I do not Like Private Prisons
About a week ago, I had some thoughts on why I do not like private prisons. Sunday, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a story, with people expressing some of the same thoughts. So, I pull my comments from a the email I sent myself from work, and rework them.
I do not want a private prison in Utah.
Reason? Where you put your carrots, determines which direction the donkey moves. For private prisons, the carrot is, of course, to make money. I can only see three places where private prisons can make money:
One, from the government, which means they have the incentive to squeeze as much money as they can out of the government. Not being someone who likes government spending , I don't like that.
Two (the second place private prisons can turn to for money), from the prisoner. Now, the prisoners aren't coming in as willing customers. It is not like they're saying, "I'll give you $31,000 if you'll be so kind as to hold me in your prison for a year." Oh, some good might come of private prisons, as far as them trying to make money off the prisoner, for private prisons have more incentive to make the prisoner work, and I do like the idea of prisoners working, instead of idling away watching TV. The problem is that private prisons will have more incentive to profit off the inmate's labor, to pay the prisoner but pennies on the dollar for work that is done.
It has been said private prisons turn the prisoner into a commodity, and I agree. The primary way for prisons to make more money becomes that they must incarcerate more people, so they become a lobbying force for legislation that results in more people being placed in jail.
Three (the third place private prisons can turn to to increase their profits), from the employees. It would seem private prisons would pay less, in order to maximize their profit margin. I'm not altogether against that, and this place for private prisons to make money does not offend me as much as the first two, still, I am not sure I like our prison employees making less money.
There is another way the carrot placement bothers me with private prisons, and this one bothers me a lot. With the prison focused on making money, less emphasis will be placed on reformation.
I like rehabilitation. Rehabilitation already is not the priority I wish it were. My friend, a former prison guard, flat out tells me rehabilitation doesn't work. He tells me studies say it doesn't. Well, I don't care what the studies say, I still believe we should be striving to reform the prisoner. Seems we should never seek anything less. If we are always failing, and have no success ratio at all, it might be that we just aren't going about it right.
So, again, where is the carrot? I do not believe a prison with a for-profit motive is inclined to seek to reform for the prisoner. I suppose financial incentives could be established, paying the prison for those they reform, and perhaps by designing the system that way, you might even swing me over to liking private prisons, but that not being the way things are currently set up, private prisons have little incentive to rehabilitate the prisoner. I imagine a public facility feels more responsibility to bring about change, even as it is that we refer to government workers as public servants. Private managers have no such carrot. When they come to work, they are charged with turning a dollar. That is their focus. It seems much more the focus of a private contractor than of a public worker.
Private enterprise is wonderful, but that doesn't mean it belongs everywhere, and it doesn't mean we take it where it doesn't belong. The glory of private enterprise is competition, and I'm doubting this will either add any of that to our prison system or be appropriate, even if it does.
No comments:
Post a Comment