The Student Newspaper of Oxford Academy

The Gamut

The Gamut

The Gamut

For-profit prisons: Not in the business of justice

For-profit+prisons%3A+Not+in+the+business+of+justice
Vivian Nguyen

On Sept. 26, 2022, an Appeals court once again blocked California’s ban on for-profit private prisons and immigration detention facilities, with the first effort to pass this law taking place last year. Despite the court’s ruling, private prisons should be banned as they profit from the mass incarceration of individuals, and thus encourage excessive punishment of minor offenders.

 

Private prisons benefit from locking people up, resulting in more people being imprisoned and incentivizing mass incarceration. A study by Washington State University researchers revealed a correlation between private prison growth and increased incarceration, theorizing that the increased capacity private prisons offer to the state contributes to this occurrence. Judges are more likely to be hesitant to sentence minor offenders time in prison if there is limited capacity; therefore, private prisons permit judges to over-sentence convicts. 

 

With little government oversight, for-profit prisons tend to exploit inmates for cheap labor and have more safety violations compared to their public counterparts. Companies like Microsoft, AT&T, Target, and Macy’s have been known to prefer inmate labor since it allows them to produce products at cheaper prices. According to an article by The Sentencing Project, compared to a select number of public facilities of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, for-profit facilities have “more safety and security incidents per capita,” such as stricter inmate discipline. Whereas the U.S. government is obligated to its people, socially-unconscious businesses will ignore the safety of inmates if it minimizes their profit.

 

Economically speaking, for-profit prisons tend to run at higher costs than public prisons. According to The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi, in 2011, private prison companies gained $5 billion from U.S. government contracts. When analyzed proportionally, private prisons operate at an additional cost of $5 per prisoner per day compared to public prisons. Even when ignoring all the ethical concerns of putting inmates in privately-run prisons, these prisons are still financially inefficient. 

 

Despite U.S. incarceration rates having risen dramatically in the last few decades, privately-run facilities don’t alleviate the burden of overcapacity for state prisons. Since the level of crime in the U.S. has fallen, it’s important to ask who the U.S. is imprisoning; the truth is about 60% of those imprisoned, according to a Center for Economic and Policy Research study, are non-violent offenders. Many have only committed minor crimes, and therefore should face lesser consequences such as community service instead. 

 

For-profit prisons aren’t in the business of justice, they are in the business of keeping people behind bars to line their pockets. It’s time to abandon these inhumane institutions.

About the Contributors
Janet Abrantes, Op-Ed Editor
This year's senior Op-Ed editor for The Gamut, Janet Abrantes will be serving her last year at the paper. Janet notes that her initial interest in journalism stemmed in Mrs. Galvan’s English 8H class back in 2018. One of her favorite memories here at The Gamut is attending journalism workshops at Fullerton college back in her freshman year. Janet is the president of the Creative Writing club here at Oxford and she is also a member of the OA cross-country team. In her freetime, Janet can be found crocheting cute projects she finds on her cottage-core Pinterest feed, hanging with her best friends Garrick and Kristela, or listening to artists like Fiona Apple. In her near future, Janet hopes to major in political science, journalism, or even economics. But for the time being, Janet is going to have the time of her life during her senior year whilst being her awesome, creative, and off-beat self. 
Vivian Nguyen, Senior Staff Artist
Entering her senior year at Oxford Academy, Vivian Nguyen is currently in her third year of illustrating for the Gamut. Her love for the comics and illustrations in the newspaper prior to her time on staff convinced her to become a contributor for the paper. Aside from drawing, Vivian enjoys creating HTML websites in various themes, as well as playing minesweeper and solitaire. Despite being a fan of a wide variety of items, ranging from 90s-esque things, Dr. Pepper Zero, raw salmon, and alkaline soap, Vivian also holds grudges against bitter melons and Myers-Briggs personality indicators. Vivian looks forward to spending her last year illustrating for new Gamut issues and helping with Gamut events — but most importantly, graduating.
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For-profit prisons: Not in the business of justice