Last August, two prisoners escaped from an Arizona penitentiary and fled to New Mexico, where they ambushed a couple, shot them to death, and lit their bodies on fire inside a trailer.

These fugitives didn’t escape from just any facility: They were housed in a privately run prison managed by the Utah-based Management Training Corporation. After the incident, a review by the Arizona Department of Corrections concluded that the prison had poorly trained staff and deficient equipment-including a faulty security system that emitted so many false alarms, the prison staff simply ignored it.

Episodes like this have raised concerns about the privatization of prisons, with critics long arguing that such facilities pose a threat to public safety and don’t save states much-if any-money in the long run. They also argue that such facilities pose a perverse incentive to keep people locked up. Still, the nation could soon see a major private-prison boom, as Republican governors and legislators across the country push privatization proposals to address budget shortfalls.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich has proposed selling five prisons to private companies-a move that would bring in an estimated $200 million up front-while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal plans to sell three state prisons to private […]