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Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions

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Abstract

Prison privatization in the US illustrates the challenge of privatization to the traditional state monopoly over “inherently governmental” functions. From a perspective on core governmental functions, this paper provides a new logical explanation of this phenomenon and argues that prison privatization demonstrates the political rationality of governments. Conservative social control and economic neoliberalism were two major political reasons for prison privatization in the US. These factors aggravated the instrumental problems of the public prison system and reinforced the urgency to address them. This logic is applied to explain the variation in the magnitude of prison privatization in the 50 states. Drawing on the results of a Tobit analysis, this paper confirms that both political factors and instrumental factors significantly influence the preference of state governments for prison privatization.

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Notes

  1. The 1940 Sumners-Ashurst Act made it a federal crime to knowingly transport convict-made goods across state lines for private commercial use, regardless of what state law allowed.

  2. NPM, a variety of reform ideas which are not always linked to each other, calls for an engagement of the private sector and the learning from private management in public management and service delivery [32].

  3. In 2000, about 12,656 ~ 17,154 state prisoners were sent to private facilities in other states, a number which accounts for about 20% of the total [8, 9].

  4. For example in 2003, North Dakota, Maine, Wisconsin, and Michigan only exported state prisoners.

  5. Data are adapted from McDonald et al. [45], Camp and Camp [18], and BJS [4, 11]

  6. According to a survey of 89 prison contracts in 1998 [44], 40% of in-state facilities had less than 20 h per month of on-site monitoring. This figure rose to 90% for out-of-state facilities. For in-state facility monitoring, 63% of contract monitors had some training for the task, but only 14% of monitors for out-of-state facilities had such training.

  7. After the Second World War a period of liberal justice practice that pursued rehabilitative goals emerged. During this period, all states adopted indeterminate sentencing [48].

  8. For example, the Anti-drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 were passed to “wage war on crime” by criminalizing drug offenses, which accounted for 55.5% of federal prisoners in 2001 [10]. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 established mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes and drug offenses.

  9. For example, the County Nueces, Texas v. Texas Board of Corrections led to the state’s loss and its liability to pay the counties $20 per day for each convicted felon housed in local jails. From Sep 28, 1987 to Feb 28, 1990, Texas owed $100.3 million to its 12 counties [34].

  10. DC is excluded due to its takeover by Bureau of Prison in 2001.

  11. This information is based on multiple data sources.

  12. Ten of the 20 states with a 0 level of SPP adopted SPP before 2003.

  13. Hawaii and Alaska are not included in their research and will be assigned the median value of western states.

  14. From 1983 to 2003, union membership decreased nationwide from 20.1% to 12.9% [17], while unionization of correctional officers increased from 44% to 51%.

  15. During 1995–1999, the number of private state prisons increased by 140% from 98 to 238 and the number of outsourced state prisoners increased by 337% from 15,408 to 67,380. During the same period, 17 states outsourced prisoners for the first time.

  16. For example, the five states with the highest PIOC in 1996 (Minnesota, Rhode Island, Maine, Alaska, Utah) had only an average of 283 state prisoners outsourced in 2003, while the five states with the lowest PIOC in 1996 (Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri) had an average of 5,551 state prisoners outsourced [5, 11].

  17. According to Levitt [38], the life cycle of a court order includes prefiling, filed, preliminary decision, final decision, further action, and release, often spanning two decades.

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Acknowledgement

The author thanks Bert Rockman and Trevor Brown for their enormous contribution to this research. The gratitude is also extended to Anand Desai, Robert Greenbaum, Evan Berman, Eugene Leong, Stephen Noakes, Kilian Rieder and the three anonymous reviewers. The author is responsible for any remaining error.

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  1. School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, 811 Wenke Building, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yijia Jing

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Jing, Y. Prison privatization: a perspective on core governmental functions. Crime Law Soc Change 54, 263–278 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-010-9254-5

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