Open record laws should apply to private prisons, too

Noted: It’s not as if we do anything meaningful with the records we manage to collect despite the protections provided to private prisons. In 2015, researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Business secured inmate disciplinary report records from a private prison in Mississippi. Using the reports as proxy for rehabilitation (reformed prisoners, presumably, wouldn’t misbehave while incarcerated) revealed that private prisons issue more disciplinary “tickets” — twice as many, in fact — than their public counterparts.