The topic of this paper is private prisons and its contribution to the American criminal justice system. In order to cope with the problems of overcrowding in prisons and the escalating costs of building cells, public officials have transferred the responsibility of incarceration to private corporations. The growth of the private prison industry is based on the belief that corporations can improve cost efficiency of prisons by reducing expenses by 15 to 20 percent. According to Susan Hart of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)ùthe largest prison company in the country, private firms are not as hampered by rules and procedures in obtaining supplies and construction as public organizations. In addition, private prisons also save on labor costs with the provision of lower wages and the absence of labor unions. The use of high technology such as video cameras, infrared security systems and heat detectors also diminishes the need for staff (Phinney, 1998a, pp. 2-3).
Although private prisons were touted as the cost-efficient panacea for the prevention of crime during the mid-1990s, they have lost their attractiveness amidst mounting problems and reduction in crime rates. The breakouts of violence and riots in several private prisons have triggered serious concerns about their capacity to perform the functions of guarding and rehabilitating offenders. For example, four inmates and a guard died in Wackenhut's New Mexico prisons in 1998 (Slevin, 1998, pp. 1-3). Northeast Ohio Correctional experienced two murders and 20 stabbings among its 1,700 inmates, compared with 22 assaults and two murders among the 48,000 inmates in Ohio's public prisons in 1997 (Phinney, 1998b, p. 4).
Some of the problems with private prisons can also be attributed to other issues such as inexperienced staff. In the prison opened by CCA at Youngstown, correctional officers stated that they did not have sufficient training and experience to cope with the i...