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"Private Prisons, Public Functions, and the Meaning Punishment"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new article by Mary Sigler now available on SSRN. Here is the abstract: As the prison population in the United States soars, states and the federal government have come to rely increasingly on private prisons.  In 2007, private detention facilities housed more than seven percent of incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons.  The primary impetus for the private-prison boom of the 1980s was the belief that for-profit corporations could deliver correctional services more efficiently than could the state.  One recent study found that private prisons may reduce the cost of housing inmates by as much as fifteen percent. Some critics have questioned the validity of these findings; others contend that if private prisons achieve any cost savings, they come at the expense of inmate well-being...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 07, 2010 (boomark / email).