Inmate Litigation and the Growth of Carceral Privatization Sample Clauses

Inmate Litigation and the Growth of Carceral Privatization. The central theoretical claim at the heart of my dissertation argues it is not the com- mon explanations of privatization that explain correctional privatization, but rather it is states’ responses to inmate litigation that conditions the likelihood of privatizing. As the number of people incarcerated grew, so too did the volume of inmate lawsuits facing state governments. Inmates were filing lawsuits at ever increasing rates, be- cause of growing legal and political rates, and states were facing this mountain of prison litigation that they had never had to handle before. It is in this environment that the modern private prison industry is born. Two facets of litigation are studied specifically here. Primarily, I argue a higher number of inmate lawsuits, regardless of outcome, will make a state more likely to privatize its prisons. The state has an incentive to privatize to limit its legal and political accountability for these lawsuits. Legal uncertainty about who is responsible for the violations that occur within prisons allow states to effectively (at least par- tially, if not completely) shift legal liability for these lawsuits onto private companies. Additionally, the layer of bureaucracy added when a state privatizes ensures it is dif- ficult, if not impossible, to know who to hold responsible for poor prison conditions. Taken together, privatization helps states limit their legal and political accountability for lawsuits and prison conditions more broadly. Second, I examine successful lawsuits specifically and argue these court orders make it less likely for a state to privatize its prisons. Successful lawsuits are incredibly uncommon, 12% by generous estimates and 1.6% by other estimates (Xxxxxx, Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx 0000, Xxxxxxxxx 2015), but I argue they prompt states to reevaluate their substandard prison rules and procedures and force corrections’ bureaucracies to professionalize. These court orders thus remove the incentive to privatize, to avoid accountability, and make it less likely that a state will turn to a for-profit company to manage and operate their prisons. These two expectations suggest accountability and transparency are indeed at the root of states’ decisions to privatize their correctional facilities. Indeed, the opaque nature of private prisons is a boon for states to avoid accountability or, if they are beholden to judicial decrees, removes the incentive to privatize at all.