[rayiner]

Probably not. Stuff like getting rid of parole preceded private prisons. Private prisons is a trailing phenomenon that appears to be more about serving the huge demand for prison beds created by retributive policies.

Washington State, for example still has no private prisons. But it enacted one of the country's early "three strikes laws" back in the early 1990s. Private prison companies have been clamoring to get an opportunity to enter the state, but they had nothing to do with the tough laws that caused the existing public prisons to be at 140% capacity.

[ending]

It's also worth considering that private prisons, once established, create perverse incentives to intensify those same retributive policies. A vicious recursion.

[rayiner]

It's a thought but I suspect it's incorrect. The harshness of prison policies peaked in the 1980s to 1990s. Private prisons really started booming in the late 1990s and the 2000s. But the trend since then in policy has been a softening (somewhat) of retributive policies. California's involvement with private prisons for example is largely in this decade, in response to court orders requiring reduction in overcrowding. But it past the country's harshest three strikes laws (where people were getting life sentences for a third non-violent felony) in the 1990s. But it softened that a bit a couple of years ago.

I think the most you can say is that private prisons (and public prison guard unions, which is probably a much bigger force) are slowing the retreat from 1980s/1990s retributive policies.