On this topic, Rolling Stone magazine published a piece by Hannah Gold I missed just about a year ago. It covers the relationships between private prisons and higher education:
American universities do a fine job of selling themselves as pathways to opportunity and knowledge. But follow the traffic of money and policies through these academic institutions and you’ll often wind up at the barbed wire gates of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison operators in the United States. …
Institutions of higher education have now become a part of what sociologist Victor Rios has called the “youth control complex”—a tightly bundled network of institutions that work insidiously and in harmony to criminalize young people of color. Here are five ways that universities buy into private prison companies.
Slightly conspiratorial, slightly cobbled together – but useful information, all the same. Hannah finds five connections: The classic investments in private prisons corporations; the use of criminal record information to bar students with records from admission; presence of private prison company executives on the Boards of Trustees of educational institutes; the use of unsavory security giant G4S for campus security; and funding university research. As a simple minded software engineer, here’s what comes to mind as I read the piece, structured by point:
1. Regarding educational investment/divestment: This is the most important and understandable – but exists on the assumption that the readers are liberals who already understand the inappropriateness of private prisons. Perhaps there’s an accompanying piece that covers it; but, if not, then the “outraged liberal” tone of the piece comes off as tone-deaf. How many conservatives are against private prisons? No luck finding any polls on that precise question; AFSCME has an undated poll that claims only 28% of US citizens are in favor of private prisons, 51% against. Given the lack of date, I have trouble with credibility – and with the source of the poll.
All that said, higher ed campuses are certainly one of the best places to start protesting against private prisons, as students rarely have vested interests in private prisons and therefore can honestly evaluate, and then act, on issues. A fallacious focus on the efficaciousness of the divestment should not be permitted; it is the symbolic aspect of the action which is important, the statement that private prisons are inappropriate to democracies. Naturally, this should be an educational moment – not only for the students, but for the administration, the Board of Trustees, and, of course, the citizenry at large who has, in the average case, not given the issue a moment’s thought.
2. Regarding requiring criminal offense history: A ticklish subject. Even though the typical college student is no longer a fresh high school grad, we still would prefer the college experience be free of risk (a ridiculous statement itself, but there it is). However, it’s difficult to think of any reason beyond that to deny someone an education. Hannah’s point is that requiring that history legitimizes
a juvenile detention system which locks away more young people than that of any other industrialized nation, and institutionalizes inequality and racism in America (black youths are incarcerated at a rate five times that of their white peers; Latinos at two to three times the rate).
However, not asking for it does not delegitimize it; and, further, by not banning violent offenders from, at least, campus, you may be endangering other students.
3. Regarding private prison executives on Boards of Trustees: I take this as indicative of the responsible body’s ignorance of the issue. They can also exert undue influence on the institution, which may obscure research that might otherwise undermine private prisons.
4. Regarding campus security: Someone has to provide it.
5. Regarding funding research: This is an important point, given the phenomenona of funding bias and appeal to authority. For those citizens who’ve not become familiar with the issue, the simple imprimatur of, say, Princeton (or Liberty University) on a piece of research which justifies private prisons can be a legimitizer in many people’s minds.
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Eugene Volokh @ The Volokh Conspiracy contributes an overview of research on the efficiencies of prison methodologies, which reduces to the complaint that it’s hard to do and virtually no one has performed such research. He usefully points to a 2012 Bureau of Justice Bulletin, which in Appendix Table 15 lists how many prisoners resided in private prisons in 2011 – indicating that, at the time, 19 states did not use private prisons. The highest, at that time: Montana at 40% of total prison population.
But Eugene’s work (and those of whom he surveys) seems a wasted effort. While to a devoted opponent of private prisons, research on efficiencies may seem another tool in stopping private prisons, I do not think it’s a wise tactic, for you are now risking the sin of biased research, if you reach a finding that supports your position, and risk the sin of omission of relevant facts if the finding is against you, and you choose not to use it (since you really can’t, except in passing). The point must be kept in focus: are private prisons appropriate in a democracy? Until and unless that argument is terminated against you, the efficiencies are meaningless: no improvement in efficiency can erase an ethical transgression, but if there is no transgression, quite often efficiency can be improved, or can be used to select which approach to use.
(h/t Kevin McLeod)
