Public or private? Towards a more effective rehabilitation in Chilean prisons

• In Event: Global and Comparative Perspectives on Corrections

Abstract

The study of prison life is receiving renewed attention as it has become crucial for various reasons, including human rights of the incarcerated, public safety, and efficient spending by states and countries.
Based on a national, mixed-methods study in Chile, we compared the quality of prison life in 13 public and 7 private facilities, while critically analyzing the implications of the results for the reintegration of the incarcerated in both systems. We employed an adapted version of the MQPL survey through a random sampling strategy (n=1,159), combined with qualitative information from more than 110 interviews.
Our quantitative results show that incarcerated individuals identified various differences between private and public prisons, including infrastructure, interpersonal relations with fellow inmates, treatment by guards, prison regime and functioning.
Our qualitative material suggests that various issues need to be addressed: internal coordination, contractual rigidities, predominance of checklists over quality, inconsistent application of intervention models, and a poor scheme of fiscal supervision.
In sum, although private prisons have improved the living conditions of inmates compared to public facilities, various deficiencies persist in terms of the quality of interventions aimed at the reintegration of the incarcerated, suggesting that the incentives under which privatized prisons operate should realign.

Authors

• Guillermo Sanhueza, Loyola University Chicago

• Liza Zúñiga, University of Chile