Private Prisons speech- Anya Slepyan

Anya Slepyan

Mr. Logsdon

AP English Language

December 13, 2015

Banking on Bondage: The American Private Prison Industry

Fun fact: the United States has five percent of the world’s population, and yet contains 25% of the world’s incarcerated individuals. That means that of all the people in the world that are in prison, one quarter of them are in the United States. This disproportionate incarceration is not a result of out-of-control crime rates, but rather the very real effect of an abusive and reprehensible criminal justice system. Though the American people rightfully have a long list of grievances against this system, one issue that stands at the forefront is the rapidly growing 70 billion dollar private prison industry. Private prisons are the embodiment of the attitude that anything the government can do, the private sector can do better (Edward O. Wilson would refer to this as “unrestrained capitalism”). Speaking as a “creeping socialist,” I would argue that this attitude is almost entirely incorrect, no matter the issue. However, private prisons are undoubtedly the biggest failure in the experiment of outsourcing the role of government to the private sector. Modern private prisons first came about in the 1980’s, when the increased crime rates overwhelmed the capacity of the prison system. As a solution, the government began contracting private entities to build and operate facilities to house federal prisoners. This was a terrible idea, but it gained popularity nation-wide, and private prisons are now active in 33 states. However, private prisons have only served to worsen the problem that they were originally intended to fix. In supporting private prisons, the government has created a money-eating, civil-liberties defying monster that has spiraled far beyond its control.

For-profit prisons claim to be a solution to America’s mass incarceration problem, while in reality these private organizations exacerbate the issue. According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “A massive transfer of taxpayer dollars to the private prison industry accompanied the unprecedented increase in incarceration and the rapid ascent of for-profit imprisonment.” The incarceration rate, which has increased some 700% in the last 30 years, has far outpaced increase in crime rate. These numbers are no mere correlation, but are in fact direct effects of the rise of the private prison industry and their influence in the United States. In 2010, the Corrections Corporation of America filed a report stating that the CCA “could be adversely affected by…leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices.” This explains the CCA’s lasting relationship with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), an organization allows corporate representatives to meet with federal and state legislators, and draft bills collaboratively. Since the CCA’s involvement with ALEC beginning in the 1990s, model bills introducing tough-on-crime policies such as the three strikes law, minimum sentences, criminalizing immigration, and truth-in-sentencing—each resulting in putting more people in jail for longer and thus benefitting private prisons—have become law in 27 different states. Private prison corporations have in this way been allowed to write self-serving bills, which are then passed into laws, functioning like a really big, really corrupt KYA. Furthermore, since 2000, the top three private-prison companies (CCA, GEO Group, and MTO) have spent over $32 million dollars lobbying the federal government in favor of these policies. Private prison corporations have also spent millions of dollars in campaign contributions, ensuring that politicians who are sympathetic to their agenda hold power, and facilitating the rapid decay of our criminal justice system. In fact, several instances exist of private prison corporations bribing judges in order to guarantee harsher sentencing practices. These actions, each directly linked to private prison corporations serve to increase America’s already sky-high incarceration rate, which “deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color, and has at best a minimal effect on public safety” according to the ACLU. The involvement of private prisons in the criminal justice system is hugely detrimental to communities across America—the only beneficiaries are the for-profit prisons themselves.

This issue is caused by the fact that there is a conflict of interest between the financial aims of a for-profit prison, and what is best for society. Not only does this conflict of interest exacerbate the incarceration rate, it also causes private prisons to be less effective than publicly run institutions. This fact is easily explained by the nature of private prisons. Because the prisons are run as businesses, their first priority is to make a profit, which is best achieved by cutting costs. This profit-oriented approach has a direct effect on both the quality and efficacy of the prisons.  First of all, recidivism rates (the number of prisoners who relapse into crime and return to prison) are substantially higher for private prisons than for public. According to a study published in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, private prisons had a significantly higher recidivism rate in each of the cases studied, thus demonstrating the ineffectiveness of private prisons. Traditionally, the goal of incarceration is to rehabilitate the prisoner, so that upon release he or she may resume their lives as productive member of society. One of the most important factors that determine the recidivism rate is the preparedness of the inmates to function in society. Such preparation is best achieved through the educational and job-training programs that are required by law to be offered in public prisons. However, in order to cut costs and thus maximize their profit, very few of these programs or opportunities exist in private prisons. This leads to an increased recidivism rate, which actually benefits private prisons in the long run as it causes more people to reenter their facilities, which gives the private prisons even more motive to not provide these opportunities to inmates.

Furthermore, private prisons have been proven to be less secure than public prisons of the equivalent security level, largely as a result of the high turnover rate of prison guards, who receive on average 56 fewer hours of training than the minimum recommended by the Bureau of Prisons. In Kingman, Arizona, while investigating the escape of three prisoners from a private prison (which resulted in the murder of an elderly couple on vacation), the Department of Corrections produced a scathing security assessment, finding, among other problems, that the staff lacked experience, was not proficient with weapons, and routinely ignored alarms. Again, this lack of training is directly caused by the interest in reducing costs (in this case, training costs) so as to maximize financial profit. Meanwhile, the Idaho Correctional Center (owned and operated by CCA) has the reputation as the “Gladiator School” as it has been found in a 2011 study to have four times as many prisoner-on-prisoner assaults as Idaho’s other seven public prisons combined. According to a United States Department of Justice study based on a national survey of private prisons, “the privately operated facilities have a much higher rate of inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults and other disturbances than publicly operated facilities, when institutions of similar security levels are compared.”

So why do we even have private prisons if they’re more dangerous, more abusive, and less effective? A large part of their continued existence is owed to the political influence I discussed earlier, and the fact that the massive profits of the corporations allow them to control and manipulate individual politicians and judges as well as the democratic process. Partially because of this influence, private prisons largely fly under the radar when it comes to prison reform. And even when they do come under attack, proponents of for-profit prisons are able to defend the system mainly through two contradictory and thoroughly fallacious arguments. The first argument is that private prisons supposedly save taxpayer money, by outsourcing many of the costs of public prisons to the private sector. However, this ignores the fact that government contracts (funded by taxpayers) make up the majority of the budget to run the private prisons.

Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that it is in fact cheaper on average to operate a private prison than it would to operate a public facility of equal size and security level. This claim is disproven even further when we consider the broader social and economic impacts caused by the inefficacy of the prisons. The higher the recidivism rate, the greater the economic detriment to any given community (because of the continued costs of imprisonment as well as the loss of contribution to the workforce and other aspects of the community). Thus the significantly higher recidivism rate of private prisons means that they are in fact much less cost effective than public institutions.

Another argument supporting private prisons is the idea that the competition within the private sector will cause the quality of the institution to increase. However, as we’ve already discussed, prisons attempt to be competitive by cutting costs, which leads to the cutting of essential educational and medical needs of the prisoners, as well as training for the guards. These reductions in spending cause a steep drop in the quality of private prisons, rather than causing any sort of benefit. 

So how does this affect us and what can we do about it? In 2013, after an unhappy history of abuse, the Commonwealth of Kentucky ended its relationship with for-profit prisons. Currently, the only privately operated facility in Kentucky houses out-of-state criminals. Because Kentucky (rather uncharacteristically) is ahead of the curve on private prison reform, all that remains for us is action on a national level. In September, a bill was introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders that would achieve a federal ban on private prisons and overhaul the criminal justice system. As Kentucky citizens, we can advocate for the discontinuation of private prisons by reaching out to our federal representatives in support of the bill. Call me a cynic, but I am not overly optimistic on the likelihood of either Rand Paul or Mitch McConnell taking positive action on this issue. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try anyways. Fortunately, this bill also constitutes on of Bernie Sanders’ platforms, so if you’ll be old enough to vote in the 2016 primary or general election, you should probably vote for Bernie Sanders. If not, as pathetic as it sounds, raising awareness on this issue is key, as it has been largely ignored by both the media and the general public.

The private prisons system is directly responsible for an increased incarceration rate, as well as an increase in violence in prisons, without providing any benefits, economic or otherwise, to American society. These issues are distinctive from those of public prisons, and thus have a relatively simple solution. In order to correct the trajectory of the criminal justice system, the government must discontinue their contracts with private prison corporations, and reclaim prisoner rehabilitation as exclusively under the jurisdiction of the government.

Works Cited

Liberty for Sale. 2012. Cincinnati. Citybeat.com. Web.

"Liberty for Sale" is a poster created by Julie Hill for a Cincinnati news source to accompany a piece on private prisons. The poster shows a shadowy man dressed in a prison uniform, standing in front of a prison cell. His face is shadowed and not detailed, and a massive price tag is fastened around his arm. This image perfectly captures the dehumanization that results from the private prison industry. The prisoner is no longer an individual person, rather he has become nothing more than another paycheck to the for-profit prison. This piece is emotionally and politically charged and is a perfect visual representation of American for-profit prisons. I will use it as a visual backdrop during my speech, as well as inspiration for the tone and subject of my research.

Too Good to Be True: Private Prisons in America. Rep. N.p.: Sentencing Project, 2012. Print.

Too Good to be True: Private Prisons in America is a report published by the Sentencing Project; a non-profit devoted to criminal justice issues in the United States. This report challenges the notion that private prisons have a beneficial impact on local economies by citing multiple studies that show no economic benefit as the result of private prisons. Seeing as this supposed benefit is one of most important arguments raised by proponents of private prisons, the fact that this has no statistical support is extremely important. The report further underscores the connection between private prison lobbyists and legislation aimed at increasing America's already disproportionate incarceration rate. I will use this report to support the financial aspect of my argument, as well as the discussion over corruption and the effects of the growing private prison industry.

Banking on Bondage. Rep. American Civil Liberties Union, 2 Nov. 2011. Web.

Banking on Bondage is a report filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on the private prison industry. The report focuses on the history of private prisons in the United States, and explores the connections between the private prison industry and its lobbyists, laws and policies they support, and the increasing incarceration rate. The report also calls into question the efficacy of private prisons, and makes very clear that the finances of private prisons save neither the taxpayer nor the government money, but make huge profits for the corporations that own the prisons. This report is very useful because it provides specific evidence of the corruption of the private prison industry, and how that corruption is connected to lobbying efforts and legislation in both the national and state legislatures. I will use it to better understand the causes and effects of for-profit prisons, which will in turn enable me to provide a more complete argument against this industry.

Up the Ridge. Dir. Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. Appalshop, 2006. DVD.

Up the Ridge is a documentary that focuses on abuses in the American private prison industry. These include physical and mental abuse, the custom of importing prisoners from different states, rampant racism, and poor medical care. While Up the Ridge exemplifies general truths about American private prisons, it focuses specifically on the maximum security facility Wallens Ridge State Prison in Virginia. The documentary was produced by Appalshop, an organization based in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that promotes social justice and Appalachian culture through its documentaries and radio broadcasts. Up the Ridge was screened in nine film festivals, both regional and international, and won awards such as "Best Documentary" in the Athens International Video and Film Festival. I will use Up the Ridge to support my argument because it provides the perspectives of many different people involved in the private prison industry, ranging from prisoners and their families to the wardens, security guards, and owners of the prisons. These primary accounts of private prisons provide excellent support and information on the topic.

Warehoused and Forgotten; Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison Industry.

Rep. American Civil Liberties Union, June 2014. Web. Warehoused and Forgotten is a report published by the American Civil Liberties Union. The report focuses on illegal immigrants trapped in the American private prison industry, primarily in the Southwestern United States. The report explores the connection between mass incarceration and for-profit prisons, and also takes an individual look at several private prisons. In these prisons the report reveals a string of devastating human rights abuses, and includes first-hand accounts of both prisoners and guards faced with these experiences. Finally, the report provides evidence of the lack of federal oversight enforced in private prisons, and gives several detailed examples of private prisons violating regulations set by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). This report will be extremely useful because it further clarifies the connection between private prisons and the epidemic of incarceration in the United States. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of human rights violations and lack of federal oversight, which helps to build my argument against for-profit prisons in the United States.