Do Private Prisons' Duty to Profit and Stockholders Create a Conflict with Their Duty to Perform Public Service?

Abstract

A distinguishable characteristic of the American prison system is its two main categories: public and private prisons. In the United States, the privatization of public prisons has been an ongoing occurrence for decades. Private prisons may have become a continuous solution to the overcrowding of public prisons in the United States. Today, private prisons are a small, but growing population. While the privatization of prisons has always been intended as an expansion benefit for the U.S. prison systems, the validity of this claim is debatable. Has the rise in prisoner and prison quantities led to less quality? Is the lack of quality an issue that is mainly to blame on private prisons due to their profit-earning goals?