sentences for crimes pose a threat to civil liberties. ALEC’s unorthodox policy approach exemplifies John Gaventa’s theory that powerful interests maintain their power by creating conditions in which citizens are not able to identify and advocate on behalf of their interests.

Investigating the Need for Transparent Disclosures of Political Campaign Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures by U.S. Private Prison Corporations

ABSTRACTTransparency is a fundamental principle of good corporate governance. A disclosure is an important mechanism that enhances corporate governance through increased transparency and better informed stakeholders. When a government operation contractually assigns prison services to a nongovernment for-profit entity, then that entity is fulfilling a public interest role of incarceration and should be accountable to the citizen taxpayers (i.e., the stakeholders). Accountability is important. But what happens to accountability when the mission statements and business strategies of the nongovernment for-profit entities diverge from the original government operation? The private prison industry, annually, spends thousands and sometimes millions of dollars toward political campaigns and lobbyists to influence and educate legislatures as a part of their corporate political strategy to ensure a steady stream of growing revenues. Consequently, various laws have been implemented resulting from successful lobbying efforts that affect the public interest. These nontrivial amounts are not disclosed in their annual reports or proxy statements. However, this information is reported in a disaggregated way in various non-SEC filings. This study shows that tracking federal and state lobbying expenditures and political campaign contributions is a complicated task for a trained staff of researchers, and would be quite difficult for most stakeholders; thus, current reporting obscures transparency. I thus argue for greater transparency by requiring mandatory disclosures of political contributions and lobbying expenditures in the financial statements of publicly held private prison corporations. Benefits of audited annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission would enhance the reliability of management assertions about expenditures related to political contributions and lobbying costs reported by private prison corporations and the detailed information would be presented in a single, complete disclosure. This new disclosure requirement would improve corporate governance, increase accountability, decrease information asymmetry that exists between the private prison corporations and stakeholders, and allow external stakeholders to make informed judgments about whether those in the business of incarceration are fulfilling their public interest role.

Judicial Intervention into Prisons: Comparing Private and Public Prisons from 1990 to 2005

ABSTRACTA mid-twentieth century prisoners’ rights revolution gave American prisoners unprecedented access to courts for exercising newly elaborated constitutional rights. The result was a tide of litigation brought by inmates and subsequent remedial court orders requiring corrections officials to improve conditions of confinement. It was in this context of aggressive judicial intervention into prison operations that the private prison industry emerged. Some early proponents of prison privatization claimed that the private sector could provide superior prison conditions and thereby reduce judicial intervention. This article assesses this claim empirically. It uses data on state and federal adult correctional facilities from the Bureau of Justice Statistics to compare the prevalence of reported court orders among public and private correctional facilities in the United States from 1990 through 2005. Results from a series of logistic regression analyses reveal that privatization has had little effect on the likelihood of judicial intervention into correctional facilities.

African Americans’ Principled Opposition to Prison Privatization

This research analyzes African American opposition toward privatized prisons. It uses data from a national survey of African Americans to show that concerns about safety and corruption correlate with opposition to private prison facilities. Perceptions of discrimination within the justice system also correlate with opposition toward privatization, but only among African Americans who perceive a sense of common fate with other African Americans. A survey experiment also shows that a sense of common fate among African Americans moderates the effect of racial disparities in private prisons on policy opposition. Overall, it appears that African Americans understand the potential costs of the growing private prison industry.

The U.S. Immigration Crisis and a Call for the Church's Lifeworld Politics: Why Should Hauerwas Collaborate with Habermas on the U.S. Immigration Crisis?

The U.S. Immigration Crisis and a Call for the Church's Lifeworld Politics: Why Should Hauerwas Collaborate with Habermas on the U.S. Immigration Crisis? Ilsup Ahn Introduction: Saying “No” to the State's Biopolitics Against the Undocumented Migrants According to the recent survey report published by the Washington, D.C.‐based Public Religion Research Institute, throughout 2013, there has been consistent bipartisan and cross‐religious support for creating a path to citizenship for immigrants living in the United States. While 14 percent percent of Americans support allowing undocumented immigrants to become permanent legal residents but not citizens, 63 percent favor providing a way for immigrants who are currently living in the United States without legal documentation to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements. They also discovered that nearly two‐thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. immigration system is either completely broken (34 percent) or mostly broken but working in some areas (31 percent). The report also shows that 41 percent of Americans believe immigration policy should be an immediate priority for President Obama and Congress, while roughly as many (42 percent) say it should be a priority during the next couple of years. Interestingly enough, only 14 percent of Americans say it should not be a priority at all. Despite the majority of the U.S. citizens favor some sort of comprehensive immigration reform, the Congress has failed to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul to date largely due to the House Republican leaders, who recently unveiled their principles for an overhaul for the nation's immigration laws. These principles, however, do not clarify whether most undocumented immigrants would ever be able to become legal residents or U.S. citizens, while they would require tighter border security and more interior immigration enforcements. These principles seem to reiterate the problematic anti‐immigration mantra to continuously militarize our borders as well as to criminalize undocumented immigrants. The Obama administration has been increasingly criticized in regard to the inhumane deportation of many undocumented people, especially those parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Critiques argue that President Obama has overseen record levels of deportations, with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) repatriating about 2 million undocumented people since he took office in January 2009 (roughly 400,000 a year or 1,100 per day). Amid the increasing political turmoil relating to the immigration reform, the public media begin to notice that the real winners in immigration control are the prison industry. The Atlantic, for example, reports that since 2003, when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was created and government crackdowns on undocumented aliens increased, private prisons have gained business, with industry profits more than doubling. Damon Hininger, CEO of CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), said during a conference call with investors in May 2010 that between 2007 and 2009, when earnings for the S&P dropped by 28 percent, the company's earnings drew by 18 percent. According to The Atlantic, the government spends more than $2 billion a year on immigration detention, while spending only $72 million on alternatives to detention. It also reports that the private prison industry, such as CCA, has spent more than $1 million on lobbying. Although private prisons say that their lobbying efforts are aimed at promoting their services, not shaping immigration policy, immigrant advocates argue that the private prison industry is always lobbying for more detention beds. Given that the cost of detaining an immigrant averages $159 a day and half of 34,000 beds are operated by private prison corporations, it is not difficult to see the connection between the interests of the private prison corporations such as CCA and the Geo Group and the criminalization of undocumented migrants. According to Lee Fang of The Nation, the controversial Arizona SB1070 was developed in consultation with private prison lobbyists through a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Unfortunately, as Aubrey Pringle reports, several pending immigration bills would increase the number of incarcerated immigrants even more. The ongoing political struggles related to the increasing border militarization, the widespread criminalization of undocumented migrants, and the massive deportation of undocumented parents are the explicit exemplification of what philosophers Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben call the...

To Be or Not to Be Committed: The Effects of Continuance and Affective Commitment on Absenteeism and Turnover Intent among Private Prison Personnel

Despite the recent burgeoning of the private prison industry, little research has focused on private prison personnel. This study attempts to help fill this research gap by examining the relationship between two distinct forms of organizational commitment, continuance and affective, and the withdrawal outcomes of absenteeism and turnover intent for personnel at a Midwestern U.S. private prison. Results of an ordinary least squares (OLS) multivariate regression analysis supported our prediction of an inverse relationship between affective organizational commitment and the withdrawal outcomes of absenteeism and turnover intent; however, contrary to our hypotheses, the analysis indicated no statistically significant relationship between continuance organizational commitment and these withdrawal outcomes, after controlling for custody position, gender, age, tenure, education, race, and supervisory status. Our results suggest that enhancing employees’ affective organizational bonds should be a priority for private correctional facilities because it has positive effects for both employees and the organization.

Prison Privatization Turns Twenty-Five: The Evolution of a Mature Private Prison Industry in the United States

This paper examines the current level of competition and innovation in the private prison industry in the US. The author places twenty-five years of private prison business development within an industrial life cycle framework and argues that the realities of the mature prison privatization market do not match the promise of innovation and quality improvements voiced by privatization advocates during the 1980s and early 1990s. Analysis by way of the four firm market concentration ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) at two points in time shows the market to be dominated by decreasingly fewer companies (an oligopoly of producers). At the same time, the number of government jurisdictions buying incarceration services is small and shrinking, resulting in an oligopsony of consumers. The net effect is that any real cost advantages of privatization are marginal at best, private prison programs have become virtually indistinguishable from public prisons, and the promise of innovation remains unfulfilled. The article concludes with a discussion of policy implications, including the idea of increasing the role of the non-profit sector in the operation of secure correctional facilities.

Commentary: The Election of Barack Obama: The Debt Has Not Been Paid

Many people have commented that with election of Barack Obama as 44th President of United States, this is a wonderful time to be a historian or other scholar of American experience. In person of President Obama we have coming together of multiple meanings and conceptualizations of designation While his father was from Kenya, Barack Obama understands that he and his family are Americans culturally; but unlike for many of us, Obama's African connection is as real and apparent as American. The election of President Obama in many ways is realization of social and political trends that began with launching of modern Civil Rights Movement in 1950s and Black Power Movement of 1960s and 1970s. But in many ways this is the best of and worst of times for U.S. Americans. On 29 February 2008, while Barack Obama was successfully winning Democratic presidential primaries, New York Times published an article on report from Pew Center for States stating that in 2007 U.S. prison population rose to 1.6 million, that more than 1 in 100 adults are in and that the U.S. inmate population is highest in world. For those who would like to argue that with election of President Obama, Americans have entered a new post-racial era, we need to call their attention to reports of The Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and other groups that have documented disparities in rates at which Americans and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use. The Sentencing Project reports that while Americans represent about 13 percent of monthly drug users, they represent 35 percent of arrests, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. American men in 15 states were imprisoned on drug charges at rates ranging from 20 to 57 higher than those of white men. As a result, one out of every 15 black men is in prison, and for those between ages of 20 and 24, rate is one in nine. And increasingly, black women are also targeted by prison-industrial complex so that one out of every 18 black women born in 2006 can expect to go to prison in her lifetime, while for white women expected rate is one in every 108; and whereas one out of 355 white women between ages of 35 and 38 was behind bars in 2007, rate for black women was one in 100. This high incarceration rate means that on any given day, one out of every 14 black children has at least one parent in prison. The drug laws that were put into effect, and harsh sentencing rules, are not merely result of politicians wanting to demonstrate that they are tough on crime, but are also a reflection of way U.S. political system currently operates. Thus wealthy lobbyists for private prison industry not only participated in writing of these new drug laws and contributed heavily to both Democratic and Republican politicians' campaigns, they also lobby to make sure that there are no changes in these laws that would stem flow of prisoners into these private prisons. Therefore, if Americans organized to change drug sentencing laws, and thus decrease numbers of black children and adults being incarcerated by thousands for victimless crimes, we would have to compete against resources and influence of private prison industry for support among politicians. In other words, we could move beyond moral indignation and outraged rhetoric to mass marches and public protests, but we would still have to raise filthy lucre to pad pockets of politicians and their political campaigns to effect any type of meaningful legislative changes. Moreover, with economic meltdown, gross disparities in circumstances for Americans compared to white Americans further undermine arguments about onset of a post-racial era in United States. …

The Rise and Stall of Prison Privatization: An Integration of Policy Analysis Perspectives

This article examines prison privatization policy in the United States from 1984 to the turn of the century by integrating several policy analysis perspectives. Kingdon's theory of multiple streams provides an overarching context, and elements of the advocacy coalition framework, the subgovernment perspective, and disjointed incrementalism explain steps along the way. The private prison industry expanded in the midst of rapidly increasing inmate populations and widespread federal court oversight of public prisons. Serious incidents in private prisons prompted the development of an extensive regulatory framework that essentially molded private prisons into mirror images of their public sector counterparts. By the turn of the 21st century, the incentive for privatization began to fade as prison population growth leveled off and federal court oversight of prisons declined. Concurrently, antiprivatization advocacy efforts gained strength, particularly within the faith-based community, limiting the prospect of broader expansion of prison privatization policy.

Changing of the Guard: A Case for Privatization of Texas Prisons

The privatization of prisons is an idea whose time seems to have come in the United States. Although still a small fraction of the total number of correctional facilities and beds overall, the size of the private sector presence in recent years has increased rapidly. The present article reviews the historical record of correctional privatization in Texas and examines more recent data and issues in that state and elsewhere, to argue that the accelerated growth of the private prison industry is a change for the good.