3 ms·

Private prisons are often used as a bogeyman because they are so obviously inarguably morally repulsive that they are an easy target. But they aren't as signifi

by wfo 10y ago

Private prisons are often used as a bogeyman because they are so obviously inarguably morally repulsive that they are an easy target. But they aren't as significant as most people would make them out to be. That being said, there is still an enormous profit motive attached to much of the current criminal justice system. There are a huge number of people who make their living off of it (and often times a whole lot more than a living) and have a vested economic interest in continuing business as usual. To pick a couple of easy examples, in California, the union for prison guards is an enormously powerful lobby (smaller than the teacher's union but more politically powerful) and spends a huge amount of time and money pushing for longer sentences and more incarceration. The alcohol industry very much likes that the criminal justice system is locking people in cages when they choose to use a competing product and is lobbying very hard to keep marijuana illegal wherever it can. Prisoners are used to work at slave wages for large private companies who make a killing off of it. So while I'll accept the dismissal of the private prison issue which is rarely significant but exhaustingly invariably raised in every single discussion even tangentially touching CJ, there's some meat to what GP is saying. And we're not quite anywhere near bipartisanship on CJ reform yet at least on a federal level; half the presidential candidates have decried any attempts to reform CJ and declared themselves the "law and order candidates"

tptacek 10y ago
Can we name some large companies that are making a killing off prison slave labor? Is there evidence that companies like AB InBev are campaigning against legalization? Also: marijuana has only a marginal effect on incarceration (contrary to popular belief drugs as a whole are minor fraction of the crimes people are imprisoned for, an marijuana is only a very small fraction of that fraction) --- so how big an impact can AB InBev be having on prison populations? There are a lot of compelling narratives about incarceration that turn out not to be true when you consult the data. Again: Pfaff is a great resource for this stuff. I agree that corrections officers unions have political clout. But I dispute the idea that they're a significant force for increased sentencing. What's probably really happening is that corrections officers work at understaffed, underfunded facilities that are left to fend for themselves against an onslaught of felony convictions generated by aggressive prosecutors. Of course they want bigger prisons! Are you reading a lot of stories about how state prisons are overprovisioned, with too many empty beds? I'm reading the opposite.
- wfo 10y ago
  On alcohol vs. Marijuana: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/beer-pot-ballot/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/beer-pot-ballot/ names a couple of instances. Nearly 50% of federal prisoners are in on drug charges. For state it's 16%. There were 700k marijuana arrests in 2014 alone. It's not enough to explain our CJ issues by itself but it's very significant. And the subject here is not just explicit incarceration, it's profit motive associated with the criminal justice system: the CJ system is explicitly designed (among other things) as a deterrent system. Even if the number of (white) Marijuana users incarcerated is small, keeping it illegal pushes people away from it and towards the more dangerous drug, alcohol, according to some alcohol industry spokespeople at least, as per that article and many others. The concerns I have with the unions have nothing to do with their pushing for better funded and larger prisons to house the prisoners we do have (which they most certainly do as well). If you take the California example, they fought hard in favor of three strikes (and succeeded!), they were BY FAR (by 4x) the biggest donor to 'No on 5' in 08 (and succeeded!) Prison labor data is difficult to find -- I assume large companies aren't eager to make it known they use prison labor, but either way I'm just having trouble finding references with any kind of hard data at all positive or negative from a reasonable source. Whole foods made news when it stopped using prison labor. The BP oil spill was cleaned up in large part by inmates, not paid contractors or employees. AT&T laid off their call center workers and hired inmates in the 90s. Also, what is Pfaff?

by wfo 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

Can we name some large companies that are making a killing off prison slave labor? Is there evidence that companies like AB InBev are campaigning against legalization? Also: marijuana has only a marginal effect on incarceration (contrary to popular belief drugs as a whole are minor fraction of the crimes people are imprisoned for, an marijuana is only a very small fraction of that fraction) --- so how big an impact can AB InBev be having on prison populations? There are a lot of compelling narratives about incarceration that turn out not to be true when you consult the data. Again: Pfaff is a great resource for this stuff. I agree that corrections officers unions have political clout. But I dispute the idea that they're a significant force for increased sentencing. What's probably really happening is that corrections officers work at understaffed, underfunded facilities that are left to fend for themselves against an onslaught of felony convictions generated by aggressive prosecutors. Of course they want bigger prisons! Are you reading a lot of stories about how state prisons are overprovisioned, with too many empty beds? I'm reading the opposite.

wfo 10y ago
On alcohol vs. Marijuana: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/beer-pot-ballot/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/beer-pot-ballot/ names a couple of instances. Nearly 50% of federal prisoners are in on drug charges. For state it's 16%. There were 700k marijuana arrests in 2014 alone. It's not enough to explain our CJ issues by itself but it's very significant. And the subject here is not just explicit incarceration, it's profit motive associated with the criminal justice system: the CJ system is explicitly designed (among other things) as a deterrent system. Even if the number of (white) Marijuana users incarcerated is small, keeping it illegal pushes people away from it and towards the more dangerous drug, alcohol, according to some alcohol industry spokespeople at least, as per that article and many others. The concerns I have with the unions have nothing to do with their pushing for better funded and larger prisons to house the prisoners we do have (which they most certainly do as well). If you take the California example, they fought hard in favor of three strikes (and succeeded!), they were BY FAR (by 4x) the biggest donor to 'No on 5' in 08 (and succeeded!) Prison labor data is difficult to find -- I assume large companies aren't eager to make it known they use prison labor, but either way I'm just having trouble finding references with any kind of hard data at all positive or negative from a reasonable source. Whole foods made news when it stopped using prison labor. The BP oil spill was cleaned up in large part by inmates, not paid contractors or employees. AT&T laid off their call center workers and hired inmates in the 90s. Also, what is Pfaff?