PRIVATIZING PUNISHMENT: TESTING THEORIES OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE PRISON AND IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITIES

• Author: PETER K. ENNS,MARK D. RAMIREZ
• Date: 01 August 2018
• Published date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12178

PRIVATIZING PUNISHMENT: TESTING THEORIES

OF PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE PRISON

AND IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITIES∗

PETER K. ENNS1and MARK D. RAMIREZ2

1Department of Government, Cornell University

2School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University

KEYWORDS: private prisons, immigration detention, public opinion, racial resentment

The transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and

federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contempo-

rary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the

private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any

understanding of the public’s preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we

test several theories that potentially explain opinions toward privatizing carceral insti-

tutions: the racial animus, business is better, conflict of interest, and problem-escalation

models. These models are tested with original data from the 2014 Cooperative Con-

gressional Election Survey. The data show that opinions toward the privatization of

carceral institutions do not neatly fall along partisan or ideological divisions but are

explained by beliefs about racial resentment, corporate ethics, and the potential ability

of private companies to provide services cheaper than the public sphere. The results

hold important implications for how we understand the future of private carceral insti-

tutions in the United States.

During the past three decades, the privatization of prison facilities has been a contro-

versial and continually changing aspect of U.S. criminal justice policy. As of 2014, 131,300

inmates were being held in a private prison facility across 30 state and federal jurisdic-

tions (Carson, 2015). Although still a small proportion of the overall prison population,

this number reflects a 90 percent increase from when the Department of Justice started

tracking the number of prisoners in private facilities in 1999. The growth of private prisons

is likely to continue given that the Department of Justice under President Trump reversed

an earlier decision made under President Obama to phase out the use of private federal

[Correction added on May 18, 2018 after online publication: in the first paragraph of DE-

PENDENT VARIABLES section the phrase “never very inappropriate” was changed to “very

inappropriate”.]

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2018.56.issue-3/issuetoc.

Authors are listed in alphabetical order. The authors would like to acknowledge the work of Paul

G. Lewis in helping construct some of the survey items used in this analysis. They also appreciate

the excellent feedback from the editors and anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by the

National Science Foundation, Award #1430505.

Direct correspondence to Mark D. Ramirez, School of Politics and Global Studies, Ari-

zona State University, P.O. Box 873902, 6th floor Coor Hall, Tempe, AZ 85287-3902 (e-mail:

mark.ramirez@asu.edu).

C2018 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12178

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 56 Number 3 546–573 2018 546

PRIVATIZING PUNISHMENT 547

prisons. Trump had been vocal about his support for private prisons during his campaign,

saying, “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons. It seems to work

a lot better” (MSNBC, 2016: Video clip). Indeed, since Trump’s victory, stock prices in

private prisons have soared, perhaps suggesting that investors believe the use of private

prisons will increase.1

Even if the phase out of private facilities by the Department of Justice had persisted,

this would not have affected state prisons or federal immigration detention centers.

Immigration detention centers have become the largest growth segment for the prison

industry (Gottschalk, 2010: 63). Mason (2012: 5) estimated that 43 percent of all immi-

grant detainees were held in private facilities in 2012 (almost a 200 percent increase since

2002). Recent internal White House memos associated with the Trump administration

have signaled to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it should prepare to

house 80,000 immigrant detainees each day as the Trump administration prepares to im-

plement its ongoing immigration crackdown (Bennett, 2017). The potential ending of the

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program could mean more profits for

these facilities as approximately 800,000 young immigrants could be detained in private

facilities prior to deportation. Immigrant detainees in these facilities (including women

and children) are often held in conditions that are “as bad or worse than those faced by

imprisoned criminals” (Tumlin, Joaquin, and Natarajan, 2009: vi). As Gottschalk (2016:

231) explained, the private prisons that run immigration detention centers “are even

more secretive and publicly unaccountable than public departments of corrections.” Fur-

thermore, although substantial evidence documents the “overcrowding, violence, sexual

abuse, and other conditions [that] pose grave risks to prisoner health and safety” in U.S.

prisons (ACLU Staff, 2018, para. 1),2the U.S. Department of Justice’s (2016) Review

of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Contract Prisons found that the private

prisons they analyzed had higher safety and security infractions in six of eight categories.3

We seek to understand the roots of public support (and opposition) to privatized pun-

ishment. Despite the growth of private prisons and immigration detention centers in the

United States, and important past criminal justice research on public attitudes toward

punishment and corrections (e.g., Beckett, 1997; Cullen, Fisher, and Applegate, 2000;

Durham, 1993; Enns, 2014, 2016; Johnson et al., 2011; Pickett and Chiricos, 2012; Ramirez,

2013; Zimring, 2008), surprisingly little is known regarding public opinion toward pri-

vate facilities (Durham, 1989).4In addition to building on the public opinion–criminal

justice literature, our focus on understanding the roots of support for privatizing carceral

1. Ten months after the election, stock prices for CoreCivic were approximately double their pre-

election value and GEO Group was valued at more than double its pre-election price

(https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:CXW; https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:

GEO).

2. Also see EJI Staff (n.d.) and Garbus (2014).

3. For presentational purposes, this research will refer to both prisons and immigration detention

centers as carceral institutions or as facilities despite the legal differences between incarceration

and detention.

4. A search of the Roper Center iPOLL archive indicates survey firms have asked citizens their opin-

ions on privatizing prisons only twice: once in 1982 and again in 1985 (Roper, 1982, 1985). In both

of these polls, most Americans opposed privatizing these institutions, but we have no data on

public attitudes toward this issue since the 1980s. Thus, there is a need to understand the current

distribution of support for these institutions as well as the factors that drive this support.