Privatizing the United States Justice System

Privatizing the United States Justice System
Author: Gary W. Bowman
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

As more areas of government experience budget problems, the search for efficient and cost effective services has intensified. Private sector involvement is under heavy consideration. Twenty-eight original essays reflect expert opinions in three areas: police, adjudication, and corrections. Included are two reprinted articles, by Warren Burger, former Chief Justice of the United States and Richard Nealy, Chief Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court. Perspectives range from desirability to implementation. Part one analyzes public and private provision of the various police functions with an evaluation of private police services. Part two focuses on the supply of private judiciary services in civil cases. Part three looks at privatizing correctional services, from supplies to complete private management.

Privatizing Correctional Institutions

Privatizing Correctional Institutions
Author: Gary W. Bowman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2023-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000949176

With more than one million people behind bars, the United States imprisons a larger share of its population than any other industrialized nation. This has precipitated a serious overcrowding problem with federal and state prisons currently operating well beyond capacity. Conventional efforts appear unable to cope with the increasing shortage of beds or with inadequate rehabilitation services. A bold solution is required; increasingly it is being seen to reside in the private sector. This timely volume explores the issues of private versus public financing, construction, and management of medium-and high-security prisons.Private prisons are not a new concept in the United States. They have existed in several forms since the eighteenth century. The opening chapters evaluate historical cases of prisons for profit, examining the concerns of labor, abuses of inmates, and the source and resolution of disputes between private and public sectors. These chapters argue that the experience gained through privatization does not justify current opposition from civil libertarians or labor unions.Chapters dealing with the modern contracting out of complete management and limited services document the growing trend toward privatization and instances of public/private partnership in prison industries.The assembled evidence indicates clearly that privately run prisons have shown significant cost savings and good quality of provision for prisoners while still being profitable. However, the authors caution that these promising results must be reinforced by public safeguards in the contracting stage and monitoring to assure good service and security. With the American prison system in disarray, the public interest demands that government look beyond the public or private identity of those who wish to provide correctional services and focus instead on who can provide the best services at a given cost. It is essential to state that correctional services should attain several objectives and not merely cost minimization. The analysis and recommendations presented here will aid in the task. Privatizing Correctional Institutions will be of interest to law-enforcement officials, public policy analysts, penologists, and criminologists.

From the Courtroom to the Boardroom

From the Courtroom to the Boardroom
Author: Deena Varner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780700636600

"The era of mass incarceration has been associated with the idea of "law and order," referring to the carceral regime in which politicians exploited public anxieties over crime and funneled resources into policing and prisons. As important as this system was and remains, there has been a shift in recent years shaped by neoliberalism-the political, economic, and sociocultural program that has supplanted liberal democratic legal frameworks, subordinating them to operations of the market and mandating that private entities intervene in the creation, interpretation, and enforcement of law. While courts and legislatures play a significant role in shaping legal personhood in the United States, private, profit-driven institutions are increasingly responsible for determining the post-sentence consequences that people with criminal convictions face. The result has been a move from the courtroom to the boardroom, from a law-and-order society to a policy-and-order society. From the Courtroom to the Boardroom is an interdisciplinary cultural studies project that examines the role of the criminal justice system in implementing neoliberal restructuring in the United States, including the partial transfer of quasi-judicial authority to employers, landlords, lenders, social media companies, and other businesses. Deena Varner examines the way the consumer background report industry has privatized the surveillance and punishment of individuals, conflating crime with bad credit and eviction history. She looks at how Airbnb's 2018 policy of banning people convicted of crimes is an example of the way corporate entities are increasingly vested with the authority to determine things like the seriousness or severity of crimes. Varner also examines the phenomenon of "cancel culture," arguing that this is best understood not as an example of the culture wars but rather of the way judicial power has been transferred from the state to the individual judgments of citizens-a partial return to what Foucault described as the punitive model of infamy"--

Privatizing Criminal Justice

Privatizing Criminal Justice
Author: Roger Matthews
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1989-12
Genre: Law
ISBN:

Assesses the state of the debate on the privatization of justice. Key aspects of the arguments are examined and compared, as the authors clarify both the theoretical issues and the practical problems involved in the privatization of justice.

Privatizing Prisons

Privatizing Prisons
Author: Adrian James
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1997-08-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

After an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice worldwide, the authors go on to describe in depth the first 18 months in the life of Wolds Remand Prison, the first private prison in Britain.

Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice

Marketisation and Privatisation in Criminal Justice
Author: Albertson, Kevin
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2020-07-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1447345703

This collection offers a comprehensive review of the origins, scale and breadth of the privatisation and marketisation revolution across the criminal justice system. Leading academics and researchers assess the consequences of market-driven criminal justice in a wide range of contexts, from prison and probation to policing, migrant detention, rehabilitation and community programmes. Using economic, sociological and criminological perspectives, illuminated by accessible case studies, they consider the shifting roles and interactions of the public, private and voluntary sectors. As privatisation, outsourcing and the impact of market cultures spread further across the system, the authors look ahead to future developments and signpost the way to reform in a ‘post-market’ criminal justice sphere.

America's Prisons

America's Prisons
Author: Curtis Blakely
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2005
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 158112435X

This reader introduces the student to prison management. Particular interest is given the increased role of profit in the application of punishment. Profit and prison privatization are viewed within their larger context. As such, public and private prison operations are compared. Part of this comparison takes place through situating each sector upon an ideological continuum. This placement helps indicate the direction being taken by the contemporary prison. It further reveals that tomorrow's prisons may be less driven by traditional objectives and more driven by the notions of profit and efficiency.

Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons

Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons
Author: James Austin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2001
Genre: Corrections
ISBN:

This report discusses the findings of a nationwide study on the use of private prisons in the United States. The number of these prisons grew enormously between 1987 and 1998, with proponents suggesting that allowing facilities to be operated by the private sector could result in cost reductions of 20%. The study examined the historical factors that gave rise to the higher incarceration rates, fueling the privatization movement, and the role played by the private sector in the prison system. It outlines the arguments, both in support of and opposition to, privatized prisons, reviews current literature on the subject, and examines issues that will have an impact on future privatizations. The report concludes that, rather than the projected 20-percent savings, the average saving from privatization was only about 1 percent, and most of that was achieved through lower labor costs. Nevertheless, there were indications that the mere prospect of privatization had a positive effect on prison administration, making it more responsive to reform.

The Privatization of Everything

The Privatization of Everything
Author: Donald Cohen
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1620976625

The book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian “An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.” From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code. “Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”