In a seminal statement, Emile Durkheim argued that punishment of crime has a salutary effect on society by reaffirming the collective consciousness. With few exceptions, Durkheim assumed that criminal punishment is done on behalf of society. With the rise of prison privatization, this assumption is increasingly called into question. For-profit firms carrying out punishment, though legally agents of the state, are motivated by private gain. This article asks: How might privatization modify the functional effects of punishment? It develops answers to this question by using insights from Durkheimian and neo-Durkheimian scholarship and the empirical case of modern privatized punishment in the United States. The article proposes three trajectories through which privatized punishment may (or may not) affect solidarity: Parity in Punishment, in which private and public punishers are seen as interchangeable; Public Interest, in which perceptions of greed and self-interest mar privatized punishment and sap it of its functional effects; and Sacred Transgressions, in which the private sector encroaches on sacred rites of punishment to the detriment of solidarity.
AlexanderJeffrey C.SmithPhilip. 1993. “The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies.”Theory and Society22(2):151–207.
2.
AlexanderMichelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press.
3.
AmanAlfred C.Jr.2009. “Private Prisons and the Democratic Deficit.” Pp. 86–106 in Private Security, Public Order: The Outsourcing of Public Services and Its Limits, edited by ChestermanSimonFisherAngelina. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
4.
ArmstrongSarah. 2002. “Punishing Not-for-profit: Implications of Nonprofit Privatization in Juvenile Punishment.”Punishment & Society4(3):345–68.
5.
AviramHadar. 2015. Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
6.
BarkerMayerene. 1986. “Santa Clarita Valley Opens Fight against Prison Plans.”Los Angeles Times, March23, p. 6.
7.
BeckettKatherineSassonTheodore. 2000. “The War on Crime as Hegemonic Strategy: A New-Marxian Theory of the New Punitiveness in U.S. Criminal Justice Policy.” Pp. 61–84 in Of Crime and Criminality: The Use of Theory in Everyday Life, edited by SimpsonSally S.Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
8.
BlakelyCurtis R.BumphusVic W.2004. “Private and Public Sector Prisons—A Comparison of Select Characteristics.”Federal Probation68(1):27–31.
BurkhardtBrett C.2012. “Contracting and Coercion in Corrections.”Presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 17–20, Denver, CO.
11.
BurkhardtBrett C.2014. “Private Prisons in Public Discourse: Measuring Moral Legitimacy.”Sociological Focus47(4):279–98.
CotterrellRoger. 1999. Emile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
19.
CulpRichard. 2009. “Prison Privatization Turns Twenty-five: The Evolution of a Mature Private Prison Industry in the United States.” Retrieved September25, 2015 (http://ssrn.com/paper=1462792).
20.
DennoDeborah W.2002. “When Legislatures Delegate Death: The Troubling Paradox Behind State Uses of Electrocution and Lethal Injection and What It Says about Us.”Ohio State Law Journal63:63–262.
21.
DolovichSharon. 2009. “How Privatization Thinks: The Case of Prisons.” Pp. 128–52 in Government by Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy, edited by FreemanJodyMinnowMartha. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
22.
DoucettePaul. 2006. “Prison Costs and Reform.”Los Angeles Times, November1, p. A.34.
23.
DupontBenoit. 2014. “Private Security Regimes: Conceptualizing the Forces that Shape the Private Delivery of Security.”Theoretical Criminology18(3):263–81.
24.
DurkheimEmile. 1958. Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
25.
DurkheimEmile. [1893] 1997. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: The Free Press.
26.
DurkheimEmile. [1900] 1969. “Two Laws of Penal Evolution.”University of Cincinnati Law Review38:32–60.
27.
EwaldAlec C.2012. “Collateral Consequences in the American States.”Social Science Quarterly93:211–47.
28.
FamaSteven. 2007. “Don’t Send Prisoners Packing.”Los Angeles Times, February9, p. A.25.
29.
FeeleyMalcolm M.2002. “Entrepreneurs of Punishment: The Legacy of Privatization.”Punishment & Society4(3):321–44.
30.
FrostNatasha A.2010. “Beyond Public Opinion Polls: Punitive Public Sentiment & Criminal Justice Policy.”Sociology Compass4(3):156–68.
31.
GarlandDavid. 1990. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
32.
GarlandDavid. 1996. “The Limits of the Sovereign State.”British Journal of Criminology36(4):445–71.
33.
GarlandDavid. 2001. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
34.
GarlandDavid. 2010. Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
35.
GarlandDavid. 2013. “Punishment and Social Solidarity.” Pp. 23–39 in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by SimonJonathanSparksRichard. London, England: Sage Publications.
36.
GreenhouseCarol J.2011. “Durkheim and Law: Divided Readings over Division of Labor.”Annual Review of Law and Social Science7(1):165–85.
37.
HallettMichael A.2006. Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
38.
HarcourtBernard E.2011. The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
39.
HarrisAlexesEvansHeatherBeckettKatherine. 2010. “Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States.”American Journal of Sociology115(6):1753–99.
40.
HartneyChristopherGlesmannCaroline. 2012. Prison Bed Profiteers: How Corporations Are Reshaping Criminal Justice in the U.S. Oakland, CA: National Council on Crime & Delinquency.
41.
HawdonJamesWoodRobert. 2014. “Crime, Fear, and Legitimating Ideologies: State of the Union Addresses as Hegemonic Strategy.”Criminal Justice Review39(4):377–93.
HuddlestonC. WestMarloweDouglas B.CaseboltRachel. 2008. Painting the Current Picture: A National Report Card on Drug Courts and Other Problem-Solving Court Programs in the United States. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance.
KaniaEdward. 1999. “Re ‘Private Prison Has Everything but Prisoners,’ July 13.”Los Angeles Times, July21, p. 6.
47.
KuhlesBeth. 2005. “Montgomery County Considers Privatizing Jail.”Houston Chronicle, January6, p. 1.
48.
LeeAnne. 2012. “Private Prisons and Community Corrections.” Pp. 223–40 in Prison Privatization: The Many Facets of a Controversial Industry, Vol. 1, edited by PriceByron EugeneMorrisJohn Charles. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
49.
LoganCharles H.1990. Private Prisons: Cons and Pros. New York: Oxford University Press.
50.
Los Angeles Times Editorial Board. 2002. “Prison Guard Clout Endures.”Los Angeles Times, April1, p. B10.
51.
Los Angeles Times. 1988. “Jail Operation Should Stay in Public Domain.”February7, p. 2.
52.
LynchMona. 2000. “On-line Executions: The Symbolic Use of the Electric Chair in Cyberspace.”Political and Legal Anthropology Review23(2):1–20.
53.
LynchMona. 2004. “Punishing Images: Jail Cam and the Changing Penal Enterprise.”Punishment & Society6(3):255–70.
54.
LynchMona. 2010. Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law Books.
MarwellNicole P.2004. “Privatizing the Welfare State: Nonprofit Community-Based Organizations as Political Actors.”American Sociological Review69(2):265–91.
57.
MarxGary. 1995. “State Keeps Eye on Track Record of Private Firms that Run Prisons.”Chicago Tribune, March19, p. 1.
58.
MasonCody. 2012. Dollars and Detainees: The Growth of For-Profit Detention. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.
59.
McCoyKatherine. 2009. “Uncle Sam Wants Them.”Contexts8(1):14–19.
MoranRichard. 1997. “A Third Option: Nonprofit Prisons.”New York Times, August23, p. 23.
63.
PageJoshua. 2011. The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers’ Union in California. New York: Oxford University Press.
64.
PageJoshuaSossJoe. 2015. “The State of Ferguson: Race, Class, and Predatory Governance in a Neoliberal Era.”Paper presented at Deconstructing Ferguson: How Social Institutions, Policy, and Law Shape American Civic Identity and Experience, Center for the Study of Inequality and the Justice Collaboratory, Yale University, May 8, New Haven, CT.
65.
PrattJohn. 2013. “Punishment and ‘The Civilizing Process.’” Pp. 90–113 in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by SimonJonathanSparksRichard. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
66.
President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control. 1983. Report on Privatization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
67.
PumaJoseph P.1994. “Prison, Privatization and Profits.”New York Times, August28, p. 7.
68.
ReiterKeramet A.2012. “Parole, Snitch, or Die: California’s Supermax Prisons and Prisoners, 1997-2007.”Punishment & Society14(5):530–63.
69.
RenzulliLinda A.RoscignoVincent J.2005. “Charter School Policy, Implementation, and Diffusion across the United States.”Sociology of Education78(4):344–65.
70.
RokoEllyde. 2007. “Executioner Identities: Toward Recognizing a Right to Know Who Is Hiding Beneath the Hood.”Fordham Law Review75:2791–829.
71.
RomanPaul M.DucharmeLori J.KnudsenHannah K.2006. “Patterns of Organization and Management in Private and Public Substance Abuse Treatment Programs.”Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment31(3):235–43.
72.
SampsonRobert J.2013. “Criminal Justice Processing and the Social Matrix of Adversity.”The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science651(1):296–301.
73.
SampsonRobert J.RaudenbushStephen W.EarlsFelton. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.”Science277(5328):918–24.
74.
SchiermerBjorn. 2015. “Late-modern Symbolism: Continuity and Discontinuity between the Modern and the Pre-modern in Durkheim’s Work.”Sociological Focus48:49–67.
75.
SchlossChristine S.AlaridLeanne F.2007. “Standards in the Privatization of Probation Services: A Statutory Analysis.”Criminal Justice Review32(3):233–45.
76.
SelmanDonnaLeightonPaul. 2010. Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business, and the Incarceration Binge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
77.
SimanskiJohnSappLesley M.2011. Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2011. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
78.
SmithPhilip. 2008. Punishment and Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
79.
SmithPhilip. 2013. “Punishment and Meaning: The Cultural Sociological Approach.” Pp. 114–28 in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by SimonJonathanSparksRichard. London, England: Sage Publications.
80.
SpierenburgPieter. 1984. The Spectacle of Suffering. New York: Cambridge University Press.
SuttonJohn R.2013. “Symbol and Substance: Effects of California’s Three Strikes Law on Felony Sentencing.”Law & Society Review47(1):37–72.
85.
UggenChristopherManzaJeffThompsonMelissa. 2006. “Citizenship, Democracy, and the Civic Reintegration of Criminal Offenders.”The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science605(1):281–310.
86.
WacquantLoïc. 2010a. “Class, Race & Hyperincarceration in Revanchist America.”Daedalus139(3):74–90.
87.
WacquantLoïc. 2010b. “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity.”Sociological Forum25(2):197–220.
88.
WesternBruce. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage.
89.
WillisJames J.2008. “Punishment and the Cultural Limits to State Power in Late 18th-Century Britain.”Punishment & Society10(4):401–28.
90.
WoodWallace. 2003. “Suggestions for Reining in Prison Guard Salaries.”Los Angeles Times, March9, p. B.18.
91.
WrightKevin A.2009. “Strange Bedfellows? Reaffirming Rehabilitation and Prison Privati-zation.”Journal of Offender Rehabilitation49(1): 74–90.
