Private Prison Recidivism

In 1995 the stock of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) went up 400%, the reason for the rise in stock was a direct correlation with the rise of crime and incarceration. People were buying stocks in crime and incarceration and the CCA and other private prison 's profits were skyrocketing. Private prisons have no incentive to decrease crime because it would decrease their profits. They would even compromise the safety of inmates, staff and the community by minimizing cost of staff, security and services if it meant they would profit from it. The most important thing for private prison corporations is money, they see prisoners as an opportunity to make money and not a human being. Private prisons motives are purely to make money, which …show more content…
The conclusion of the study was that for adult males, adult females, and youthful offender males, no statistically significant differences on recidivism rates were found between public and private inmate groups. This analysis indicates that, at this time, public and private prisons have the same effects on re-offense and reinprisonment rates for adult males, adult females, and youthful offender males after release from Florida prisons. This study finds no empirical justification for the policy argument that private prisons reduce recidivism better than public prisons. This study shows no convincing evidence that exposure to private prisons reduces recidivism (Bales et al, 2005). This study was conducted after multiple studies came out claiming that private prisons had a lower recidivism rate than public prisons. The most famous of these studies was from Professor Charles Thomas of the University of Florida. His studied claimed that private prisons had a lower recidivism rate than public prisons and he vouched for the effectiveness and efficiency of private prisons in numerous other studies of his. It was later discovered that Charles Thomas was a paid consultant for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which houses the most inmates in private prisons. Charles Thomas was paid over 3 million dollars and had 30,000 …show more content…
How can we as a society lower the incarceration rate, if there are so many people who profit from the incarceration and would oppose lower incarceration rates. Lobbyist from the CCA and other private prison companies actively oppose bills, which would lessen sentencing, decriminalize certain crimes, and keep people out of prison. These actions call into question the goal of private prisons and what is most important to them. Do they value money over the safety of the community, staff, inmates and inmate rights, because many of their actions would indicate that they do? Private prisons profit from incarceration and by keeping costs at a minimum, which is achieved through diminishing of services or quality of services (McDonald, 1994). The real question is how far are they willing to go to achieve their profits, the answer lies in the incarceration of illegal immigrants. To ensure their profits and to keep their contractual obligations private prisons started housing illegal immigrants at unprecedented rates. Today, more than 25,000 “low-security criminal aliens” are incarcerated in thirteen private prisons under criminal alien requirement (CAR) contracts. Five of these CAR prisons are located in Texas, and they are home to roughly half of BOP’s segregated non-citizen population. The tipping point came in 2009 when, for the first time, more people entered federal prison for immigration