By Zachary Cohen:

The purpose of the prison system has never been less clear in contemporary America. Breaking the law is met with brutal punishment, time spent in an inhumane, toxic culture that hardens and traumatizes its victims. Even upon release, the ex-felon lives with a tag of dishonesty and violence that jeopardizes the ability to work and reintegrate back into society. This begs the question, what do prisons even do? 

Plato discusses in his final dialogue, Protagoras, his idealistic nature of corrective justice. The character Protagoras describes the idea that punishment for the sake of inflicting evil on evil is “unreasonable fury.” That instead, “rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone… (the purpose is that) the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again… implying that virtue is capable of being taught.” In the text, Socrates further establishes this argument by affirming the necessary of teaching virtue in response to injustice. Plato’s dialogue ultimately that the “punishment” should not be torture, but delivered as moral therapy for the soul.

From this appraisal of punishment, we must consider our own motives for incarceration. Sometimes we fail our criminals in our attempt to restore them to society. The modes of punishment we label justice are important to consider, because some people forget that the true purpose of sentencing is not just to transitively inflict equal crime onto offenders. There is no actual justice in that reasoning. Rather, prisons should always prioritize education. When an individual is released, we should all hope that they have reflected and learned in preparation to rejoin society. The opponents to successful rehabilitation in modern justice are ignorance and greed.

Private prison control has introduced a market consideration to American criminal correction that operates at the expense of true justice. Management & Training Corporation (MTC), GEO Group, and CoreCivic are just a few of the leading corporations maximizing the profits of incarceration at the expense of true justice. Numerous lawsuits have alleged that their facilities employ few and inexperienced staff, neglect prisoner living conditions, and leave progressive programs (i.e. health and violence prevention) underdeveloped. These standards have observable consequences for inmates, such as the 65% increase in reported violent incidents when comparing private prisons to their state-run counterparts (Andijar & Levine Accident Attorneys). Judging by their business model, these atrocities are not surprising. Outrage for reform erupted after one of CoreCivic’s founders publicly announced that the market for selling prisons was ‘just like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers’” Someone who does not understand the true purpose of a prison should not be in charge of these facilities that effectively impact the moral content of the nation’s most vulnerable. Management with such carelessness is disrespectful to the families separated by bars, the civilians paying their allowances, and the notion of justice itself. 

The reward for CoreCivic’s moral disjunction and misplaced priorities is record revenue in 2025 (2.2 billion, up 13% from 2024), especially as more of their facilities accommodate the expansion of ICE-related apprehension. When confronted with an approximation of daily ICE detentions failing to meet 100,000 immigrants, CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle responded with optimism, that his investors should rest assured the number is yet to peak.

Private prisons are filthy assumptions of justice, but where is does the blame lie? Is it the companies themselves for managing these faulty institutions? To some extent, yes, but it is in a corporate nature for these entities to take advantage of a system that is fiscally advantageous. It would also be fair to point at the government. Once the rightful heir of prison control, Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” quickly assimilated more substance offenders than public jails could handle. The first mistake in corporate incarceration could be the initial line of contracts, paying prison companies along quotas, rather than quality. That market strategy effectively equates humans to dollars. Possibly the latest fault is a component of President Trump’s executive order, “Initial Recissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,” issued on the first day of his second term, which reverses Biden’s ban on federal contracts with private prisons. Such legislation provides proof that the government is aware of the situation, yet chooses to encourage corruption in our justice system anyway. Given the infrastructure continually provided by the government, how can we truly blame CoreCivic and its peers singularly for taking advantage of the opportunity presented by our executives? 

Justice is a construct built by philosophy and executed by institutions. It is in our human nature for crime to occur. The best course of action we can take is to help the convicted become virtuous as best as we can; life is short and humans deserve to be judged by more action (within reason). Socrates and Protagoras, as well as some of humankind’s greatest minds would agree that private prisons, markets, incentives, and profit have little place in determining justice. We must call first for accountability, exampled in legislation such as the 2023 Private Prison Information Act (“PPIA”), demanding thorough recordkeeping in public prisons pertaining to staffing, health and safety, and other equitable protocols. The next step is repossession, taking the avarice out of justice entirely as it once was before Reagan. Integrity is only achieved when our government works harder to dedicate itself to justice, beyond what is easy and accessible. Outsourcing our incarcerated civilians to independent facilities is a message that says we do not care about them. Public prisons perform stronger rehabilitation and have proven a dominate alternative in almost all measurable outputs of success. This initiative should be carried out by first stopping new contracts and investing in government-owned facilities. Then, we can begin gradually shift inmates out of their private confinements. We owe it to our civilians to provide them the best opportunity for rehabilitation. When justice is means to a dollar, how can we actually expect our incarcerated to learn from their mistakes? If we do not treat our convicts with compassion and humanity, there is no reason to believe they will learn anything except misery in confinement.