Why do states privatize their prisons?

Why Do States Privatize their Prisons? The Unintended Consequences of Inmate Litigation.” (Job market paper).
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 state prison privatization is not a function of simple ideological or economic considerations. Rather, prison privatization has been a (potentially unintended) consequence of the administrative and legal costs associated with litigation brought by prisoners. I assemble an original database of prison privatization in the US 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. PDF of most recent version here, comments welcome.​ Appendix here.

Do Private Prison Companies Suffer When Inmates Win Lawsuits? The central claim of my dissertation argues it is the advent of inmates’ rights and rising prisoner litigation that contributed to the rise of prison privatization in the state. A separate dissertation chapter considers this relationship from the viewpoint of the business: is it the case that the economic future of the company is vulnerable to the announcement of successful court orders? I use event study methodology and find I find that on aggregate, investors are not particularly concerned with these judicial decrees. Rather, investors respond to the lawsuits in those states that are the most consequential for private prison firms’ business. This chapter fleshes out the behavior of private prison companies and provides further empirical evidence for the central claim of the dissertation, that private prison firms are indeed vulnerable to the announcement of court orders.

Those are new papers by Anna Gunderson, Ph.D candidate in political science from Emory, starting at Louisiana State, and I note she just won the Elinor and Vincent Ostrom award from the Public Choice Society.  Here is her home page.