It is the responsibility of the government to maintain the nation’s correctional facilities. Therefore, any privatization of correctional facilities is inherently irresponsible. The reason it is irresponsible is because the top priority of any business is to secure a profit. Whereas the mission of a correctional facility is to “protect society by confining offenders in…facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.” The purpose of a correctional facility is disregarded when they are privatized. Prisoners become profit margins when they are left to the discretion of businesses.

Privatization incentivizes businesses to increase the number of prisonsbecause higher incarceration rates lead to greater profit margins. This is exactly what society does not need. The public has forgotten that most correctional facilities do not hold permanent residents. About one in nine offenders are serving life sentences. This means that eight in nine are expected to reenter society. For example, the intervals for mandatory minimums of federal drug offenses are 5, 10 and 20 years depending on the severity of the crime. This means every 5, 10 and 20 years inmates are being released on former drug offenses. Incarceration serves a dual purpose; protect the public from the offenders and rehabilitate the offenders to become functional members of society. It is counterproductive to fulfill one purpose while ignoring the other. State and federal facilities are incentivized by the purpose of a correctional facility. On the other hand, private prisons have no economic benefit from this purpose.

Why?

Private prisons can serve half of the purpose without sacrificing potential profits. Higher incarceration rates will lead to a greater demand for facilitates. This is an opportunity for private business to secure a profit. However, if prisoners become functional members of society, they will not return to prison. In the best case scenario, the prison populations will decrease and so will their profit margins. Therefore, creating functional members of society is not profitable.

Taxpayers are burdened with the responsibility of maintaining correctional facilities. In 2012, the average annual cost per inmate in Texas was $21,390. Maintaining these facilities should be a burden. This is why they try to turn inmates into productive members of society which will alleviate this burden in the long run. The reason we feel this burden is because it is our responsibility to address this issue. It is an act of carelessness to transfer this burden to private businesses.

The goal should not be to spend less money on inmates. As Michael Jacobson explained in The Crime Report:

“It is not necessarily a positive to have low per-inmate costs (as the result of overcrowding, for example) or a negative to have higher per-inmate costs (which may be due in part to interventions that help reduce recidivism).

The better goal is to be cost-effective: to spend resources wisely to get the best possible outcomes, both on an individual level for those who return to the community and, more broadly, as reflected by improved public safety.

Operating a safe, secure, humane and well-programmed prison is, and should be, an expensive proposition.”

I clearly recognize the necessity of correctional facilities. I am simply pointing out the fact that maintaining this system is the government’s responsibility which in turn makes it our responsibility. Society needs to combat this burden by improving itself. Not handing the problem off to a business to take care of it.