Privatization Of Prisons

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Over the past hundred years, the United States has emerged as a global superpower, emitting power and influence around the globe. With spiraling economic growth, the United States has become an economic superpower as well, with large growth in both the public and the private sector. One sector in which the United States has seen large economic growth is in correctional facilities. Historically the American prison system has been publicly funded, but this changed (In the early 1980s, with the Corrections Corporation of America pioneering the idea of running prisons for a profit) (Pauly, 2016). This idea was radical and saw a huge shift in the law enforcement landscape. What is most jarring about this privatization of prisons is that “America …show more content…
Other practices put into place by the United States government included mandatory minimum sentences which took away judges discrepancy to deliver punishment on a case by case basis. Along with other policies such California’s three strike policy which after a defendant's third felony offense they are put in jail for life with a chance of parole (DuVernay, 2016). These policies disproportionately affected African Americans, and Latinos and helped to fill these privately run prisons. The privatization of the prison system has a direct correlation to the creation and implementation of these laws that had a direct impact on American …show more content…
With the introduction of the privatization of prisons in nineteen-eighty-three, many legislative changes have been made from Reagan's war on drugs to the implementation of mandatory minimum sentences, to the three strike policy. All of these political tactics were designed to lock up as many Americans as possible for the longest time possible with many of these detainees being African American and Latino. The correlation between these policies and the introduction of privatized prisons is undeniable with the United States prison population skyrocketing “from 357,292 in 1970 to 2,306,200 in 2014” (DuVernay, 2016). This evidence is indisputable as the “United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world” (DuVernay, 2016) and the link to this uptick in the size of the prison population happening at the same time as the privatization of the prison system is no mere coincidence. The privatization of the United States prisons has had an extremely detrimental effect on the American justice system as well as on the well being of the American people and there should be serious consideration
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