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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#481

Post by gm678 »

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…

"Less than 10% of incarcerated people are held in private prisons."

While this is true, that's still 133,000 people. An attempt to make the system more ethical for over 100,000 people makes a significant difference.

Re: California bans private prisons

#482

Post by Galanwe »

phry wrote: post #472
philwelch wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going after public sector unions at all is extremely difficult. The most successful attempt to do so that I'm aware of was Gov. Scott Walker's in Wisconsin. And even he didn't go after the law enforcement unions. (It might be possible to split off the police unions from the prison guard unions, but it's not clear to me that it is.) Law enforcement unions are one of the few American institutions with completely bipart…

> What happens if police officers and prison guards go on strike? > When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on New York Police Department crime statistics. > The scientists found that civilian complaints of major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown. https://www…

I find it very malicious to just drop numbers like this. It gives the impression that you state a simple fact, while the reality is much more complicated than that. The studies on the subject require much more subtlety and statistical understanding when interpreting the results that a 2 line quotation to make a point.

There are a number of factors to take into account when giving credit to such studies:

- Is there enough observations to have statistically significant results? (i.e. do we have enough occurences of police strikes to really have meaningful results? can we have overwelmingly influencing factors not present in the studied samples: I guess it would likely highly depend on the city where the strike happens also)

- Did the sample properly allowed the isolation of the variable being studied against other influencing factors?

- What is the collinearity between the variables used for the regression? (i.e. if violence complaints are made on the spot, then less police means harder to fill complaints, it doesn't necessarily mean less violence)

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" has a good introduction to the challenges of such studies, and discusses a bit the particular case of police.

Re: California bans private prisons

#483

Post by CameronNemo »

55orolder wrote: post #185

I find it fascinating that private prisons draw such ire while the prison guard union draws so little, when the prison guard union has all the exact same incentives and is drastically more powerful. California would have had legal marijuana a decade sooner except for lobbing by the union, they're a major force for mandatory minimum sentences and tougher sentencing in general. This seems like a trivial easy-PR win for…

The Union at least must disclose all of their contributions, right?

Re: California bans private prisons

#484

Post by mikekchar »

arcticbull wrote: post #424
microcolonel wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 / glob…

I've been out of Canada for 15 years, so I missed the whole Conservatives under Harper. However, I think to be fair wrt comparing today's Conservatives to Joe Clark's Conservatives, the latter organisation doesn't really exist any more. The Conservatives were down to 2 seats when they merged with Reform Party. I think that's where to you start to see the drift to the right. They had to actively kick out the really extreme right wingers when that happened, but it's just not the same party at all IMHO. Seeing from abroad, I always got the impression that Harper's government was pretty much exactly what you might expect from a slightly toned down Reform party and it wasn't really a surprise to me.

Re: California bans private prisons

#485

Post by saghm »

vga805 wrote: post #473
philwelch wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government itself, no. The correctional officers' union, yes. Outlawing private prisons is probably a good step, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to eliminate the vested interest in mass incarceration.

it's probably necessary. and i must ask, you've studied philosophy? that's the only time i see people talking about "necessary and sufficient conditions"

FWIW, I've never studied philosophy (unless you count formal logic, but we never talked about "necessary and sufficient conditions" in the two courses I took), and I use that terminology a fair amount. I'm not sure where I picked it up, but it certainly wasn't in philosophy classes.

Re: California bans private prisons

#486

Post by smhost »

whiddershins wrote: post #480
phry wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens if police officers and prison guards go on strike? > When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on New York Police Department crime statistics. > The scientists found that civilian complaints of major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown. https://www…

When police go on a “slow down” recorded reports to the police should naturally decrease.

> In our analyses, we examine how crime under-reporting may bias the results. We employ precinct fixed-effects to address time-invariant sources of under-reporting, such as communities’ varying histories of police distrust. We then model time-variant sources of under-reporting biases, such as those caused by the killing of Eric Garner and/or the heightened conflict between protesters and police. Model (5) in Fig. 3 controls for the number of community complaints reported in each precinct-week for misdemeanours and criminal violations. Assuming that time-variant sources of under-reporting are correlated across crime types, this model is robust to slowdown-induced under-reporting bias. While we cannot entirely rule out the effects of under-reporting, our results show that crime complaints decreased, rather than increased, during a slowdown in proactive policing, contrary to deterrence theory. Additional tests show the results are robust to specifications including controls for long-term trends in crime (Fig. 3 model (6)), lagged ‘Major crime arrests’ (Fig. 3 model (7)) and lagged ‘Major crime complaints’ (Fig. 3 model (8)).

doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0211-5

Re: California bans private prisons

#487

Post by philwelch »

phry wrote: post #472
philwelch wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going after public sector unions at all is extremely difficult. The most successful attempt to do so that I'm aware of was Gov. Scott Walker's in Wisconsin. And even he didn't go after the law enforcement unions. (It might be possible to split off the police unions from the prison guard unions, but it's not clear to me that it is.) Law enforcement unions are one of the few American institutions with completely bipart…

> What happens if police officers and prison guards go on strike? > When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on New York Police Department crime statistics. > The scientists found that civilian complaints of major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown. https://www…

That’s not the same as going completely on strike. It’s possible that police wouldn’t go completely on strike, but it’s also possible that the work stoppages or disruptions would affect something more essential than the “broken windows” policy. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see what might go wrong even inside prisons.

There is a non-trivial risk of violent, even armed conflict if there really was a police strike and the National Guard was called in to restore order. That’s not something a state governor wants on their record.

Re: California bans private prisons

#488

Post by bthallplz »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #57
warent wrote: post #40

> Private prison companies used to view California as one of their fastest-growing markets. This is such a bizarre and twisted sentence to hear without a hint of irony. It's like dream/nightmare logic except in real life. In 100 years private prisons are going to be a hideous stain on our history and this is such a huge step in the right direction that it really makes me proud to be living in California and supportin…

Isn't it? Companies that probably lobby for stricter and longer sentences, looking at a populated state as a "market," with caged human beings as their product. It's the most absurd concept to me, and it's even more disgusting when it's put in such an innocent manner. "Private prison companies used to view California as one of their fastest-growing markets." It just gets more disgusting the more you look into it, and…

Just to throw it out there: the idea isn't absurd; it's evil.

Re: California bans private prisons

#489

Post by philwelch »

vga805 wrote: post #473
philwelch wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government itself, no. The correctional officers' union, yes. Outlawing private prisons is probably a good step, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to eliminate the vested interest in mass incarceration.

it's probably necessary. and i must ask, you've studied philosophy? that's the only time i see people talking about "necessary and sufficient conditions"

I have, yeah.

Thing is, private prisons are 10% of prisons. Which means public prisons are 90% of prisons, and so public-sector prison guards are at least 90% of prison guards (maybe 100% if they get the state to require collective bargaining in private prisons). That means a majority of the special interests are there either way. There is a conflict of interest with private prisons, but private prison owners are a small and not-very-powerful special interest compared to others.

Like, let’s talk marijuana legalization. I’m pretty sure fast food franchise owners are already a bigger special interest than private prison operators. They probably would be even if 100% of prisons were privatized.

On the other hand, the prison guard union has some real power. If they go on strike, you have to call up the National Guard and panic to get the prisons in working order before the prisoners start rioting and/or starving to death. If a private prison owner pulled that shit, it’s just one private prison owner, and regardless, they’re ruined for life. It only even becomes a remotely comparable risk if there was a single private prison monopoly across the whole state, whereas public prisons already have a prison guard monopoly in the form of the union.

Re: California bans private prisons

#490

Post by dragonwriter »

celticmusic wrote: post #237
jvm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic to see the correct take get downvoted. If anyone's interested in actually learning about the causes of mass incarceration, I'd strongly recommend John Pfaff's _Locked In_: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L6SLKK8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... In short: a) It's not the war on drugs. b) It's not private prisons. c) It's not sentencing laws. You could get rid of all of those and America would still lead the "free" worl…

The government isn't going to be lobbying itself to pass minimum occupancy laws. The motivations are better. No one is saying it's going to solve world hunger, but it's a good first step.

> The government isn't going to be lobbying itself to pass minimum occupancy laws.

The government won't lobby itself; the prison guards unions may, however.

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