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>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 s

>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.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  In Texas, we had a prison system director named Andy Collins who involved himself and the whole prison system in a huge scandal(s) about 20 years ago, and the stink from that still hasn't gone away. It was super embarrassing. Collins signed contracts to purchase some soybean product that was supposed to resemble food from an ex-convict (from Canada, not TDCJ). He didn't use the required bid process, and was receiving kickbacks for the stuff. They bought so much of it that it sat in warehouses and rotted. The inmates just wouldn't eat it. (source: I was a TDCJ guard at the time). The current directors seem content with minor scandals, and are presently leaving the wide-scale graft to someone else. TDCJ has been pretty territorial in protecting their control over staffing, and the citizens of the state were happy to fund enough concrete and bars to prevent the state needing to use those kind of creative tricks in order to get more beds. The biggest scandal with prison privatization in Texas, as far as I am aware was the problem(s) I mentioned before with the Texas Youth Commission. That's not an argument for privatization though, our private prisons still suck; we just don't do much of it here. We're apparently very proud of having one of the largest prison systems in the world, and I think our public prison officials tend to see private prisons as a threat (at least until they retire and consult for them). >You get some weird situations where public institutions use staff from contractors, rent buildings and buy in all their services. Yeah, IIRC TYC had all of that, and while it was talked about, nothing was really done until the sex-scandal broke. http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-great-texas-prison-mess/ http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-great-texas-prison-...

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.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
In Texas, we had a prison system director named Andy Collins who involved himself and the whole prison system in a huge scandal(s) about 20 years ago, and the stink from that still hasn't gone away. It was super embarrassing. Collins signed contracts to purchase some soybean product that was supposed to resemble food from an ex-convict (from Canada, not TDCJ). He didn't use the required bid process, and was receiving kickbacks for the stuff. They bought so much of it that it sat in warehouses and rotted. The inmates just wouldn't eat it. (source: I was a TDCJ guard at the time). The current directors seem content with minor scandals, and are presently leaving the wide-scale graft to someone else. TDCJ has been pretty territorial in protecting their control over staffing, and the citizens of the state were happy to fund enough concrete and bars to prevent the state needing to use those kind of creative tricks in order to get more beds. The biggest scandal with prison privatization in Texas, as far as I am aware was the problem(s) I mentioned before with the Texas Youth Commission. That's not an argument for privatization though, our private prisons still suck; we just don't do much of it here. We're apparently very proud of having one of the largest prison systems in the world, and I think our public prison officials tend to see private prisons as a threat (at least until they retire and consult for them). >You get some weird situations where public institutions use staff from contractors, rent buildings and buy in all their services. Yeah, IIRC TYC had all of that, and while it was talked about, nothing was really done until the sex-scandal broke. http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-great-texas-prison-mess/ http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-great-texas-prison-...