Privatization of Prisons in the US

Pratt and Maahs argue that part of the soil why privatization is thought of as a more efficient method of incarceration than public prisons has to do with the theory use in formulating such(prenominal) kinds of public policy. They outline public pick theory which is founded on economicals and political science, an analytical good example that "emphasizes the role of market-driven competition in policy development" (Pratt and Maahs 359). In light of this theory, many are led to believe that privatization of prisons would trim apostrophizes because of market competition. We assume seen with California's recent energy crisis that such theory is non always effective or reasoned and the authors here demonstrate why this is not the case for incarceration.

The authors birth their thesis by showing from the results of their meta-analysis that other factors contribute to the per diem monetary value for a prison that do not include whether the understructure is public or nonpublic. These include the facility's ability to apply economies of casing across the organization, the age of the facility, and the security level of the institution. Independent variables in the analysis included ownership, number of cons, age of facility, security level, and yr of data collection. The final variable was used to adjust for economic changes over time.

The authors make a inviolable case for their determination that "Ownership of a correctional facili

ty is an insignificant predictor of the standardized measure of inmate cost per day" (Pratt and Maahs 362). While a simple cost relation does demonstrate a cost per day advantage of $2.45 for private prisons, the authors argue that there is no significant per diem cost savings when running a correlation analysis victimization the self-supporting variables outlined above (Pratt and Maahs 362).

Despite there being no significant cost savings on a per diem bottom from a simple cost comparison, the independent variables were found to clear a significant impact on per diem costs. Pratt and Maahs (362-363) find that size of prison population, age of facility, and security level solely have a significant impact on cost-effectiveness: 1) the larger the inmate population, the lower the costs of housing, 2) age of facility is a powerful predictor of daily per diem cost, and 3) security level is a strong and significant predictor of the standardized effect size estimate.

With all of the current pressure on policy-makers to consider privatization of the U.S. prison carcass and with a business-friendly administration in the White House, it is likely the discover toward prison privatization will continue to gain momentum. If policy-makers wish to skip over on the privatization band-wagon, they need to be aware of the fact that cost-effectiveness is not a valid supportive argument for prison privatization using the public choice theory of policy formation. Further, a matter like this one provides policy-makers with a more realistic and cagy assessment of
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