9 ms·

Columbia becomes the first US university to divest from private prison companies

278 points by shill 11y ago

jflatow 11y ago
Interesting article, but the first graph is one of the most blatantly misleading charts I have seen in a long time. Showing two graphs overlapping on completely different scales is a really nasty trick.
- adamrt 11y ago
  Extremely. Also, it looks like they picked random years for the data points as well. They cross in 2010 like it has some significance.
  - jflatow 11y ago
    Right, good point - when you choose arbitrary scales you can make them cross whenever you want.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Interesting article, but the first graph is one of the most blatantly misleading charts I have seen in a long time. Showing two graphs overlapping on completely different scales is a really nasty trick. They are the same in 2010 because that's where the graph starts. The rest of the graph should be interpreted as "cumulative growth as of $DATE, relative to 2010". This is actually a common way of presenting two stocks. I believe Google Finance does it. Search for any ticker symbol (e.g. GOOG) and then type in another where it says "compare" (e.g. TWTR). No matter how far back you pull the graph, the leftmost points on each line will always overlap. I agree that it's a bit weird if you're not used to it.
  - jflatow 11y ago
    I don't think so - in Google Finance compare both graphs are actually on the same scale. Since the scales here are independent, it depends on the chosen scale where they will cross. The graphs do not start in 2010, they start in 2000.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Interestingly, I think it would be more illustrative of their point if they presented the graphs in some normalized form (such as percentage increase). The private inmate population has risen ~48% (~89k to ~132k) over that time period, while the total inmate population has risen ~14% (~1.95m to ~2.22m).
Blackthorn 11y ago
While this is great news, I challenge Columbia to do one better. My own alma mater, Bard College, created a program called the Bard Prison Initiative. This program teaches college courses for college credit to incarcerated prisoners in the state of New York, ultimately awarding either Associates or Bachelors degrees from Bard College. Education for prisoners is important from both a moral and economic perspective, dramatically reducing recidivism as well as saving money (a $1 investment in prison education reduces incarceration costs by $3-$4 in the first three years of an inmate's release[1]). This is a great first step but it is not enough to simply not support the prison industry. There are proven steps that can be taken here to reduce recidivism and help society. Despite this, the Bard Prison Initiative is chronically underfunded despite support by governor Cuomo due to politicians not wanting to appear soft on crime. Columbia is a much wealthier university than Bard College, so I challenge them to join Bard in their initiative. [1] http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departments-announce-new-research-showing-prison-education-reduces http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departme...
- JesperRavn 11y ago
  It's not mentioned in the article but Columbia also has a very progressive hiring policy to help people get jobs after prison. For example, they hired convicted murderer and terrorist Cathy Boudin as an adjunct professor[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin
  - afarrell 11y ago
    I cannot tell from your comment if that was snarky or genuine because I know nothing about Ms. Boudin.
    - timboslice 11y ago
      Wiki summary: In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York. After Boudin dropped her infant son off at a babysitter's, she took the wheel of the getaway vehicle, a U-Haul truck. She waited in a nearby parking lot as her heavily armed accomplices took another vehicle to a local mall where the Brink's truck was making a pick-up. They confronted the guards and gunfire immediately broke out, severely wounding guard Joe Trombino and killing his partner, Peter Paige. The four then took $1.6 million in cash and rejoined Boudin. An alert college student called the police after spotting the gang abandoning their vehicle and entering the U-Haul. Two policeman spotted and pulled over the U-Haul, but they were expecting black males, and could only see Boudin - a white female - in the driver's seat. She got out of the cab, and raised her hands. Another police car with two officers quickly arrived on the scene. The police officers who caught them testified that Boudin, feigning innocence, pleaded with them to put down their guns and got them to drop their guard; Boudin said she remained silent, that the officers relaxed spontaneously. After the police lowered their guns, six men armed with automatic weapons emerged from the back of the truck, and began firing upon the four police officers, one of whom, Waverly Brown, was killed instantly. Officer Edward O'Grady lived long enough to empty his revolver, but as he reloaded, he was shot several times with an M16 rifle. Ninety minutes later, he died in the hospital.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
andrewstuart 11y ago
If the futile and counter productive prohibition of drugs comes to an end then all those prisons won't be needed.
- wtvanhest 11y ago
  Drug sentences are only part of the problem. Many violent and non-violent crimes carry far greater sentences than they did in the 1970s. Extremely high sentences do several bad things, first, they normalize giving extremely high sentences so relatively a 3 year sentence seems low, when in reality, that is nearly 5% of someone's life. Second, large sentences force otherwise innocent people to plea out of charges because the risk is simply too high.
- shill 11y ago
  The Corrections Corporation of America noted this as a risk factor in their 2011 10-K filing. "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws." Source: http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?filingid=7753684&tabindex=2&type=html http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?f...
dsinsky 11y ago
Is there any reason to believe that private prisons are significantly worse than publicly run prisons? I agree that the U.S. is badly in need of major reforms in its criminal justice system, but is there any reason to believe that society is better off with exclusively publicly run prisons? Private prisons may do some regrettable lobbying on behalf of longer prison sentences, but I'm pretty sure that the corrections officers unions (most of whose membership works in publicly run prisons) is a far stronger political force. It seems as though the students' activist energy would have been better used fighting the policies of mass incarceration rather than the private companies who do the government's bidding in applying them.
- serf 11y ago
  Private companies have a greater motivation to maximize profits than public entities do. The problems stem from that. That is more or less the ACLU's opinion, as well. https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-solution https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-so...
  - dsinsky 11y ago
    >> Private companies have a greater motivation to maximize profits than public entities do. Corrections officers unions have strong motivations to keep prison populations high as well and unions tend to be stronger in the public sector than the private sector so its not obvious that private prisons increase the aggregate political pressure for high prison sentences. http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-california-s-prison-guards-subvert-democracy http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-califor... >> The problems stem from that. This seems like a serious inversion of cause and effect. Our problems with prisons pre-dated the growth in private prisons and private prisons remain a small fraction of the overall prison industry so its hard to see how private prisons could be the primary source of the problem.
    - lotso 11y ago
      >Corrections officers unions have strong motivations to keep prison populations high as well and unions tend to be stronger in the public sector than the private sector so its not obvious that private prisons increase the aggregate political pressure for high prison sentences. It's not about prison sentences. It's about the poor conditions of private prisons and the rampant abuse there.
slg 11y ago
While I admire the motivation, everything I have seen has stated divestment doesn't have much of an economic impact. If these companies are profitable, they will still be profitable. In fact, the profits will end up being concentrated with less morally minded investors, which can make the problem even worse. A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction. However if the only stockholders left put profit above all other motivations, the company has less and less incentive to make morally sound decisions.
- icanhackit 11y ago
  If these companies are profitable, they will still be profitable. Until it becomes politically untenable to provide contracts to these companies or make laws that fuel the industry. A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction. Why would you hold stock in something if the morals you wish to champion will make it less profitable or non-existent? Better to drop that cash in something like renewables which are going to see growth for decades to come and give you warm fuzzies at the same time. There's also the press angle: Press: You invest in private prisons University: But we do so with good intentions, we wish to improve the... Public: Ugh, too many words. These guys are clearly jerks.
  - slg 11y ago
    You have a valid point. It doesn't make sense for a single investor to actively work against their financial interests by devaluing stock they own. But that shouldn't necessarily hold true for institutional investors, especially a university like Columbia that already has a multi billion dollar endowment and doesn't have the financial pressure to be forced to make the most profitable decisions. For example, PETA owns SeaWorld shares for the purpose of attending and protesting the company at their stockholder meetings. PETA would be perfectly happy to lose their investment and they would just attribute that as the cost of accomplishing their mission. Really divestment is the no man's land between working for change and supporting the status quo. Instead of doing good, Columbia just decided to stop doing bad.
    - 11y ago
cperkins 11y ago
Nice work, Colombia. I hope that others follow suit. And maybe the awareness around this issue will then lead to a discussion of the high human cost of the War on Drugs, the greatest burden borne by our citizens of color. And maybe that will cause us to revisit our criminal justice system and end the war on drugs. Private prisons are a symptom, not a cause. For a better understanding of the forces leading to prison privitization and a myriad of other woes and injustices I _strongly_ recommend reading "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander.
- adamnemecek 11y ago
  Colombia != Columbia
tempodox 11y ago
That makes a Plus in my book for Columbia. And I thank the students who set this in motion with their protests.
chrisgd 11y ago
I don't understand why this matters? In every transaction, there is a buyer and a seller. Even if Columbia divests, someone else is buying in. The bigger impact is if no one buys newly issued equity. The biggest impact is stopping them from collecting revenue, i.e. stopping the government from having privately run, for-profit prisons.
wahsd 11y ago
The thing about this is that as long as there is a private prison industry, or really any privatization of fundamental government functions, that makes profits, there will be investors that will replace anyone who makes some moral investment decisions. I laud their efforts and there really should be more of these ethical decisions in investment by public organizations, but reality is those choices are simply a symptom of moral people compensating for the moral depravity of our own government.
njharman 11y ago
Guess I was naive. Assumed few to no universities invested in prisons...

278 points by shill 11y ago

Interesting article, but the first graph is one of the most blatantly misleading charts I have seen in a long time. Showing two graphs overlapping on completely different scales is a really nasty trick.

adamrt 11y ago
Extremely. Also, it looks like they picked random years for the data points as well. They cross in 2010 like it has some significance.
- jflatow 11y ago
  Right, good point - when you choose arbitrary scales you can make them cross whenever you want.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> Interesting article, but the first graph is one of the most blatantly misleading charts I have seen in a long time. Showing two graphs overlapping on completely different scales is a really nasty trick. They are the same in 2010 because that's where the graph starts. The rest of the graph should be interpreted as "cumulative growth as of $DATE, relative to 2010". This is actually a common way of presenting two stocks. I believe Google Finance does it. Search for any ticker symbol (e.g. GOOG) and then type in another where it says "compare" (e.g. TWTR). No matter how far back you pull the graph, the leftmost points on each line will always overlap. I agree that it's a bit weird if you're not used to it.
- jflatow 11y ago
  I don't think so - in Google Finance compare both graphs are actually on the same scale. Since the scales here are independent, it depends on the chosen scale where they will cross. The graphs do not start in 2010, they start in 2000.
kbenson 11y ago
Interestingly, I think it would be more illustrative of their point if they presented the graphs in some normalized form (such as percentage increase). The private inmate population has risen ~48% (~89k to ~132k) over that time period, while the total inmate population has risen ~14% (~1.95m to ~2.22m).

Blackthorn 11y ago

While this is great news, I challenge Columbia to do one better. My own alma mater, Bard College, created a program called the Bard Prison Initiative. This program teaches college courses for college credit to incarcerated prisoners in the state of New York, ultimately awarding either Associates or Bachelors degrees from Bard College. Education for prisoners is important from both a moral and economic perspective, dramatically reducing recidivism as well as saving money (a $1 investment in prison education reduces incarceration costs by $3-$4 in the first three years of an inmate's release[1]). This is a great first step but it is not enough to simply not support the prison industry. There are proven steps that can be taken here to reduce recidivism and help society. Despite this, the Bard Prison Initiative is chronically underfunded despite support by governor Cuomo due to politicians not wanting to appear soft on crime. Columbia is a much wealthier university than Bard College, so I challenge them to join Bard in their initiative. [1] http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departments-announce-new-research-showing-prison-education-reduces http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-and-education-departme...

JesperRavn 11y ago
It's not mentioned in the article but Columbia also has a very progressive hiring policy to help people get jobs after prison. For example, they hired convicted murderer and terrorist Cathy Boudin as an adjunct professor[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin
- afarrell 11y ago
  I cannot tell from your comment if that was snarky or genuine because I know nothing about Ms. Boudin.
  - timboslice 11y ago
    Wiki summary: In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York. After Boudin dropped her infant son off at a babysitter's, she took the wheel of the getaway vehicle, a U-Haul truck. She waited in a nearby parking lot as her heavily armed accomplices took another vehicle to a local mall where the Brink's truck was making a pick-up. They confronted the guards and gunfire immediately broke out, severely wounding guard Joe Trombino and killing his partner, Peter Paige. The four then took $1.6 million in cash and rejoined Boudin. An alert college student called the police after spotting the gang abandoning their vehicle and entering the U-Haul. Two policeman spotted and pulled over the U-Haul, but they were expecting black males, and could only see Boudin - a white female - in the driver's seat. She got out of the cab, and raised her hands. Another police car with two officers quickly arrived on the scene. The police officers who caught them testified that Boudin, feigning innocence, pleaded with them to put down their guns and got them to drop their guard; Boudin said she remained silent, that the officers relaxed spontaneously. After the police lowered their guns, six men armed with automatic weapons emerged from the back of the truck, and began firing upon the four police officers, one of whom, Waverly Brown, was killed instantly. Officer Edward O'Grady lived long enough to empty his revolver, but as he reloaded, he was shot several times with an M16 rifle. Ninety minutes later, he died in the hospital.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

andrewstuart 11y ago

If the futile and counter productive prohibition of drugs comes to an end then all those prisons won't be needed.

wtvanhest 11y ago
Drug sentences are only part of the problem. Many violent and non-violent crimes carry far greater sentences than they did in the 1970s. Extremely high sentences do several bad things, first, they normalize giving extremely high sentences so relatively a 3 year sentence seems low, when in reality, that is nearly 5% of someone's life. Second, large sentences force otherwise innocent people to plea out of charges because the risk is simply too high.
shill 11y ago
The Corrections Corporation of America noted this as a risk factor in their 2011 10-K filing. "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws." Source: http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?filingid=7753684&tabindex=2&type=html http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?f...

dsinsky 11y ago

Is there any reason to believe that private prisons are significantly worse than publicly run prisons? I agree that the U.S. is badly in need of major reforms in its criminal justice system, but is there any reason to believe that society is better off with exclusively publicly run prisons? Private prisons may do some regrettable lobbying on behalf of longer prison sentences, but I'm pretty sure that the corrections officers unions (most of whose membership works in publicly run prisons) is a far stronger political force. It seems as though the students' activist energy would have been better used fighting the policies of mass incarceration rather than the private companies who do the government's bidding in applying them.

serf 11y ago
Private companies have a greater motivation to maximize profits than public entities do. The problems stem from that. That is more or less the ACLU's opinion, as well. https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-solution https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-so...
- dsinsky 11y ago
  >> Private companies have a greater motivation to maximize profits than public entities do. Corrections officers unions have strong motivations to keep prison populations high as well and unions tend to be stronger in the public sector than the private sector so its not obvious that private prisons increase the aggregate political pressure for high prison sentences. http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-california-s-prison-guards-subvert-democracy http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-califor... >> The problems stem from that. This seems like a serious inversion of cause and effect. Our problems with prisons pre-dated the growth in private prisons and private prisons remain a small fraction of the overall prison industry so its hard to see how private prisons could be the primary source of the problem.
  - lotso 11y ago
    >Corrections officers unions have strong motivations to keep prison populations high as well and unions tend to be stronger in the public sector than the private sector so its not obvious that private prisons increase the aggregate political pressure for high prison sentences. It's not about prison sentences. It's about the poor conditions of private prisons and the rampant abuse there.

slg 11y ago

While I admire the motivation, everything I have seen has stated divestment doesn't have much of an economic impact. If these companies are profitable, they will still be profitable. In fact, the profits will end up being concentrated with less morally minded investors, which can make the problem even worse. A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction. However if the only stockholders left put profit above all other motivations, the company has less and less incentive to make morally sound decisions.

icanhackit 11y ago
If these companies are profitable, they will still be profitable. Until it becomes politically untenable to provide contracts to these companies or make laws that fuel the industry. A moral stockholder can help drive the company in a moral direction. Why would you hold stock in something if the morals you wish to champion will make it less profitable or non-existent? Better to drop that cash in something like renewables which are going to see growth for decades to come and give you warm fuzzies at the same time. There's also the press angle: Press: You invest in private prisons University: But we do so with good intentions, we wish to improve the... Public: Ugh, too many words. These guys are clearly jerks.
- slg 11y ago
  You have a valid point. It doesn't make sense for a single investor to actively work against their financial interests by devaluing stock they own. But that shouldn't necessarily hold true for institutional investors, especially a university like Columbia that already has a multi billion dollar endowment and doesn't have the financial pressure to be forced to make the most profitable decisions. For example, PETA owns SeaWorld shares for the purpose of attending and protesting the company at their stockholder meetings. PETA would be perfectly happy to lose their investment and they would just attribute that as the cost of accomplishing their mission. Really divestment is the no man's land between working for change and supporting the status quo. Instead of doing good, Columbia just decided to stop doing bad.
  - 11y ago

cperkins 11y ago

Nice work, Colombia. I hope that others follow suit. And maybe the awareness around this issue will then lead to a discussion of the high human cost of the War on Drugs, the greatest burden borne by our citizens of color. And maybe that will cause us to revisit our criminal justice system and end the war on drugs. Private prisons are a symptom, not a cause. For a better understanding of the forces leading to prison privitization and a myriad of other woes and injustices I _strongly_ recommend reading "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander.

adamnemecek 11y ago
Colombia != Columbia

tempodox 11y ago

That makes a Plus in my book for Columbia. And I thank the students who set this in motion with their protests.

chrisgd 11y ago

I don't understand why this matters? In every transaction, there is a buyer and a seller. Even if Columbia divests, someone else is buying in. The bigger impact is if no one buys newly issued equity. The biggest impact is stopping them from collecting revenue, i.e. stopping the government from having privately run, for-profit prisons.

wahsd 11y ago

The thing about this is that as long as there is a private prison industry, or really any privatization of fundamental government functions, that makes profits, there will be investors that will replace anyone who makes some moral investment decisions. I laud their efforts and there really should be more of these ethical decisions in investment by public organizations, but reality is those choices are simply a symptom of moral people compensating for the moral depravity of our own government.

njharman 11y ago

Guess I was naive. Assumed few to no universities invested in prisons...