December 2014
For-Profit Prisons
Pro Cases p.1
We believe that the following resolution is true: “Resolved: For-profit prisons in the
United States should be banned.” For-profit, or private, prisons undermine the criminal
justice system’s goals.
OUR FRAMEWORK: This debate must be judged on whether public prisons
or private prisons are better to fulfill the purposes of punishing and rehabilitating
offenders, while maintaining respect for their civil rights. Cost comparisons and
economics are not the purposes of prisons, thus, those considerations are irrelevant.
1st: he profit motive leads for-profit prisons to cut expenses resulting in less
rehabilitation efforts and over-punishment of offenders.
Peter H. Kyle, William & Mary Law Review in 2013 Contracting for Performance:
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Restructuring the Private Prison Market Kyle continues:
“[T]he drive toward lowering costs ... engenders various other problems.... [P]rivate
prisons make money by cutting corners, which means skimping on food, staffing,
medicine, education, and other services for convicts. It also means fielding poorly
trained, ill-equipped, non-unionized and often brutal guards.” Indeed, the costminimizing efforts have led to more than just reductions in prisoner comfort. The
emphasis on cutting expenses has resulted in decreased levels of security and a number of
high-profile incidents of understaffing and abuse.
2nd, private prisons have a greater recidivism rate, showing that for profit prisons
undermine the purposes of the criminal justice system to rehabilitate offenders. Matt
Simmons, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Florida, MA in American
History at University of Tulsa, wrote in 2013:
With an ever increasing rate of incarceration Oklahomans should be thinking about more
than locking up offenders as cheaply as possible. It would be far more cost-effective to
prevent crimes and reduce the need for incarceration. Yet a study comparing recidivism
rates in private versus public prisons in Oklahoma concluded that “private prison inmates
had a greater hazard of recidivism in all eight models tested.”2
In conclusion, for-profit prisons in the US should be banned because they undermine the
goals of the criminal justice system to rehabilitate offenders while maintaining fair
punishment.
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Pro Blocks
A/T Banning would hurt private prison market / economy.
1. There’s no reason why the government couldn’t take back control over the private
prisons.
2. The shrinking prison population is already threatening the private prison market.
Peter H. Kyle, J.D. Candidate, William & Mary, Contracting for Performance:
Restructuring the Private Prison Market, 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2087 (2013),
http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol54/iss6/8
Yet as the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group both acknowledge,
and as independent market analysis suggests, the decline of determinate sentencing
measures and the concomitant shrinking of the prison population represent the greatest
threat to the viability of the private prison industry.
3. The impact isn’t unique: states have already started to ban for-profit prisons.
Peter H. Kyle, J.D. Candidate, William & Mary, Contracting for Performance:
Restructuring the Private Prison Market, 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 2087 (2013),
http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol54/iss6/8
Accompanying the prison privatization movement has been a consistent stream of
opposition to privatizing the fundamental government function of punishing criminals.
As testament to the controversial nature of prison privatization, Illinois and New York
went so far as to ban the practice entirely,37 and many states that allow privatization
place stringent restrictions on the practice.38 The most resounding critiques of prison
privatization invariably relate either to the positivist concern about the increased weight
placed on cost effectiveness over quality improvements39 or to the normatively
problematic encroachment of the profit motive into the public domain of corrections
policy.
Pro Blocks
A/T For profit prisons are necessary because of governmental budget constraints.
1. This argument is misleading: the government has to pay for prisons regardless of
whether the government owns the prison or the private company owns the prison. The
government still has to pay contract money to for-profit prison companies.
2. The savings from improved services that reduce recidivism and lower crime rates
could be funneled back to the state resolving budget crises.
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Pro Blocks
A/T Studies are flawed.
1. No research or study is going to be perfect. There are necessary flaws in all of them,
one of which is a standard term known as “margin of error.” Thus, just because no study
is perfect doesn’t mean we reject all of them.
2. Objective studies show that prisons produce no cost savings.
Thompson Reuters 2013 (Private Jails in the United States, Findlaw.com,
civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/private-jails-in-the-united-states.html)
While some studies have demonstrated that private prisons may save governments
money, other studies have found just the opposite. A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics found no such cost-savings when it compared public and private prisons. This is
in part because simple numbers don't tell the whole story. For instance, privately run
prisons can refuse to accept certain expensive prisoners, and they regularly do. This has
the effect of artificially deflating the costs associated with running a private jail.
A/T Studies are biased because they are funded by prison corporations.
1. Just because a company funds research and studies doesn’t mean the outcome or
methodology is wrong.
2. There are plenty of objective studies not by prison corporations that support for
profit prisons. Thompson Reuters 2013 (Private Jails in the United States, Findlaw.com,
civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/private-jails-in-the-united-states.html)
While some studies have demonstrated that private prisons may save governments
money, other studies have found just the opposite. A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics found no such cost-savings when it compared public and private prisons. This is
in part because simple numbers don't tell the whole story. For instance, privately run
prisons can refuse to accept certain expensive prisoners, and they regularly do. This has
the effect of artificially deflating the costs associated with running
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PRO CASE
FRAMEWORK:
judge whether public
prisons or private
prisons better fulfill the
purposes of punishing
and rehabilitating
offenders, while
maintaining respect for
their civil rights. Cost
comparisons and
economics are not the
purposes of prisons, &
don’t count .
1. the profit motive
leads for-profit prisons
to cut expenses
resulting in less
rehabilitation efforts
and over-punishment of
offenders. Kyle
2. private prisons have a
greater recidivism rate,
showing that for profit
prisons undermine the
purposes of the criminal
justice system to
rehabilitate offenders
Simmons 2013
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