Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T06:23:53.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why Do States Privatize their Prisons? The Unintended Consequences of Inmate Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2020

Anna Gunderson Open the ORCID record for Anna Gunderson [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The United States has witnessed privatization of a variety of government functions over the last three decades. Media and politicians often attribute the decision to privatize to ideological commitments to small government and fiscal pressure. These claims are particularly notable in the context of prison privatization, where states and the federal government have employed private companies to operate and manage private correctional facilities. I argue that state prison privatization is not a function of simple ideological or economic considerations. Rather, prison privatization has been an unintended consequence of the administrative and legal costs associated with litigation brought by prisoners. I assemble an original database of prison privatization in the United States and demonstrate that the privatization of prisons is best predicted by the legal pressure on state corrections systems, rather than the ideological orientation of a state government.

Type
Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 187 - 204
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WRHPXL

Many thanks to Tom Clark; Michael Leo Owens; Zachary Peskowitz; Hannah Walker; Jeffrey Staton; the Law and Courts working group at Emory University; audiences at the 2017 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, State Politics and Policy Conference, and the Emory Public Interest Committee Conference; audiences at the 2018 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, State Politics and Policy Conference, and Meeting of the Society of Political Methodology; audiences at the 2019 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society; and the anonymous reviewers and editors for helpful comments and suggestions on this paper.

References

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Ashenfelter, Orley, Eisenberg, Theodore, and Schwab, Stewart J.. 1995. “Politics and the Judiciary: The Influence of Judicial Background on Case Outcomes.” Journal of Legal Studies 24(2): 257-81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Associated Press. 1996. Laws Lag Behind Booming Private Prison Industry. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-01-mn-4574-story.html).Google Scholar
Associated Press 2013. “Inmate Lawsuits Cost California Taxpayers $200 million Over Last 15 Years.” Daily Breeze, February 11. (https://www.dailybreeze.com/2013/02/11/inmate-lawsuits-cost-california-taxpayers-200-million-over-last-15-years/).Google Scholar
Austin, James, and Coventry, Garry. 2001. “Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons.” Bureau of Justice Assistance. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice. (https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=181249).Google Scholar
Barker, Vanessa. 2009. The Politics of Punishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beckett, Katherine. 1999. Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Dan. 2014. Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Christina L. 2013. “She’ll Settle It?” Journal of Law and Courts 1(2): 193–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boylan, Richard T., and Mocan, Naci. 2014. “Intended and Unintended Consequences of Prison Reform.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 30(3): 558–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brill, Alison. 2008. “Rights without Remedy: The Myth of State Court Accessibility after the Prison Litigation Reform Act.” Cardozo Law Review 30:645–82.Google Scholar
Brudney, J. L., Fernandez, Sergio, Ryu, Jayeungha, and Wright, Deil. 2005. “Exploring and Explaining Contracting Out: Patterns among the American States.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 15(3): 393–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhardt, Brett C. 2019. “Does the Public Sector Respond to Private Competition? An Analysis of Privatization and Prison Performance.” Journal of Crime and Justice 42(2): 201–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhardt, Brett C., and Jones, Alisha. 2016. “Judicial Intervention into Prisons: Comparing Private and Public Prisons from 1990 to 2005.” Justice System Journal 1:39–52. DOI:10.1080/0098261X.2015.1062738CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carson, Ann E. 2018. “Prisoners in 2016.” Bureau of Justice Statistics. (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p16.pdf).Google Scholar
Caughey, Devin, and Warshaw, Christopher. 2018. “Policy Preferences and Policy Change: Dynamic Responsiveness in the American States, 1936–2014.” American Political Science Review 112(2): 249–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cody, W.J. Michael, and Bennett, Andy D.. 1987. “The Privatization of Correctional Institutions: The Tennessee Experience.” Vanderbilt Law Review 4: 829–49.Google Scholar
Corrections Corporation of America. 1986. “CCA Annual Report.” Microfiche.Google Scholar
Corrections Corporation of America 1987. “CCA Annual Report.” Microfiche.Google Scholar
Corrections Corporation of America 1988. “CCA Annual Report.” Microfiche.Google Scholar
Culp, Richard F. 2005. “The Rise and Stall of Prison Privatization: An Integration of Policy Analysis Perspectives.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 16(4): 412–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daley, Dennis. 1996. “The Politics and Administration of Privatization: Efforts among Local Governments.” Policy Studies Journal 24(4): 629–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolovich, Sharon. 2005. “State Punishment and Private Prisons.” Duke Law Journal 3: 437–546.Google Scholar
Eisen, Lauren-Brooke. 2018. Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Enns, Peter. 2016. Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enns, Peter K., and Ramirez, Mark D.. 2018. “Privatizing Punishment: Testing Theories of Public Support for Private Prison and Immigration Detention Facilities.” Criminology 56(3): 546–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epp, Charles R. 1998. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M., and Rubin, Edward L.. 2000. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America’s Prisons. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fortner, Michael. 2015. Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gilmour, Robert S., and Jensen, Laura S.. 1998. “Reinventing Government Accountability: Public Functions, Privatization, and the Meaning of ‘State Action’.” Public Administration Review 58(3): 247–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschalk, Marie. 2006. The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Marie 2016. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Guetzkow, Joshua, and Schoon, Eric. 2015. “If You Build It, They Will Fill It: The Consequences of Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Law & Society Review 49(2): 401–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habel, Philip, and Scott, Kevin. 2014. “New Measures of Judges’ Caseload for the Federal District Courts, 1964–2012.” Journal of Law and Courts 2(1): 153–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Matthew. 2010. “Randomness Reconsidered: Modeling Random Judicial Assignment in the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 7(3): 574–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallett, Michael A. 2006. Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Harding, Richard. 1997. Private Prisons and Public Accountability. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Harding, Richard. 2001. “Private Prisons.” Crime and Justice 28: 265–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, Oliver, Shleifer, Andrei, and Vishny, Robert W.. 1997. “The Proper Scope of Government: Theory and an Application to Prisons.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(4): 1127–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auditor, Hawai’i State. 2010. “Management Audit of the Department of Public Safety’s Contracting for Prison Beds and Services.” A Report to the Governor and the Legislature of the State of Hawai’i. (http://files.hawaii.gov/auditor/Reports/2010/10-10.pdf).Google Scholar
Hinton, Elizabeth. 2016. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Barry T., and Macpherson, David A.. 2003. “Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 56(2): 349–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
In the Public Interest. 2013. “How Lockup Quotas and ‘Low-Crime Taxes’ Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations.” In the Public Interest, September 19. (https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/wp-content/uploads/Criminal-Lockup-Quota-Report.pdf).Google Scholar
Jacobs, James B. 1980. “The Prisoners’ Rights Movement and Its Impacts, 1960–80.” Crime and Justice 2:429–70. DOI: 10.2307/1147419CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, Susan L. 1987. “The Implications of Prison Privatization on the Conduct of Prisoner Litigation under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983.” Vanderbilt Law Review 40: 867–88.Google Scholar
Kim, Younhee, and Price, Byron E.. 2014. “Revisiting Prison Privatization: An Examination of the Magnitude of Prison Privatization.” Administration & Society 46(3): 255–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leander, Anna. 2010. “The Paradoxical Impunity of Private Military Companies: Authority and the Limits to Legal Accountability.” Security Dialogue 41(5): 467–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, Steven D. 1996. “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 111(2): 319–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipman, Pauline, and Haines, Nathan. 2007. “From Accountability to Privatization and African American Exclusion.” Educational Policy 21(3): 471–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makarios, Matthew D., and Maahs, Jeff. 2012. “Is Private Time Quality Time? A National Private–Public Comparison of Prison Quality.” Prison Journal 92(3): 336–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, Douglas, Fournier, Elizabeth, Russell-Einhourn, Malcolm, and Crawford, Stephen. 1998. “Private Prisons in the United States: An Assessment of Current Practice.” (http://www.abtassociates.com/reports/priv-report.pdf).Google Scholar
McDonald, Douglas, and Patten, Carl. 2003. Governments’ Management of Private Prisons. Abt Associates. (https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203968.pdf).Google Scholar
Mumford, Megan, Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore, and Nunn, Ryan. 2016. The Economics of Private Prisons. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. (https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-economics-of-private-prisons/).Google Scholar
Murakawa, Naomi. 2014. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Naff, Katherine C. 1991. “Labor-Management Relations and Privatization: A Federal Perspective.” Public Administration Review 51(1): 23–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Center for State Courts. 2009. “National Center for State Courts Poll: February 2009 [Roper #31111781].” Produced by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Distributed by Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.Google Scholar
Nicholson-Crotty, Sean. 2004. “The Politics and Administration of Privatization: Contracting Out for Corrections Management in the United States.” Policy Studies Journal 32(1): 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, Brian J., Hanson, Roger A., and Cheesman, Fred L.. 2003. “Congress, Courts and Corrections: An Empirical Perspective on the Prison Litigation Reform Act.” Notre Dame Law Review 78(5): 1525–60.Google Scholar
Page, Joshua. 2011. The Toughest Beat. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perrone, Dina, and Pratt, Travis C.. 2003. “Comparing the Quality of Confinement and Cost Effectiveness of Public versus Private Prisons: What We Know, Why We Do Not Know More, and Where to Go from Here.” Prison Journal 83(3): 301–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piehl, Anne Morrison, and Schlanger, Margo. 2004. “Determinants of Civil Rights Filings in Federal District Court by Jail and Prison Inmates.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 1(1): 79–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Byron E., and Riccucci, Norma M.. 2005. “Exploring the Determinants of Decisions to Privatize State Prisons.” American Review of Public Administration 35(3): 223–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinlan, J. Michael, Thomas, Charles W., and Gautreaux, Sherril. 2004. “The Privatization of Correctional Facilities.” In Privatizing Governmental Functions, ed. Deborah Ballati. New York: Law Journal Press.Google Scholar
Raher, Stephen. 2010. “The Business of Punishing: Impediments to Accountability in the Private Corrections Industry.” Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest 13(2): 209–250. (https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=jolpi).Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 2008. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, Margo. 2003. “Inmate Litigation.” Harvard Law Review 116(6): 1555–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, Margo 2006. “Civil Rights Injunctions Over Time: A Case Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders.” New York University Law Review 2: 550–630.Google Scholar
Schlanger, Margo 2015. “Trends in Prisoner Litigation, as the PLRA Enters Adulthood.” UC Irvine Law Review 5: 153–178.Google Scholar
Schneider, Anne. 1999. “Public-Private Partnerships in the U.S. Prison System.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(1): 192–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoenfeld, Heather. 2010. “Mass Incarceration and the Paradox of Prison Conditions Litigation.” Law & Society Review 44(3-4): 731–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoenfeld, Heather 2018. Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selman, Donna, and Leighton, Paul. 2010. Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
Shor, Boris, and McCarty, Nolan. 2011. “The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 105(3): 530–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Kevin B. 2004. “The Politics of Punishment: Evaluating Political Explanations of Incarceration Rates.” Journal of Politics 66(3): 925–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sovey, Allison J., and Green, Donald P.. 2011. “Instrumental Variables Estimation in Political Science: A Readers’ Guide.” American Journal of Political Science 55(1): 188–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturm, Susan P. 1994. “Lawyers at the Prison Gates: Organizational Structure and Corrections Advocacy.” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 27(1): 1-129.Google Scholar
Taggart, William A. 1989. “Redefining the Power of the Federal Judiciary: The Impact of Court Ordered Prison Reform on State Expenditures for Corrections.” Law & Society Review 23(2): 241–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tartaglia, Mike. 2014. “Private Prisons, Private Records.” Boston University Law Review 94(5): 1689–744.Google Scholar
Thompson, Lyke, and Elling, Richard C.. 2002. “Mapping Patterns of Support for Privatization in the Mass Public: The Case of Michigan.” Public Administration Review 60(4): 338–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UPI Top News. 2013. Report: Inmate Lawsuits Cost NYC $111M. (http://libezp.lib.lsu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=%20B92W2171274264&site=ehost-live&scope=site).Google Scholar
U.S. Congress House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice. 1986. Privatization of Corrections. Number v. 4 Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice. 2016. “Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Contract Prisons.” (https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/e1606.pdf).Google Scholar
Useem, Bert, and Goldstone, Jack A.. 2002. “Forging Social Order and Its Breakdown: Riot and Reform in U.S. Prisons.” American Sociological Review 67(4): 499–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughn, Michael S. 1993. “Listening to the Experts: A National Study of Correctional Administrators’ Responses to Prison Overcrowding.” Criminal Justice Review 18(1): 12–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volokh, Alexander. 2013. “The Modest Effect of Minneci v. Pollard on Inmate Litigants.” Akron Law Review 46(2): 287–329.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1965. Politics as a Vocation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
White, Ahmed A. 2001. “Rule of Law and the Limits of Sovereignty: The Private Prison in Jurisprudential Perspective.” American Criminal Law Review 38(1): 111–46.Google Scholar
Journal, Wisconsin State. 1998. “Stopping Inmates’ Silly Lawsuits.” (https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/406418294/).Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Gunderson supplementary material

Appendix

Download Gunderson supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 710.2 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Gunderson Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WRHPXL
Link