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February 26, 2005
Alexander Tabarrok (editor): Changing the Guard, Private Prisons and the Control of Crime. Oakland: Independent Institute, 2003.
2. Define the difference between privatization and contracting out.
They isolate Benson as the radical of the book... but claim that better is better, justice be damned.
"Rightly or wrongly most interested observers of prisons are concerned about costs and quality, not about what an economist would call the general-equilibrium effects of prison privatization on how many people are imprisoned and for what crimes. On the cost score, as the chapters in Changing the Guard demonstrate, private prisons are superior to their public counterparts."
But Benson addressed all of these claims in his texts.
-Hulsmann's fraudulent industries claim would show that this is very important to look at. Most interested observers are too narrowly focused.
Chapter 2: The Economics of Prisons: Kenneth L. Avio
9. Prison population and growth statistics.
Lists questions pertaining to prisons: Do rehab programs work? How do prisons fit in the larger justice system? What do we know about recidivism? Etc..
-These questions are positioned from a public choice perspective, and are ignoring the questions of individual's subjective incentives that are the real place where crime decisions take place.
This chapter is cut into eleven parts:
10. Efficiency and Equity: "Constitutional contract-arian models applied to punishment can rationalize independent constraints on social-cost minimization and will be implicitly assumed as follows."
11. Prisons versus Fines: Dismisses the ability of restitution because of overzealous victims. Incarceration is more efficient at deterring crime than fines and restitution (assumed for rest of paper).
Prisons are multi-product firms: General deterrent + removal + rehab - criminal training
Offenders discount the future more: higher time preference.
12. Parole:
Parole reduces incapacitation effect but can have good effect on behavior of inmates.
Current research fails to link parole accounted for criminal training with recidivism.
14. Organizational Design:
different agents motivated by different incentives set different variables...law, court, parole board...
This has lead to more centralization, judges decree parole eligibility.
Tabasz (1974) proposed a two-part penalty period. One restitutional then one rehabilitative.
Avio thinks there is no way to separate the effects and purposes of each. The penal functions are defined as retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. Avio is assuming that retribution will have negative effects on rehabilitation.
-I think these can all be accomplished through retribution.
Roper (1986) says the purpose of prison is to turn out prisoners who don't commit crime. Prison will make contracts with inmates for parole conditions.
Nardulli (1984) exposes tragedy of the commons for prison space. Local officials want to appear tough on crime so they send lots of people to state prisons (see Benson).
(Nardulli) The solution is to allocate price of prison space with what is left to aovide free rider problems, but (Avio) would result in different sentences for similar crimes.
Gillespie (1983) a market for prison space, administered by centralized correctional authority.
18. Privatization:
This phenomenon has found a capital opportunity on the incentive differences between variables in the provision of justice. They are making a killing in providing the restitutional, rehabilitative, and deterrence and eliminating the inefficient bureaucracies of the parole board by honing to the demands of the state budget allocates. With the presence of private prisons the state retracts from the productive role of corrections and hones its focus in regulation.
Kant says autonomy is not compatible with force restitution. This supports the warehouse example of crime.
-If this were true wouldn't people only demand justice regarding recurring instances of crime? If one was convinced that a particular crime would not happen again and was merely an isolated incidence. He would not require justice as the purpose defined by Kant of justice is merely to inhibit crime from happening again. In conclusion it is obvious by the demand of justice existent, though difficult to expose because of current de-incentives to seeking justice, on the market. People demand restitution in civil cases.
If prisons continue to be efficient at providing for the states perception of justice than the state could successfully incarcerate thousands and thousands of immigrants, with the support of powerful interest groups.
22. Statistical Models of Recidivism:
The research cannot keep up with the growing prison populations and changing and expanding legal policies.
26. In-Prison Rehabilitation:
The "nothing works," attitude has been stated, supported and challenged but remains a major part of penological lore.
-Of course nothing works, we are incapable of distinguishing between the ability of correctional facilities to have correcting effects with the policy implications of the prison industry preconditioned institutions of law and police services. For all the mainstream economist knows, all of these in-prison programs work great at reducing recidivism but the state works great at encouraging it. Legislation expands the criminality of voluntary action and police officers have an easier job in arresting old criminals than taking the time to find new ones.
28. Manpower Programs for Former Prison Inmates:
Nothing really seems to work. Inmates were increasing their skills but not their tendency to find work or remain crime free. Suggestions point to job search and on the job training over education and general job skills.
-I'd bet the same is true for education firms in general. Schools that successfully place people do not necessarily educate them the best but rather take the initiative to assist in job finding.
32. Criminal and Legitimate Labor Market Opportunities for Former Prison Inmates:
34. Does Prison Pay?:
How much do criminals cost society by committing crime, compared to how much prisons cost society directly. For every dollar a prison costs it saves "society" $64.
-I highly question this statistic because of the criminality of victimless crimes being included in the calculation, victimless crimes cost society nothing, in fact one could argue that they benefit society so prisons holding such individuals hurt society more than just that one dollar.
-This implies that if a particular criminal commits less than the average amount of crimes than he should be released so as to maintain his cost. This totally ignores whether the victims of his particular crime are satisfied in their receipts of justice.
-This would be the equivalent of turning away customers by any traditional business. Which in theory would be legitimately acceptable but the problem is that the victims of crimes ignored by the justice system so as to maximize efficiency are still forced to pay taxes.
See Benson: "you cannot ration justice."
These numbers are warped and not representative because of the war on drugs.
Age is relevant to proclivity to commit crime, when prisons are overcrowded it saves money to release old criminals to make room for younger ones.
-All of these studies seem to be at least contributing to our status quo level of regulation and governmental policies. But they still build more prisons.
Preschool is a greater deterrent of crime. What is the best way to operate prison on a particular budget?
40. Additional Topics and Suggestions for Future Research:
Economic factors in the origins of prison systems (Conley 1981; Langbein 1976; F. Lewis 1988, 1990; Nicholas 1990).
The theoretical models developed in economics do not appear to address these facts satisfactorily. One policy implication is that more attention is paid to influencing the lifetime profile of established criminals than to attending to the prevention of such careers in the first place. See the earlier comment on preschools.
-This uses prisons to legitimize government intervention in schools, healthcare, housing etc...
57. Chapter 3: Correctional Privatization in America: An Assessment of Its Historical Origins, Present Status, and Future Prospects. Charles W. Thomas.
61. Privatization started slow because it was not supported by unionized public justice service providers. Now they are more prevalent.
59. Initially it was proposed that having 10% of prisons being privately operated would have an increased efficiency in even public operations thanks to competition.
64. Now it seems that innovation and creativity is being less privatized and more governmentalized. Private prisons are clones of public prisons.
65. A society may be judged by the manner in which it responds to those for whom it has the least regard and who have at best meager access to economic and political power. Prisoners are certainly one such group.
72. The day has passed when the dominant view was that the proper role of government involved both the making of public policy and the delivery of policy-mandated services. The day has arrived when it is altogether common to see government agencies actively involved in shaping public policy regarding the content of essential public services but contracting with the private sector for service delivery.
-No one is trying to understand why we term these services essential. We can hope for the day when the policy aspects of all services are removed from the government's hands.
74. Initial Contract Awards. 84 and 85
76. The 1987 Texas Department of Criminal Justice decision awarded to CCA and Wackenhut.
78. Housing capacity rose over 800% from 1990 to 1999 in private prisons.
78-81 critics who doubted privatization, what they said and how they were wrong.
Opponents and proponents were misguided on the actual happenings of the privatization phenomenon.
86. Private construction is faster.
87. How government pays for prisons. Private companies are starting to build prisons before they have contracts to operate, risky for private money holders not for taxpayers but successful nonetheless.
-When analyzed through the Austrian business cycle how does this look? Boom periods would have the price indicators to fuel construction but bust periods would have higher crime rates to respond to need.
89. Operating cost savings.
91. Recidivism is lower in private prisons
94. Legal liability issues results in closer attention to inmate's rights.
96. Privatization abroad.
Barriers to privatization:
98. Politics: California democrat corrupted by labor unions
99. Florida department of corrections remained stagnant despite the governor's attempts to request private prisons. New agency to oversee the purchase and contract of private prisons, now its own existence is reviewed routinely.
100. Governmentalization: forced labor policies on private prisons, ignore local labor markets and architectural advancements.
Arizona mandates that private prisons mirror public prisons.
103. General failure of cost calculation.
-Mises socialism problem.
104. Progress in Avoiding the Pitfalls of "Low-Ball" Cost Proposals.
-You get what you pay for.
106 vague terms: suitable programs, adequate medical services, and properly qualified staff. Contracts of private firms are more specific and clarify these terms.
-Clarity comes to anyone who has the responsibility of evaluating contract compliance. As long as this person is selected according to political means of the election process we will be subject to inefficiencies, corruption, and red tape in the criminal justice system.
107. Contracts fail to measure output. For example English training measure participation rather than improvement.
107. Third party standards.
-What effects could a completely privatized certification agency have on the prison industry, public and private?
110. On site contract compliance monitors positively affect the operation standards of private prisons.
112. No answer is yet available whether policy makers will be blessed with the fortitude to push efficient policy.
-It would take a blessing, because all of the incentive structures point to no.
125. Chapter 4: Prison Privatization and Public Policy. Samuel Jan Brakel and Kimberly Ingersoll Gaylord.
This paper claims to be a modest proposal to "privatize" parts of the correctional machinery in response to price pressures.
-Its actually a state sympathetic document which marginalizes libertarian philosophy by deeming it as radical.
126. Unions have not been as much of a problem as people claim?
127. Decriminalizing won't work because voters won't approve.
-This shows how slow democracy is at production.
130. What does privatization entail? 1) philosophical component that government should not manage what it does poorly. 2) recognition that private sector is better. Compares to privatization in Great Britain.
-Ignores the difference between privatization and contracting out according to its own definition offered. We have no successful opt out for prisons...The government is the only customer base...see Benson
131. History of private justice predates state operations.
132. Most prison labor has been and is performed at the direction of the state and federal government and is not done for private firms.
130. Privatization defined: the transfer of ownership, operation, and responsibility from the public sector (i.e., the government) to the private sector.
132. Privatization model offered in this chapter: involves the management, sometimes construction, and occasionally the financing of entire prison facilities by private correctional companies under contract to federal, state, and local governments.
133. There is no compelling philosophic argument for government to divest itself of this responsibility and its burdens. The issue is pragmatic.
Costs: Construction, management, and financing construction.
-The only way to understand costs is with money? This ignores appropriate means of justice and subjective valuation preferences. With this logic wouldn't it hold sound that if it was cost effective to put everyone in jail compared to allowing their freedom we should implement such policy? Or on the opposing spectrum if it were cheaper to simply ignore crime than pay for it to be corrected we liquidate the entire justice system?
140. Quality standards listed.
143. Cream skimming claim is false.
144. Financing Costs: When privatized, lease financing, legislative appropriation and taxpayer approval is bypassed. In view of the small annual impact costs spread out over the long term, these concerns may not be of paramount importance.
145. Does the US government have the authority to privatize corrections facilities. They say yes.
-The real question should be does the US government have the authority to provide prison services period.
146. List of state legislations pertaining to private prisons and contracting out.
151. The Role of Contracts in Legitimizing Private Corrections.
-These contracts exist between government and private enterprise. Typically this would be okay. But if this enterprise is the prison system, then what happens as punishment if they ignore the contract, break the contract, steal the money etc...Do they go to their own jail?
153. Pay per inmate is incentive to keep prison full. Bonus rewarded for lower recidivism.
154. Building frenzy v. prison reform. Building prisons simply leads to having more filled prisons, we need more non-incarceration alternatives.
-Compare this to Dr. Thornton's skyscraper piece.
155. Social costs of crime.
157. If private prisons aren't the answer than other private corrections are.
-What about private justice in general?
163. Chapter 5: Do We Want the Production of Prison Services to Be More "Efficient"?
Bruce L. Benson.
Technological efficiency v. allocative efficiency.
Tech: 1) Improvement in the quality of a given quantity of goods or services produced at a given cost. 2) a reduction in the cost of producing a given quality of goods or services. 3) an improvement in quality accompanied by a reduction in cost.
Allocative efficiency refers to the redirecting of scarce resources from uses having a lower value to uses having a higher value.
Opportunity costs of building prisons include money spent for drug rehabilitation programs that are more efficient at alleviating drug use.
166. Normative issues: Government production is a fiction. At some level they have to contract out. Each individual working for government wages is contracted out.
168. rationally ignorant voters allow power to interest groups.
176. Competitive firms represent the demands of the customer base.
2 aspects of private firms: 1) competition and 2)voluntary contracts
179. Prisons are used to arrest people who have not violated property rights but are rather political criminals. If prisons are more efficient they can be misused more efficiently.
Gains in technological efficiency are better than no gains at all, sometimes.
-is this a direct contradiction to the enterprise of law?
186. Drug laws increase in size and scope because police forces are a major interest group and they make more money enforcing drug laws than other laws because the federal agencies offered to split the confiscated monies.
-Like pirates hiring henchmen.
-Remember the commercials that said that buying drugs contributes to terrorists. Now we can say that buying drugs contributes to a stronger police force. Someone's daddy has a job because Stinky Joe the homeless heroine addict is a junky. The money he spent on crank built a drug empire which was seized by the local police and paid for uniforms, squad cars, walky talkies and so on.
187. Florida's rise in drug arrests after the federal asset-seizure law. Decrease in percentage of jail time served.
189. Drugs are allegedly the root cause of most societal problems. Drugs lead to property crimes through spillover effects.
-Would this be true is drugs were legalized?
This perspective has not shown to be effective, as increased drug legislation has not relieved other numbers and crime statistics.
190. Drug users commit crime to finance their drug habits. How many users are addicts?
Some drug users commit more Index II crimes to support their habits than property crime, for example, prostitution, drug dealing etc.
191. Estimated effects of crime as a result of drug use was more than ten times the amount of property crime in all of New York city.
194. Crime leads to drug use, more than vice versa.
195. Moving money from property crime deterrent to drug crime deterrent reduces the likelihood of criminals getting caught committing property right crime.
198. contracting out increases technological efficiency but decreases allocative efficiency. The war on drugs may last longer because of technologically efficient private prisons.
-We still haven't combated the issue of social cost. Why does Benson bow down to the legitimacy of social cost theory? No one in this text answers the question what is the legitimate purpose of justice? Benson proposes a brief summary attributing justice to the provision and protection of property rights, but when discussing efficiency he mentions social spillover repeatedly. Does he consent to the legitimacy of social cost? Is social cost compatible with a pure property rights approach to justice?
Posted by djdamico at February 26, 2005 8:12 PM