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Private prisons aren't some abstract thought experiment about how tuning incentives can produce lower recidivism rates. They are real human institutions that in

• ALittleLight 5y ago
  First, I want to call attention to the fact that when I provide sources mine are academics and government agencies studying a problem disinterestedly with facts, statistics, and published analyses. Your sources are partisan activist organizations expressing opinions and an opinion letter to a college newspaper. None of these sources even attempt to contradict I wrote and linked to sources to support. When I use sources I excerpt the source and explain what I think it means. You do not do this but instead drop a few related opinion pieces and leave figuring out how they are supposed to relate to the topic at hand to me. Problem is, I don't think these are especially relevant to what we are discussing. As I wrote before comparing recidivism, and even cost, between private and public prisons is difficult because private prisons tend to house different populations of prisoners and tend to be located in different locales. When scholars to try to control for variables they find mixed results ranging from private prisons decrease recidivism to have no effect to increase recidivism. The balance, from my short investigation, seems to suggest "No effect". Nothing in what you've linked refutes that or gives me any reason to reconsider. Nothing in what you've linked or what you've written makes the case that private prisons are inherently bad either. I do not understand what point you are attempting to make. I have shared my opinion on private prisons - that we need to align their incentives with society and prisoners. You have said I shouldn't share my opinion because it disagrees with experts - but you don't link to any such experts and there doesn't seem to be any expert consensus on the topic. One more contrast between you and I in this thread - when I am offering an opinion based on my own thinking I provide an explicit caveat to that effect. You, on the other hand, misleadingly bolster your pronouncements by suggesting that they are the informed consensus of experts and "people who've thought about this for a long time."
  • seoaeu 5y ago
    > disinterestedly with facts, statistics, and published analyses I think this is the core of the disagreement, and why we're talking past each other... Your argument (let me know if I'm stating it correctly): on the objective metrics of cost, recidivism, and so forth there is no compelling statistical difference between public and private prisons. Therefore there's no grounds to rule out either. Since different incentives can change behavior, better laws could result in private prisons optimizing for these metrics and we'd have better outcomes. My argument (evidently not clear from previous posts): Prisoners shouldn't be treated cruelly regardless of whether that improves or worsens some objective metric. Example: it isn't morally OK to serve prisoners rotten food, even if that makes them less likely to come back. An academic or government agency who is disinterested in the welfare of prisoners is the least qualified to study how prisons should be run, while those with a track record of promoting human rights and humane treatment for prisoners have the most credibility on how to make things better. Edit: I'd also add just how catastrophically bad it is that private prisons do lobbying. Their fundamental incentive is the exact opposite of the rest of society: to have the highest number of criminals possible.
    • ALittleLight 5y ago
      No, that's not my argument at all, though I apologize because I can see how you would get there. I spent too much time arguing matters of fact that are incidental. If private prisons were worse on every metric I would take that as evidence of my statement that their incentives are misaligned. I don't think it's well demonstrated that they are worse, but that question is beside my point. My point is that the incentives of private prisons are misaligned with society. As I wrote earlier, they would view recidivism as repeat customers. I then suggested a concept to realign private prisons with society and prisoners. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with private prisons. The problem is that they are misaligned, not that they exist - as I see it. To approach the problem a different way - public prisons don't have a good incentive structure either and they produce some pretty poor results. In fact, it is our public criminal justice system that is currently hiring misaligned private prisons in addition to running their own poorly performing prisons.