Main Claim:
It is generally agreed by most authors that the government doesn't have enough money to run America's prisons, but what isn't agreed upon is whether we should solve this 'funding dilemma' through increased privatization. The argument that the profits earned from privatized prisons will be spent to improve living conditions and to create innovative and more effective ways of punishing prisoners is doubted by Jacobs and more strongly criticized by Walzer as unrealistic. I, however, believe that partial privatization of prisons (in which private companies create work/rehab programs and run prison administrations) is the strongest solution to the money problem, provided that these companies are closely watched by the government.
Subclaim:
The critics of privatization are correct in assuming that the profit motive can produce disastrous results in
human terms. While Jacobs claims that, at best, "the jury is still out" (190) on whether privatization helps living
conditions in prisons and, at worst, prison conditions will actually get even worse if cost is the only concern
(190), Walzer looks at the free market in real (not just theoretical) terms and concludes that unregulated private
businesses lead to abuse of workers and "petty tyranny" (171). Despite this, neither author proposes a workable
solution to solve the money problem. Walzer claims that we should turn to non-profit NGOs to run prisons
(173), but as Jacobs points out, this solution fails for two reasons -- lack of funding and lack of bodies to do
the work necessary for true reform (191). Likewise, Jacobs' solution -- a national youth volunteer program
(191-193) -- ignores not only that the public would likely not support this solution but also that
adequately training and supervising this group would likely be quite expensive in itself. What I propose is a
solution that brings privatization back into the equation, but with enough regulation to guarantee that the
primary concern of companies is not cutting costs at the expense of prison workers' and inmates' quality of life.
Turning over limited aspects of punishment, such as creating work rehabilitation programs in prisons,
seems to be the most practical and feasible solution. As Feeley points out, private companies have always helped
the government create new ideas and generate the money necessary to truly improve our penal system
(6). Although I disagree with Feeley's 'hands-off' approach of letting the market run free and having the flaws
of privatization (such as institutional slavery in the prison lease system) fix themselves over time, one
solution that would appeal to the profit motive of companies would be to have private companies develop new
work and rehabilitative programs that will be paid for by the government, not by consumers of products
produced in prisons..
How, though, would that save the government any money? The government already sinks a large amount of
money into social programs done for the benefit of its citizens, and some of the work done in those social
programs could instead be done in prisons. In this sense, the government would pay the money directly to
private companies running work programs in prisons, with prisoners doing the work, and the 'products' created
would be turned over to the taxpayers. One such program is already being run in the Dominguez State Jail in
Texas, in which inmates are being used to train guide dogs for the blind and companion animals for people with
disabilities (http://www.guidedogsoftexas.org/pawsitive-approach-help.htm). Not only would a program like
this be more likely to get voter approval for funding than just a general work program for prisons, but the
benefits to the prisoner would be work training that could lead to productive employment on the outside world,
as opposed to the unskilled, low-paying labor Burger proposes in his prisons (21), and some sort of moral
sense of responsibility to society and the community, which Murphy would find great value in. To avoid the
creation of a huge prison-industrial complex that would only perpetuate a "vicious cycle of punishment [and]
impoverishment" (Davis 50), these programs would have to be small and be done on a prison by prison basis.
This might not be as difficult as it would first seem, though, because private businesses, as Feeley correctly
points out, have the flexibility and ability to take risks on new ideas that is missing from government-run
programs (6).