Private Prisons

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This contemporary push to privatize corrections takes place against a socioeconomic background of severe and seemingly intractable crisis. Under the impetus of Reaganite social Darwinism, with its "toughness" on criminal offenders, pris on populations soared through the 1980s and into the 1990s, making the U.S. the unquestioned world leader in jailing its own populace. By 1990, 421 Americans out of every 100,000 were behind bars, easily outdistancing our closest competitors, South Africa and the then USSR. By 1992, the U.S. rate had climbed to 455. In human terms, the number of people in jails and prisons on any given day tops 1.2 million, up from fewer than 400,000 at the start of the Reagan era. While incarceration statistics have skyrocketed, crime rates have increased much more slowly. In fact, from 1975 to 1985, the serious crime rate actually decreased by 1.42 per cent while the number of state and federal prisoners nearly doubled. The number of people sent to prison is actually determined by policy decisions and political expediency. Politicians of all stripes have sought cheap political points by being "tough on crime." They throw oil on the fire of public panic by portraying the urban underclass (read: young, black males) as predator. Ignoring the broad context of economic policies that have effectively abandoned large segments of the population, they have instituted mandatory minimum sentences, tighter or no parole schedules, and tougher "good time" regulations. Adding to the overpopulation these putative measures wrought, the War on Drugs-which aimed its frenzy at the inner city-stuffed the nation's already over crowded prisons with a large crop of mostly African-American and Latino nonviolent offenders. In state after state, budgets have been stretched to the breaking point by the cost of maintaining and expanding this massive correctional archipelago. In California, the nation's largest state prison system, the corrections budget increased seven-fold during the 1980s to $2.1 billion annually at the end of the decade-and the system was still operating at 180 percent of capacity. The huge costs associated with the choice to deal with social problems by mass imprisonment are a fundamental part of the drift toward private prisons. The converging trends (rampant free-marketism, higher prison population, and escalating costs) are part of a larger trend-the sharpening of Reaganite class war and the social meanness that accompanied it.
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