The United States currently incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other nation on earth. In an attempt to contain costs involved in operating prisons, some states have resorted to contracting out the services of for-profit companies to run prisons for them. Adding a profit motive to the operation of prisons at taxpayer expense is detrimental to the purposes of having a criminal justice system in a free society such as ours purports to be. What may seem like a good short-term fix to a very real fiscal difficulty may become a longer-term fiscal problem, as well as a moral dilemma for our society.

If crime rates fall or laws are changed to require fewer people to be housed in prisons as punishment for socially unacceptable behavior, there is less need for them overall. Private prison companies, however, know that closing prisons or administering them for a declining…