Governments have long relied on private entities to assist with the implementation of correctional punishments, treatments, and services. In the United States, reports of privatized corrections can be traced back to Colonial America. These public-private partnerships remain prevalent in contemporary America and they span all aspects of corrections, including the collection of court-ordered fines, oversight of court services, provision of community programs and treatments, supervision of probationers and parolees, contracting of services and programs inside incarceration facilities, and the operation of juvenile facilities, jails, and prisons. This longtime and widespread use of privatization has been accompanied by contentious and unsettled debates about its impacts, merits, and legitimacy. Proponents frequently argue that private entities can provide comparable or better services than can public corrections and can do so at less cost. Critics refute such claims. In addition, they argue that it is morally unjust for organizations to profit from the administration of justice and punishment and that profit incentives motivate private entities to lower quality as a way to maximize profits. Debates about privatized corrections may stem from ideological differences in views about the goals and approaches that should be prioritized when administering state-sanctioned punishments. Such differences may persist because research has yet to adjudicate whether one approach, public or private, operates more effectively or efficiently than the other. Regardless of the cause, it remains the case that little is known about private corrections. Against this backdrop, I argue in this dissertation that corrections privatization is more complicated than has been recognized to date in scholarship and policy. Many questions in fact exist about what constitutes privatization, the theoretical logic by which it influences not only recidivism but also a range of outcomes, how debates about privatization are framed to the public, the extent to which privatized corrections improve or worsen recidivism, and, not least, the ethical foundations of privatizing corrections or, alternatively, of failing to do so. Insights along each of these dimensions and a focus on privatization generally can help to provide observations about the broader corrections landscape. In this dissertation, I seek to advance scholarship and policy on crime and justice and, in particular, privatized corrections. To this end, I draw on prior scholarship, use multiple data sources, and employ quantitative and qualitative methods to assess five sets of research questions. First, I draw on scholarship and original interviews to shed light on how privatization is conceptualized—that is, what “privatized corrections” entails—in contemporary corrections. Second, I examine these same interview responses to identify the theoretical logic by which privatization might be effective and efficient or, conversely, ineffective and inefficient. Third, I employ a content analysis of newspaper articles to assess how the media portrayed private prisons in the aftermath of the United States Department of Justice’s 2016 decision to stop contracting with private prison operators. Fourth, I use official data, propensity score matching, and logistic regression to examine the effects of private prison incarceration on recidivism, whether those effects vary by race, ethnicity, or age, and whether in-prison experiences explain any identified effects. Fifth, I develop a conceptual framework that identifies ethical concerns that may arise with private corrections or with public corrections. In the sections below, I describe each of the five studies that are included in this dissertation. Each of these descriptions are kept brief with fuller discussions of relevant information provided in the subsequent chapters. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / May 4, 2018. / Evidence-based policy, Private prisons, Privatization of corrections, Punishment / Includes bibliographical references. / Daniel P. Mears, Professor Directing Dissertation; Melissa Radey, University Representative; William D. Bales, Committee Member; Sonja E. Siennick, Committee Member; Eric A. Stewart, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_650723 |
| Contributors | Lindsey, Andrea Montes (author), Mears, Daniel P., 1966- (professor directing dissertation), Radey, Melissa (university representative), Bales, William D. (committee member), Siennick, Sonja E (committee member), Stewart, Eric Allen (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Criminology and Criminal Justice (degree granting college), College of Criminology and Criminal Justice (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (149 pages), computer, application/pdf |
Page generated in 0.0507 seconds