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By: Kevin A. Wright

In: The American Prison: Imagining a Different Future

Chapter 9: The Private Prison

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506374628.n9

Subject: Prison Studies

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The Private Prison

The private prison

Kevin A. Wright

Editors' Introduction

The American prison was founded with inordinate optimism. It was to be a place of national pride, a forward-looking invention that would replace barbaric punishments with life in an environment designed to reform the very spirit of offenders. Much contemporary scholarship on prisons, however, is devoted to illuminating how the correctional enterprise has fallen far short of this grand goal. In fact, books on imprisonment often read much like a social problems text, showing how the society of captives is marked by severe crowding, insufficient programs if not idleness, gangs and racial conflict, inmate-on-inmate victimizations, and a correctional staff whose primary orientation is to ensure custodial order at all costs. Not surprisingly, nearly all prominent criminologists ...

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