5 ms·

>the point isn't to save money or reduce crime, it's to punish the bad people Actually, one of the reasons is to spend money on private prisons. Private prison

by akerro 8y ago

>the point isn't to save money or reduce crime, it's to punish the bad people Actually, one of the reasons is to spend money on private prisons. Private prisons, bigpharma, lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things, things that were delegalized by sponsored bills. We've known for years that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than marijuana, yet, there are lobbies that benefit a lot from jailing people for having 5g of weed.

slavak 8y ago
Private prisons account for 8% of the total state and federal prison population in the United States+. Are they really a major driver of criminal policy? [+] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
- mieseratte 8y ago
  Has the Netherlands, a country which has been closing prisons and even importing convicts from Belgium, faced any significant lobbying from the prison industrial complex and or any law enforcement organizations in favor of harsher sentencing? Or is this a uniquely American problem?
  - crote 8y ago
    There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. I wouldn't call it an American problem, but there is definitely a very large difference between the American and European approaches to imprisonment. If you're interested in learning more, check out Breaking the Cycle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE): it compares a Norwegian high-security prison to an American one. Main takeaway: if you imprison people in order to make them better persons, threat them as actual human beings; punishment is not the primary incentive of imprisonment.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. This is really off the mark. Having prisons and jails owned by the government does not mean that there's no incentive to increase the inmate population - in fact, the US is proof positive of that, because, for all the press that private prisons get, the number of them is quite small, and most of the worst abuses occur in state-run prisons. This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I should point out that, in general, people tend to underestimate the extent of the prison-industrial complex in Western/Central Europe, and particularly its effect on ethnic and religious minorities. It doesn't help that a lot of the countries that have problems with this also make it either difficult or illegal to access that data officially, so it's not discussed nearly enough.
    - mieseratte 8y ago
      > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. How are food, clothes, supplies, etc. sourced? Who builds the prison? Is this all done by the government down to the farmer? Or is there a supply chain that makes profit by selling to prisons? If so, there is a prison industrial complex. How about the staff? Are they paid? Do they have a union? If there is a profit motive, there is a potential for political lobbying / corruption.
      - teekert 8y ago
        A farmer can also feed people who are not in jail, an industrial prison complex cannot make people who are not in jail perform free labor. To the farmer/clothing producer the prisoners are equal to free people, to the stake holder of an industrial prison complex, they are not.
      - SiempreViernes 8y ago
        Right, and I guess because the tax office buys its furniture from private companies there is a tax-industrial complex too? I'd say you are now pretty clearly arguing for diluting the meaning of the "military-industrial complex" context to nothingness.
- KirinDave 8y ago
  But it varies wildly by state, with some states having nearly half their prison population in pivate prisons. I imagine in those states, the lobby is pretty powerful at the state level. Lots of state-specific interests have a great deal of federal lobbying power.
- joncrane 8y ago
  8% is still billions of dollars, I reckon. The other 92% doesn't lobby for laws that result in more prisoners, but a billion dollar industry does. So the 8% statistic is a red herring.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  For-profit prison industry is more than just running the prison itself. The other 92% of public (I guess?) prisons still need services.
  - Fjolsvith 8y ago
    Yeah, and all those inmates and families gotta stay in touch somehow - so charge for video calls.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Not just charge; charge out the ass. Just like everything else in the prison.
- xr4ti 8y ago
  Not just private prisons. The prison guards union has been one of the most potent political forces in California over the last 20-30 years. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-prison-guards.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-pri...
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  I'm also skeptical of the influence of private prisons on criminal policy (mostly just because voters unfortunately seem to love putting people in prison regardless, no special lobbying required), but I think there are some interesting correlations at the state level. For example, the 6 states with the lowest incarceration rates (New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maine) have no private prisons. And 9 out of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates do have private prisons. - Percent of privately incarcerations: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso... - Incarceration rates by state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarce...
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
Reminder private prisons make up 8.4% of total inmates. Source (as the official government source is giving a HTTPS issue) https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-house-leaders-introduce-bill-to-ban-private-prisons https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sande... The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion. Can we not bring it here as well?
- parthdesai 8y ago
  it still is 8.4% more than it should be.
- akerro 8y ago
  >The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion I've never seen such thread on reddit.
  - dopamean 8y ago
    There was a period maybe around the election in 2016 when it was a very frequent topic of conversation. That may have been spurred by the Obama administration's announcement that they'd stop using private prisons for detention of illegal immigrants at the border. Hillary I believe said she'd do the same if she became president. As a result there was a lot of talk about it.
- organsnyder 8y ago
  Private prisons may be under 10% of inmates, but they still constitute 100% of some companies' income streams. The influence those companies wield is a function of their investment in lobbying and other persuasion tools, which is not necessarily correlated to marketshare.
jaredklewis 8y ago
> lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. The median pay for public prosecutors with with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $81,500. For public defenders (who handle roughly 80% of all felony cases [1]), the median pay for someone with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $62,550. Oh, these fat, fat cats in criminal justice! And if anyone here thinks the work life balance in SV companies leaves something to be desired, I encourage you to read about the bat-shit hours that the average criminal attorney puts in. 20 hours of overtime a week would not raise any eyebrows. And basically those salaries are not affected by caseload. Whether 100 or 50 people go to prison makes no financial difference to lawyers on either side. Some prosecutors have bonuses contingent on conviction rate or volume, but such agreements are rare and when they do exist, the bonuses are never contingent on sentencing, so there would be no incentive to send people to prison. There is no equivalent for defense attorneys. And all of the above just speaks to your claim's stunning lack of circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the lack of actual evidence that lawyers are intentionally putting more people in prison to make money. The US justice system is rife with problems. But the idea that a root cause of those problems is lawyers trying to make more money just doesn't make sense. 1. http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html
- simonsarris 8y ago
  > The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. That's strange of you to say. Haven't lawyers conspired to do just that before? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal > To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. Is it not well understood that people who are less highly remunerated are more prone to seeking out illegal sources of additional funds? This is the justification for extremely high ministerial salaries in Singapore - to avoid such corruption.
  - 8y ago

by akerro 8y ago

slavak 8y ago

Private prisons account for 8% of the total state and federal prison population in the United States+. Are they really a major driver of criminal policy? [+] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...

mieseratte 8y ago
Has the Netherlands, a country which has been closing prisons and even importing convicts from Belgium, faced any significant lobbying from the prison industrial complex and or any law enforcement organizations in favor of harsher sentencing? Or is this a uniquely American problem?
- crote 8y ago
  There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. I wouldn't call it an American problem, but there is definitely a very large difference between the American and European approaches to imprisonment. If you're interested in learning more, check out Breaking the Cycle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuLQ4gqB5XE): it compares a Norwegian high-security prison to an American one. Main takeaway: if you imprison people in order to make them better persons, threat them as actual human beings; punishment is not the primary incentive of imprisonment.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. There is no incentive to increase the inmate population. This is really off the mark. Having prisons and jails owned by the government does not mean that there's no incentive to increase the inmate population - in fact, the US is proof positive of that, because, for all the press that private prisons get, the number of them is quite small, and most of the worst abuses occur in state-run prisons. This isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but I should point out that, in general, people tend to underestimate the extent of the prison-industrial complex in Western/Central Europe, and particularly its effect on ethnic and religious minorities. It doesn't help that a lot of the countries that have problems with this also make it either difficult or illegal to access that data officially, so it's not discussed nearly enough.
  - mieseratte 8y ago
    > There is no prison industrial complex in The Netherlands, as all prisons and jails are owned by the government. How are food, clothes, supplies, etc. sourced? Who builds the prison? Is this all done by the government down to the farmer? Or is there a supply chain that makes profit by selling to prisons? If so, there is a prison industrial complex. How about the staff? Are they paid? Do they have a union? If there is a profit motive, there is a potential for political lobbying / corruption.
    - teekert 8y ago
      A farmer can also feed people who are not in jail, an industrial prison complex cannot make people who are not in jail perform free labor. To the farmer/clothing producer the prisoners are equal to free people, to the stake holder of an industrial prison complex, they are not.
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      Right, and I guess because the tax office buys its furniture from private companies there is a tax-industrial complex too? I'd say you are now pretty clearly arguing for diluting the meaning of the "military-industrial complex" context to nothingness.
KirinDave 8y ago
But it varies wildly by state, with some states having nearly half their prison population in pivate prisons. I imagine in those states, the lobby is pretty powerful at the state level. Lots of state-specific interests have a great deal of federal lobbying power.
joncrane 8y ago
8% is still billions of dollars, I reckon. The other 92% doesn't lobby for laws that result in more prisoners, but a billion dollar industry does. So the 8% statistic is a red herring.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
For-profit prison industry is more than just running the prison itself. The other 92% of public (I guess?) prisons still need services.
- Fjolsvith 8y ago
  Yeah, and all those inmates and families gotta stay in touch somehow - so charge for video calls.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Not just charge; charge out the ass. Just like everything else in the prison.
xr4ti 8y ago
Not just private prisons. The prison guards union has been one of the most potent political forces in California over the last 20-30 years. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-prison-guards.html https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/07/us/political-gains-by-pri...
jaredklewis 8y ago
I'm also skeptical of the influence of private prisons on criminal policy (mostly just because voters unfortunately seem to love putting people in prison regardless, no special lobbying required), but I think there are some interesting correlations at the state level. For example, the 6 states with the lowest incarceration rates (New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maine) have no private prisons. And 9 out of the 10 states with the highest incarceration rates do have private prisons. - Percent of privately incarcerations: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso... - Incarceration rates by state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarce...

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago

Reminder private prisons make up 8.4% of total inmates. Source (as the official government source is giving a HTTPS issue) https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-house-leaders-introduce-bill-to-ban-private-prisons https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sande... The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion. Can we not bring it here as well?

parthdesai 8y ago
it still is 8.4% more than it should be.
akerro 8y ago
>The private prison issue is one of reddit's favorite topics to blow out of proportion I've never seen such thread on reddit.
- dopamean 8y ago
  There was a period maybe around the election in 2016 when it was a very frequent topic of conversation. That may have been spurred by the Obama administration's announcement that they'd stop using private prisons for detention of illegal immigrants at the border. Hillary I believe said she'd do the same if she became president. As a result there was a lot of talk about it.
organsnyder 8y ago
Private prisons may be under 10% of inmates, but they still constitute 100% of some companies' income streams. The influence those companies wield is a function of their investment in lobbying and other persuasion tools, which is not necessarily correlated to marketshare.

jaredklewis 8y ago

> lawyers make a lot of money on defending AND putting people to prison for stupid things The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. The median pay for public prosecutors with with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $81,500. For public defenders (who handle roughly 80% of all felony cases [1]), the median pay for someone with 11 - 15 years of experience is only $62,550. Oh, these fat, fat cats in criminal justice! And if anyone here thinks the work life balance in SV companies leaves something to be desired, I encourage you to read about the bat-shit hours that the average criminal attorney puts in. 20 hours of overtime a week would not raise any eyebrows. And basically those salaries are not affected by caseload. Whether 100 or 50 people go to prison makes no financial difference to lawyers on either side. Some prosecutors have bonuses contingent on conviction rate or volume, but such agreements are rare and when they do exist, the bonuses are never contingent on sentencing, so there would be no incentive to send people to prison. There is no equivalent for defense attorneys. And all of the above just speaks to your claim's stunning lack of circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the lack of actual evidence that lawyers are intentionally putting more people in prison to make money. The US justice system is rife with problems. But the idea that a root cause of those problems is lawyers trying to make more money just doesn't make sense. 1. http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html http://www.pbs.org/kqed/presumedguilty/3.2.0.html

simonsarris 8y ago
> The idea that lawyers are part of a conspiracy to make _money_ by running more people through the criminal justice system is completely senseless. That's strange of you to say. Haven't lawyers conspired to do just that before? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal > To start, criminal justice is easily in the running for least highly remunerated category of law. Is it not well understood that people who are less highly remunerated are more prone to seeking out illegal sources of additional funds? This is the justification for extremely high ministerial salaries in Singapore - to avoid such corruption.
- 8y ago