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Private prisons skim off the folks who are cheap to house -- not usually the hard time and dangerous inmates so they are set up for profit making. States experience prison overcrowding because they incarcerate too many people for too long -- drug and DWI offenders clog the system. The criminal justice system has less to do with actual justice and more to do with propelling offenders into incarceration...read your state's criminal code. Private prisons offer a choice between continuing to lock people up as usual or creating and using effective alternatives to incarceration. I was involved in rewriting a state's criminal code and it was a struggle to keep the process from being hijacked by politicians and prosecutors who had a vested interest in being tough on crime and locking people up.
There needs to be more oversight of private prisons- not just for how prisoners are housed and treated but the administration, hiring, and contracting -- this is tax payers' money.
I'm not even sure if private prisons should exist. Contrary to what Libertarians think, the free market won't handle everything. If there's no profit, it won't do it. In order for private prisons to be profitable, there will always need to be X amount of prisoners. Unfortunately, they'll always want higher. We have 2 million incarcerated, at least half for non-violent crimes.
American needs to smarten up. Tough on crime is not a sustainable policy. Smart on crime is what will benefit us more, but Americans are brainwashed.
Half to say, the fear of communism is alive and well and we don't even realize we're building gulags in our own backyard. Such a naive populace.
I'll ignore the fact that this question doesn't actually address what I was saying...
Down. Technically. Recidivism rates are still unreasonably high. If our tough on crime approach is so effective, why are at least half of those released coming back? And to contrast, countries like Norway, who we'd say are too soft on criminals, have 20% recidivism; the lowest in the world.
So that right there suggests which system is better; the smart approach over the tough approach.
But if we restrict crime to things that should actually be crimes, crime rates have been dropping long before the tough on crime policy came into existence in the 70s. Drug crimes have gone up, or at least the penalty for which they receive.
So yeah, our approach is unsustainable, or if not that, the exact opposite of justice. But go ahead and listen to what the government says. Because they're clearly not invested in lying about this.
Privatized prisons are the new Republican solution. In fact, presidential candidate Marco Rubio has benefited financially more than any other from GEO, the country's second largest prison for profit company.
Showing just how important these policies are to the private prison industry, both GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America have warned shareholders that changes in these policies would hurt their bottom lines. In its 2014 annual report, CCA wrote:
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 our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. … Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior.
You have private prison companies that want to continue the drug war because they gain financially from it.
"...privatization created the atmosphere that made the “Kids For Cash” scandal possible, in which two Pennsylvania judges received $2.6 million in kickbacks from for-profit juvenile detention centers for sending more kids to the facilities and with unusually long sentences."
...that America is now the world's biggest jailer.
Way back when I was in school (50s and 60s) I recall our teachers telling us that a big reason the USA was so much better than Russia and China was the fact that they imprisoned so many of their people, but America wasn't a police state like them.
How lovely. Ignores everything else. The ends justify the means. The worst philosophy the world has ever seen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by T-310
Critical thought? Don't break laws, don't go to prison. How is that akin to nazism?
Talk about no regard for a simple solution to problems liberals scratch their heads over.
It's not Nazism specifically. It's authoritarian statism. You're so absorbed by the government that to you, morality and ethics don't matter at all; only what the law says.
That's what statists do.
So I'll ask this: why should the government be big enough to tell it's citizens they can't use certain drugs, like marijuana? Are you pro-individual freedom or a statist?
How is this not "corporatism"? Why are conservatives behind this? They say it doesn't matter but when they get sentenced to six months jail for peeing the street (being facetious but you get the point) they'll see how this impacts freedom and liberty.
Sometimes I think cons think they only real freedom is the freedom to make money. Every other right is spurious.
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It's worked out SO well...
