Private Prisons Clause Samples

Private Prisons. The Data

Private Prisons. In 2016, nearly 18% of federal prisoners and approximately 9% of state prisoners were housed in private facilities (▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2018). This proportion is even more stun- ning considering one of the preeminent private corrections companies, CoreCivic, was only founded in 1983 (Dolovich 2005). Though modern privatization of corrections facilities at all levels, local, state, and national, began in the 1980s, carceral privati- zation has a long and torrid history in the United States. Private companies had previously been involved with the operation of the cor- rections system beginning in the nineteenth century with the use of convict leasing (Dolovich 2005). This system, in which state governments leased inmates to private companies to work on plantations, roads, or other projects, was the most common way private companies interacted with the corrections system prior to the 1980s (Dolovich 2005). This was especially common in the South, as Southern states effectively en- slaved convicts to labor in coal mines, brickyards, and other projects to generate profit for the state (▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2006, ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 2010). This brutal tradition was eventually replaced first by chain gangs, which forced inmates to labor on road projects, then by more modern correctional facilities in which the state took the control of prisons back2 from private companies. Private enterprise was largely absent from the criminal justice system for decades, but the intense pressure of overcrowded prisons and jails encouraged the development of the modern private prison industry. In the words of one of the founders of Core- Civic, “we could sell [prison] privatization as a solution, you sell it just like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers” (quoted in ▇▇▇▇▇▇ and Leighton (2010)). In 1986, at least 1,600 inmates were held in privately operated state, local, or national prisons and jails. By 2016, that number had reached more than 160,000, a hundred-fold increase in only thirty years. A few states adopted private prisons and later eliminated them3, but the majority of states privatized part of their corrections systems and did not later cease contracts with private prison companies entirely. 2Though, note that public prisons still utilize prisoners for a variety of industries, so private prison companies are not alone in monetizing the labor of inmates.‌ 3States like Wisconsin, Arkansas, and Nevada - see Chapter 2 for further details. within its borders at some point between 1986 and ...

Private Prisons. 5 1.2.1 Continuing Controversies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.3 Inmate Litigation and the Growth of Carceral Privatization . . . . . . 13