3 ms·

When private companies profit from the state imprisoning its citizens, those companies will lobby (successfully) for more business in the form of mandatory sent

by ghouse 10y ago

When private companies profit from the state imprisoning its citizens, those companies will lobby (successfully) for more business in the form of mandatory sentencing and other crime fear-mongering. Just like Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, we should do the same for the prison industrial complex.

adventured 10y ago
Care then to explain how almost all of the extreme prison population boom occurred during a time in which private prisons had a very small market share? 1980 to 2000 - which spans over 3/4 of the boom in incarceration - private prisons were a single digit percentage share of the market. US incarceration from 1980 went from about 550,000 to 2.1 million by the end of Clinton's second term. Almost all of that went to government prisons and jails. Turns out there is vast profit in government prisons. It goes into the pockets of millions of government employees and private contractors that benefit from the huge government prison complex. Those employees and their reps then spend millions of dollars lobbying to build more government prisons for their own benefit, along with lobbying against laws that would reduce incarceration. Politicians love to build government prisons to employ people in their districts, to lure tax dollars, it has been an easy vote generator for decades for them. Further, the extreme expansion of the government prison complex the last three decades, has increased the total power and size of government, another thing politicians go wild for.
- Clubber 10y ago
  I would guess that politicians now believe (true or not) the most effective way to get elected is to pursue lobby money and use it to run scare commercials at people who are "political children," a Dan Carlin term. The fact that this is more effective than what you described is additionally troubling.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Supply and demand. It's a two sided market. Without the demand what's the point in creating a supply? But now that the demand has created the supply the supply becomes self-protecting and self-perpetrating.

by ghouse 10y ago

adventured 10y ago

Care then to explain how almost all of the extreme prison population boom occurred during a time in which private prisons had a very small market share? 1980 to 2000 - which spans over 3/4 of the boom in incarceration - private prisons were a single digit percentage share of the market. US incarceration from 1980 went from about 550,000 to 2.1 million by the end of Clinton's second term. Almost all of that went to government prisons and jails. Turns out there is vast profit in government prisons. It goes into the pockets of millions of government employees and private contractors that benefit from the huge government prison complex. Those employees and their reps then spend millions of dollars lobbying to build more government prisons for their own benefit, along with lobbying against laws that would reduce incarceration. Politicians love to build government prisons to employ people in their districts, to lure tax dollars, it has been an easy vote generator for decades for them. Further, the extreme expansion of the government prison complex the last three decades, has increased the total power and size of government, another thing politicians go wild for.

Clubber 10y ago
I would guess that politicians now believe (true or not) the most effective way to get elected is to pursue lobby money and use it to run scare commercials at people who are "political children," a Dan Carlin term. The fact that this is more effective than what you described is additionally troubling.
jacquesm 10y ago
Supply and demand. It's a two sided market. Without the demand what's the point in creating a supply? But now that the demand has created the supply the supply becomes self-protecting and self-perpetrating.