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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#281

Post by bborud »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #276
jorblumesea wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems They've been told socialized medicine is evil communist plot to steal their hard earned money. Many Americans have not been outside of the states and have no concept of what life in other countries might be like. There's a good percentage of Americans that are completely ignorant of how the rest of the world does things, and also dism…

Your comment seems flatly accurate and yet you get downvoted. I still can’t understand this phenomenon.

I think he points out why: people don’t know any better.

Re: California bans private prisons

#282

Post by a1369209993 »

ary wrote: post #172
thatswrong0 wrote: post #39

Honestly, 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…

Just a reminder that approximately 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. 10% of 2.2 million is 220,000 , and that is 220,000 more people than deserve to be a human sacrifice to a corporation and its bottom line.

Uh, no, that's 2.2 million (or possibly 2.42 million) more people than deserve to be a human sacrifice to a corporation and its bottom line.

Re: California bans private prisons

#283

Post by NortySpock »

lacampbell wrote: post #272
etaty wrote: post #179

Just for fun, same sentence on health care. > I'm so happy about this. Private health care insure are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum health care coverage in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as clients). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent on research and…

How expensive is health care in the US? IE, in my country dentistry is fully private, and it costs about 100 USD for a teeth cleaning. How much is that in America?

Dentistry is private with some insurance options in the US, and I (in the suburbs of a large city in the Midwest) would have paid about $100 for a teeth cleaning had my dental insurance not paid for it. (My dental insurance is about $25 a month and covers most of major oral surgery if needed. My root canal cost about $350 with insurance recently)

Re: California bans private prisons

#285

Post by kenhwang »

arcticbull wrote: post #207
etaty wrote: post #179

Just for fun, same sentence on health care. > I'm so happy about this. Private health care insure are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum health care coverage in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as clients). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent on research and…

Yes, I'm also in favor of socialized medicine for basically exactly these reasons. Shocker, I know. The system works! I grew up in socialized medicine, and you get sick, you go to the hospital, they treat you and you leave. There's no step 4. Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.

There's a choice component to health. Sure, you can lose the genetic or environmental lottery and just be unhealthy.

Or you can choose to be unhealthy. Smoking, drinking, drugs, poor diet, lack of exercise. These are by far the biggest contributors to healthcare cost and they cost absolutely nothing to prevent. Many people just don't take responsibility for their health, and many others in the US don't like the idea of subsidizing other people's healthcare for preventable or self-inflicted health complications.

edit: I actually do have access to one of the best single payer systems in the world due to dual citizenship. Single-payer is far from the perfect silver bullet everyone likes to sell it as.

Re: California bans private prisons

#286

Post by randiantech »

Wondering from where it comes the optimism in this thread for this ban. Ive traveled to more than 40 countries, and lived for some time in 5, all of them with public prison monopolies. In all of them the prison systems turn to be terrible. And by terrible, I mean that the US prisons look like 5 stars hotels compared to them. For reference, I was in most south american and caribbean countries, Spain, Portugal among others.

Re: California bans private prisons

#287

Post by archie2 »

arcticbull wrote: post #207
etaty wrote: post #179

Just for fun, same sentence on health care. > I'm so happy about this. Private health care insure are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum health care coverage in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as clients). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent on research and…

Yes, I'm also in favor of socialized medicine for basically exactly these reasons. Shocker, I know. The system works! I grew up in socialized medicine, and you get sick, you go to the hospital, they treat you and you leave. There's no step 4. Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.

There is a step 4: pay exorbitant tax rates.

Re: California bans private prisons

#288

Post by chroma »

abathur wrote: post #232
chroma wrote: post #109

I 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…

A caveat, first: I think two of our larger-scale social issues are that incentives are often misaligned with the outcomes we actually want, and that we don't create structural room for innovation. That said, I think this is still pretty fraught. Incentives are just rules enforced with a carrot instead of a stick; we're just as likely to come up with bad incentives as we are to develop ineffective regulations and writ…

Please notice how far afield you had to go to postulate bad outcomes. For your scenario to play out, the people running private prisons must commit some pretty egregious crimes. Can you imagine the chutzpah of someone who tries to bribe a judge?! That's practically instant, guaranteed jail time. Judges only get bribed when judges ask for bribes.

If you applied this same level of scrutiny to the existing prison system, I'm sure you could come up with far worse outcomes using far less speculation. For example: What's to stop state prison guards from torturing inmates? Answer: Nothing, because they have qualified immunity.[1]

1. https://www.newsweek.com/prison-inmate-qualified-immunity-pr...

Re: California bans private prisons

#289

Post by dictum »

arcticbull wrote: post #207
etaty wrote: post #179

Just for fun, same sentence on health care. > I'm so happy about this. Private health care insure are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum health care coverage in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as clients). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent on research and…

Yes, I'm also in favor of socialized medicine for basically exactly these reasons. Shocker, I know. The system works! I grew up in socialized medicine, and you get sick, you go to the hospital, they treat you and you leave. There's no step 4. Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.

> Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2911271-america-and-am...

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