In the mid 1950’s, privatization of prisons became a booming industry. The idea of privatization is to invest into private corporations to own and operate prisons for profit. The following decade prisons became privatized left and right until funding came to a halt and private corporations could not afford to build prisons. The prison systems in 1970 contained 280,000 prisoners and in 2000 there were 2 million prisoners (United States 45). The boom was caused by new acts of crimes and by increasing the strictness of sentencing for other acts of crime. Soon after the prisons contained too many inmates for its capacity and construction budgets were at an all-time low. The politicians that had promised to build new prisons could no longer keep to their word to build the facilities leaving the prisons to become overcrowded. In recent times, prison overcrowding is the most pressing issue as it becomes hard for one to specify the exact number of inmates since prison capacity is measured in various ways with the highest record reaching as high as 110 percent its capacity (Logan and Rausch 304). In America, prison overcrowding has surpassed the budget for constructing new prison buildings and since the politicians that promised to deliver new prisons could no longer build them, then there is prison boom emerging with the strict crimes act enacted. The total prison population has almost doubled in the past ten years to almost half million prisoners and the existing buildings cannot contain such huge numbers. Since correctional institutions cannot handle the large numbers, their response is to overcrowd the cells with the ever flowing number of inmates and other recreational rooms, gymnasiums and basements of the prison. Overcrowding has led to deterioration of the physical conditions, poor management of the prisons and large numbers of sickness and deaths. In the long run, seeking private prisons becomes the only suitable solution to this problem. The privatization of the correctional facilities raise many questions to the public, which may cause many concerns given that the community is who ultimately pays for the costs of criminal justice system, whether it be public or private. With that being said, some main points against the privatization of a correctional facility would be that if the costs per unit or holding cell would be lower but in return the demand for criminal justice would rise. This point of containing labor costs is the crux of the privatization movement. “Prisons are extremely labor intensive, with approximately 65 to 70 percent of the costs of operating a prison going to staff salaries, fringe benefits, and overtime. Controlling these costs is more difficult to achieve with unionized government workers. Private firms typically use nonunion labor, allowing for the lowest benefit packages” (United States 25). The lower costs the counties would then incarcerate more people to fill the beds and on the downward spiral this leads to costing more in the long run. The cost of reduction should be a secondary concern. There are many standards set out for longevity to occur and for the interests of the public to be preserved. The crime on the streets will continue if the objective is to fill beds and not to prevent crime. In addition to continuing crime, the sentence for the crimes are increasingly brutal, leaving prisoners imprisoned for longer periods of time. In the end, the public is still left unprotected, and the offenders are still committing crimes. “The dramatic increase in prison and jail populations and the associated need to construct prison and jail facilities quickly and cheaply have often been cited as a major impetus behind the move toward privatization” (United States 15). By allowing private companies the ability to privatize the correctional system, prisons have been able to be financed, located, and constructed quicker and cheaper than government prisons. This allows the government more flexibility when a new facility is under consideration. “Based on experience, governments take 5 to 6 years to build a facility, whereas some private companies claim they can do it in 2 to 3 years (or less)”(Ferro 10). Privatized facilities can be built faster and cheaper meeting the growing needs of the community to house the prison population and eliminate overcrowding. All of these examples are reasons for emergence of privately run prisons is due to the high cost of imprisonment. The cost of operating and building prisons is enormously high and in most cases, usually underestimated. The cost estimates for construction range differently with the region the prisons are situated, the type of prison and the needs of the program, and the use of prison labor (Cullen and Mackenzie 49). The American Department of Justice on average spends $26, 000, $46,000 and $58,000 to construct beds for minimum, medium and maximum security prisons respectively (Logan and Rausch 304). These estima