ABSTRACT
Chapter 17 by Brett Burkhardt and Story Edison is about the situation in the USA. The authors say the modern era of correctional privatization began in the United States in the 1980s. Today, the American private corrections industry is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, with contracts to provide an array of services to a variety of governments. In this chapter entitled “Correctional Privatization in the United States,” the authors review the research on the extent, performance, and politics of correctional privatization in the US. They say the industry has expanded to incarcerate more than 128,000 prisoners in 28 states (plus the federal government). It has been increasingly important in the field of immigrant detention, where roughly two-thirds of immigrant detainees are held in privately contracted facilities. Moreover, the industry has expanded further into community corrections, offering probation supervision, re-entry programs, drug treatment courses, and electronic monitoring. This growth of the private corrections industry has occurred despite a lack of robust evidence that the private sector outperforms the public sector on quality or cost. It has also persisted in spite of organized opposition. Privatization of corrections, which in reality means prisons, has become a partisan issue, with major Democratic politicians calling for a return to wholly public prisons. Labor unions, student groups, and religious organizations have also mounted public pressure campaigns against the private corrections industry. Yet it would be premature to forecast the demise of private corrections in the US. Several trends – including a greater focus on prisoner re-entry and a sustained crackdown on immigration – foretell a long future for the industry.
