The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial on prison privatization entitled Pulling profits from a cell. This editorial seems to be pretty well in line with the opinions I offered in a previous entry. The Journal Gazette argues:
The state has a responsibility to operate a correction system in a manner that is safest for its citizens and meets constitutional requirements. To cede the job to a private contractor as a money-saving tactic is a wholesale abandonment of one the state’s most important functions.
The editorial points out that in Florida, 200 employees of state-run juvenile detention centers who were fired for abuse and incompetence were later hired by privately run juvenile centers. In Kentucky, a private prison contractor faced a state fine for having only 7 guards trained to respond to a riot instead of the 20 that were needed.
They say that it’s irresponsible to consider only the economics of the matter. I would suggest that once the lawsuits accusing the state of constitutional violations start falling fast and furious, even the economics of the matter won’t necessarily justify the change.
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