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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#421

Post by arcticbull »

archie2 wrote: post #297
c0nducktr wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. Americans spend twice as much for healthcare as other first world countries.

The US government already spends at least 10k per capita on healthcare - without even having a socialized medecine. More than double that of Canada at 4.8k per capita. The United States is not a free market healthcare system - it's literally the worst parts of both capitalist and socialized systems with none of the benefits of either. Also: I am Canadian, I spent nearly 50% of my earned income last year on just taxes…

I grew up in Canada, have family there I visit regularly and live in America. The tax rate in California top marginal is higher than Ontario and yet one includes healthcare. You don’t think you can spent 50% of your marginal income on taxes in California? I think with the state taxes no longer deductible it’s closer to 55%. I’ve only ever had great interactions with OHIP.

Re: California bans private prisons

#422

Post by tathougies »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #359
tathougies wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All drug offenses are violent. Illegal drugs channel money into large organized crime syndicates that kill, torture, terrorize and maim people. Just because those people are brown, poor, and not Americans doesn't mean we should care less. If you ask me, we need substantially more drug enforcement. There are severe inequalities in how we police for drugs that often result in only the poor and marginalized locked up. W…

X consumes a drug - This is not violent. Drug dealer Y kills someone to protect territory - This is violent. If X was willing to buy drugs from anyone, and/or if X would prefer to buy from a legal seller but none is available, Y is not the cause of the violence. Also, you can get locked up for smoking weed that you grew yourself and had no intention of selling. What of that?

X got the drugs from somewhere. At some point, someone paid someone to get the drug. This enables Y.

> if X would prefer to buy from a legal seller but none is available

If I want to buy a nuke, but one is not available from a legal seller, does that mean I am not responsible for paying an unscrupulous seller to furnish that for me?

> Also, you can get locked up for smoking weed that you grew yourself and had no intention of selling. What of that?

Where did you get the weed plant? Last time I checked, weed doesn't magically sprout in your hydroponic set up (and I'd know).

Re: California bans private prisons

#423

Post by tathougies »

packet_nerd wrote: post #380
tathougies wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All drug offenses are violent. Illegal drugs channel money into large organized crime syndicates that kill, torture, terrorize and maim people. Just because those people are brown, poor, and not Americans doesn't mean we should care less. If you ask me, we need substantially more drug enforcement. There are severe inequalities in how we police for drugs that often result in only the poor and marginalized locked up. W…

> Illegal drugs channel money into large organized crime syndicates An excellent argument for decriminalizing them. > All drug offenses are violent. Illegal... First you say "all", then "illegal". Which is it?

If using a drug puts you in the category of someone who has committed a 'drug offense', then you have -- by definition -- taken an illegal drug.

> An excellent argument for decriminalizing them.

Indeed, but that doesn't automatically exculpate those who have -- during prohibition -- directly caused violence by their money. In my opinion, they should all be in jail for murder. For life.

Re: California bans private prisons

#424

Post by arcticbull »

microcolonel wrote: post #413
arcticbull wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure private prisons were a Harper/Tory [1] project that got rolled back by the Liberals. I'd imagine that remains the same as the federal Conservatives have continued their relentless march right. [1] https://www.straight.com/article-119340/stephen-harper-opens...

> the federal Conservatives have continued their relentless march right. I did not notice such a thing. What do you think constitutes a "relentless march right", that the Conservative party is engaged in?

Conservatives under Harper started to align their policies more with Democrats and then with eventually Republicans. The gag orders on scientists, climate denial, private prisons, mandatory minimum sentences with a focus on drug crimes, slashing social programs, tightening up immigration and nationality rules, singling out muslims, and broad tax cuts without specific goals. This is the playbook of the US right / global far-right. The recent feud / split with the new Libertarians in Canada I think illustrates that at least a subset of the party was dragging everyone right, and eventually they had to break off. Of course trump is one step further right still so by comparison they appear downright reasonable. Then at the provincial level Ford speaks for himself haha.

I can’t imagine for instance a Joe Clark conservative jumping at these ideas but maybe it was always like that?

Re: California bans private prisons

#425

Post by tathougies »

cwkoss wrote: post #402
tathougies wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All drug offenses are violent. Illegal drugs channel money into large organized crime syndicates that kill, torture, terrorize and maim people. Just because those people are brown, poor, and not Americans doesn't mean we should care less. If you ask me, we need substantially more drug enforcement. There are severe inequalities in how we police for drugs that often result in only the poor and marginalized locked up. W…

Violence related to drugs is mostly caused by prohibition. If we decriminalized these drugs, we'd eliminate the price premium that can be commanded from secrecy and use of force. I watched a really great lecture online that was about how everything that rich countries criminalize (primarily prostitution and drugs) ends up becoming powerful industries in poorer countries because the demand from rich countries persists…

> Violence related to drugs is mostly caused by prohibition

The rising violence rate due to the marijuana trade in California (and other states) does not agree with your made up reasoning. Although, in principle, I agree that your reasoning ought to make sense. Unfortunately, my principles and empiricism are often at odds, so it's best to side with the latter.

Re: California bans private prisons

#426

Post by chroma »

ebiester wrote: post #397
chroma wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, sometimes there are corrupt judges. Note that the article doesn't say whether the owners of the detention centers approached the judges or whether the judges approached them. Both sides had to be evil (and know the other side was evil) for the scandal to happen.

If you read more into the cash for kids scandal, you'll see it was the tip of the iceberg. The level of nepotism in Luzerne county was absurd and the state did nothing to fix it. There were judges abusing their positions, using staff for personal errands, showing blatant bias against certain attorneys, fixing cases, etc. By the time the FBI was done, around a half dozen judges in the county were convicted of various offenses.

My takeaway from the whole thing was that judges have too much power and too little oversight. They're the one relic of the royalty/nobility system that we kept after the American revolution.

Re: California bans private prisons

#427

Post by jorblumesea »

nwallin wrote: post #378
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…

All of the people I know who are strongly opposed to government run healthcare are veterans. They are people who have spent 4-20 years of their life with government run healthcare. One guy I knew went to the doctor complaining about blood in his poop. Was prescribed pepto bismal. Went back a few months later. Same thing. Went back a few months later, same thing. This pattern repeated for a little bit over a year. Eve…

> But your assertion that opposition to government run healthcare is based in ignorance is absolutely, completely false.

Socialized medicine is in no way equivalent to the VA system or the issues of the DoD and VA. So if you're using that as an example to disprove ignorance, to me that just proves how ignorant people are. Pointing to the VA as an argument against universal socialized medicine is such an absurd take that I'm not sure how to respond.

If anything, your comment proves my point. Americans are completely ignorant on the basics of the topic to the point where they compare a poorly designed military system as some kind of argument against socialized medicine. The incentives of the VA are so radically different from any national healthcare system. I appreciate the debate.

Re: California bans private prisons

#428

Post by Groxx »

the-pigeon wrote: post #375
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…

Ah I see you've never implemented an incentive program before. EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM GETS GAMED. NO MATTER WHAT YOU MEASURE. Every metric you could possible think of can be manipulated in ways you can't imagine. But give private companies the incentive and someone in them will figure it out. IMO the only way to run things like prisons is to hire people that strongly care about the public good to run them. Hire people w…

Sure, but zero incentives don't work either, for obvious reasons. Neither of which implies there aren't better or worse options along the continuum.

Re: California bans private prisons

#430

Post by jellicle »

kortilla wrote: post #416
verall wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course they would. Prisons inmates are not isolated from information.

You're not too familiar with prison, I guess.

By and large, I would expect inmates to choose the closest prison to their family, regardless of quality metrics. What good does it do to know that some prison 2000 miles away has a really good meal program?

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