4 ms·

Problem here is prison capacity. U.S. needs a very large, cheap, ideally profitable imprisonment system to keep all those people in - akin to Soviet gulags. Oth

Problem here is prison capacity. U.S. needs a very large, cheap, ideally profitable imprisonment system to keep all those people in - akin to Soviet gulags. Otherwise catch-and-release is unavoidable unless you just machinegun them - prisons are already overloaded and are extremely expensive to maintain.

anonym29 2y ago
The "ideally profitable" part you're looking for are called "private prisons", and they come with a host of side effects that are nothing short of horrific. When a corporation becomes incentivized to strip people of their freedom (regardless of whether they do it correctly or incorrectly), bad outcomes occur.
- anovikov 2y ago
  Why corporations? They need to be state-run, of course, with all employees being public servants directly. And prisoners need to make government money by building roads, houses, etc. Most of them can never be released anyway, too dangerous when young and too sick/needing too much in the way of medical expenses, when old.
  - anonym29 2y ago
    At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits that do not generate profits. Additionally, what you're proposing is incredibly optimistic from the perspective of how much economic utility prisoners actually have. The median state's average cost of housing a prisoner is about $65,000 a year, with wealthy coastal states like CA, WA, NYC costing over $100,000 per prisoner per year. [1] It's a sad economic reality, but many of the people in these prisons aren't even economically capable of producing output that has a market value even meeting the costs it takes it house them, let alone exceeding it, with the exceptions being largely concentrated in the minimum security prisons where white collar criminals and executives are housed (think Martin Shkreli, Bernie Madoff, etc), though you obviously can't ask people like that to perform the same kind of economically productive work that enticed them to get themselves sent to prison in the first place, if that were even possible (would you invest any of your money in a hedge fund that had a CEO working from prison for fraud?). [1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-prisons/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-pr...
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      > At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits that do not generate profits. Gosh, it's almost like the state is spending tax money to help its citizens! The horror!
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    Amazing. I think you're being sarcastic, but this is Hacker News, so of course people are engaging with you as if you're being serious because this is considered a perfectly reasonable opinion here.
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
      This is the internet. Coming across unreasonable opinions is not rare. Because sarcasm is hard to convey in text form I think it's better to assume all comments are made sincerely. What makes you think they are being sarcastic?
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        Optimism.

anonym29 2y ago

The "ideally profitable" part you're looking for are called "private prisons", and they come with a host of side effects that are nothing short of horrific. When a corporation becomes incentivized to strip people of their freedom (regardless of whether they do it correctly or incorrectly), bad outcomes occur.

anovikov 2y ago
Why corporations? They need to be state-run, of course, with all employees being public servants directly. And prisoners need to make government money by building roads, houses, etc. Most of them can never be released anyway, too dangerous when young and too sick/needing too much in the way of medical expenses, when old.
- anonym29 2y ago
  At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits that do not generate profits. Additionally, what you're proposing is incredibly optimistic from the perspective of how much economic utility prisoners actually have. The median state's average cost of housing a prisoner is about $65,000 a year, with wealthy coastal states like CA, WA, NYC costing over $100,000 per prisoner per year. [1] It's a sad economic reality, but many of the people in these prisons aren't even economically capable of producing output that has a market value even meeting the costs it takes it house them, let alone exceeding it, with the exceptions being largely concentrated in the minimum security prisons where white collar criminals and executives are housed (think Martin Shkreli, Bernie Madoff, etc), though you obviously can't ask people like that to perform the same kind of economically productive work that enticed them to get themselves sent to prison in the first place, if that were even possible (would you invest any of your money in a hedge fund that had a CEO working from prison for fraud?). [1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-prisons/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-pr...
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    > At least in the US, pretty much everything that is state-run, including state-run companies (like Fannie and Freddie) are notorious for being massive money pits that do not generate profits. Gosh, it's almost like the state is spending tax money to help its citizens! The horror!
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Amazing. I think you're being sarcastic, but this is Hacker News, so of course people are engaging with you as if you're being serious because this is considered a perfectly reasonable opinion here.
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    This is the internet. Coming across unreasonable opinions is not rare. Because sarcasm is hard to convey in text form I think it's better to assume all comments are made sincerely. What makes you think they are being sarcastic?
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      Optimism.