For-Profit Prisons: Another Failed Privatization of a Government Service
...nor iron bars a cage. (photo: miss_millions)
A new study by the state of Arizona shows that private prisons end up costing the state more than public facilities. From the New York Times:
The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.
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Despite a state law stipulating that private prisons must create “cost savings,” the state’s own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons.
The idea that private companies were going to somehow find a radically more efficient way to do something as basic as holding and feeding criminals in a secure building was always pretty much pure fantasy. Private prisons