Corporations are using dubious research to take over prisons
By Matt Stroud
Since the mid-1980s, private companies have contracted with states and branches of the federal government to assume certain prison operations. The argument behind these contracts has been that private companies — which are not beholden to things like pension arrangements with correctional officer’s unions — can cut prison spending in ways that governments can not.
For the most part, this argument was theoretical — an idea never definitively proven by any significant academic studies (though some have tried to do so). But then, in April 2013, came a study out of Temple University in Philadelphia. This study found that private prison companies could help governments cut costs from between 12.46 percent and 58.61 percent. It looked like a groundbreaking study on its surface, and the private prison industry ran with it. But recently that appearance has begun to fade and reveal a very different picture: that of corporate prisons taking a page out of Big Tobacco's playbook.
Private prison companies were doing well enough without the academic boost. Though these companies only oversee about 8 percent of United States prisons, the number of prisoners in private facilities rose by 37 percent between 2002 and 2009, and the companies generally make a lot of money: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the world, has a market cap of $3.74 billion; one of its competitors, the GEO Group, has a market cap of $2.46 billion. But the study was nonetheless helpful; it backed up the savings claims with an ostensibly independent study from a reputable academic institution. It brought private prisons — and the contracts those companies were lobbying to secure with states and the federal government — into policy discussions all over the country. The study’s authors, Temple economics professors Simon Hakim and Erwin A. Blackstone, even wrote op-eds in newspapers where private prisons were being considered by lawmakers. This was all excellent news for private prison companies.
Soon after, however, the study’s findings began to look a little less excellent.
more
http://www.theverge.com/policy/2014/8/6/5968979/corporations-are-using-dubious-research-to-take-over-prisons
