Private Prisons

Private Prisons Paper
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Abstract
The advent of overcrowding in most federal prisons gave rise to alternative private correctional facilities to curb the situation. It should be pointed that privatization of prisons was intended to reduce the cost of incarceration that for a long time has affected the federal government. Indeed, the private prisons are said to be less expensive, and their operations are likely to incur fewer expenses. However, there exist various critics that have postulated that both private and public correctional facilities are the same in as far as the cost of operation is concerned. To be precise, the private facilities possess numerous benefits some of which relates to their service delivery and quality of services. They have achieved this by spending comparatively less as compared to public prisons. This paper, therefore, gives a comprehensive annotated bibliography of various scholars from different articles. It is depicted from the articles that private prisons are more cost-effective. The paper also discusses the findings relating to critics of the above opinion in as much as private prisons outweigh the public facilities regarding operational cost.
Keywords: Public prison, private prisons, cost-effective, quality service
Perrone, D., & Pratt, T. C. (2003). Comparing the quality of confinement and cost-effectiveness of public versus private prisons: What we know, why we do not know more, and where to go from here.

 The Prison Journal, 83(3), 301-322.
According to Perrone & Pratt (2003), there is a need to analyze the cost of incarceration about private and public prisons. The authors in their article posit that reducing the cost of incarceration is of importance to the Federal Government. In their article, they address the question of whether private prisons can be cost-effective as compared to public prisons. Additionally, the authors tend to explain the extent to which the private prisons can provide quality confinement to the inmates as compared to the public agencies. The authors have also employed evaluation literature to validate the effectiveness of private prisons as compared to the counterpart public prisons. This makes the finding relevant since it depicts the extent to which the private prisons are effective. Pratt, T. C., & Maahs, J. (1999). Are private prisons more cost-effective than public prisons? A meta-analysis of evaluation research studies. Crime & Delinquency, 45(3), 358-371.
Pratt & Maahs in their article were interested in analyzing how prisons can be made private to reduce the cost of incarceration. They posit that the need to reduce the cost of incarceration require the federal state to accept and support the privatization of prisons. The authors did critically conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis of 33 cost-effective evaluations of both the private and public correction facilities. According to the findings, it was evidenced that both public and private correctional facilities are less the same regarding cost and their effectiveness. This article is significant since it gives detailed critics on the cost-effectiveness of the private prisons as supported by this paper.
Terry L. Stewart. (2002). Private Prisons Advantages And Misconceptions From An Arizona Director’s Perspective. Arizona Department of Corrections. Retrieved from https://morrisoninstitute.asu.edu/sites/default/files/content/products/Private%20Prisons%20-%20Misconceptions.pdfTerry (2002) in his article attempts to give some of the advantages as well as the misconceptions encompassing the effectiveness of private prison. The article discusses the advantages that private prisons on public clients. Some of the advantages that the article discusses include the ability to prevent the government from spending excess capital to construct correctional facilities. Additionally, the private correctional institutions aid in the reduction of the operational cost hence lowers the required budget to initiate the related prison activities. The author also explained that private correctional facilities also provide alternative services to the public prisons. In this aspect, they help in reducing overcrowding in many correctional institutions. However, the author points out some of the critics that private prison is more less the same as the public ones. Indeed, this article is ideal for finding out the cost-effective nature of the private facilities.
Bowditch, C., & Everett, R. S. (1987). Private prisons: Problems within the solution. Justice Quarterly, 4(3), 441-453.
Bowditch & Everett (1987) in their article examine the perceived claim that private correctional facilities can provide flexible and cost-effective needs of housing the inmates. This is measured by how best they are deemed to meet the set demands for improved prison requirements. The authors show comprehensive predictions and high chances of enhanced efficiency of the private prisons as well as its flexibility to host inmates. As a result, they agree that there is no need of regulating private correctional facilities by the government since they are advantageous as compared to public prisons. This article is of significance since it gives consequences of privatizations hence one can gauge on the ideal correctional facility to accept within the country.
Moore, T. (1998). Private prisons: Quality corrections at a lower cost. In Policy Study No. 240. Reason Public Policy Institute: Los.
Moore (1998) in his article tends to analyze the extent to which private prisons have expanded in the United States. Additionally, the article postulates that private prison is more cost effective as compared to public prisons. It is evidenced that private prisons save around 10-15 percent of the operations cost used by the government to erect such facilities. They also provide efficient services under good management. The article is of significance since it gives the comparison of public and private prisons based on the six independent quality comparison studies.

References
Bowditch, C., & Everett, R. S. (1987). Private prisons: Problems within the solution. Justice Quarterly, 4(3), 441-453.
Moore, T. (1998). Private prisons: Quality corrections at a lower cost. In Policy Study No. 240. Reason Public Policy Institute: Los.
Perrone, D., & Pratt, T. C. (2003). Comparing the quality of confinement and cost-effectiveness of public versus private prisons: What we know, why we do not know more, and where to go from here. The Prison Journal, 83(3), 301-322.
Pratt, T. C., & Maahs, J. (1999). Are private prisons more cost-effective than public prisons? A meta-analysis of evaluation research studies. Crime & Delinquency, 45(3), 358-371.
Terry L. Stewart. (2002). Private Prisons Advantages And Misconceptions From An Arizona Director’s Perspective. Arizona Department of Corrections. Retrieved from https://morrisoninstitute.asu.edu/sites/default/files/content/products/Private%20Prisons%20-%20Misconceptions.pdf