Prison - Atmore Man Accused of Breaking into Jail

Private Prisons

Criminal Justice 1101 06/T1

Troy State University

Mr. Loyal Evans

September 7, 2006

Motivator:

Atmore man accused of breaking into jail

Brewton, AL- Authorities have arrested an Atmore man accused of breaking into the

Escambia County Jail to deliver drugs to inmates. John Lee Davis III, 20 was charged

with the unlawful possession of a controlled substance, promoting prison contraband,

possession of marijuana and criminal trespass. Davis remained in jail on a $15,000 bond

Thursday.

Escambia County Sheriff spokesman Maj. Mike Murphy said corrections officers

monitoring security cameras on Aug. 14 noticed Davis scale the exercise yard fence

about10 p.m.

Murphy said officers watched him put items into a bag that had been lowered from a

broken window in the jail by inmates. Davis then climbed back over the fence.

Officers entered the inmate's block where the bag came from and found a methadone pill,

Ecstasy pills, and tobacco with rolling papers, cigars and cigars laced with marijuana.

After a brief foot chase, officers arrested in a nearby bank parking lot.

Another person who dropped off Davis at the jail may face charges as an accomplice,

Murphy said.

Opening Statement:

Within this paper I will attempt to describe some of the ways that Private Prisons

operate. Also how some Private Prisons get to pick and choose whom that want in their

prisons. As I refer back to the Motivator, we can make the assumption that this is an

under manned jail/ person.

Private Prisons

With the cost of keeping prisoners on the rise, and the prison population continuously growing, some areas have decided to privatize their prisons. Private prisons are runs by companies and their purpose, just like any other company, is to turn a profit. Private prisons have been around for years and have a large number of people for them and against them. Some of the people against them say that they run poor prisons because of their desires to cut costs by any means necessary. However, some people are for them because they say that they are necessary to cut the cost of maintaining prisons to the public. There is no shared consensus on which type of prison is better.

Politics have played a big part in the emergence of private prisons. One of the reasons for this is because of the cost. A political figure who has to spend a large amount of money for corrections might be more inclined to sell off his cities, states, counties, prisons cost in order to save the citizens money. Another reason that politics have played a role is because of overcrowding issues that many prisons have faced. Since the prison population is on the rise and more people are being sentenced to longer terms there is a problem of where to put all of the criminals. With all of the public prisons being filled up, the private ones are being sent prisoners to relieve the overcrowding situation in prisons. This helps the public prisons because they do not have to worry about the issues involved with overcrowding, and it also helps the private prisons because they get to take on more inmates.

With the Public prisons filling up and private prisons taking prisoners off of their hands, the issue of cherry picking comes up. Cherry picking is where the private prisons pick the best inmates to take and leave the public prisons with the worst. The way that the private prisons do this is by looking at the prisoners and finding out about their needs. If they can choose between taking a terminally ill cancer patient or a young man who is in peak physical condition and is able to work for them, they take the younger one. The reason for this is because they do not want to have the added medical costs of the cancer patient so the public prison is stuck with the medical bills for him. Private prisons also cherry pick the better behaved prisoners. The reason for this is because better behaved prisoners are less likely to stab or attack guards or other prisoners. By doing this, they are also able to keep the medical costs down by not having much violence and little medical costs due to injuries and maintain "an extraordinary safety record" (Sartre, 2004). This makes the private prisons look good but it also makes the public prisons look bad. "Critics argue that if they were allowed to engage in "cherry-picking" the most well-behaved inmates, they too could have well-run prisons" (Sartre, 2004). All that cherry picking does is continue to make the public prisons spend more money and look worse overall because they get stuck with problem and sickly prisoners.

With the private prisons main goal being to make money, they are sure to cut corners any way that they can. One of the ways that they might be able to cut costs is through their staff. One of the potential problems concerning staff at private correctional facilities is the training of their correctional officers. If an officer is not fully trained, then he or she might face a problem and not know how to handle it. In many other fields that would not be a problem, but in corrections it is a big problem. According to the Corrections Yearbook for 2000... [the]