Changing the Guard is an authoritative survey of one of the most controversial aspects of criminal justice and corrections: the growing use of private prisons.
When prison privatization began in the United States in the early 1980s, many policy analysts claimed it would increase costs, decrease quality and erode state authority. Has it? Changing the Guard brings together leading criminal justice researchers to tackle this and related questions: Does prison privatization make economic sense? What are the prospects for enlarging prison privatization?
Changing the Guard also examines the broader questions that surround the prison privatization debate: What are the historical precedents for prison privatization? What do we know about punishment and recidivism? How long must a prison sentence be to deter crime? Are too many people in prison or too few? Should legal reform take precedence over prison reform to ensure that privatization does not simply make the criminal justice system more efficient at abusing civil liberties and executing legal injustices?
“Changing the Guard is the authoritative and definitive book on prison privatization. It brilliantly examines the full range of issues—history, status, economics, efficiency effectiveness, equity, morality, and recidivism, and addresses the fundamental societal costs and benefits of incarceration itself.”
“If you want to understand private prisons and how they fit into the criminal justice system, you need the information and analysis in this book. Changing the Guard does an outstanding job of combining a firm grounding of what we know about private prisons and how they work with great analysis of the economics and policy issues that surround the use of private prisons. Then it frosts the cake with some unique perspectives on both criminal justice and private prisons. Anyone who needs to make decisions about private prisons needs to read this book.”
“Changing the Guard is first-rate analysis of a moribund industry, its political-bureaucratic ills and the modest success of so-called prison privatization over the last two decades. Real experts point toward a crucial reform: foster competition for renewable contracts among public and private prison agencies to operate every facility, not just a few new ones.”
“This book brings refreshing relief from the widespread cant and negativity about prisons in general and privately operated prisons in particular. . . . So much written about private prisons is tendentious and ideological, in contrast to the carefully researched contributions here.”
![The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1] - 27 Oct 2020](https://ingress-cdn.pressreader.com/imageserver/v1/image/books/603536a3-5cbe-4bca-8bbf-92263b677af5?width=163)
