Mr. Trump has indicated he favors the privatization of prisons. This comes at a time when the U.S. Justice Department is winding down its use of such prisons.
Private prisons didn’t save much money. They didn’t provide rehabilitation programs. They were far more violent. They had many more assaults on inmates and prison workers than those run by the Bureau of Prisons. And, according to an article by Eduardo Porter on Jan. 11 (Times, p. B-1), they went into lockdown to respond to disturbances ten times more often than prisons run by the Bureau of Prisons.
Think about it. Private prisons exist to make money. If they can cut costs on medical care, on food, on basic necessities, they will do that. That is the nature of private enterprise. Private prisons also have an interest in maximizing the number of prisoners and the length of sentences. The more prisoners, the more income.
I don’t understand why anyone with a lick of sense and an ounce of humanity would have thought such prisons were a good idea in the first place.
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