NCJ Number
126259
Date Published
1991
Length
17 pages
Annotation
The reemergence of privately operated prisons is examined as a major social innovation which presents multifaceted directions and possible outcomes. The social factors that create an interest in private prisons, modern penology, the overflowing corrections dilemma, cost effectiveness, accountability, and decarceration plus overall consequences of the privatization of prisons are reviewed.
Abstract
The reemergence of prisons-for-profit has attracted the private sector entrepreneurs who look at the process as a "criminal justice industrial enterprise." With the public desire for increased incarceration of more people for longer periods of time plus the current racial demographics of the prison populations, the trend must be seen in the full context of the prisoners' rights movement and wider democratization of American society and its institutions during the past several decades. Private prison operators, whose growth may depend upon the pressures of an expanding prison population could stimulate an increase in incarceration rather than decarceration; yet prison overcrowding is more an indicator of a national breakdown of social and economic viability rather than an indicator of too small prisons. 35 references.