Comparing Quality of Confinement in Private and Public Prisons Charles H
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Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice
Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2015 Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice Allegra M. McLeod Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1490 http://ssrn.com/abstract=2625217 62 UCLA L. Rev. 1156-1239 (2015) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice Allegra M. McLeod EVIEW R ABSTRACT This Article introduces to legal scholarship the first sustained discussion of prison LA LAW LA LAW C abolition and what I will call a “prison abolitionist ethic.” Prisons and punitive policing U produce tremendous brutality, violence, racial stratification, ideological rigidity, despair, and waste. Meanwhile, incarceration and prison-backed policing neither redress nor repair the very sorts of harms they are supposed to address—interpersonal violence, addiction, mental illness, and sexual abuse, among others. Yet despite persistent and increasing recognition of the deep problems that attend U.S. incarceration and prison- backed policing, criminal law scholarship has largely failed to consider how the goals of criminal law—principally deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retributive justice—might be pursued by means entirely apart from criminal law enforcement. Abandoning prison-backed punishment and punitive policing remains generally unfathomable. This Article argues that the general reluctance to engage seriously an abolitionist framework represents a failure of moral, legal, and political imagination. -
A Legacy of Supremacy: Prison, Power, and the Carceral Nation
Western Washington University Western CEDAR WWU Graduate School Collection WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship Winter 2017 A Legacy of Supremacy: Prison, Power, and the Carceral Nation Luke J. Hickey Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Hickey, Luke J., "A Legacy of Supremacy: Prison, Power, and the Carceral Nation" (2017). WWU Graduate School Collection. 554. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/554 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in WWU Graduate School Collection by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A LEGACY OF SUPREMACY: PRISON, POWER, AND THE CARCERAL NATION By Luke J. Hickey Accepted in Partial Completion of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Kathleen L. Kitto, Dean of the Graduate School ADVISORY COMMITTEE Chair, Dr. Kathleen Young Dr. Sean Bruna Dr. Shurla Thibou MASTER’S THESIS In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree at Western Washington University, I grant to Western Washington University the non- exclusive royalty-free right to archive, reproduce, distribute, and display the thesis in any and all forms, including electronic format, via any digital library mechanisms maintained by WWU. I represent and warrant this is my original work, and does not infringe or violate any rights of others. I warrant that I have obtained written permissions from the owner of any third party copyrighted material included in these files. -
Phasing out Our Use of Private Prisons | OPA | Department of Justice
10/7/2016 Phasing Out Our Use of Private Prisons | OPA | Department of Justice PHASING OUT OUR USE OF PRIVATE PRISONS August 18, 2016 Courtesy of Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates When most people think of the Justice Department, they are likely to imagine the most visible parts of our job – the law enforcement agents who investigate crimes or the lawyers who prosecute them. But the department’s core responsibilities go beyond investigation and prosecution. Unlike most states, the federal government puts its law enforcement agents, criminal prosecutors, and correctional officers all in a single department. We handle every step from the start of an investigation to the end of a prison sentence. Our work to house and rehabilitate individuals incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons is an important part of our responsibility and operations, accounting for 25 percent of the department’s budget every year. The federal prison population increased by almost 800 percent between 1980 and 2013, often at a far faster rate than the Bureau of Prisons could accommodate in their own facilities. In an effort to manage the rising prison population, about a decade ago, the bureau began contracting with privately operated correctional institutions to confine some federal inmates. By 2013, as both the federal prison population and the proportion of federal prisoners in private facilities reached their peak, the bureau was housing approximately 15 percent of its population, or nearly 30,000 inmates, in privately operated prisons. 2013 was also the year that the Department of Justice launched its Smart on Crime Initiative after identifying reforms that would ensure more proportional sentences and effective use of federal resources. -
The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a Global View a Global Detention Project Working Paper
The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a Global View A Global Detention Project Working Paper By Michael Flynn and Cecilia Cannon September 2009 THE PRIVATIZATION OF IMMIGRATION DETENTION: TOWARDS A GLOBAL VIEW A Global Detention Project Working Paper By Michael Flynn and Cecilia Cannon∗ September 2009 Summary: The phrase “private prison” has become a term of opprobrium, and for good reason. There are numerous cases of mistreatment and mismanagement at such institutions. However, in the context of immigration detention, this caricature hides a complex phenomenon that is driven by a number of different factors and involves a diverse array of actors who provide a range of services. This working paper employs research undertaken by the Global Detention Project (GDP)—an inter-disciplinary research project based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies—to help situate the phenomenon of the privatization of immigration detention within a global perspective. Part of the difficulty in assessing this phenomenon is that our understanding of it is based largely on experiences in English-speaking countries. This working paper endeavors to extend analysis of this phenomenon by demonstrating the broad geographical spread of privatized detention practices across the globe, assessing the differing considerations that arise when states decide to privatize, and comparing the experiences of a sample of lesser known cases. I. INTRODUCTION The phrase “private prison” often conjures images of rapacious corporations out to make a buck at the expense of prisoners. Abetted by neoliberal economic policies, private security companies are given a responsibility long considered a core function of the state—the appropriate treatment of people imprisoned because of their crimes. -
Hustle and Flow: Prison Privatization Fueling the Prison Industrial Complex
FULCHER FINAL (DO NOT DELETE) 6/10/2012 2:43 PM Hustle and Flow: Prison Privatization Fueling the Prison Industrial Complex Patrice A. Fulcher* ABSTRACT The Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”) is a profiteering system fueled by the economic interests of private corporations, federal and state correctional institutions, and politicians. The PIC grew from ground fertilized by an increase in the U.S. prison population united with an economically depressed market, stretched budgets, and the ineffective allocation of government resources. The role of the federal, state, and local governments in the PIC has been to allocate resources. This is the first of a series of articles exploring issues surrounding the PIC, including (1) prison privatization, (2) outsourcing the labor of prisoners for profit, and (3) constitutional misinterpretations. The U.S. prison population increased in the 1980s, in part, because of harsh drug and sentencing laws and the racial profiling of Blacks. When faced with the problem of managing additional inmates, U.S. correctional institutions looked to the promise of private prison companies to house and control inmates at reduced costs. The result was the privatization of prisons, private companies handling the management of federal and state inmates. This Article addresses how the privatization of prisons helped to grow the PIC and the two ways in which governments’ expenditure of funds to private prison companies amount to an inefficient allocation of resources: (1) it creates an incentive to increase the prison population, which led to a monopoly and manipulation of the market by Correction Corporation of America (“CCA”) and The GEO Group, Inc. -
Private Prison Fact Sheet
Private Corrections Institute, Inc. QUICK FACTS ABOUT PRISON PRIVATIZATION The private prison industry has a sordid past, dating from the turn of the 20th century when inmates were handed over to private businesses under the “convict lease” system, primarily in the South. Abuses by private prison companies that used inmates for forced labor, including a high rate of prisoner deaths, led government agencies to abandon the concept of for-profit incarceration. The industry revived in the early 1980s due largely to tough-on-crime sentencing laws and the war on drugs, which resulted in an increase in the prison population. A number of companies were formed to capitalize on the developing market for housing inmates, including the industry leader, Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), the industry’s second-largest firm, GEO Group (previously known as Wackenhut Corrections), and Cornell Corrections, MTC, Civigenics and various other smaller companies. The industry expanded in the 1990s due to a crackdown on illegal immigration but has leveled off in more recent years. Today, approximately 8% of state and federal prisoners are held in privately-operated facilities, totaling over 126,000 inmates. Government agencies contract with private prison companies for several reasons, primarily anticipated cost savings and a need for additional bed space. However, there are a number of negative factors related to private prisons that should be considered, including the following: Staff Turnover Rate Staffing costs account for about 80% of operational expenses for prisons whether they are public or private. Thus, one of the main ways that private prison companies reduce costs to increase their profit margins is by cutting staffing expenses. -
State Slavery Sanctioned by the 13Th Amendment
State Slavery sanctioned by the 13th Amendment HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of “hiring out prisoners” was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery – which were almost never proven –or vagrancy (leaving the plantation in search of better opportunities) and were then “hired out” for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of “hired-out” miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. -
Overview of Prison Privatization in Arizona
Prison Privatization in Arizona A briefing paper prepared by the American Friends Service Committee, Arizona Area Program American Friends Service Committee, Arizona Area 103 N. Park Ave., Ste. 111 Tucson, AZ 85719 (520)623-9141 (520)623-5901 fax [email protected] October 2010 Introduction The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker organization that works for peace and justice worldwide. Our work is based on a commitment to nonviolence and the belief that all people have value and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. The AFSC‟s programs promote social justice by focusing on a diverse set of social concerns. The organization‟s criminal justice work has always focused on the need for an effective and humane criminal justice system that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment. Here in Arizona, our criminal justice program advocates for a reduction in the state‟s prison population through rational sentencing reform and a moratorium on new prison construction. A key focus of that effort is our work to educate the public on the risks inherent in prison privatization through for-profit prison corporations. This document is an attempt to paint a picture of the current efforts at privatization of prisons in the state of Arizona and raise questions about the potential pitfalls of this practice. Arizona Overview Arizona‟s experiment with for-profit incarceration began in the early 90‟s when the state faced the first of many prison overcrowding crises. Arizona‟s first privately operated prison was the Marana Community Correctional Treatment Facility, a minimum-security prison for people with substance abuse issues. -
Coming out of Concrete Closets
COMING OUT OF CONCRETE CLOSETS A REPORT ON BLACK & PINK’S NATIONAL LGBTQ PRISONER SURVEY To increase the power of prisoners we need greater access to the Jason Lydon political process. We need real! access to real people in real power with who will actively hear us and help us, not just give us lip service, come Kamaria Carrington sit and talk with me, help me take my dreams and present them to Hana Low the people who can turn them into a reality, I am not persona non Reed Miller grata, hear me, don't patronize me just to keep me quiet, understand that I'm very capable of helping in this fight. ‐Survey respondent Mahsa Yazdy 1 Black & Pink October 2015 www.blackandpink.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Version 2, 10.21.2015 Cover image: “Alcatraz” by Mike Shelby / CC BY 2.0 , 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................................... 3 Key Findings ............................................................................................................................................................ 3 Recommendations ..................................................................................................................................................... 6 Policing and Criminalization of LGBTQ People ....................................................................................................... 6 Courts / Bail Reform / -
UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO the Penitentiary at Richmond
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The Penitentiary at Richmond: Slavery, State Building, and Labor in the South’s First State Prison A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Hilary Louise Coulson Committee in charge: Professor Rebecca Jo Plant, Chair Professor Stephen D. Cox Professor Mark Hanna Professor Mark Hendrickson Professor Rachel Klein 2016 Copyright Hilary Louise Coulson, 2016 All Rights Reserved The Dissertation of Hilary Louise Coulson is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2016 iii DEDICATION For my parents, Richard and Laura Coulson who always believed I could, and for my husband, Frank Fernandez, who helped me prove it. iv EPIGRAPH “You know we don’t have our prisons like yours of the North, like grand palaces with flower-yards.” –Keeper of the Virginia Penitentiary, c. 1866 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ............................................................................................... iii Dedication ...................................................................................................... -
Educator Pedagogical Approach Shedding Light on Solitary Confinement Moya Atkinson, MSW May 2020
Q&A: Educator Pedagogical Approach Shedding Light on Solitary Confinement Moya Atkinson, MSW May 2020 What approach to teaching about solitary confinement, and incarceration more broadly, do you recommend? The most powerful teaching approach is experiential, namely involvement in relevant activities coupled with reflection. Following are some learning opportunities for students that we recommend. Involvement and Observation 1. Witness the prison environment. Take part in a correctional facility tour: visit a prison, jail, or detention center. Some jails offer educational tours to college and university classes at the request of the professor. See, for example, information from the Orange County Corrections Department in Florida, and the Strafford County Department of Correction in New Hampshire. 2. Write letters to incarcerated people. See Letters from Solitary by Solitary Watch. Another excellent resource is the Prison and Justice Writing Program, which is part of PEN America, an organization that promotes the intersection of literature and human rights. Set up opportunities to interview returning citizens who were formerly incarcerated. 3. Experience solitary confinement virtually. The Guardian offers 6x9: A virtual experience of solitary confinement, which places you inside a U.S. solitary confinement prison cell. 4. Get involved in efforts by organizations that advocate for issues of solitary confinement and for the improvement of the justice system: Q&A: Educator Pedagogical Approach 2 American Civil Liberties Union The Vera Institute of Justice The Center for Constitutional Rights The Marshall Project (Abolition Resources) Prison Policy Initiative Center for Prison Reform (Explore their extensive list of organizations, including those for currently and formerly incarcerated people and for their families.) 5. -
Private Prisons the Wrong Choice for Alabama
POLICY BRIEF PRIVATE PRISONS THE WRONG CHOICE FOR ALABAMA OCTOBER 2017 Alabama is grappling with how to reform an overcrowded, understaffed prison system that perpetuates violence and fails to rehabilitate prisoners. It’s a problem that has confronted many other states as their prison populations mushroomed during the era of “tough-on- crime” policies that made America the incarceration capital of the world. Beginning in the late 1980s, some states turned to pri- quately trained corrections officers and remarkably vate, for-profit companies to operate their prisons in high staff turnover. hopes of controlling costs. As Alabama contemplates In recent years, many states have ended their con- prison expansion, state officials may be tempted to fol- tracts with such companies, realizing that the long- low suit in a misguided effort to cut costs. At least one term cost savings originally promised were largely major prison company – GEO Group – has already illusory. Between 1999 and 2010, nine states2 elim- established a foothold in Alabama by buying a inated their reliance on private prison com- re-entry facility in Columbiana and a vacant panies. In addition, Wisconsin has reduced building in Perry County.1 BETWEEN 1999 AND the number of prisoners in private facili- 2010, 9 STATES 3 Private prisons, however, are not the ELIMINATED THEIR ties from thousands to dozens. answer. Focused solely on their bottom RELIANCE ON The Federal Bureau of Prisons an- line, private prisons cut costs wherever PRIVATE PRISON nounced in late 2016 that it would