Private for-profit prisons are not good public policy

The Arizona Capitol Times, October 15, 2015, reports: “The history of private sector involvement in corrections is a bleak, well documented tale of inmate abuse and political corruption with roots in slavery. In Worse than Slavery, David M. Oshinsky outlined the system of Jim Crow established after the Civil War. He concluded that for-profit prison systems inevitably become slave camps. It was the prisoner himself who was the item of commerce. The same is true today.”