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It always struck me (as a Brit) that the plea bargaining system in the US seemed to encourage prison time. There seems to be a lot of incentive for the DA's to

It always struck me (as a Brit) that the plea bargaining system in the US seemed to encourage prison time. There seems to be a lot of incentive for the DA's to 'get their conviction' and a lot of pressure on those accused to accept a bargain that might see them do 2 years instead of 20 or some arbitrary high number. Is this an accurate view? Do these plea bargain happen regularly? I also understand that the prison system was privatised in the US. The combination of aggressive DA's, plea bargains and financial incentives to incarcerate seem, from the outside at least, to have created a perfect storm that's sort of feeding itself. I'd love to hear from anyone with thought on this!

allencoin 11y ago
Partially privatized. According to a 2012 source [1], there are 1.6 million prisoners in the US and roughly 8% of them are in privately-owned prisons. That number, however, unfortunately keeps growing. [1] http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...
- jordigh 11y ago
  Huh, I was under the impression that most prisoners in the US were in privatised prisons. If that is not the case, then this does not seem to explain either the prison boom.
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    Prison boom is easy to explain. Politicians like to be seen doing something. Punishing bad people is easy. Building prisons is the cost but politicians don't pay this cost and people don't understand the financial cost of the prisons nor the cost it inflicts on those imprisoned and their families. Politicians also like to control people. You do this through laws and regulations. Combined with punitive measures you coerce people into thinking and behaving as you need them. Those who don't or are less desirable; poor who don't fund campaigns and such; are easy targets. Politicians also want to put groups against each other, distracting both sides from all the other activities that the politician may be engaged in. TL;DR Politicians crave power and money, it is simple to "protect" the people by making it easier to put people in jail claiming a problem solved.
    - jordigh 11y ago
      But the politicians aren't the ones doing the sentencing. They just write the laws. The Slate article suggests that it's the judges who are handing out increasingly Draconian sentencing. Why are judges doing that?
      - phire 11y ago
        Judges and prosecutors are elected too (it varies from state to state) so technically they are politicians too.
        jordigh 11y ago
        Aren't they frequently appointed or they run unopposed?
        phire 11y ago
        It varies from state to state (perhaps even county to county) In some places they are appointed, in others they are elected. When they are elected, even if they run unopposed they still tend to act tough on crime. If a judge or prosecutor started acting weak, the could very quickly find themselves opposed in the next election.
        adrusi 11y ago
        They're "supposed to" be appointed. This is the way it used to be and the way it constitutionally has to be at the federal level. But I think more than half of states have elected judges. True, they often run unopposed, but that doesn't free then from political pressure; if they make an unpopular decision, any lawyer could opt to run against them by simply campaigning as not the other judge. They would usually win and get a fantastic résumé boost.
        Amezarak 11y ago
        > if they make an unpopular decision, any lawyer could opt to run against them by simply campaigning as not the other judge In many localities there is no requirement that a judge have any prior legal training or experience. So anyone, not just any lawyer.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    The private prison meme is far larger than the actual number, which is eight percent. Elsewhere in this people are asking how much of US manufacturing is from prison labor, I doubt it is large enough to accurately measure.
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      Just how large is the meme, in units that can be reasonably compared to the percent of prisoners in privately-owned prisons?
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        Someone would have to do a survey but I would guess that 90% of Europeans buy into it. Of course they also believe that they will be carjacked if they come to the US so I don't think their opinions are useful.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        happyscrappy 11y ago
        Don't impugn the ACLU with your lack of understanding of how percentages work. Edit: LesZedCB just deleted his comment where he adds two different percentage groups from the ACLU site.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Not only that, but the private prison population was very small in the 1980's and early 1990's when the vast majority of the prison boom happened. Private prisons are mostly a late-90's and 2000's reaction to the desire of states to save money housing their huge prison populations.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  What percentage is publicly owned but largely privately ran?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>Is this an accurate view? Do these plea bargain happen regularly? Yes. Either that or people just confess to everything they can out of ignorance or because showing reticence can supposedly get you leniency from a judge. >I also understand that the prison system was privatised in the US. Not the whole system(s), but there are private prison operators. The majority of prisons are still state owned and run. >perfect storm As you predicted, this guy Mark Ciavarella is probably the most shameful example of systematic injustice in recent history; he was caught and eventually sent to prison himself (though it is rare for a judge to go to prison for something they did on the bench). There is no reason that this sort of thing couldn't be happening on a wide scale. http://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-pri.html http://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-... In my state, IIRC the private prisons have contracts with the state which stipulate that they will be paid as if they were nearly full without regard to if their population falls below some threshold. I think that's probably the reason why we don't have prison operators bribing judges. We have other problems though, mostly related to underfunding health care, food, anything else that can be underfunded. About ten years ago there was a huge sex-abuse scandal in the youth-prisons. http://www.texastribune.org/2010/01/07/15-of-tx-youth-offenders-forced-into-sex-acts/ http://www.texastribune.org/2010/01/07/15-of-tx-youth-offend...
- duncanawoods 11y ago
  >> The majority of prisons are still state owned and run. Do you also have privatisation happening by the back-door? i.e. how many private services do the public prisons use? You get some weird situations where public institutions use staff from contractors, rent buildings and buy in all their services.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Any government agency meets this description, though. Your sense of smell is accurate -- it's where fraud does occur in reality. But the more serious fraud on the public comes when prison owners are incentivized to buy less food and sell the labor of their prisoners.
  - 11y ago
freshyill 11y ago
If you want to see just how bad private prisons can be, read about the Cash for Kids scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  There's a judge who was not neutral.
- ancap 11y ago
  Calling those prisons "private" in the sense that "private" equates to "private sector" is a huge misnomer.
netcan 11y ago
Out of these two, the plea bargaining system always seemed the most corrupt to me. It's also widespread (in some form^) and predates privatization. I say some form, because confessions forced with threats of far worse punishment are a long unbroken tradition. It used to be more common for them to happen after sentencing, say during your punishment. The modern form usually revolves around an enormous range of potential punishments. 6 months probation if you confess/bargain, 6 ears in jail otherwise. It's especially malicious because it's all happening between lawyers, without judicial involvement. Well paid lawyers are important in courts too, but at least there is a neutral judge in the room. It's not unique to the US.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Judges aren't neutral. They're only supposed to be neutral.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  There was a movement to get everyone to decline all plea bargains to try to swamp the system, but of course these are criminals who will likely lose their case in court and end up serving a longer sentence so it never went anywhere.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    Interesting thing is that one of the largest plea bargain use-cases are DUI first offenders, a group for whom many that is there only interaction with the criminal justice system -- and there are some white middle-class suburbanites who loooooove plea bargains then.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      And what? It is bad that they don't usually commit crimes? Or just because they are white? First time offender plea bargains are the best chance to reduce prison population.
      - 11y ago
wil421 11y ago
>I also understand that the prison system was privatised in the US. The prison system was not privatized in the US. Some places do have private prison but it is by no means the norm. As of 2012 less than 8% of the 2.2 million incarcerated persons in the US are in private prisons [1]. This is less than 1% of the population. Although 20% of federal prisoners are in private prisons as of last year [2]. The recidivism rate is even worse. In 2005 almost a half a million inmates were tracked after their release, more than 75% were rearrested within 5 years.[3] >financial incentives to incarcerate... Do you have any sources for this? [1]http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g... [2]http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-profit http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-prof... [3]http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...
- PuffinBlue 11y ago
  > Do you have any sources for this? Actually the second link you provided mentions how private prisons take steps to keep inmates 'in' longer. So that's on incentive. I haven't taken the time to look into it in detail (so shouldn't make sweeping statement of course), but I do remember hearing in other submissions on this site that prisons lobby and fund elected representatives who are 'tough on crime' and who might send convictions their way, so a truer 'incentive' to incarcerate initially not just keep them there. I'll see if I can dig those up.
  - wil421 11y ago
    Thank you. I was wonder if it was actual kickbacks or something indirect like campaign funding.
    - PuffinBlue 11y ago
      I can't find the specific submissions I saw previously but did find a plethora of articles like those below with example of lobbying: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_private_prison_industry_is_exploding_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_... https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/prisons/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/prisons/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-prisons-spend-45-million-on-lobbying-rake-in-51-billion-for-immigrant-detention-alone/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-p... There are a lot more out there across the years. The general impression is one of an 'industry' seeking to expand its operations and that just doesn't sit right to me as an outsider.
phkahler 11y ago
And yet he says: >> And if we focused on cutting back sentence lengths, maybe that would weaken DAs’ bargaining power at plea bargaining, but since people aren’t serving the massively long sentences anyway, it probably won’t have that big an effect on prison population either. They're getting lots of easy short sentences because they accept those in exchange for not going to trial against 25 years. So it sure seems like reducing the long sentences and overdone charges would reduce the likelihood of getting plea bargains. Of course that would make more work for the prosecutors. Before taking that route, one has to ask if we really should have fewer people in prison. Efficiency in dolling out appropriate punishment is not a bad thing. Efficiency with injustice is a bad thing. I have no data on that, so I'll stop now. I guess I'm asking, are the people in prison for the right reasons, and is their actual sentence appropriate for what they did? We should start there, not at the population numbers.
xlm1717 11y ago
Private prisons are very rare in the US. The majority of them are run by individual states or by the federal government. Where I have read that private prisons are on the rise, however, is in the UK itself, and in New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Australia, run by companies like Serco and G4S.

allencoin 11y ago

Partially privatized. According to a 2012 source [1], there are 1.6 million prisoners in the US and roughly 8% of them are in privately-owned prisons. That number, however, unfortunately keeps growing. [1] http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...

jordigh 11y ago
Huh, I was under the impression that most prisoners in the US were in privatised prisons. If that is not the case, then this does not seem to explain either the prison boom.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  Prison boom is easy to explain. Politicians like to be seen doing something. Punishing bad people is easy. Building prisons is the cost but politicians don't pay this cost and people don't understand the financial cost of the prisons nor the cost it inflicts on those imprisoned and their families. Politicians also like to control people. You do this through laws and regulations. Combined with punitive measures you coerce people into thinking and behaving as you need them. Those who don't or are less desirable; poor who don't fund campaigns and such; are easy targets. Politicians also want to put groups against each other, distracting both sides from all the other activities that the politician may be engaged in. TL;DR Politicians crave power and money, it is simple to "protect" the people by making it easier to put people in jail claiming a problem solved.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    But the politicians aren't the ones doing the sentencing. They just write the laws. The Slate article suggests that it's the judges who are handing out increasingly Draconian sentencing. Why are judges doing that?
    - phire 11y ago
      Judges and prosecutors are elected too (it varies from state to state) so technically they are politicians too.
      - jordigh 11y ago
        Aren't they frequently appointed or they run unopposed?
        phire 11y ago
        It varies from state to state (perhaps even county to county) In some places they are appointed, in others they are elected. When they are elected, even if they run unopposed they still tend to act tough on crime. If a judge or prosecutor started acting weak, the could very quickly find themselves opposed in the next election.
        adrusi 11y ago
        They're "supposed to" be appointed. This is the way it used to be and the way it constitutionally has to be at the federal level. But I think more than half of states have elected judges. True, they often run unopposed, but that doesn't free then from political pressure; if they make an unpopular decision, any lawyer could opt to run against them by simply campaigning as not the other judge. They would usually win and get a fantastic résumé boost.
        Amezarak 11y ago
        > if they make an unpopular decision, any lawyer could opt to run against them by simply campaigning as not the other judge In many localities there is no requirement that a judge have any prior legal training or experience. So anyone, not just any lawyer.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  The private prison meme is far larger than the actual number, which is eight percent. Elsewhere in this people are asking how much of US manufacturing is from prison labor, I doubt it is large enough to accurately measure.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Just how large is the meme, in units that can be reasonably compared to the percent of prisoners in privately-owned prisons?
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
      Someone would have to do a survey but I would guess that 90% of Europeans buy into it. Of course they also believe that they will be carjacked if they come to the US so I don't think their opinions are useful.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - happyscrappy 11y ago
        Don't impugn the ACLU with your lack of understanding of how percentages work. Edit: LesZedCB just deleted his comment where he adds two different percentage groups from the ACLU site.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Not only that, but the private prison population was very small in the 1980's and early 1990's when the vast majority of the prison boom happened. Private prisons are mostly a late-90's and 2000's reaction to the desire of states to save money housing their huge prison populations.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
What percentage is publicly owned but largely privately ran?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago

>Is this an accurate view? Do these plea bargain happen regularly? Yes. Either that or people just confess to everything they can out of ignorance or because showing reticence can supposedly get you leniency from a judge. >I also understand that the prison system was privatised in the US. Not the whole system(s), but there are private prison operators. The majority of prisons are still state owned and run. >perfect storm As you predicted, this guy Mark Ciavarella is probably the most shameful example of systematic injustice in recent history; he was caught and eventually sent to prison himself (though it is rare for a judge to go to prison for something they did on the bench). There is no reason that this sort of thing couldn't be happening on a wide scale. http://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-pri.html http://boingboing.net/2013/08/06/judge-who-accepted-private-... In my state, IIRC the private prisons have contracts with the state which stipulate that they will be paid as if they were nearly full without regard to if their population falls below some threshold. I think that's probably the reason why we don't have prison operators bribing judges. We have other problems though, mostly related to underfunding health care, food, anything else that can be underfunded. About ten years ago there was a huge sex-abuse scandal in the youth-prisons. http://www.texastribune.org/2010/01/07/15-of-tx-youth-offenders-forced-into-sex-acts/ http://www.texastribune.org/2010/01/07/15-of-tx-youth-offend...

duncanawoods 11y ago
>> The majority of prisons are still state owned and run. Do you also have privatisation happening by the back-door? i.e. how many private services do the public prisons use? You get some weird situations where public institutions use staff from contractors, rent buildings and buy in all their services.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  Any government agency meets this description, though. Your sense of smell is accurate -- it's where fraud does occur in reality. But the more serious fraud on the public comes when prison owners are incentivized to buy less food and sell the labor of their prisoners.
- 11y ago

freshyill 11y ago

If you want to see just how bad private prisons can be, read about the Cash for Kids scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

spacemanmatt 11y ago
There's a judge who was not neutral.
ancap 11y ago
Calling those prisons "private" in the sense that "private" equates to "private sector" is a huge misnomer.

netcan 11y ago

Out of these two, the plea bargaining system always seemed the most corrupt to me. It's also widespread (in some form^) and predates privatization. I say some form, because confessions forced with threats of far worse punishment are a long unbroken tradition. It used to be more common for them to happen after sentencing, say during your punishment. The modern form usually revolves around an enormous range of potential punishments. 6 months probation if you confess/bargain, 6 ears in jail otherwise. It's especially malicious because it's all happening between lawyers, without judicial involvement. Well paid lawyers are important in courts too, but at least there is a neutral judge in the room. It's not unique to the US.

spacemanmatt 11y ago
Judges aren't neutral. They're only supposed to be neutral.
happyscrappy 11y ago
There was a movement to get everyone to decline all plea bargains to try to swamp the system, but of course these are criminals who will likely lose their case in court and end up serving a longer sentence so it never went anywhere.
- JackFr 11y ago
  Interesting thing is that one of the largest plea bargain use-cases are DUI first offenders, a group for whom many that is there only interaction with the criminal justice system -- and there are some white middle-class suburbanites who loooooove plea bargains then.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago
    And what? It is bad that they don't usually commit crimes? Or just because they are white? First time offender plea bargains are the best chance to reduce prison population.
    - 11y ago

wil421 11y ago

>I also understand that the prison system was privatised in the US. The prison system was not privatized in the US. Some places do have private prison but it is by no means the norm. As of 2012 less than 8% of the 2.2 million incarcerated persons in the US are in private prisons [1]. This is less than 1% of the population. Although 20% of federal prisoners are in private prisons as of last year [2]. The recidivism rate is even worse. In 2005 almost a half a million inmates were tracked after their release, more than 75% were rearrested within 5 years.[3] >financial incentives to incarcerate... Do you have any sources for this? [1]http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-growing-for-profit-detention-industry http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g... [2]http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-profit http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-prof... [3]http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...

PuffinBlue 11y ago
> Do you have any sources for this? Actually the second link you provided mentions how private prisons take steps to keep inmates 'in' longer. So that's on incentive. I haven't taken the time to look into it in detail (so shouldn't make sweeping statement of course), but I do remember hearing in other submissions on this site that prisons lobby and fund elected representatives who are 'tough on crime' and who might send convictions their way, so a truer 'incentive' to incarcerate initially not just keep them there. I'll see if I can dig those up.
- wil421 11y ago
  Thank you. I was wonder if it was actual kickbacks or something indirect like campaign funding.
  - PuffinBlue 11y ago
    I can't find the specific submissions I saw previously but did find a plethora of articles like those below with example of lobbying: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_private_prison_industry_is_exploding_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_... https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/prisons/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/prisons/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-prisons-spend-45-million-on-lobbying-rake-in-51-billion-for-immigrant-detention-alone/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/03/627471/private-p... There are a lot more out there across the years. The general impression is one of an 'industry' seeking to expand its operations and that just doesn't sit right to me as an outsider.

phkahler 11y ago

And yet he says: >> And if we focused on cutting back sentence lengths, maybe that would weaken DAs’ bargaining power at plea bargaining, but since people aren’t serving the massively long sentences anyway, it probably won’t have that big an effect on prison population either. They're getting lots of easy short sentences because they accept those in exchange for not going to trial against 25 years. So it sure seems like reducing the long sentences and overdone charges would reduce the likelihood of getting plea bargains. Of course that would make more work for the prosecutors. Before taking that route, one has to ask if we really should have fewer people in prison. Efficiency in dolling out appropriate punishment is not a bad thing. Efficiency with injustice is a bad thing. I have no data on that, so I'll stop now. I guess I'm asking, are the people in prison for the right reasons, and is their actual sentence appropriate for what they did? We should start there, not at the population numbers.

xlm1717 11y ago

Private prisons are very rare in the US. The majority of them are run by individual states or by the federal government. Where I have read that private prisons are on the rise, however, is in the UK itself, and in New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) Australia, run by companies like Serco and G4S.