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Private prisons are an atrocity. That they are 8% does not change that the entirety of that 8% is deriving profit from the suffering of others. Acting like this
by kingkawn 4y ago
Private prisons are an atrocity. That they are 8% does not change that the entirety of that 8% is deriving profit from the suffering of others. Acting like this corrupt practice is an unimportant part of this story is absurd and betrays a deep ignorance of the US prison system’s many different ugly faces.
- kiba 4y agoif there were less prisons in the first place, then there would be less people ending up in jail.
- pyuser583 4y agoOr there would be extreme overcrowding. You can pack quite a few people into an extremely small place when you aren’t concerned about their well-being.
- Rackedup 4y agoThey already aren't very concerned about their well-being... not sure how it would make it any worst...
- pyuser583 4y agoWhere I live there’s basically a two tier system for long term prisoners. Either prisoners are sent to a prison for long term prisoners, or to jail for “short term” prisoners. But many “short term” prisoners include those serving consecutive short term sentences that add up to a lot of time. Jails are the correctional equivalent of a bus station. Not the sort of place you want to live in. Jails aren’t long term facilities, but some prisoners can spend over a decade in them. Even worse than jails is being sent out of state. The state pays out of state prisons and jails to incarcerate our felons. These prisons are money making machines for the states that offer them. The wide variety of conditions we have now prove pretty clearly things could be much better or worse.
- ada1981 4y agoI think private prisons could be a good thing if the right people had the right incentives. Imagine if there were something like recidivism bonds or cooperatively owned prisons, with healthy start-up culture behind it.
- Broken_Hippo 4y agoWhy should people profit off of locking people up against their will?
- ada1981 4y agoWell, I think with the right incentives, we could have better outcomes and save lives. Meaning that with for profit, there is at least a pathway to new ways of doing prison.
- mola 4y agoYeah like kickbacks. This naive view that incentives engineering could somehow fix the fact that a profit oriented creature means that any other value become subjugated to profit. Ppl are amazing at optimizing for stuff, especially stuff you can measure. If you throw away the non tangible values of decency truth fairness freedom, in favor of the very tangible value of money you'll get corporations working hard to maximize their profit in any way imaginable, including twisted lobbying to rewrite the incentives and outright kickbacks. We see this happen again and again and again, and still the "incentive engineers" want to try one more time.
- r-w 4y agoI don’t even know where to start. I guess because we as a society agree that we need protection from each other, that punishment is a thing, and that one of the ways we punish/isolate/shame people for transgressions is prison time? And because, if someone has to do it, then that someone ought to be paid to do it? …not that it’s done properly or humanely though, or that the incentives are commensurate with those ideals. It seems we can’t agree on whether people who have ever shown an ounce of imperfection get to retain their rights. Ah, politics…