Question

1. Why are jails and prisons usually treated as a public good? Use the language of economics in your answer and include the formal characteristics of a public and private good.

2. In Louisiana, prisons are operated as a private good. Does this change the public policy choices made in the state about crime? Is there an incentive to either increase or decrease the prison population in the state? Why?

3. In your opinion, is privatization of probation and prisons a good idea? Why or why not? Write what you think, not what you feel, and back up your analysis.

Answer 1

ANSWER:-

1.

• A private good is a good which is purchased and used by one single customer. It is not available for use to other people. For Example you bought a car for personal use. Only you can use thatcar not your neighbors.
• A public good is a good that is offered free to consumers. Example Air, Street Light, Prisons are public good. They serve the public as a whole and not individual customers. That's why they are considered as public good.

2).

• Louisiana is called as world's prison capital. The state imprisons more people per capita than any other state or country in the world, with one out of every 86 adults behined bars. Some of the local prisons here are run by sheriffs and they get incentives for keeping prisons full.
• Sheriffs also outsource the prisons to and then those companies operate prison. In these prisons rooms are overcrowded and prisoners stay over there even after sentence is over thus leading to large population.
• The sheriff does not want to reduce population as by giving few facilities, they are able to earn huge from large prison population.

3). Advantages of Private Prisons

• These are cheaper for tax payers. Applying cost savings techniques improves operational efficiency and reduce costs and increase profits, in case of private prisons.
• Offering more jobs to local community thus resulting in economic benefit.
• Privarte prisons can be used for many other purposes. They can be used for immigration housing and detention purposes. If need for prison goes away they can be used for other community purposes.
• Private prisons can lower the rates of reoffending. As per statistics, private have the potential to lower the rates of reoffending by up to 50% in some regions.

Disadvantages

• Prisoners stay for long private prisons even if their sentence is over resulting in overcrowding.
• They do not provide shelter to costly prisoners requiring strict security control as this may result in increase in expenses.   
• They are more violent. The staff members are low in such prisons.
• This leads to more chaos and violence as less people are able to control fights among prisoners.
• Such prisons are located far from the house of prisoners and this may result in detachment from family members and may delay the process of transforming the prisoner in to better person as family support matters a lot.
• Wages of employees in private prisons are low.

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