Privatization of prisons: Impact on prison conditions

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2006

Publication Title

The American Review of Public Administration

Volume

36

Abstract

The number of state and federal prisoners has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, but public willingness to finance prisons has not kept pace. One response has been a renewed interest in privately managed prisons. Proponents of privatization contend that private contractors, unencumbered by government procurement and personnel procedures, can provide better quality prison services at lower costs. This article uses the 1995 Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities to examine claims of improved quality. The authors find that privately managed prisons perform better on some, but not all, measures of quality of confinement. Specifically, bivariate comparisons suggest that private facilities outperform both state and federal facilities in terms of the proportion of institutions that are able to avoid inmate assaults on staff members or other inmates. Even when the authors controlled for other causal variables, private prisons remained significantly less likely than federal prisons to experience violence.

Keywords

Corrections – Contracting out; Prison industries; Prison violence; Prisons – Finance; Prisons – Law and legislation; Prisons – Privatization

Disciplines

Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Language

English

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