3 ms·

This is needlessly pedantic, but private prisons are absolutely a thing in America.

• jaredsohn 6y ago
  The part that matters is what makes a person required to be in prison (i.e. government law / judicial system) and not who runs the prison.
• trutannus 6y ago
  Of course, but the person who assigns you to that prison is still acting on behalf of the state. It would be correct to say that a business can keep you in a prison though!
• bhupy 6y ago
  Although private prisons exist (in strikingly small numbers[1]), private corporations can't just decide to throw you into a private prison on a whim; the government decides that. [1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
  • La1n 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal Private prison kickbacks for conviction are a thing.
    • bhupy 6y ago
      They're not presently a thing; it's just a scandal that happened at one time in history. It's also corruption, and corruption exists in both the private as well as public sectors. In the case of the Kids for Cash scandal, there have since been lawsuits, overturned adjudications, and commissions to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Solving corruption is orthogonal to the question of whether private corporations can perform extra-judicial imprisonment with impunity. That really just doesn't happen at scale, because it can't.
      • La1n 6y ago
        >just a scandal that happened at one time in history. I really hope that's true, but it might also be that it was only convicted for once in history while it happens more often.
        • bhupy 6y ago
          Oh, I absolutely do not doubt that it could happen again more often, but at least we have Racketeering laws and a system to essentially minimize the degree to which it happens with impunity.