What questions emerge regarding the practice of contracting with private, for-profit organizations to operate correctional facilities?
Private prison is a place, in which the offenders will be incarcerated or imprisoned by private organizations, for the fulfillment of the contract with the government. Private prisons are also known as for-profit prisons. Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the United States. But thanks to the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, which led to harsher sentencing policies and higher rates of incarceration, the inmate population skyrocketed beyond the capacity of the nation’s existing prisons, a fact that corporations were quick to take advantage. In 1984, the country’s first for-profit prison was established in Tennessee, and over the next six years, it was joined by 66 more. In August 2016, the Justice Department announce their plan to end the use of private prisons, citing concerns about their levels of safety and effectiveness at saving money compared to government-run facilities. Less than a year later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reserved this plan. Although private prisons account for a small overall percentage of America’s incarcerated population, they have grown at a disproportionate rate, with an astounding 1600 percent increase in their populations from 1990 to 2005. The firm or private for-profit organizations with a financial motive should not be put in control of prisoner’s lives.