4 ms·

The impact of for profit prisons is hilariously overstated. Only 8% of US prisons are privatized, and it's only in a few select states. The UK, Japan, Australia

The impact of for profit prisons is hilariously overstated. Only 8% of US prisons are privatized, and it's only in a few select states. The UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all have higher rates of prison privatization. Correctional workers unions do far more local and federal lobbying than any private prison company. The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. There are no private prisons in CA.

dijonman2 4y ago
Nevada receives more money for prisons than they do gambling revenue.
elicash 4y ago
I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every prison is for profit. Private companies are everywhere. There are jails where it's $25 to make a 15-minute phone call (extreme case but widespread problem). Commissary spending being mandatory because people aren't fed enough. Libraries are being replaced with tablets where you pay for e-books (and, until there was controversy around it, even public domain books). In-person visits being scaled-back or in some instances entirely replaced by video calls -- for a price. Just adding money to the account of an incarcerated person costs money. I don't think this is why we do it. But it does financially ruin the families of these incarcerated people.
- jjcon 4y ago
  > every prison is for profit. Sure... but the alternatives are worse, shifting the financial burden to the innocent public or simply allowing lawlessness. Committing crimes isn't supposed to have a free and easy path back to society.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    > Sure... but the alternatives are worse, shifting the financial burden to the innocent public The innocent public is already paying for it. They're just paying for profits, too...
    - jjcon 4y ago
      > The innocent public is already paying for it. So because they are footing part of the bill they might as well just foot the whole thing? non sequitur much? If anything we should be charging prisoners the full cost of their incarceration but in that case even if we paid them minimum wage it wouldn't cover their debt, not by a long shot. At least then people wouldn't falsely equate modern prison systems with slavery, but the imprisoned would be much worse off.
      - IX-103 4y ago
        And that's why insurance should be illegal! If someone gets sick, then let them pay for it. They should have gotten exercise and lived right. If someone's house burns down, they should have fixed the wiring and known better than to have old appliances. Get in a car accident, you should since more carefully. For that matter we should get rid of public police and fire departments. If someone wants that service they can pay for it themselves. /s
        jjcon 4y ago
        Your comparison makes absolutely zero sense…
        pastacacioepepe 4y ago
        It's your understanding of the world that is very limited. Prisons are not a punitive system, they are public services like police and firefighters and so on.
        jjcon 4y ago
        > Prisons are not a punitive system, they are public services like police and firefighters and so on. What did I say that at all disagreed with prisons being a public service? No shit.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  - FpUser 4y ago
    The alternative is for one to revert that fucked up attitude toward convicts and consider them as people who need help to go back to being normal productive members of society rather than slaves. Yes some of the convicts are a monsters so they would keep being in prisons but the rest will not have to turn into hardened career criminals with fucked up mind and looking for a revenge.
    - jjcon 4y ago
      They played stupid games and they won stupid prizes… that’s the whole idea…
      - FpUser 4y ago
        To the end of their lives? This "whole idea" is an abomination. And whose idea is it anyways, fucking slave owner's?
        jjcon 4y ago
        > To the end of their lives? Absolutely for plenty of them they deserve nothing less. Society shouldn't have to live with killers and rapists, put them in the ground.
        FpUser 4y ago
        Killers and rapists make a minority of of all crimes so cut the bull.
      - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
        I hope you never have to suffer wrongful incarceration. Or maybe a bit just so you learn how the world works.
        jjcon 4y ago
        I think you've somehow gotten the victims in this world reversed. Have you ever had something stolen from you? Someone close to you raped beaten or even killed? Maybe a bit of experience in the real world would knock some sense into you. Your bleeding heart for criminals (of all people) is making the world worse for the rest of us. Not that it should have to be said but to be clear... the victims of crimes are the victims... not the criminals.
  - elicash 4y ago
    The options are in fact that either these financial burdens are paid either by the families of incarcerated people, or the taxpayer. I vote for the taxpayer. We have this system of putting people in prison for our own safety -- the least we can do if we incarcerate people is to pick up the costs of our own justice system. Ruining the financial lives of their families and of their children isn't the path I favor, personally. We want this justice system we can pay for it.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    The public should invest as much as possible in the rehabilitation of prisoners. Thinking only about the economic cost is such a stupid simplification of the issue. Having a broken but cheap prison system will have massive societary costs. Much better to spend some taxpayer money to actually have some criminals return healthily to society and start contributing again. By the way there are plenty of real financial burdens on the innocent public, if you know where to look. Maybe we should stop subsidizing the rich with the "innocent public" money?
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  > I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every prison is for profit. Even publicly owned prisons have to contract out and outsource a lot of the services they need. Private companies supply food, maintenance, cleaning, IT, supplies, construction, architecture and so on. Private companies also benefit from the cheap to free forced labor they get from government-owned prisons, as well. There are layers to the grift that lines the pockets of private interests in the prison industry, and those layers certainly don't end at whether a prison is privately owned or not.
Retric 4y ago
It’s not about lobbing, one for profit prison bribed multiple judges with $2.6 million dollars to send more people their way. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html For profit prisons are simply corrosive to the justice system. Further, even state run prisons are handing out some very lucrative contracts etc.
heavyset_go 4y ago
> The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. Police Benevolent Associations in my state spend millions of dollars every year lobbying the government to repeal marijuana legalization that voters enacted via popular public referendum. It's been several years since legalization, and PBAs are still throwing millions of dollars at making marijuana illegal again, because according to PBAs, marijuana legalization is preventing police from "doing their jobs". The irony, of course, is that it's the job of police to enforce the laws as they are written, and yet law enforcement is spending millions of dollars each year to complain about the fact that they themselves have to actually follow the law. Police are really angry that they can no longer use the made up excuse of "I smell marijuana" as pretext for probable cause to illegally search and detain the people they interact with. What makes it even more perverse is the fact that the current legislation prevents police from arresting and charging kids with drug crimes for petty possession or use of marijuana. A single drug-related arrest, charge or conviction will make students ineligible for federal student loans and education assistance, and can ruin a kid's chances of being able to go to college. Cops have been screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is that they can't "do their jobs" and ruin kids' lives, and their ability to better their lives, for smoking a joint anymore. It's really gross. At one point, a local PBA leader and chief of police tried to start a moral panic by claiming that unscrupulous drug dealers were hiding behind bleechers at little league games trying to sell elementary school students marijuana, all because police found a pot grinder that someone lost that had a Rick & Morty sticker on it. The police claimed that drug dealers were trying to get elementary school kids hooked on marijuana by selling it in containers with adult cartoon characters on it. Thankfully, even the most staunch supporters of the police called them out on their nonsense. A lot of Rick & Morty fans came out of the woodwork to remind them that it's not a show for kids, too, which was kind of funny. Cops and their organizations are desperate to spook voters and their representatives into making marijuana illegal again.
FpUser 4y ago
>"Only 8% of US prisons are privatized" "Only" - this is some fucked up evaluation. Proud for not yet being an outright slave owner?

dijonman2 4y ago

Nevada receives more money for prisons than they do gambling revenue.

elicash 4y ago

I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every prison is for profit. Private companies are everywhere. There are jails where it's $25 to make a 15-minute phone call (extreme case but widespread problem). Commissary spending being mandatory because people aren't fed enough. Libraries are being replaced with tablets where you pay for e-books (and, until there was controversy around it, even public domain books). In-person visits being scaled-back or in some instances entirely replaced by video calls -- for a price. Just adding money to the account of an incarcerated person costs money. I don't think this is why we do it. But it does financially ruin the families of these incarcerated people.

jjcon 4y ago
> every prison is for profit. Sure... but the alternatives are worse, shifting the financial burden to the innocent public or simply allowing lawlessness. Committing crimes isn't supposed to have a free and easy path back to society.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > Sure... but the alternatives are worse, shifting the financial burden to the innocent public The innocent public is already paying for it. They're just paying for profits, too...
  - jjcon 4y ago
    > The innocent public is already paying for it. So because they are footing part of the bill they might as well just foot the whole thing? non sequitur much? If anything we should be charging prisoners the full cost of their incarceration but in that case even if we paid them minimum wage it wouldn't cover their debt, not by a long shot. At least then people wouldn't falsely equate modern prison systems with slavery, but the imprisoned would be much worse off.
    - IX-103 4y ago
      And that's why insurance should be illegal! If someone gets sick, then let them pay for it. They should have gotten exercise and lived right. If someone's house burns down, they should have fixed the wiring and known better than to have old appliances. Get in a car accident, you should since more carefully. For that matter we should get rid of public police and fire departments. If someone wants that service they can pay for it themselves. /s
      - jjcon 4y ago
        Your comparison makes absolutely zero sense…
        pastacacioepepe 4y ago
        It's your understanding of the world that is very limited. Prisons are not a punitive system, they are public services like police and firefighters and so on.
        jjcon 4y ago
        > Prisons are not a punitive system, they are public services like police and firefighters and so on. What did I say that at all disagreed with prisons being a public service? No shit.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
- FpUser 4y ago
  The alternative is for one to revert that fucked up attitude toward convicts and consider them as people who need help to go back to being normal productive members of society rather than slaves. Yes some of the convicts are a monsters so they would keep being in prisons but the rest will not have to turn into hardened career criminals with fucked up mind and looking for a revenge.
  - jjcon 4y ago
    They played stupid games and they won stupid prizes… that’s the whole idea…
    - FpUser 4y ago
      To the end of their lives? This "whole idea" is an abomination. And whose idea is it anyways, fucking slave owner's?
      - jjcon 4y ago
        > To the end of their lives? Absolutely for plenty of them they deserve nothing less. Society shouldn't have to live with killers and rapists, put them in the ground.
        FpUser 4y ago
        Killers and rapists make a minority of of all crimes so cut the bull.
    - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
      I hope you never have to suffer wrongful incarceration. Or maybe a bit just so you learn how the world works.
      - jjcon 4y ago
        I think you've somehow gotten the victims in this world reversed. Have you ever had something stolen from you? Someone close to you raped beaten or even killed? Maybe a bit of experience in the real world would knock some sense into you. Your bleeding heart for criminals (of all people) is making the world worse for the rest of us. Not that it should have to be said but to be clear... the victims of crimes are the victims... not the criminals.
- elicash 4y ago
  The options are in fact that either these financial burdens are paid either by the families of incarcerated people, or the taxpayer. I vote for the taxpayer. We have this system of putting people in prison for our own safety -- the least we can do if we incarcerate people is to pick up the costs of our own justice system. Ruining the financial lives of their families and of their children isn't the path I favor, personally. We want this justice system we can pay for it.
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  The public should invest as much as possible in the rehabilitation of prisoners. Thinking only about the economic cost is such a stupid simplification of the issue. Having a broken but cheap prison system will have massive societary costs. Much better to spend some taxpayer money to actually have some criminals return healthily to society and start contributing again. By the way there are plenty of real financial burdens on the innocent public, if you know where to look. Maybe we should stop subsidizing the rich with the "innocent public" money?
heavyset_go 4y ago
> I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every prison is for profit. Even publicly owned prisons have to contract out and outsource a lot of the services they need. Private companies supply food, maintenance, cleaning, IT, supplies, construction, architecture and so on. Private companies also benefit from the cheap to free forced labor they get from government-owned prisons, as well. There are layers to the grift that lines the pockets of private interests in the prison industry, and those layers certainly don't end at whether a prison is privately owned or not.

Retric 4y ago

It’s not about lobbing, one for profit prison bribed multiple judges with $2.6 million dollars to send more people their way. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html For profit prisons are simply corrosive to the justice system. Further, even state run prisons are handing out some very lucrative contracts etc.

heavyset_go 4y ago

> The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. Police Benevolent Associations in my state spend millions of dollars every year lobbying the government to repeal marijuana legalization that voters enacted via popular public referendum. It's been several years since legalization, and PBAs are still throwing millions of dollars at making marijuana illegal again, because according to PBAs, marijuana legalization is preventing police from "doing their jobs". The irony, of course, is that it's the job of police to enforce the laws as they are written, and yet law enforcement is spending millions of dollars each year to complain about the fact that they themselves have to actually follow the law. Police are really angry that they can no longer use the made up excuse of "I smell marijuana" as pretext for probable cause to illegally search and detain the people they interact with. What makes it even more perverse is the fact that the current legislation prevents police from arresting and charging kids with drug crimes for petty possession or use of marijuana. A single drug-related arrest, charge or conviction will make students ineligible for federal student loans and education assistance, and can ruin a kid's chances of being able to go to college. Cops have been screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is that they can't "do their jobs" and ruin kids' lives, and their ability to better their lives, for smoking a joint anymore. It's really gross. At one point, a local PBA leader and chief of police tried to start a moral panic by claiming that unscrupulous drug dealers were hiding behind bleechers at little league games trying to sell elementary school students marijuana, all because police found a pot grinder that someone lost that had a Rick & Morty sticker on it. The police claimed that drug dealers were trying to get elementary school kids hooked on marijuana by selling it in containers with adult cartoon characters on it. Thankfully, even the most staunch supporters of the police called them out on their nonsense. A lot of Rick & Morty fans came out of the woodwork to remind them that it's not a show for kids, too, which was kind of funny. Cops and their organizations are desperate to spook voters and their representatives into making marijuana illegal again.

FpUser 4y ago

>"Only 8% of US prisons are privatized" "Only" - this is some fucked up evaluation. Proud for not yet being an outright slave owner?