| Abstract: | One of the results of Western capitalism has been the increasing pressure for the privatization of the criminal justice system.
Although there has long been private or nonprofit involvement in corrections, a newer response has been to turn entire prisons
over to private enterprise, or to pay private prisons to house state or federal inmates. Progressively, then, inmates once
completely devalued as social junk are being valued as commodities to be sought after. This paper attempts to discuss a series
of issues around private prisons. As we can only look at several issues in one paper, we shall concentrate our attention on
construction, operating costs, accountability and broader ethical questions.
This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. |
