“Faced with declining tax revenues, counties and municipalities are turning over the operation of parts of the criminal justice system to private corporations that promise to provide legally mandated services at “no cost to taxpayers”. These companies then charge fees for these same services to individuals accused of crimes or on probation – fees higher than what states would charge for equivalent services, if they charge at all. Often already impoverished, those many who can’t pay the fees are now being imprisoned for debt.” “Contracting-out is a vast and growing part of the federal government. Contract spending mushroomed from $200 billion in 2000 to $530 billion in 2011. The total cost of federal contract employees is twice that of federal civil servants… The POGO study – Bad Business 55 … found that “billions of dollars [are] wasted on hiring contractors” based on “a misguided assumption that market economies enable contractors to be more cost efficient than the government. On average, contractors charged the federal government more than twice the amount it pays federal workers.”