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Why Do States Privatize their Prisons? The Unintended Consequences of Inmate Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2020

Anna Gunderson Open the ORCID record for Anna Gunderson [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

The United States has witnessed privatization of a variety of government functions over the last three decades. Media and politicians often attribute the decision to privatize to ideological commitments to small government and fiscal pressure. These claims are particularly notable in the context of prison privatization, where states and the federal government have employed private companies to operate and manage private correctional facilities. I argue that state prison privatization is not a function of simple ideological or economic considerations. Rather, prison privatization has been an unintended consequence of the administrative and legal costs associated with litigation brought by prisoners. I assemble an original database of prison privatization in the United States and demonstrate that the privatization of prisons is best predicted by the legal pressure on state corrections systems, rather than the ideological orientation of a state government.

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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 187 - 204
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© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WRHPXL

Many thanks to Tom Clark; Michael Leo Owens; Zachary Peskowitz; Hannah Walker; Jeffrey Staton; the Law and Courts working group at Emory University; audiences at the 2017 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, State Politics and Policy Conference, and the Emory Public Interest Committee Conference; audiences at the 2018 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, State Politics and Policy Conference, and Meeting of the Society of Political Methodology; audiences at the 2019 meetings of the Southern Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society; and the anonymous reviewers and editors for helpful comments and suggestions on this paper.

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