NCJ Number
132872
Journal
Partnership Focus Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Dated: (March 1991) Pages: 20-21,23-24
Date Published
1991
Length
4 pages
Annotation
The greatest controversy remaining in the debate over privatization concerned the American adult correctional system. Ten years ago, although the private sector was involved in the juvenile corrections arena, private sector involvement in adult corrections was limited to work release centers and halfway houses, food, education, and medical services.
Abstract
As prison populations increased in the 1980s, without an accompanying rise in tax dollars to fund prison construction and operations, the government began to look to the private sector for some solutions. In the 1970s private sector involvement grew slowly because the idea of privatization was novel, government agencies were unenthusiastic about private competition, existing laws either failed to authorize or prohibited private management of correctional facilities, and there was no private corrections industry to push for the contracts that were available. With the 1983 formation of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in Nashville, the correctional privatization movement was born. Other companies became part of the developing industry, winning contracts at the Federal, State, and local levels. Privatization offers four major benefits: an ability to construct new facilities more quickly; construction cost savings over and above those linked to time savings; facility operations at an inmate per day cost of approximately 10 percent below government costs; and provision of a higher quality of service. Several obstacles need to be overcome for the industry to progress, however: the need for legislative reform; opposition within the public corrections establishment; public employee union opposition; and anti-competitive statutory provisions and bid requirements. Nevertheless, these authors predict that the growth of the private corrections industry will accelerate during the next decade. 1 appendix