They shake up correctional departments, bringing accountability to systems otherwise fraught with corruption, crisis, and controversy. Public officials must recognize their power to hold private prisons accountable and capitalize on it. That lesson applies to privatization in all its manifestations. Reform-minded state officials have always struggled for ways to work with state agencies to bring about change, or for ways to force them to change. Often neither route is easy to navigate.
Privatization brings competition, and offers a third way to achieve reform.
If you remain skeptical, follow what happens in the aftermath of the next prison break or beating that grabs the headlines. If it was at a private prison, you can be sure heads will roll. If the scene was a government prison, you can be sure only of hearings, the naming of blue-ribbon commissions, and other meaningless gestures. A case study provides details of the benefits of prison privatization.