Here in Brazil criminals riot to be transferred to private prisons because the ones ran by the state are inhuman.
California bans private prisons
161–170 of 646 posts
Re: California bans private prisons
#162I think private prisons could work if: - Convicts could choose whether to be sent to a public or private prison. - Private prisons had financial incentives for post-incarceration behavior. Eg: If their prisoner recidivism rate after 3 years was 10% lower than the average public prison, they would get a 20% bonus. Those changes would create enough competition and align incentives such that we could see some real innov…
> If their prisoner recidivism rate after 3 years was 10% lower than the average public prison, they would get a 20% bonus.
Ah, so the people who profit off of others' misery would be able to profit even further if they treat prisoners like human beings? Great incentive indeed.
> If someone ever proposes such a system, they'll be branded a supporter of "private prisons".
You propose such a system and I don't see how you are not supporting private prisons, so yeah.
But, lets be charitable and assume you don't really mean to support private prisons and are just interested in the well being of inmates, and you'd like to motivate the prison company to do the right thing. How about a structure where they don't make any profit whatsoever (state only covers costs) unless, say, 50 year recidivism rate is below 2%? If that was my company, I'd move heaven and earth to make sure every prisoner left that place an angel. Would you support that motion?
Re: California bans private prisons
#163>Servin said that while the new law was a significant victory, there was one other thing immigrants rights groups were concerned about. When several sheriffs’ departments canceled their contracts to house Ice detainees last year, instead of freeing the detainees, Ice moved many of them to prisons in Colorado and Hawaii. Is this something that people against private prisons believe...that they just release all the pri…
> Is this something that people against private prisons believe...that they just release all the prisoners when they close the prison? There are a few different strains of thought when it comes to opposition to private prisons, but I believe the common denominator is that they create a perverse incentive. They turn prisons into businesses—the more prisoners, the better. So while there are definitely people who want t…
Prison profits are spent lobbying for tougher crime laws. Thus, unnecessarily harsh criminalization of behavior has a strong economic incentive. Having an incentive to turn citizens into criminals is bad for society.
Re: California bans private prisons
#164These John Oliver docs were very illuminating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJtYRxH5G2k
Re: California bans private prisons
#165I'm sure there's at least a few free market purists that will decry this move as it removes competition from the market, but this happens to be one instance where public prisons actually cost less on average than when outsourced to the private market [0]
[0] https://www.criminaljusticeprograms.com/articles/private-pri...
Re: California bans private prisons
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hahaha yea right, that problem is actually hard. Cleaning up straws is much easier.
That sort of cynicism is needless. Considering that this thread is about private prisons, a very serious issue, bringing up a literal straw man is disingenuous and completely unnecessary.
It's not a strawman argument if that's really what they are spending time on that should be spent addressing far more important issues like homelessness. They shouldn't spend 1 second talking about an issue so meaningless on the list of issues they need to tackle. If you can't see that they are grabbing at low hanging fruit so that they can say they accomplished something then I think you might be a bit naive. A ban is literally the easiest cop-out for legislatures to do. No deep thinking required to blanket ban everything you don't like or perceive as problematic.
Re: California bans private prisons
#167Honestly, it's a bit of a red herring.. nothing is going to change from a criminal justice perspective. Less than 10% of incarcerated people are held in private prisons. But even more importantly, there are still so many private contractors / unions in the (public/private) prison industry that this ban won't really affect policies or outcomes going forward.. private interests will almost always exist in it that have…
Well, you wouldn't have things like the Kids for Cash scandal as likely to occur.
https://nypost.com/2014/02/23/film-details-teens-struggles-i...
Re: California bans private prisons
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal experience tells me that in federal prison you get 300 minutes a month. You pay 26 cents a minute for long distance. There's legit virtual phone tech businesses that service the families of those incarcerated. You get it dropped down to 6 cents a minute......... That 15 minute maximum includes a mandatory waste of 38 seconds of a recorded message telling the receiver that the person on the other end of the l…
Are you writing this comment from prison? What's the internet access like?
No. I'm writing it from my desk at my place of employment. I went to the privately owned halfway house in May of 2019. I get released to probation in October of 2019.
Internet access is non-existent without a cell phone. The higher up in security level you go the harder it is to get a cell phone. Camps at Fort Dix, Petersburg, Morgantown, etc. without a fence.. they're readily available for anywhere from 100-300 USD. A low that has an attached camp a little harder and more expensive. A low with a fence you're looking at maybe 1,000+ USD. Beyond that good luck. These are the shitty prepaid 30 dollar Android phones. Get caught with a cell phone you'll lose up to 200 days of good time and get an automatic shipment (through the horrible OKC facility...) to the next security level. Camp -> Low -> Medium -> High.
General rule at a camp is expect to pay 4x the street price for anything you want. Multiplier gets to be more like 5x-7x if it's something bulky and unusual.
Re: California bans private prisons
#169I would recommend you do some research on this topic. Your giving a talking point produced by mainstream talking heads. When in fact, research points to private prisons being better at dropping incarceration rates through the programs offered at them. Therefore increasing ones chance at correct rehabilitation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249718665_A_Compara...
Please don't repeat the same comment multiple times. It lowers the signal/noise ratio.
Re: California bans private prisons
#170I think private prisons could work if: - Convicts could choose whether to be sent to a public or private prison. - Private prisons had financial incentives for post-incarceration behavior. Eg: If their prisoner recidivism rate after 3 years was 10% lower than the average public prison, they would get a 20% bonus. Those changes would create enough competition and align incentives such that we could see some real innov…
> If their prisoner recidivism rate after 3 years was 10% lower than the average public prison, they would get a 20% bonus. Ah, so the people who profit off of others' misery would be able to profit even further if they treat prisoners like human beings? Great incentive indeed. > If someone ever proposes such a system, they'll be branded a supporter of "private prisons". You propose such a system and I don't see how…
If the incentives you proposed were enacted, there would be no private prisons because any company that tried would go bankrupt. (Unless you mean that the state would cover any costs incurred by the private prison, in which case you'd just get prisons run by grifters.)
California's state-run prisons have a recidivism rate of 65% within 3 years. A 2% rate of conviction over 50 years is lower than the population of non-convicts. It's not possible for any organization to accomplish that. Also, the company would have to wait 50 years for payout. Even if that payout is with interest, 50 years is beyond the time horizons of most governments, let alone companies.