Continuing Controversies Sample Clauses

Continuing Controversies. The advent of private prisons in the 1980s, and the growing number of private fa- cilities in the decades following, has done little to quell the controversy surrounding their use. Private prisons and the role of the market in government service provision 4In the 1990s in particular, some private companies built facilities “on spec” without securing a government partner for them, a xxxxxx that was a profitable one (XxXxxxxx and Xxxxxx 2003). has attracted considerable controversy in the scholarly, legal, and public community (Austin and Coventry 2001, Xxxxx 2018). Though there is a surprising dearth of infor- mation regarding the public’s opinion on privatization, the little evidence that does exist indicates that while citizens support market intervention into benign service areas such as garbage collection and janitorial services, they balk at private compa- xxxx operating prisons of any kind (Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxx 2002). Additionally, the modal category of Americans asserts the government should never privatize prisons (Xxxx and Xxxxxxx 2018). The public at large is still therefore grappling with the consequences of adopting this policy. It is not only citizens who are concerned about the normative implications of private prisons. The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liber- ties, and the Administration of Justice held a hearing in 1985 specifically regarding the privatization of corrections and the feasibility of implementing that policy at the federal level. Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx, the chairman of the subcommittee, posed several questions at the beginning of the session inquiring about cost savings and inmate rights, but ended his questions with this normative concern: “And the ultimate ques- tion: Can and should governments delegate this power to deprive persons of liberty?” (United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts and the Adminis- tration of Justice 1986). Similarly, as the Tennessee government was considering a proposal from CoreCivic to take over the entire state’s prison system, the state at- xxxxxx general X.X. Xxxxxxx Xxxx strenuously objected to delegating a responsibility like corrections to a private company. He argued “[t]he idea of a transfer or delega- tion thereof, [is] in direct opposition to the design and ends of their creation” (quoted in Cody and Xxxxxxx (1987)). Thus, these concerns are not only relevant to public opinion, but policymakers at the national and state level actively considered thes...