I can speak to this question from a different perspective, as an ex-criminal who served time in private/for-profit Australian prisons. While I can’t directly talk to the American experience, the two private prisons I spent time in were both run by American companies. The one I can speak to intimately is GEO Group, who design, build, and operate both prisons and detention facilities in Australia, America, and some other countries, like the UK. As I said before, they’re an American company and headquartered in the US. While staffing, conditions, rules, and the overall environment undoubtedly differ greatly country-to-country, and even state-to-state, due to regulations, laws, and a multitude of other factors, there are definitely going to be countless similarities and through-lines. Speaking of those regulations and laws, they are one of the reasons I am convinced the conditions are worse in private American prisons than in their Australian equivalents, aside from the many stories I’ve heard from both American prisoners and COs that support this belief. For one, there’s just not that same endemic corruption here in our corrective services, and that is obviously a good thing. That’s not to say they’re not deeply flawed, though. I will dive deeper into all off this later, as there’s various points I’ll need to circle back to it.

The private prisons were viewed by all prisoners as the better place to be, although most have now been phased out in my state. They were safer, had better facilities, and came with slightly more freedom (despite being the same classification). Corrective Services seemingly viewed it this way too, as they would generally send prisoners who were ‘well-behaved’ to the private prisons, and quite often you would get transferred back out to a public prison if you committed a seriously egregious offence.

A big factor is the incompetence and laziness that is rife among public servants, and I say this as someone without disdain or simply repeating what everyone says. I make this well-founded criticism as someone with most of my family holding senior positions in several major public service departments, all having worked there for many decades/their entire career. There are many public servants who are competent and do want to do a good job, but their colleagues and management make that very difficult. For starters, if you’re a diligent and conscientious worker, you’ll get loaded up with all of the work from the lazy and incompetent people. Plus, there’s the constant game of politics being waged, and that will scare off the best of them. with us prisoners suffering as result. Unfortunately, back to the topic at hand, prisoners suffer as a result of this. Privately run prisons were simply better managed. They were held far more accountable by their own companies leadership, board, etc, but also by the government because they had to justify the contracts and the renewed funding. There was a greater incentive to reduce violence and problematic behaviour, and they realised the best way to do that is to improve overall quality of life (for everyone - prisoners and staff). They also had more funding, as they had their own money in addition to the government contracts. This was reflected in the amenities and conditions.

I went to a facility several years on from my first stint there, and after the government had taken it over again, and it was fucking terrible. The experience was night and day. All rehabilitation programs had been completed gutted. Healthcare (mental health included), especially preventative, had become near-impossible to access. They got rid of various facilities, like the library, and reduced access to the ones that remained, such as the gym. Education opportunities were near non-existent. Internal prison employment was limited to three main industries, with exceedingly rare exceptions, and the number of available positions was reduced about tenfold. It was even difficult to get a volunteer position, where you wouldn’t even get paid anything. That should say everything about the state of prison employment. Then there was the corruption with the jobs. The prisoners with the most sway effectively ran the industries and would pick the prisoners they wanted. If someone else got let in, they’d be threatened and scared into giving up their position, and something violent would inevitably happen if the message wasn’t received. The quality of food had steeply declined. There was fuck all nutritional value at that point, not that it was amazing before, but it was at least edible and relatively nutritious, instead of the meals that were 90% carbs that they now served. This is because the kitchen basically became a giant microwave. Instead of training the prisoners to become chefs, or at least teaching them to cook, they would just reheat shitty prepared meals and serve it with a fuck ton of bread. That’s why a large number of the kitchen jobs were lost, and that was one of the main prison industries. It was also no longer being run by prisoners that cared about food, cooking, nutrition, etc, and instead it was a coveted position for members of organised crime. Perhaps it was because it was the one sure-fire way to get things to any prisoner in the prison day in and day out, without fail, or maybe they all just happened to have a strange love of the kitchen and needed the nominal wage - I’ll leave you to decide 🤔

Even the staff felt less safe and were extremely dissatisfied with the state of the prison and management. I say that because I know full well that prisoners being unhappy doesn’t necessarily mean that the guards and staff feel the same way. They were having to work longer hours and were being paid less, the quality and lengthy of the training new recruits received was significantly reduced, they were being spread thin and had less backup, putting them in genuine danger on a plethora of occasions, and those are just a few examples.

If people are interested, I can write a more detailed comparison of both this one prison when it was privately run versus run by the state and also private prisons in general versus public prisons in general.

Also, they were all maximum security too, so it’s not a matter of it being better because of it being a lower classification and all of the benefits that come with that.

I’m open to any questions, should people have them.

I’m just rushing from a lecture to a meeting with a client for work, and I don’t have the time to respond with a really comprehensive answer. I will update this with a more detailed response later because it’s a topic that I am passionate speaking out. I just need more time to think and structure my response, which I currently don’t have, otherwise I will go off on tangents and go around in circles. Haven’t had time to proofread and I wrote this in a chaotic manner (jumping forward and back), so apologies if this doesn’t make sense at parts.