About Privatization

There are at least 3 things I think should not be handled by for-profit corporations: prisons, hospitals and schools.  Each of those activities operated for profit have perverse incentives which I think act against the common good.  Ohio currently has 2 for-profit prisons operating, and Governor Kasich appointed a managing director of the for-profit prison company CCA.  Ohio had some serious difficulty with a private prison run by CCA in the past:

“In 14 months of operation, the Northeast Ohio Correction Center in Youngstown, Ohio experienced 13 stabbings, 2 murders and 6 escaped inmates. In reference to the Youngstown facility, Peter Davis, director of the Ohio Correctional Institution Inspection Committee said, “There is nothing in Ohio’s history like the violence at that prison.”16 Reviews of the correctional facility determined that the problems occurred due to inadequately trained staff and the improper acceptance of maximum-security offenders to the medium-security facility.
In March 1998, Youngstown filed suit against CCA on behalf of all the prisoners alleging that prisoners were put at risk by being sheltered with maximum-security prisoners in a facility not designed for containing them. The court ultimately ordered the removal of 113 inmates deemed maximum-security offenders by an independent consultant.

This story from Pennsylvania increases my concern:

It's been called the biggest legal scandal in Pennsylvania history: a pair of state judges charged with accepting $2.6 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for sending thousands of juvenile offenders to two private detention centers. Well, one of those former judges is now on trial in Scranton, as NPR's Joel Rose reports....
ROSE:Mishanski stood outside the federal court in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Ciavarella is now standing trial for his alleged role in a conspiracy dubbed kids for cash. In opening statements this morning, federal prosecutors said Ciavarella treated his office like a money-making machine.
Along with another ex-judge, Ciavarella is accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks from friends who got government contracts to build a pair of privately-owned detention centers.
And Ciavarella is accused of funneling hundreds of kids as young as 10 years old into detention even when their crimes didn't warrant it. Wilkes-Barre defense lawyer Barry Dyller says his clients couldn't get a fair hearing in Ciavarella's courtroom.

I would prefer to see the state look at privatizing prisons as an absolutely last resort, after considering alternative sentencing, easing harsh sentences and letting prisoners go.  The potential for corruption in for-profit operations is too high to risk public trust on.