Pros and Cons of Privatizing Prisons

Pros and Cons of Privatizing Prisons

Introduction

The debate of privatization of prisons revolves around the issue of money. Proponents of privatization of prisons argue that cost is reduced after privatization and this is the main reason that people favor the privatization of prisons. People who oppose the privatization of prisons say that there will be lack of security and safety and possible delays if prisons will be privatized. This paper will present the pros and cons of privatizing prisons.

Discussion

The following are the alleged advantages and disadvantages of privatizing prisons:

Cost and Quality

One of the main points of contention concerns the question whether the state can save through the use of private prisons costs, without compromising on the quality.

Running costs

It is claimed that private prison companies can operate prisons more cost-effective than the state. A significant cost reduction in operating costs can be achieved by a significant reduction in personnel costs, which saves cost savings of 15% can be achieved. Officials are limited consistently on their core tasks and all the services without intervention powers over prisoners in the hands of private service conductor is transmitted, this may lead in the longer term to reduce payroll costs (www.deseretnews.com). Suitable services, taking into account the official title of Article 33 IV of the Basic Law , only tasks or activities within the house management, supply management, care management and also parts of the surveillance and control management for the transmission into consideration.

Quality

While it is true that private net savings in personnel costs can be achieved, but they often employ badly qualified personnel. For individuals, it is according to the laws of the market economy that profit maximization is in the foreground, which is to achieve as wide a difference in favor of the provider between the cost of the service and the price. Therefore, there is a purely commercial interest, the risk of power reduction to achieve a high profit as possible. Private employees are less paid and are employed for a shorter time than state employees. It is questionable; however, why public servants are unnecessarily long and well formed when private can be used effectively after a short training (Logan, 1990). It is usual also that private employees work under worse and unsafe working conditions need to do more than is possible, for example through the twelve-hour shift. Due to this, a constant change of personnel is recorded. While it is conveyed that people are basically motivated by incentives and fear of job loss, but by taking advantage of this state it works obviously faster, but not better.

However, the opposite can be held that there is no natural law that officials work better as compared to the social workers, trainers or supervisors. Through detailed description of the services in the tendering process and the estimates based on fixed-term operating agreement, the quality can be ensured, so that the tasks by the private sector, at least the standard of the previous task performance equivalent (Price & Morris, ...