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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#501

Post by donatj »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #224
arcticbull wrote: post #27

I'm so happy about this. Private prisons are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum occupancy levels in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as criminals). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent rehabilitating criminals and making them functional members of society. Ne…

It feels like there are just 0 incentives for a private prison to actually rehabilitate anyone. Perhaps private prisons could work if they were compensated based on recidivism rate or something

Call me cynical but the entire law system in the United States is punitive, there is zero interest in rehabilitation by anyone in power.

Re: California bans private prisons

#502

Post by Paul-ish »

In "Locked In" John Pfaff makes the point that private prisons are not the problem. It is a more nuanced problem, but prosecutors play a large part in our national incarceration problems. Definitely recommend the read (or listen as an audiobook as I did).

Re: California bans private prisons

#503

Post by cwkoss »

dragonwriter wrote: post #454
tathougies wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The rising violence rate due to the marijuana trade in California (and other states) does not agree with your made up reasoning. It actually does, because federal prohibition has not been lifted (even though there is non-assured enforcement forebearance). The fact that anyone in a significant ownership, leadership, or management position in any business in the industry is technically guilty of a federal felony with…

Also, much of violence is related to legal marijuana businesses being unbanked. Large amounts of cash always attract crime.

Re: California bans private prisons

#504

Post by esoterica »

js8 wrote: post #492
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…

Actually, in democratic capitalism, unions in private companies are always less powerful than private companies themselves. The power of unions (for a certain sector) in a given society scales proportionally to number of people involved in them. However, the power of private companies (certain sector) in a given society is proportional to revenue of that sector. Since the power of unions in monetary terms can be boun…

“Proportional to” hides a constant factor, so your analysis is wrong.

Re: California bans private prisons

#505

Post by throwawayjava »

Paul-ish wrote: post #502

In "Locked In" John Pfaff makes the point that private prisons are not the problem. It is a more nuanced problem, but prosecutors play a large part in our national incarceration problems. Definitely recommend the read (or listen as an audiobook as I did).

> but prosecutors play a large part in our national incarceration problems

The problem is pro-punishment politicians. Singling out any particular office/position misses the point.

Even when judges practice discretion, pro-punishment legislators step in and introduce mandatory minimums.

And even when prosecutors practice discretion, pro-punishment judges will step in and force them to prosecute cases that the prosecutors don't want to prosecute [1].

[1] See Suffolk County for a recent example

Re: California bans private prisons

#506

Post by vajaya »

I watched an episode of last week tonight in which John Oliver covers issues of private prisons. Basically it's inmates being exploited by extremely low paid labor and various unreasonable charges for necessities. But I don't see how government run prisons can solve or mitigate the problems.

Re: California bans private prisons

#507

Post by squiggleblaz »

pornel wrote: post #374
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…

Incentives for this are all weird. You have literal customer lock-in, so you can promise anything and deliver nothing. The recidivism metric would probably cause private prisons to try to avoid or eject worst prisoners, so you'd end up with a 2-tier system, where private prisons are hotels for "nice" people, and public prisons are a hell-hole for the rest. Or maybe some prisons would run training on how not to get ca…

> The recidivism metric would probably cause private prisons to try to avoid or eject worst prisoners, so you'd end up with a 2-tier system, where private prisons are hotels for "nice" people, and public prisons are a hell-hole for the rest.

Yes, so you'd have to run the metric based on who was initially assigned to the prison. "Oh, John was assigned to your prison, but one look at his record and you decided to expel him? Well, you're still responsible for his recidivism, because you chose to not serve him. Oh, Jack was assigned to state prison, and you tried to encourage him? Well, you're not responsible for his recidivism, because you selected him."

But yeah, I agree in general that the thing about metrics is that they can be gamed.

Re: California bans private prisons

#508

Post by throwawayjava »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #471
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…

> when the prison guard union has all the exact same incentives and is drastically more powerful. Could you please provide me some examples? I figure if California's prisons were 200% of capacity, there's no shortage of work for the prison guards anyway.

> I figure if California's prisons were 200% of capacity, there's no shortage of work for the prison guards anyway.

I'm not sure how/why you figure that, or how it's at all relevant.

I'm not sure how/why you figure that because "over capacity" != "will build new prisons / hire new guards". I.e., it's not at all impossible for there to be prisons that are over-capacity and also a decline in the number of prison guard jobs.

It's not relevant because the entire point of unions is to counter-act the effect of supply/demand dynamics on labor (see: "there's always another scab"). Just because there's "no shortage of work for the prison guards" doesn't mean they will lobby against changes to laws that might one day create such a shortage.

Re: California bans private prisons

#509

Post by throwawayjava »

js8 wrote: post #499
jMyles wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The union in question is a public sector union, though, so it's not obvious how to apply your (correct, at least to my eyes) analysis.

I think for public sector, we have to look at it on the state level. Using the same analysis, in a democratic society, one vote has in theory more power than membership in a public sector unions, because with that vote you can decide more things than just wages of public employees. I suspect the American culture of "being tough on crime" isn't really about prison-employee unions, but has historical roots in the colon…

> Using the same analysis, in a democratic society, one vote has in theory more power than membership in a public sector unions, because with that vote you can decide more things than just wages of public employees.

...except when you can both be a member of a union and also exercise your vote.

I wasn't aware that in the USA joining a public sector union meant giving up your right to vote ;-)

Re: California bans private prisons

#510

Post by kodachi »

_qhtn wrote: post #491
Galanwe wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

Thank you for the last bit about Freakonomics- it lets everyone know it's safe to ignore you.

On contrast, your ad hominem argument is not appreciated by me.
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