THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Those amendments, like all of the original 10 were designed to protect us from governmental overreach and misuse. But what if the functions are now performed by private corporations? Does the Constitution protect us from the free hand of private enterprise?

here are only two parts of the American criminal justice system that haven’t succumbed to privatization, according to research released on Thursday by In the Public Interest: the police and the courts. Everything else – including transportation, probation, food, electronic monitoring, psychiatric and drug treatment and fine collection – has been privatized somewhere in the country.

We’ve farmed out so many correctional services to private corporations that criminal justice is no longer a government function.

The stories about how private corporations cut corners in prisons in order to maintain their profit margins are horrendous and, unfortunately, have become commonplace in public discourse – especially in the past year.

For instance, there’s Management and Training Corporation, a Utah corporation contracted to run the Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility. It faces a class-action lawsuit for cost-cutting that became so dangerous that inmates began losing their vision and their appendages from lack of oversight and medical care.

Or there’s the private Prisoner Transport Services of America, which employed officers who allegedly urinated on an inmate and held a shotgun to his head last summer during a transport from Florida to Pennsylvania; it’s being sued for denying a woman water during a two-day trip across Texas in August 2013.

And none of that is as bad as what inmates in Florida faced, when they were powerless to protect themselves as doctors employed by a private healthcare company watched them die while treating their cancers with Tylenol.

It’s not just prisoners whom private prison contractors leave in the lurch, though. Written into many of their contracts is the freedom to walk away from their agreements with the state – particularly when their profit margins diminish.

Not more than six weeks ago, Corizon – the largest private correctional health care provider in the country – broke its contract with the Florida Department of Corrections after the company realized that it was facing steep civil liability for its poor performance because the number of inmate deaths had hit a 10-year high under Corizon’s watch. Florida Department of Corrections secretary Julie Jones was left to figure out how to provide adequate healthcare for 75,000 people who rely on the state to stay minimally healthy.

At best the Corizon pullout was cowardly; at worst it was an out-and-out admission of the company’s guilt in providing substandard care to inmates. But above all, Corizon’s move was a clear warning to the public agencies that contract with them: we can leave whenever we want.

Granted, Corizon did give the State of Florida six months to rearrange its correctional healthcare – as though that’s a simple task. Still, nothing stops Corizon or any other private company from leaving their posts in the justice system as soon as the profit forecast looks gloomy. Moral obligation seemingly doesn’t motivate these private businesses, otherwise their management of prisoners wouldn’t be as bad as it clearly is to begin with.

Whether it's education or incarceration, government created systems are for the benefit of everyone in common. The commonwealth is another way to put it. When it becomes privatized it becomes for the benefit of a private few and no longer serves the commons, even though the commonwealth still pays for it. Justice is one of the most important services provided by the commonwealth. If it only serves the private wealth, is there Justice any longer?