Tacoma Community College, Building 18, 6501 South 19th Street Tacoma, WA 98466, United States.
Soc Sci Res. 2013 May;42(3):596-610. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.12.008. Epub 2013 Jan 11.
In this study of prison privatization we draw on the insights of a recent body of literature that challenges a widespread belief that prisons help to spur employment growth in local communities. We look to these studies to provide an empirically and theoretically grounded approach to addressing our research question: what are the benefits, if any, to employment growth in states that have privatized some of their prisons, compared to states with only public prisons? Our research makes use of a large, national, and comprehensive dataset. By examining the employment contributions of prisons, as recent research has done, we were able to corroborate the general findings of this research. To study prison privatization we distinguish between states in which privatization has grown rapidly and those states in which privatization has grown slowly (or not at all). Our findings lend support to recent research that finds prisons do not improve job prospects for those communities that host them. We contribute to this literature by demonstrating that new prisons in states in which privatization is surging impede employment growth in the host community. To explain this we highlight the significant reduction in prison staffing - in both private and public prisons - where privatization is growing quickly.
在这项关于监狱私有化的研究中，我们借鉴了最近一系列挑战广泛存在的观点，即监狱有助于促进当地社区的就业增长。我们希望这些研究能为我们的研究问题提供一种经验和理论上的方法：与只有公立监狱的州相比，哪些州的监狱部分私有化对就业增长有好处（如果有的话）？我们的研究利用了一个大型的、全国性的、全面的数据集。通过研究监狱的就业贡献，正如最近的研究所做的那样，我们能够证实这项研究的一般结论。为了研究监狱私有化，我们将私有化发展迅速的州与私有化发展缓慢（或根本没有发展）的州区分开来。我们的研究结果支持了最近的研究，即监狱并没有改善收容它们的社区的就业前景。我们通过证明在私有化迅速发展的州，新监狱会阻碍收容社区的就业增长，为这一文献做出了贡献。为了解释这一点，我们强调了在私有化快速发展的地方，私营和公共监狱的监狱人员配备都大幅减少。
