That prisons should be privatised

Kush

I would like to express my gratitude towards Bugsy460 for debating with me on this resolution.

     I agree with your definition of privatization. But how about we look at a definition of prisons (via Google):

“a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed”

     So, the main purpose of prisons is to hold persons who have violated the law in a disgraceful manner and are too dangerous to be left out in the open. But more often than not, this isn’t the case. A large number of the prisoners have been charged with misdemeanor. According to a study, 46% of the inmates are non-violent. This means that they have been charged with something minor like, petty theft, or gambling, bribery etc. But putting them behind the bars for such a misdemeanor for the rest of their lives is just morally wrong. Instead, what we should be doing is rehabilitating them. According to a study, 43% of the state prisoners are rehabilitated and released.

     In a study it states, “Private prisons have no real incentive to rehabilitate prisoners. If they make their profit from criminal society, it goes against business sense to reduce criminality.” So, all private prisons are looking for is profit, even at the expense of civilians. Just to prove my point, a 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice stated, “privately operated federal facilities are less safe, less secure and more punitive than other federal prisons.” Shortly after this statement, the DoJ (Department of Justice) announced it will stop using private prisons.

     As for the second argument made by PRO, I completely agree that cheaper alternatives should be a priority when it comes to other resolutions, but not this one. Prisons are created to keep the citizens safe, but if the government becomes too greedy and seeks out the cheapest options, then they will be undermining the safety of their civilians. My opponent also argued that private-prisons create jobs. Maybe, they do, but the jobs that are earned by the rural population aren’t exactly productive. The jobs do not really benefit the cause of prisoning the violators of the law. Another report by the Department of Justice said, “To achieve their modest savings, private prisons tend to cut back on staff costs and training.... private facilities pay their officers less, provide fewer hours of training and have higher inmate-to-staff ratios.... as well as the uptick in inmate assaults.” So, if we think about it, if a fight broke out between the inmates, the state facilities officers are better equipped than the officers of the private facilities. Hence to save their pennies, the private prisons are ready to put the inmates’ lives and the civilian population’s lives at risk. And as far as employment is concerned, employment for the prisons is already available through the federal prisons.

As we have already noticed above, private prisons are primarily based upon the profit they receive. But, like everything there are downsides to this. A study performed in the University of Wisconsin notes that the sentences served in for-profit prisons is 7% higher than the sentences served in state prisons. So the private prisons are willing extend the sentences of their inmates even though their sentences are fullfilled, for the sole aim of earning profit.

     As you might have noticed, a lot of my citations are from the DoJ (Department of Justice). And all of their reports are against the privatization of prisons.

     So now, the question I would like to ask the PRO is if your own government is against this resolution for rational reasons, why are you being so irrational and oblivious to the fact, privatization of prisons aren't logical because of their impracticality.

Sources

• https://vittana.org/20-privatization-of-prisons-pros-and-cons

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism

Kush

My opponent has made two main arguments:

• Cost-effectiveness of private prisons

• Regulation by the government is key to the success of the private prisons

But researches and credible sources have to say otherwise. Let us first look at cost-effectiveness. The opponent argues that privatization saves the taxpayer money. But Eric Young, the president of the Council of Prisons says, “This is yet another example of trying to save money at the expense of community safety….It’s unacceptable to take an inmate in the community without being supervised by trained federal correctional officers. And on top of jeopardizing safety, both the Bureau of Prisons and Government Accountability Office agree that  private prisons don't save taxpayers money in comparison to federal and state facilities.”Apart from this, the Washington Post found similar results. They said in their article, “Many private prison companies try to save money on inmate health care, selecting younger and healthier inmates to house – leaving many of the sick, old and mentally ill inmates to remain in public incarceration. Even with this selective incarceration, the SAVINGS ARE NEGLIGIBLE.”So, in reality, private prisons cost more than public prisons even though they apply selective incarceration and jeopardize the safety of their citizens as well as their inmates.

Moving onto the second argument made by the opponent, regulation is key for success. As I mentioned in the first cross-examination, looking at a firmly regulated private prison, we think of the IDEAL private prisons. But, taking an idealistic approach won’t help us come to a conclusion about this resolution, but looking at hardcore facts will. First of the important aspect we will be looking at is that, the private prisons aren’t forced to submit to the Freedom of Information Act. Hence, they can remain shrouded with secrecy regarding to how they operate. There are also cases when the corporation builds a facility without a governmental contract, with the expectation that their services will be needed in the future.These kinds of prisons are called ‘spec’ prisons. Almost every single one of the private prisons in the U.S. are ‘spec’ prisons. These prisons have very few accountability measures because initially, they don’t have a governmental contract. But when the government becomes desperate, the corporations are able to force a better deal and FEWER REGULATING MECHANISMS.

My opponent, while looking at this resolution only was looking at one kind of scenario, cost-effectiveness. Taking a more holistic approach when considering this resolution has proved to be more productive—like me and the Government Accountability Office. In their 2007 report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated, “for any comparative study of private and public prisons call for the comparison to be based not just on operational costs, but on a variety of factors including selection of facilities with similar characteristics, i.e.,staffing levels and programs offered and quality of service.” And as I have already proven, the private prisons tend to cut off the staff training, have no real incentive to rehabilitate prisoners and thus offer the worst quality of service.

So, why should we privatize prisons?

Sources

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118519639.wbecpx175

• https://www.afge.org/article/do-private-prisons-really-save-us-money/

Kush

So, first off, I promised to elaborate on the point I mentioned in the previous cross-examination. I will now prove how Australian and New Zealand private prisons are as illicit as the ones is United States.

My opponent also says that I have not addressed the issue of overcrowding, and dealing with overcrowding is one of the main arguments made by the PRO. They believe that private prisons solve overcrowding. But in reality, numerous of the private prisons FACE overcrowding themselves. And since my opponent considers the Australian private prisons to be exemplary, let me give an example of an Australian private prisons. Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre in Brisbane's southeast went into lockdown because of overcrowding, drug smuggling, and prisoner violence. A correctional officer from the facility gave a statement, “currently housed around 1200 inmates, despite having a single bed capacity for 890 men with a maximum-security wing for up to 18 inmates.”So, this so-called ‘High-Security’ prison compromises in their own security by housing 310 additional inmates than their capacity. Now the question arises, why? They do this because as I have mentioned before, the sole aim of private corporations and for-profit prisons is profit. And the greater number of inmates that a facility houses, the more the profit. So, private prisons are ready to compromise the lives of their officers and the citizens just for profit.

My opponent has also said that private prisons are ‘cheaper’. Could this get any more absurd than this? I have clearly mentioned time and time again private prisons are ready to do anything for profit. As I have already discussed in my previous speeches, private prisons tend to SELECT prisoners which they can benefit from. This means that private prisons choose younger and healthier inmates to reduce their housing costs. They are even ready to cut-off on medical care of the inmates and to house them in atrocious and inadequate levels of housing. So, it is clearly evident that since the private prisons don’t care about the living conditions of their prisoners, the housing costs will be curtailed.

There is also one another issue that has time and time again weighed down the PRO, transparency. My opponent’s main argument is that the key to the success of private prisons is regulation. PRO has argued for everything with only one thing, regulation. But they don’t understand one thing private prisons don’t NEED to report to the government and no amount of regulation can change that. As I have already said in my second argument, private prisons aren’t forced to submit to the Freedom of Information Act, thus they can remain enshrouded with secrecy. And it is evident from my examples mentioned above that private prisons can go to any length to make sure that no penalties are charged. If there is a riot or death of an inmate in a private prison, the outside world may not even know about it.

I have discussed numerous aspects of how private prisons are atrocious and should be ended. They are:

• No incentive to rehabilitate

• Cut back on staff-training and equipment

• Pay their employees meagerly

• Extend the sentences of inmates to earn more profit

• Their savings are negligible

• Save money on inmate healthcare

• Provide pitiable housing conditions

• Remain enshrouded with secrecy

• Aren’t forced to submit information to the government

• Have fewer regulating mechanisms

• Face overcrowding, drug smuggling, and inmate assaults at a higher rate than state-run prisons

Summary

The PRO has mentioned many aspects related to why private prisons are desirable. Though after doing profound research I have disproved every single claim made by the even though they haven’t been able to disprove a single one of my claims. I would also like to mention that in 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice ultimately ended their collaboration with the private prisons because, “they found that for-profit prisons provided fewer services, had higher safety risks, and had higher security risks without producing a substantial level of savings.” The PRO doesn’t understand that they are fighting a battle which has already been fought and won by my faction. The very system of private prisons is rotten to its core. And of not exterminated, it could well lead to disaster of inmates running free on the streets because who knows what the private corporations might do to obtain profits.

JUDGE/S VOTE FOR THE CON SIDE

Sources

• https://www.justiceaction.org.au/privatisation-of-prisons-report3

• http://www.privateci.org/shame_aust.html

• https://vittana.org/20-privatization-of-prisons-pros-and-cons

• https://www.justiceaction.org.au/images/stories/CmpgnPDFs/geoinfo51009.pdf

• https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/phasing-out-our-use-private-prisons

Kush

First off, I would like to thank Bugsy460 for participating on this debate and would like to congratulate my opponent for this debate as this was a hotly-contested debate and I enjoyed every part of it but I still think that the claims made by me were more rational and logical. Also, my opponent has been impartial while considering this resolution.

JUDGE/S VOTE FOR THE CON SIDE

Bugsy460

• Remain enshrouded with secrecy

• Aren’t forced to submit information to the government

• Have fewer regulating mechanisms