User:Lebaugh/sandbox

United Kingdom

* added photo of HMP Altcourse, a UK private prison*

Governance and accountability

Privately run prisons are run under contracts which set out the standards that must be met, which in many respects mirror the Service Level Agreements which apply to publicly run prisons.[25] Payments may be deducted for poor performance against the contract. Government monitors ("controllers") work permanently within each privately managed prison to check on conditions and treatment of prisoners. The framework for regulation and accountability is much the same for privately run prisons as for publicly run ones. In England and Wales they are subject to unannounced inspection by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, to monitoring by local Independent Monitoring Boards and prisoner complaints are dealt with by the Prison and Probation Ombudsman. Similar arrangements exist in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

My addition- The United Kingdom has a Payment-by-Results program, in which private prisons get paid for reductions in their recidivism rates. The Payment-by-Results program has done well, bringing the United Kingdom's re conviction rate down to 24.8%. .

Torrance County Detention Center

This example in the private prison system shows how locking people up in private prisons in order to maintain a quota can lead to a conflict of interest between the justice system. While also being a detriment to local economies if they're unable to perform their services. Removed sentence for bias

Early history

The privatization of prisons can be traced to the contracting out of confinement and care of prisoners after the American Revolution. Deprived of the ability to ship criminals and undesirables to the Colonies, Great Britain began placing them on hulks (used as prison ships) moored in English ports.

In 1852, on the northwest San Francisco Bay in California, inmates of the prison ship Waban began building a contract facility to house themselves at Point Quentin. The prison became known as San Quentin, which is still in operation today. Its partial transfer of prison administration from private to public did not mark the end of privatization. *Added photo of San Quentin prison*

Cost–benefit analysis

Studies, some partially industry-funded, often conclude that states can save money by using for-profit prisons. However, academic or state-funded studies have found that private prisons tend to keep more low-cost inmates and send high-cost back to state-run prisons. This is counterproductive to the cost benefit analysis of the Private Prisons and contradicts the original selling point of the CCA and other private prisons; "to mitigate the cost of running prisons". My addition/edit (To properly compare the benefits of private v.s public prisons, the prisons must share common factors such as similar levels of security, number of staff, and population in the prisons )

Increase in the Prison Population

From 1925 to 1980 the prison population stayed consistent with the general population. The private prison population began to increase at an disproportional rate in 1983 (the year that private prisons began operation in the United States). From 1925 to 1980 the prison population had a gradual increase from 150,000 to 250,000. However, From 1983 to 2016 the Prison population has increased from 250,000 to 1,500,000.

When Reagan's War of Drug (Correction needed: War on Drugs) lead to a massive rise in numbers in prisons, private prison operators were quick to seize the opportunity. According to statistics from "The Problem with Private PrisonsJustice Policy Institute", from 1990 to 2005 there was a 1600 percent increase in the American private prison population. However, the vast majority of prisoners, over 90 per cent, remain in publicly-run prisons.

Inadequacies including staff training New name of this section would be (Inadequacies including being Understaffed)

Costs

My addition- Recidivism rates are not usually considered to measure performance. A study in 2005 found that out of half of the federal prisoners released that year, 49.3% were arrested again later on. Pennsylvania became one of the first states to offer a financial incentive to corrections facilities who were privately operated that could lower their recidivism rates in 2013. In order for these facilities to gain a 1% bonus, they had to lower rates to 10% below the baseline. Together, all 40 of these facilities in the state had an average of 16.4% reduction in their recidivism rates.

Judicial corruption scandal

In the kids for cash scandal, Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp, a private prison company which runs juvenile facilities, was found guilty of paying two judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, $2.8 million to send 2,000 children to their prisons for such crimes as trespassing in vacant buildings and stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart.[94][95] My addition- Sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, Ciavarella will spend his time in Kentucky at Federal Correctional Institution Ashland. The two judges were not the only ones at fault though, seeing as the First National Community Bank never reported the suspicious activity, causing the scandal to go on even longer. In the end, FNCB was fined $1.5 million for failing to report the suspicious activities including transactions that went on over a total of 5 years.