Privatization refers to outsourcing government functions to a private, usually for-profit, business although the arrangement can be with a non-profit organization. Currently, the most privatized aspect of criminal justice is punishment in general and prisons in particular. Prisons have historically engaged in “nominal privatization,” which includes privatization of services such as the designing and construction of prisons, provision of food services, medical care, and commissary. During the 1980s, contracts expanded to include “operational privatization,” which meant contracting out the day-to-day management of prisons to private, for-profit companies. Operational privatization involves a private company operating a facility owned by the government or managing inmates in a prison that the company owns. In some countries, such arrangements may be called public private partnerships (PPP) or private finance initiatives (PFI). Operational privatization originated during the 1980s in the United States, which was undergoing an unprecedented prison expansion because of ongoing wars on crime and drugs. At the same time, politicians were promising tax cuts, so privatization allowed a resolution to the contradiction by allowing private capital to profit by taking on some traditional responsibilities of government. Despite objections that the privatization of punishment and prison were different in nature than, say, trash collection, the dominant political view was that government kept sentencing authority and business could do the other functions more efficiently. While operational privatization has spread to a handful of countries, the largest private prison corporations are US-based, multibillion-dollar multinational companies that are traded on stock exchanges. As such, private prisons are the tip of a much larger criminal justice (CJ)–industrial complex, which describes a range of business and financial interests whose profit motive can shape criminal justice policy, including in ways that perpetuate current injustices. The CJ-industrial complex, mirroring the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned of, is comprised of everyone who financially profits from the police, courts, and corrections system. In turn, it is part of a larger security-industrial complex, which includes private security, investigators, intelligence, and technology sold as a response to (real and exaggerated) fear of crime, hackers, terrorists, and youth. Even when considered on its own, though, the CJ-industrial complex is significant because it could also mirror the concerns Eisenhower had: that because of its size and lobbying power, the defense industry could start to make policy based too much on its own interest rather than for the public good.
Higher Education and the Market
