s prisons, and the financial ability of states to build and operate new facilities. Consequently, federal and state governments turned to privatization as the answer to their shortage of prison cells. This paper will examine the move towards privatization of prisons, particularly in California, which houses the most inmates in the nation.
Privatization of prisons is not new. The latter part of the 19th century saw many communities contract with private firms to handle the incarceration of prisoners. Private contractors operated two of New York's prisons and Louisiana's first prison. The government asserted control over prisons when investigations revealed that many prisoners had been abused or neglected (Phinney, 1998). Moreover, in the first half of the 20th century, the prison population remained largely constant, while the rate of crime declined dramatically, thus eliminating the need for private prisons.
After World War II, crime began a steady rise, reaching its peak during the 1970s. The rise in crime led to more arrests and more people behind bars, but the number remained manageable. That began to change in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The American public, fed up with increasing crime and weary of attempts at rehabilitating criminals, clamored for greater punishment of criminals, especially repeat offenders. At the same time, the nation launched a war on drugs. These developments led to a dramatic rise in the number of people incarcerated, even as the crime rate remained constant for much of the 1980s (Heglin, 1994, 213), then declined to its lowest point in decades in the late 1990s (Beres and Griffith, 1998, 105).
Concurrently, the American public's attitude towards government underwent a change. Most people did not view the government as the answer to society's problems, and many came to view it as one of society's problems. Voters wanted government cut, claiming that the private sector could do the ...