California bans private prisons • Hacker News Board

Re: California bans private prisons

#131

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #127

hanniabu wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FCC under Obama had capped the amount they could charge which was promptly undone with government changes. We see this time and time again. There really needs to be a better protocol for this. It takes so much time and effort to make these laws, yet they can be undone in a heartbeat. It's an inherently flawed system.

These things COULD go through a functioning legislature. Functioning being the key word. When you have one party who outright states that they will stop any and all work in the legislature just because Obama is president, and the citizenry continues to re-elect that party, what else do you do? What else SHOULD you do?

> These things COULD go through a functioning legislature

Which would just make them subject to switching when the legislative majority changed, rather than actually fundamentally changing the situation.

But I'm not sure either is really a problem: otherwise, bad laws would be impervious to change, too. If you want good laws, you have to keep electing good government.

Re: California bans private prisons

#132

Post by SilasX » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #125

SilasX wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. People scream bloody murder about "omg! This means a financial incentive for imprisonment" and then ignore how the exact same thing happens with public prisons, in particular how prison guard organizations pushed for Three Strikes to pad demand for their work -- same dynamic. http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/the_undue_influen... And IMHO is bizarrely inconsistent outrage. Want to make a profit…

Wow bad faith all over the place... People do see problems with all of those, but the only solution to people making a profit from supplying prisons is for there to be no prisons (or for the government to make all the food and clothing soup to nuts, but that'd be crazy). Same with the others the issue with post prison jobs is that they're not enough so hiring them is good and a step down the road to a solution. Refor…

It's deeply confused to see a farm selling food to a prison as some kind of evil. It seems you've dove head-first into an anti-market position that sees any for-profit production as bad, which should be a big red flag.

Hiring a felon should not be regarded as evil, either; just the opposite.

I don't see how it's bad faith to assume activists don't advocate full abolition of markets. If you want to take the position that all profit is evil (or at least is evil if it ever touches any part of the prison system), that just makes your position harder to defend.

Re: California bans private prisons

#133

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

elicash wrote: post #60

rtkwe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's not great but it's a move in the right direction and beyond closing all prisons there will always be a need for vendors to provide goods and services inside prisons. Prisoners need food and clothing at the very least and it'll be bought from someone.

They don't need phone calls in some jails that cost over $20 for 15 minutes. Please don't make excuses for a corrupt system. Yeah, this is a win, but the problem is MASSIVE and in so many different domains. Frankly, you don't seem aware of the many issues that they were hinting at.

Sorry I didn't provide an exhaustive list of all the evils in the prison vendor system I'm aware of. I know about the horrendously expensive phone calls and the move toward video conferencing in place of in person visitation and the massive over charging for commissary items and the nearly slave 'wages' prisoners are paid for jobs they have no option to reject.

I just didn't think I needed to provide an exacting list of thing that will probably always involve a vendor. For example though unless the state gets into growing and preparing all the food from scratch there'll always be a food vendor in place, maybe just a normal food services company but it'll always be bought from someone, similarly for clothes and furniture.

Re: California bans private prisons

#134

Post by djstein » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

>kamala harris hated this

Re: California bans private prisons

#135

Post by maxcan » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

I've always wanted to see a lambda school model for private prisons. they get some share of an inmates future tax revenue but pay a significant penalty if ex-inmates re-offend.

I've reached out to Austen..

Re: California bans private prisons

#136

Post by chongli » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

llarsson wrote: post #24

Good riddance. The whole premise of private, for-profit, prisons has always seemed deeply troubling to me. The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society. That can take years of hard work by the individual, and require assistance from professionals (therapists, teachers, ...). A for-profit company by definition…

The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate

The operative word you used is should. You hold the view that the purpose of justice is rehabilitation, which is one theory of justice. Other popular views are deterrence and retribution.

From what I've observed about the United States, preferences for these competing theories of justice tend to fall along well-trodden political lines. That's why it can be so hard to make the legislative changes that California has just made.

Re: California bans private prisons

#137

Post by OBLIQUE_PILLAR » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #25

cjensen wrote: post #7

The cynic and me sees this as a win... for the prison guards union. It seems to me that whether public or private, prisons should have good, independent oversight. Pretending that the "profit motive" is the biggest issue overlooks the horrific abuses committed by guards in California's public prisons.

You're right. People scream bloody murder about "omg! This means a financial incentive for imprisonment" and then ignore how the exact same thing happens with public prisons, in particular how prison guard organizations pushed for Three Strikes to pad demand for their work -- same dynamic. http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/the_undue_influen... And IMHO is bizarrely inconsistent outrage. Want to make a profit…

I don't know any activists who feel or behave in the way the activists in your comment do.

Re: California bans private prisons

#138

Post by mrnobody_67 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:25 PM UTC

MFLoon wrote: post #42

cjensen wrote: post #7

The cynic and me sees this as a win... for the prison guards union. It seems to me that whether public or private, prisons should have good, independent oversight. Pretending that the "profit motive" is the biggest issue overlooks the horrific abuses committed by guards in California's public prisons.

Not that I've been to prison in California, public or private, but if you look up a guy named Wes Watson on youtube, who recently got out after >10 years in a mix of private and public California prisons, he mentions that the guards at state run prisons were actually much more effective and actually tried to do their job the right way, because they're paid well with state benefits and pensions and such, compared to t…

Look no further than the Mother Jones story where the reporter went undercover as a prison guard -- https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-pri...

Re: California bans private prisons

#139

Post by jedberg » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #21

bnt wrote: post #2

California is on a roll this week, it seems. Can someone local explain what’s going on?

End of legislative session (so a lot of bills that need to either be passed or die are getting final action), the first legislative session under a new governor that is slightly more progressive and much less a believer in relatively narrow focus on policy change at any one time than his predecessor, and a Democratic supermajority.

> and a Democratic supermajority.

This is the key. With Gov Brown, he still had a modicum of temperance that they couldn't override. Now the legislature has carte blanche to do whatever they want, because regardless of the governor, they can override his veto.

Re: California bans private prisons

#140

Post by mindcrime » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #62

llarsson wrote: post #24

Good riddance. The whole premise of private, for-profit, prisons has always seemed deeply troubling to me. The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society. That can take years of hard work by the individual, and require assistance from professionals (therapists, teachers, ...). A for-profit company by definition…

Even in a lot of the more mainstream libertarian literature [1] most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons. Besides, most of these sorts of private/public relationships are unlike other true markets anyway with very little competition and on…

most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons.

FWIW, one should also consider that in a Libertarian system FAR fewer people would be in jail in the first place - perhaps as few as none, since Libertarian ideology is not big on forced imprisonment in the first place. The typical Libertarian view of justice is rooted more in the idea of restitution for damages caused (where applicable) than "punishment".