Response to this Reflective statement
Privatization does not always result in ethically sound outcomes. This is a correct statement especially when we read what Shane Bauer says in his exposé of private prisons in the United States. His article is quite an eye-opener to me personally because I was not aware of the existence of private prison facilities in the US. I had always thought that prisons were the exclusive responsibility of government.
What Shane Bauer discovers in one of these prisons, the CCA in Louisiana, is a clear indication that the state should not completely take off its hands from some of these institutions. The CCA's recruitment procedure is full of loopholes. One of its managers even talks of scraping the bottom of the barrel in their recruit, which means that anyone who applies for a guard duty is recruited. The owners are just out to grab anyone who comes their way. Take for example, Shane Bauer who includes his background as a reporter in his application but no one seems to notice.
Guards are barely trained and poorly paid. They don't feel responsible for anything and easily turn a blind eye on the inmates' use of drugs. The living conditions of the inmates are deplorable. Health care is practically non-existent. There is a very pathetic case of an inmate who had his limbs amputated because his pleading to be taken to hospital was ignored for months until it was too late to save his legs and fingers. Apparently no private prison wants to send inmates to hospital as they will be required to shoulder the hospital costs, as the state does not cover such expenses.
Violence is so widespread that the administration even resorts to the use of gangs to maintain discipline. Female guards are often sexually threatened by inmates and the administration seems powerless or unwilling to address the situation. Sexual harassment among inmates is extensive, with the young and weak inmates being sexually abused on a frequent basis without the prison authorities doing anything about it.
From Shane Bauer's report, it is clear that something drastic needs to be done to remedy the situation of privately run prisons in the United States. That is why the Washington Post's article says that the Justice Department has now decided to step in and put some order into the situation. It has discovered that private prisons are not as cost effective as they were thought at first to be. The level of safety and security is very low and violence is rampant.
The situation of private prisons even led Senator Bernie Sanders to sponsor a bill to end private prison facilities in America. He believes that the US has the highest number of people behind bars in the world and he attributes much of that to the existence of private prisons. President Obama has also done much to ease the prison population by the early release of prisoners incarcerated for non-violent offences.
What is clear is that privatization and outsourcing of government responsibility, especially in the area of prisons, has failed. It seems to me that government should not completely cede responsibility of prison facilities to the private sector alone. The public and private sectors should be jointly involved and the state should keep an eye on the way these private facilities are run through effective presence on the ground. The state should ensure that candidates for employment in these facilities are carefully screened and those with criminal records taken off the list. The inmates' 8th Amendment should be respected and they should receive appropriate medical care in state-run hospitals.
From what I have said above, it is imperative that the state and the private sector work together to salvage what can still be salvaged from privately run prison facilities.