ene in the privatization process.
The notion of prison privatization arose in the 1980s, though private for-profit firms had long been involved in running various components of prison systems such as catering, industries, juvenile offender facilities, or community-based rehabilitation programs (Cavise, 1998). It is only recently that government entities, generally concentrated in the United States and Europe, have turned to the private sector in hopes of reducing the costs and improving the efficiency of prisons systems from large to small. The topic is one that ahs been widely and intensely debated. Arguments advanced in favor of privatization include:
The private sector can build larger prisons faster
and thus accommodate a rapidly expanding prison population;
The private sector is less encumbered by a bureaucracy
than the public sector, and thus less likely to duplicate
functions or respond sluggishly to mandates for change;
Corporations tend to be more streamlined (and bottom line
conscious) and more willing to be flexible to meet expanding or changing needs (Cavise, 1998).
Opponents of privatization, however, counter that:
Crime is not a private matter between an offender and
his or her jailers, but an issue that concerns society
If the rights of an individual and the interests of
society are to be safeguarded, the government is under the obligation to ensure that the goals of incarceration are met via constant control and monitoring (Cavise, 1998).
At the same time, proponents of privatization make the point that the government does not simply surrender its regulatory, monitoring and oversight authority when it privatizes prison operation (Cavise, 1998). Government does continue to play a dominant and central role in this context and in some of the day-to-day operations of privatized prison systems, which have expanded to constitute an estimated 20 percent of all global prisons. Cavise...