Main Claim:
The critics of privatization, like Walzer, point out that the profit motive of private businesses tends to maximize profit by cutting costs, and that this would lead to worse conditions in prisons, not better ones (172). If, however, we could eliminate this profit motive or at least keep it in check through government regulation, it could be used to create both the money and new ideas that prisons need in order to improve.
Subclaim:
One of the things private companies provide that is necessary to run safe and humane prisons is money. As
Jacobs points out, using the right philosophy in running a prison is also important, but it is not enough; while
"money does not guarantee decent prison conditions and operations...lack of money assures the opposite" (179)
and even in the best of financial times, voters are very unlikely to provide more funding to improve prison
conditions. Some authors, like Logan and Feeley, claim that this is where private businesses can work in
partnership with government, supplying the financial support and innovation needed for an improved prison
system, while always being under the watchful eye of the government (Logan 163-165, Feeley 6).
Critics such as Walzer and Jacobs, though, think that the great danger in letting private companies run prisons
is that their drive for profit will lead to 'cutting corners' and actually making the living conditions worse (Walzer
172, Jacobs 190-191). Walzer looks to the history of the free market and notes that "helpless men and women
have never fared well at the hands of profit-seeking entrepreneurs" (172), but fails to acknowledge that, when
private businesses are regulated by the government, this tendency to exploit for profit can be controlled. It is my
belief that, with effective government regulation, private companies can indeed provide the innovation and
investment that prisons sorely need.
One specific way that private businesses could operate in prisons would be to run in-house work or
rehabilitation programs, with the government actually running the general prison administration. Instead of the
government 'warehouses' that Burger complains about (18), private entreprenuers would be given government
funding to come up with a diverse amount of job training and work programs or rehabilitation programs to deal
with alcohol or drug dependency, anger management, psychiatric care, etc. This would serve the purpose of
preparing prisoners to live on the outside world, but would also be cost effective because, as Burger points out,
one of the biggest cost to prisons today is recidivism (18-19).