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The recent growth in the number of privately operated and privately owned prisons in the United States focuses our attention on the nature of the privatization arrangements employed in this setting. This article argues that the privatization of correctional facilities is best understood as a combination of government failures, market failures, and political incentives. Using a case‐study approach to examine prison privatization in Mississippi, the article concludes that prison privatization not only fails to correct certain government or market failures, but also actually creates additional (hybrid) pathologies that combine elements of both government and market failures.
John C. Morris (Wed,) studied this question.