Throw Away the Key: For-Profit Prisons and the Ethics of Incarceration

Stephen Foster

Sadly, crime and punishment are both inevitable and necessary when two or more people inhabit the same geography: homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man. But it’s how a society punishes its criminals that defines it. How a collective of individuals goes about the grim task of depriving its members of their freedoms—at times, their lives—says as much about our law-abiding as it does our lawless.

For civilized society, prisons are necessary. But prisons need not be inhumane. They need not mimic the very behaviors they are purportedly punishing. Two methods of operating prisons in the United States exist: government-run and maintained, and as for-profit enterprises. Being incarcerated under the latter model is inherently unethical; it reduces our humanity to a “make-a-buck” model of punishment. A corporate, or for-profit, prison may indeed receive a stipend from the government to help with operations. But make no mistake: it’s the corporate element that defines not only how it treats its residents but also its employees.

When it comes to a prison’s population, these two methods of incarceration differ by desired outcomes, and the calculus is remarkably simple. Investopedia says, “A public prison is naturally non-profit. The end goal is to house prisoners in an attempt to rehab them or remove them from the streets. A private prison, on the other hand, is run by a corporation. That corporation’s end goal is to profit from anything they deal in.” (The Business Model of Private Prisons. Sean Bryant, June 2019.)

Corporate prisons benefit the most when they are at full capacity, so rehabilitation and release are secondary, if that. A government-run prison wants—needs—to have its residents pay for their crimes in the ways that society dictates and then release those men and women back into society all for the better. Like it or not, detainees have rights, and more than a few studies have concluded that for-profit prisons will inhibit or quash those rights to increase the proverbial bottom line.

When it comes to a prison’s employees, according to Cody Mason, “Privately managed prisons attempt to control costs by regularly providing lower levels of staff benefits, salary, and salary advancement than publicly-run facilities (equal to about $5,327 less in annual salary for new recruits and $14,901 less in maximum annual salaries).” (Too Good to be True: Private Pensions in America. The Sentencing Project. January 2012, p.10.).

The desire for increased earnings quarter-over-quarter should not dictate how prisons are run. Detainees suffer. Employees suffer. The only winners here are the very institutions that should not have winning financially as their goal.

Failing to attempt rehabilitation of prisoners is unethical; it undermines this country’s need to integrate rather than segregate, and surely our moral underpinning is weakened when we sanction the treatment of prisoners in ways that enhance a balance sheet. And asking a prison employee to work for poverty wages—in jobs that require extreme dedication and high-level training—is, too, lacking an ethical foundation.

For-profit prisons not only diminish but defile us. They are a disgrace we should choose not to live with.