Privatized Prisons and Unions

“Privatized Prisons and Unions” Please respond to the following:

Debate It. Take a position for or against privatization of prisons.

I am for and against privatization of prisons. Private prisons are only in business to make a profit at the expense of the inmates it houses and the employees hired to guard the inmates. Rehabilitation is not a priority to owners of private prison and as long as the beds remain full, rehabilitation will never be a priority. In fact, “private prison contracts often require the government to keep the correctional facilities and immigration detention centers full, forcing communities to continuously funnel people into the prison system, even if actual crime rates are falling. Nearly two-thirds of private prison contracts mandate that state and local governments maintain a certain occupancy rate – usually 90 percent – or require taxpayers to pay for empty beds” (Cohen, 2015, para. 5). I would like to see more efforts placed on rehabilitation, so that when these inmates are released, they can be more productive members of society. In regards to taxpayer’s dollars, private prisons allow tax dollars to be spent on other services that could potentially deter criminal activity. Furthermore, “As the state and government needs for more prisons increased, more money was being allocated to criminal justice initiatives and taken away from other state services such as public education and health care” (Riccucci, 2012, p. 190). The industry can bev seen as helpful on one end of the spectrum and detrimental on the other.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/

http://strayer.vitalsource.com/books/9781256974000/page/190

From the second e-Activity, as Human Resource Director for the Department of Corrections in your state, you have been selected to participate on the Advisory Council. There has been increased attention to several employees regarding prison rape and increased drug use. Recommend two strategies your agency and the Advisory Board should implement to address these issues from an HR perspective.

The two strategies I would recommend for implementation would be training and random drug testing for employees as well as inmates. Controlling prison rape will continue to be a critical problem. Over populated and under staffed prisons are just a couple of the issues that cause prison rape and the smuggling of unlawful narcotics inside prison walls. In fact, “Realistically, they cannot be completely controlled, but the rape of an inmate is a far greater oversight than the entry of contraband. Because the majority of these incidences occur at the hands of staff members, the crime is an even worse insult to our criminal justice system and our humanity” (Hayes, 2014, para. 3). As the prison population continue to expand, finding ways to control inmate rapes and drug use will continue to be a critical problem to control.

Hayes, Jelani. (2014). Society’s Indifference to Prison Rape has to end. Retrieved from http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/societys-indifference-prison-rape-has-end