Praise for Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective

Michael Hallett/2006
University of Illinois Press

Hallett (Univ. of North Florida) has written a very fine critical history of privatization and for-profit correctional programs in the US. An early view of privatization comes with the convict lease system after the Civil War, which witnessed a prison population shift from predominately white to ever-increasingly African American. These inmates, often convicted of petty crimes like vagrancy, were leased to private business owners who then shouldered the burden of confinement and maintenance in return for hard labor and profit. Like their earlier counterpart, modern for-profit private prisons disproportionately confine black men and minorities (66 percent), disenfranchised groups ignored through thinly veiled racist inattention driven by selective enforcement of the drug laws. Not surprisingly, most of these prisons are in the South. With privatization has come profit and, not unexpectedly, a profit that finds its way into the pockets of the most privileged Americans. This small advantaged community has traditionally viewed average and poor Americans as commodities, and has ironically also made up the body of the most dangerous and costly criminals in US society. Yet the well-heeled seldom become personally acquainted with the correctional system they exploit. Summing Up: Highly recommended. A must read for those interested in the US corrections.

–Choice –Book Review Digest * October 2006

Several books and scores of articles analyzed and dealt with the various aspects of this privatization trend. Michael Hallett in his book "Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective" focuses on the social, economic and political connections between the increasing proportion of poor minority inmates and the entrance of private for-profit companies into the prison business. This work by dealing with an aspect of privatization that hitherto was not dealt with makes a valuable contribution to the study of private prisons.

David Shichor, Author (1995) Punishment for Profit: Private Prisons/Public Concerns.  London: Sage Publications.

Criminologists across the political spectrum understand that the American prison apparatus is greatly influenced by political and commercial activities occurring outside the traditional boundaries of criminal justice. In Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective, Michael Hallett offers a concise and compelling account of how race (and class) continues to shape the march toward greater investment in imprisonment. As Hallett demonstrates convincingly, people of color (and the poor) serve as raw material for a prison industry that produces a generous windfall for private corrections firms.

Michael Welch , Rutgers University, author of Ironies of Imprisonment.

Hallett's critical analysis - too often missing in current criminological analysis (which too often benefits from corporate and/or governmental handouts for "correct" research topics) - looks even further and finds the timing of the recent incarceration binge with privatization corresponds precisely with the rise of a conservative domination of all governmental functions. As Hallett notes at the end of the book: "The racial characteristics of modern private prisons c annot be ignored for what they still represent: a racialized, coercive, for-profit incarceration practice disproportionately utilizing young black men for its system of economic production.” Crime control, in short, is big business, and Michael Hallett's book provides a deeper understanding of what we all face, both today and in the future.

Randall G. Shelden is Professor of Criminal Justice at UNLV and the author and co-author of several books and articles on crime and criminal justice, most recently Controlling the Dangerous Classes: A Critical Introduction to the History of Criminal Justice and Criminal Justice In America: A Critical View (both published by Allyn and Bacon).

(*****)A seminal, ground breaking work in penology, May 5, 2006

A seminal, ground breaking work in penology, A Critical Race Perspective: Private Prisons In America by Michael Hallett (Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Director of the Center for Race and Juvenile Justice Policy at the University of North Florida) is an extensively researched, comprehensively written, impressively informed and scholarly study of the profiting organization of the modern, corporately owned, private sector prison and the alleged manipulation of the penal system to enhance profitability. Enlightening readers to the key concepts of the inter-workings of the profit industry of privately owned and operated prison systems with their focus on cost-effectiveness, contract monitoring, and seemingly significant focus on the imprisonment of African-American men in attempt to raise profits, Private Prisons In America informatively investigates the wrongful pursuit of profit in the prison system and questions whether truly honorable justice can have a profit motive.

Hallett explores the issue of prison privatization in broad historical and social context. He ties it to the long-standing role of entrepreneurs in shaping Anglo-American policies on punishment, the history of slavery and race relations in the American South, race, class, and crime, and the long history of sweetheart deals that funnel public monies to American capitalists. In doing all this, Hallett writes with a passion that is in the best tradition of American muckraking scholarship.

Malcolm M. Feeley , Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Chair Professor of Law, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), author of Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State and The Process is the Punishment.

The disproportionate incarceration of people of color (particularly African American men) has generated much debate in the fields of criminology and criminal justice. Some argue that disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) is a function of the greater involvement of people of color in criminal activities that are likely to come to the attention of authorities. Others, however, contend that selective law enforcement accounts for the overrepresentation of minorities in our jails and prisons. Michael Hallett’s book, Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective, provides historical documentation that supports the latter interpretation of DMC. His book draws cogent parallels between the convict lease system that emerged in the post-Antebellum South and the more contemporary War on Drugs that focused primarily on crack cocaine use in America’s inner cities. Both events culminated in the disproportionate imprisonment of African Americans while serving the interests of the capitalist system. Hallett additionally elucidates reasons for the dramatic rise in prison privatization and for the recent emphasis on “faith-based” corrections in the United States. Regardless of one’s theoretical leaning, this is a must-read book for all persons interested in criminology, penology, race and ethnicity, or criminal justice in general.

Marvin D. Free, Jr ., Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Editor, Racial Issues in Criminal Justice: The Case of African Americans (Praeger 2004).

There have been books on prison privatization, and books on how all English-speaking countries disproportionally imprison and bring under state control members of non-white racial groups. What makes Michael Hallett’s contribution unique is his focus on the intersectionality between race and private capital in the imprisonment boom. His insights into the machinations of political and industrial leaders are essential, exploring how their quests for self-gain were often built on the backs of convicts. At the same time he shows how the for-profit movement can only be understood in the context of our racist history and present. Overall, this work looks to head into familiar ground but instead comes out with a series of path breaking analyses that will require everyone to rethink their views. It deserves a much wider audience than corrections scholars and professionals, for whom it is quite essential.

Martin D. Schwartz, Professor of Sociology, Ohio University, Editor, Race, Gender and Class in Criminology: The Intersections . New York: Garland Publishing (1999).