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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#391

Post by verall »

chroma wrote: post #385
codedokode wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Then the best strategy would be to make sure that the prisoners die as soon as possible.

Are you suggesting that the private prisons would murder convicts soon after they're released? That's uhh... that's just a little bit illegal and people who commit murder tend to get caught and imprisoned for a very long time. But let's assume that the private prisons could somehow keep getting away with murder . If anyone ever looked at the stats and saw that people released from private prisons had much shorter lif…

> If anyone ever looked at the stats and saw that people released from private prisons had much shorter life expectancy, then convicts would choose state prisons.

No, they would not, because there is huge information asmyettry here and, and generally convicts have lost access to the sorts of publications with this info.

Re: California bans private prisons

#392

Post by fooker »

chroma wrote: post #385
codedokode wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Then the best strategy would be to make sure that the prisoners die as soon as possible.

Are you suggesting that the private prisons would murder convicts soon after they're released? That's uhh... that's just a little bit illegal and people who commit murder tend to get caught and imprisoned for a very long time. But let's assume that the private prisons could somehow keep getting away with murder . If anyone ever looked at the stats and saw that people released from private prisons had much shorter lif…

>Then the private prison's revenue dries up and they go out of business

Eventually. In the meantime ..say.. for about 10 years they make great money.

Re: California bans private prisons

#393

Post by salty_biscuits »

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…

It is a nice idea, but I don't think many private companies are looking that far into the future to figure out where to best get their revenue. They can gamble on something that might not be totally under their control years out into the future, or just try to get more bodies in the prisons now. A ruthless "rational" actor would go for the second option.

Re: California bans private prisons

#394

Post by kazagistar »

chroma wrote: post #154
pavel_lishin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the better solution to these priorities be shrinking down those definitions of crime, and not filling up the prisons we've got, rather than building bigger ones?

Only 1 in 5 prisoners are there for nonviolent drug crimes. You can't reduce the prison population by more than that unless you want to repeal laws against fraud, burglary, rape, assault, or murder. One alternative would be to reduce sentences for those crimes, but good luck getting the public to vote for any politician who would propose such a thing. See https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html for some int…

Or improve policies that lead to lower rates of those crimes.

Re: California bans private prisons

#395

Post by lacampbell »

FoxPaw wrote: post #291
lacampbell wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just a cleaning without x-rays? About $100-300. Dental isn't really indicative of "how expensive health care is" though. Lots of U.S. dental and vision "insurance" plans are really just mandatory subscription plans since their bills are pretty consistent, and anything that might cost more gets you a referral to a hospital. It's when you visit a hospital (voluntarily or via emergency ambulance) that you'll start getti…

Dental isn't really indicative of "how expensive health care is" though.

I'm in good health so I don't have much personal data - dentistry is about the only fully privatized healthcare I access.

Re: California bans private prisons

#396

Post by anarchodev »

vonmoltke wrote: post #209
anarchodev wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw their comment and frankly I think it's a perfectly reasonable sentiment. That objecting to incarceration practices in America is viewed as contributing to a "political flamewar" by the mods here is surprising to me.

"[F]acists" and "concentration camps" are intentionally incendiary and do not promote a constructive discussion. There is nothing reasonable about that wording at all.

These are descriptive terms for what currently exist in the US (and have existed before in the US). If hearing them causes you to feel emotions that don’t allow you to engage in civil discussion I think it’s worth investigating why that is —- not insisting we find less precise terminology.

Re: California bans private prisons

#397

Post by ebiester »

chroma wrote: post #288
abathur wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syste…

You mean like this? https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/08/11/139536686...

Re: California bans private prisons

#398

Post by lacampbell »

droithomme wrote: post #361
lacampbell wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> it costs about 100 USD for a teeth cleaning It's about the same for me in the US, where we also don't have insurance for dentistry in general. Getting a couple stitches on a Sunday on the other hand last ran me a bit over $7500.

I got stitched at a private clinic for about 1/10th that here. I'm in NZ so salaries are a bit lower but cost of living a bit higher.

$7500 seems well out of whack. What kind of gold were the stitches made of!? Surely it could be done for cheaper than that.

Re: California bans private prisons

#399

Post by FireBeyond »

archie2 wrote: post #354
rosser wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trope that wait times are materially worse in single-payer systems is precisely that: a trope. You do not have to dig hard to find examples of wait-times measured in months to get diagnostic procedures scheduled, and where I live — the San Francisco Bay Area — the wait time for an initial consultation with, e.g., a dermatologist has been about the same, for as long as I've lived here. I know doctors who work in h…

That's because California is a terribly run state, and one third of your population is on Medi-Cal. You literally have the same problems as Canada.

Here's me in Washington where I had a severely injured wrist after a car accident, was advised to get PT immediately...

... and had no PT within the county with a I guess we're close to Canada though, so maybe it's contagious?

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