Inside Private Prisons (eBook)

An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Lauren-Brooke Eisen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-54231-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Lauren-Brooke Eisen blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America. Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, offering a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens.

---

When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today more than a hundred thousand of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in twenty-nine states and federal corrections. Private prisons are criticized for making money off mass incarceration-to the tune of $5 billion in annual revenue. Based on Lauren-Brooke Eisen's work as a prosecutor, journalist, and attorney at policy think tanks, Inside Private Prisons blends investigative reportage and quantitative and historical research to analyze privatized corrections in America.From divestment campaigns to boardrooms to private immigration-detention centers across the Southwest, Eisen examines private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America's largest private prison corporations. Private prisons have become ground zero in the anti-mass-incarceration movement. Universities have divested from these companies, political candidates hesitate to accept their campaign donations, and the Department of Justice tried to phase out its contracts with them. On the other side, impoverished rural towns often try to lure the for-profit prison industry to build facilities and create new jobs. Neither an endorsement or a demonization, Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. If private prisons are here to stay, how can we fix them? This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing carceral landscape.

Autor

Lauren-Brooke Eisen is senior fellow at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she focuses on changing financial incentives in the criminal justice system. Previously she was a senior program associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections, served as an assistant district attorney in New York City, and taught criminal justice at Yale College and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Inhalt

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Prison Buildup and the Birth of Private Prisons2. How the Government Privatized3. Prisoners as Commodities4. The Prison Industrial Complex5. Private Prisons and the American Heartland6. The Prison Divestment Movement7. The Politics of Private Prisons8. Shadow Prisons: Inside Private Immigrant Detention Centers9. Public Prisons Versus Private Prisons10. Wrestling with the Concept of Private Prisons11. The Future of Private PrisonsConclusionNotesIndex

Produkt-Details

• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Öffentliches Recht ► Verfassungsverfahrensrecht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht ► Kriminologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• ISBN-10: 0-231-54231-3 / 0231542313
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-54231-9 / 9780231542319