Private Prisons and Family Values
When politicians talk about “family values,” they rarely mention the importance of family to prisoners. Most inmates will eventually be released. Some will quickly return to crime. Those who have been regularly visited by family members are less likely to recidivate. The importance of family to prisoners should come as no surprise to “family values” advocates, so why don’t they routinely speak out about news like this?
Chronic prison overcrowding has corrections officials in Hawaii and at least seven other states looking increasingly across state lines for scarce prison beds, usually in prisons run by private companies. Facing a court mandate, California last week transferred 40 inmates to Mississippi and has plans for at least 8,000 to be sent out of state. ...About one-third of Hawaii’s 6,000 state inmates are held in private in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Kentucky. Alabama has 1,300 prisoners in Louisiana. About 360 inmates from California, which has one of the nation’s most crowded prison systems, are in Arizona and Tennessee. ...
Paige M. Harrison, a researcher for the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the out-of-state inmates faced problems familiar to the large number of in-state prisoners incarcerated hundreds of miles from their homes. A study in 1997 found that more than 60 percent of state inmates were held more than 100 miles from their last place of residence.
Private prisons are a profitable business (one reason why “family values” politicians keep silent about the adverse impact they have on families), but privatization of corrections isn’t conducive to rehabilitation, particularly when the prisons are built far from the prisoner’s home.
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