Breaking the Shackles of Private Prisons Private

prisons in the United States have long been the topic of controversy, for example over their role in housing undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Several states have banned them, some banks have vowed to stop financing them and more than one presidential candidate has pledged to end them at the federal level.

During his first week in office last year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order demanding the Department of Justice not renew its contracts with privately operated criminal detention centers. The directive only covers 13 private prisons with roughly 20,000 prisoners, but in fact, the U.S. houses over 200 of said facilities, holding more than 110,000 inmates—some 8 percent of the country’s total jail population.

Private prisons can be both heaven and hell for their residents, depending on personal bank balance. Critics point out that profit motives, coupled with a lack of oversight, can create incentives to minimize costs and care for inmates.

Generally speaking, if prisoners can cough up the money, they can live in relative comfort, need not engage in heavy physical labor, and can get protection to reduce the risks of violence or abuse. If they don’t have the cash flow, they are often forced to work hard at an hourly wage far below the minimum standard in the name of “vocational training” or “reemployment projects.” Under the latters’ circumstances, sanitary conditions and food quality, too, will be inferior.

In May 2012, one private detention center in Mississippi witnessed a violent 2.5-hour riot, killing 16 inmates, because residents were dissatisfied with the living conditions and medical standards.

Under the pressure of public opinion, the Barack Obama administration put forward the goal of phasing out private prisons in 2016. Yet when Donald Trump took office in 2017, his commitment to the fight against illegal immigrants ushered in a new era of development opportunities for private prisons and newly established, privately run immigration detention facilities.

With these prisons obviously trampling American core values such as judicial justice and human rights protection, the question beckons: Why can’t they be shut down?

Packed to the rafters

The U.S. is a highly privatized society, its market economy considered capable of solving almost all problems. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the American Government stepped up efforts to crack down on crime, the ensuing explosive increase in inmate population overwhelming the already poorly managed public prison system. Construction of new facilities would cost the taxpayer a large lump of money and the American people thus strongly opposed this, believing their taxes should go to improving education, healthcare and social welfare, rather than the suppressing and locking up of people.

Tom Beasley, t hen Chairman of t he Tennessee Republican Party, came up with a solution: “You just sell prisons like you’re selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers.” Inviting public bidding and transferring the job of detaining prisoners to private enterprises in the form of “service outsourcing” would surely “solve the problem.” Beasley then teamed up with two other senior Republicans to establish the first private prison in the U.S., marking the entrepreneurial account of the largest private prison enterprise in the country: the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Compared with their public peers, private prisons seem to be more efficient: Statistics show that it usually takes five to six years for the government to build such a facility, while private companies only take two to three years; the operating cost of each bed in private prisons is only one 10th of that in public ones; private guards and staff do not occupy the civil service establishment, which can save state governments a lot of money.

But business people do not run prisons for charity. On the one hand, they receive government subsidies and on the other, they squeeze money out of their inmates. At present, private detention centers in the U.S. can generate over $5 billion in profits every year.

Money talks

The American double standard concerning human rights issues gives rise to many of its social problems, the controversial private prison system included. The U.S. population accounts for about 5 percent of the world’s total, but contributes more than 20 percent of imprisonment with a prison population of over 2.3 million, meaning one in 110 adults is incarcerated. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit organization based in America, in 2018, if all 50 U.S. states were to be regarded as sovereign countries, their internment levels would rank among the top 60 in the world.

The U.S. has always positioned itself as a “human rights defender” and frequently uses human rights as an excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Yet it tends to turn

Total Private Prison Population in the U.S.

128,063 87,369