Week 12: Private vs. Federal Prisons
For this blog I decided to do some research on the difference between federal and private prisons and the difference breakdowns of races, genders, and social backgrounds within those prison systems. Also any information I could find pertaining to the treatment of prisoners in the different types.
Information of federal prisons was easy to find, through the U.S Department of Justice, I was able to find a breakdown of different statistics based on federal prisons around the United States. Federal prisons are broken down into different levels of security, thus also breaking down what kind of criminals are in those prisons. For example there is low security which has a lower staff to inmate ratio then a high security prison would have. The Bureau of Federal Prisons is responsible for over 200,000 inmates, and of those inmates 85% of them are confined to correctional facilities or detention centers.
Private prisons are a little bit harder to find information on. If you did not known, private prisons are prisons that are owned by a third party, that the government, whether it is state or federal uses to house criminals and pays that private prison an amount of money to hold that inmate. One of the largest companies that does this is the CCA or the Corrections Corporation of America, who just celebrated their 20th university. Unfortunatly the CCA has experienced many lawsuits over the past few years, put out by prisoners, and the government.
These include:
-failure to provide adequate medical care for prisoners
-failure to control violence
-poor conditions
-high level of escapes
In conclusion, while these are just an example of two different types of prisons, there is a lot to be said as to why federal prisons are better then that of private funding. When prisoners are sent to private prisons they are basically being sold to another location that is not always better then that of a federal prison.
http://www.alternet.org/story/17392/
12/16/2008 at 8:49 am
I think this a great topic to research as it is one of the many undercover issues in our prison systems. The private prison system is set up to make money, therefore the welfare of the prisoners housed in these prisons is less than a concern for higherups. This is unfortunate and as the post talked about, it leads to an array of issues that hurt the prisoners. I would really be interested to see how the AIDS epedemic has affected the private prisons in comparison to the federal prison. From the lack of medical care talked about in this blog, I would assume all medical issues are more detrimental to the prisoners in private prisons versus federal prisons. This and other issues would be interesting to compare, and perhaps would be a good topic for a future post.
12/16/2008 at 8:52 am
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12/16/2008 at 8:49 am
I think this a great topic to research as it is one of the many undercover issues in our prison systems. The private prison system is set up to make money, therefore the welfare of the prisoners housed in these prisons is less than a concern for higherups. This is unfortunate and as the post talked about, it leads to an array of issues that hurt the prisoners. I would really be interested to see how the AIDS epedemic has affected the private prisons in comparison to the federal prison. From the lack of medical care talked about in this blog, I would assume all medical issues are more detrimental to the prisoners in private prisons versus federal prisons. This and other issues would be interesting to compare, and perhaps would be a good topic for a future post.
12/16/2008 at 9:54 am
I was very intrested in how many of these women are treated poorly in the prison system. However i was wondering about the amount of options that women in prison recieve as a means of treatment and rehabilitative paroll. compared to a male prison it women are for the most part put into much nicer prisons with much nicer facilities as well as many more options of treatment and rehabilitative programs such as education and work related programs that can teach these women a trade and can also help them find work when they are released. alog with this are numerous opertunities for women to get there GED’s, high school diploma, and even 2 year and four year bachlors degrees.