st-saving strategy of public administration at local, state, and federal levels (1991, p. D3). Constraints on public-sector budgets, particularly at local government levels, are cited as a major factor of prison-management privatization. Ring (1987) and Brakel (1989) cite cost controls as a significant positive reason for contracting out larger as well as smaller federal, state, and local corrections facilities and services to prison-management companies. Ring observes that, by and large, private-sector contracting services have historically been "peripheral. For example, the 10 most frequently contracted services are medical and mental health, community treatment centers, construction, education, drug treatment, college programs, staff training, vocational training and counseling. Actual management of prisons for the most part remains in public hands" (Ring, 1987, p. A24).
Writing in 1989, Brakel notes that many smaller, decentralized jail facilities have been managed by private-sector firms since the early 1980s. He cites a number of major correctional faci
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