In 1776 tough sentencing laws and a need to deal with prison overcrowding led to an “innovative” solution. The English Parliament passed an act authorizing for two years   that decommissioned naval ships (hulks) would serve as “temporary” holding prisons. This practice lasted 80 years.

Given Vermont state’s existing relationship with private for profit prison services and budget pressures it is worth taking note of recent trends nationwide in extreme privatization of government functions. Vermont currently has about 680 inmates in out-of-state prisons, mostly in two facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both are owned by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest for-profit prison vendor.

Recently a female prisoner died (the second in several years) from lack of access to medicine while in state custody but under the care of a for profit prison medical service  Prison Health Services Inc.  

Razing Arizona state prisons?

Arizona State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

 The state’s death row inmates could become the responsibility of a private for Profit Company. A truly mind boggling move when one considers the potential for abuse. There must come a time when state governments will again shoulder the responsibility and cost of actually running the government rather than subcontracting it out . Taxing though it may be.

The privatization effort, both in its breadth and its financial goals, demonstrates what states around the country – broke, desperate and often overburdened with prisoners and their associated costs – are willing to do to balance the books. Arizona officials hope the effort will put a $100 million dent in the state’s roughly $2 billion budget shortfall.

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For advocates of prison privatization, the push here breathes a bit of life into a movement that has been on the decline across the country as cost savings from prison privatizations have often failed to materialize, corrections officers unions have resisted the efforts and high-profile problems in privately run facilities have drawn unwanted publicity

http://www.7dvt.com/2009vermon…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10…