An article in the Nacogdoches (Texas) Daily Sentinel discusses in detail the sociologists and criminologists who have studied privatization of prisons and the results that they wrote about in numerous articles and books.
Nacogdoches is looking to the prison for tax revenue and growth. The minimum security facility will house illegal alliens who must serve less than 90 months prior to being deported. There is a high probability that many of those inmates committed gang related crimes. Texas has no built-in oversight for privately owned or run prisons. Federal law restricts overcrowding in state-run facilities, but this law does not apply to privately owned prisons.
Dilulio, a noted criminologist, has written about the poor training that private correctional staff receive; the article quotes him as stating that guards at privately run facilities are "ill-trained, under-educated, poorly paid, and unprofessional."
At the moment the prison population is exploding and the percentage of the budget used for corrections is higher than that allocated for higher education. But there are indications that rehabilitative and alternative community corrections may be on the rise. 10% of Texas prisoners are currently serving time in privately run facilities.
The State of New York has seen the impact on rural communities when the prison closed and local employment opportunities vanished. Will that happen in Texas and other communities with privately operated prisons?
In 2002 the Bureau of Justice Assistance reported that there were 49% more assaults on guards and 65% more assaults on fellow inmates in privately run prisons compared to government operated prisons.
Do you think we should be looking to privately run prisons or a change in correctional philosophy to deal with the rising prison inmate count?
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I believe we need to rethink some of the crimes for which people can be imprisoned. Determinant sentences like life without parole, as well as three strikes laws, have not been around long enough for us to fully realize their ramifications. As more and more violent felons are sent away for life with no hope of ever getting out, the prison overpopulation problem can only get worse. Sooner or later, something is going to have to give, and I believe one solution is to decriminalize drugs, or at least decriminalize marijuana. History has taught us that nothing is going to stop people who want to use drugs. Centuries ago, even the threat of the death penalty did not stop people from using tobacco in Turkey, Russia, and France. Decriminalizing drugs would not only substantially reduce the prison population, but it would free up law enforcement agencies to perhaps prevent a certain number of crimes from being committed in the first place. It never ceases to amaze me that in a country that is supposed to be the most free society in the world, otherwise law abiding, productive citizens can be thrown in jail for years simply for rolling up a weed in paper and smoking it.
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