to their defense to try to reduce the probability of conviction. It is important
ID: 1144685 • Letter: T
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to their defense to try to reduce the probability of conviction. It is important to note, however, that while wealthy defendants may try to lower their probability of conviction, prosecutors may counter by increasing the amount of resources they use in trying wealthy defendants. But how well can prosecutors stretch their resources to combat wealthy defendants? It may appear that a sensible prosecutorial goal would be to try to equate the probability of conviction across different types of defendants charged with committing a particular crime. This suggests that more resources should be devoted to defendants who mount more expensive defenses. But there may be some problems with this approach. First, wealthy defendants may have far more flexibility in their spending than will prosecutors. If a prosecutorial budget can only be stretched so far, wealthy defendants may be able to successfully outspend the prosecutors, thus leading to lower conviction rates for the wealthy relative to the poor. Second, even if prosecutors can match wealthy defendants, there is the issue as to whether or not the additional resources can be put to more efficient use in other aspects of setting the expected punishment, such as with increasing the probability of apprehension. Finally, if too many resources are moved from prosecuting poor defendants to prosecuting wealthy defendants, the poor defendants may face too low a probability of conviction. This implies that poor defendants may be underdeterred. Actually, some scholars believe that the existence of wealthy defendants in and of itself benefits poorer defendants because of this last point In all, it is unlikely that wealthy defendants with high opportunity costs will be able to successfully lower conviction rates to make equal prison sentences yield equal expected punishment. It is more likely that, for whatever prison sentence is set for a particular crime, the wealthiest defendants will be overdeterred, and the poorest defendants will be underdeterred. Still, the ability of wealthy defendants to "subvert” justice to any extent may actually be leading to more efficient levels of expected punishment It is important to note that the argument being made in this section is not that the wealthy should be less severely punished than the poor. The argument is that if it is desirable to maintain an equal level of expected punishment for an identical crime, equal conviction rates and equal prison sentences for the wealthy and poor may not achieve that goal. If prison imposes more of a cost on a wealthy criminal, a lower conviction rate is necessary to maintain a consistent expected punishment across income groups. In effect, expected punishment can be a broader concept than what is determined by the authorities when they set the certainty and severity of punishment. Different defendants can perceive identical sanctions to have different subjective impacts on their behavior The privatization of prison:s A common issue in many social policy debates is the role of private versus social control of resources. Are private markets or socialized systems better suited to provide health care, offer schooling, build highways, and so on? The succinctExplanation / Answer
There are some great benefits to prison privatization. They are simplified and reduce cost to governments. Governments pay private companies less money to care for a prisoner than if they do it themselves.
One inmate may cost more or less than another, which is a concern for the private prison to worry about. The cost is less because private prisons do not have to adhere to rules that government organizations do.
The private prisons are safer while having better living conditions and lower rates of repeat offenders as compared to public prisons. Private prisons utilize resources much efficiently than public prisons do. But government should make well specified contracts with private prisons to lay out the ground rules of operation.
The private prisons should be held to well publicized and well defined standards. While keeping all the things in mind, one more thing should be worked on that the efficient types of punishment where burden is diverted on the shoulders of the criminals as well by including criminals into social welfare analysis.
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