Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 646 posts

Re: California bans private prisons

#591

Post by tenebrisalietum »

tathougies wrote: post #422
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inte…

I buy guns. The gun lobby, funded in part from gun manufacturer profits, fights laws that prevent mass shootings. Am I enabling mass shootings?

Re: California bans private prisons

#592

Post by chadcmulligan »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #521
geowwy wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well done California. Hopefully this is a step towards abolishing the prison system.

I've entertained the idea of abolishing prisons in my head, but I can't imagine what we would do as an alternative. Suggestions?

Have you seen the Norwegian system - https://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-norways-prison-system...

Re: California bans private prisons

#593

Post by dnate »

cstejerean wrote: post #524
johnchristopher wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. edit: Do you have any articles to recommend that would shed some lights on this matter ? Do you have some sources ? (I don't live in the US, but I find the idea that guards somehow lobby fascinating)

So this isn’t directed at you in particular but I don’t understand this “do you have any sources?” for stuff that’s one search away. If it was some obscure hard to find information published in some journal I would understand it, but this in this case https://lmgtfy.com/?q=california+prison+guards+lobby And yet I see this constantly on almost every thread. What is it with HN and asking for sources on everything?

I have also noticed this trend, not just online, but also offline with friends.

While it seemed annoying at first, I quickly came to love the fact that this happens. I feel like this might be a natural tendency starting to be developed in the wake of fake news, and opinion-generating bot armies on the rise.

Better to ask for a source one time too many, than one time too little.

Re: California bans private prisons

#594

Post by jacobush »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #311
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 War On Drugs is a mechanism prosecutors use to get people into the system. We can't dismiss the changes in law brought about from a moral panic and how that affects who and how people are taken in.

Also, total numbers aside, the War on Drugs was tailored from the start to affect blacks more.

Re: California bans private prisons

#596

Post by rwmurrayVT »

qes wrote: post #199
rwmurrayVT wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience tells me that in federal prison you get 300 minutes a month. You pay 26 cents a minute for long distance. There's legit virtual phone tech businesses that service the families of those incarcerated. You get it dropped down to 6 cents a minute......... That 15 minute maximum includes a mandatory waste of 38 seconds of a recorded message telling the receiver that the person on the other end of the l…

State prisons and jails, at least the ones I've been in and heard about (was an inmate for the better part of a decade) are much more expensive. Federal prison was progressive in many ways compared to the states.

I do agree with you. The fact that people in the feds that have been in a state prison refer to it as easy street is deflating. The local places I have been are much worse. Manhattan/Charlotte/Hampton Roads are all really, really shitty.

Truth be told, if you have some minimum level of funds available and you are within regular travel distance of visitors the federal system is not bad at a camp or a low.

The existence of a straight-to-camp prisoner is a little silly to me. Camps should really only be a stepping stone down from higher security level on your way to release. The feds could save a lot of money by sending people with 18-36 month sentences to a modified RDAP program while living at a halfway house or home confinement. I fully believe every one in the federal system should be participating in an RDAP-type program to evaluate their criminal thinking and have better availability to skills training. Prison and Oren Cass' book "The Once and Future Worker" really influenced my thinking on what should be done to help.

Re: California bans private prisons

#597

Post by rwmurrayVT »

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.

You also need to consider that several people are processed through private facilities on their way to a public facility. CCA Youngstown and others hold prisoners before they are finally transferred to a federal facility. CCA Youngstown can melt off the face of the Earth as far as I am concerned.

Re: California bans private prisons

#598

Post by lewiscollard »

llarsson wrote: post #24

Good riddance. The whole premise of private, for-profit, prisons has always seemed deeply troubling to me. The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society. That can take years of hard work by the individual, and require assistance from professionals (therapists, teachers, ...). A for-profit company by definition…

> The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society.

Compare with this statement: "A well-run private prison system would be given financial rewards based on recidivism rates and internal violence, and could do so at less cost than state-run prisons". I suspect your response will probably be along the lines of "that's nice dear, but that's not the system we actually ended up with".

The alternative to privately-run prisons that actually exists in CA is not the healthy prison system that you have described, but is the state-run prison system: a revolving door into criminal training centres, with all the abuses you could expect from a system in which certain sets of people have near-arbitrary power over other sets of people.

> A for-profit company by definition seeks to maximize profits.

Yep, people who make money from a thing have an incentive for that thing to continue happening. Now, I challenge you to take a less narrow view of "profit", one that would include (say) a secure job that pays a good wage and comes with a cushy pension (and power over others for those that relish that sort of thing), and apply your reasoning to the state prison system.

Re: California bans private prisons

#599

Post by tonyarkles »

fastball wrote: post #543
lightgreen wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was nonviolent crime, then island where convicted can live with shops, houses, internet, trains and parks and local elected administration and cctv, but cannot go back to the rest of the world. But if it is a serious violent crime, it should still be prison. Comfortable like in Europe or better, but preventing convicted from doing harm to others. It should not be a punishment. It should be just an isolation. Se…

Brb, I'm gonna go commit a bunch of non-violent crimes so that I can live on this island paradise.

Warning: It's full of criminals!

Re: California bans private prisons

#600

Post by willyt »

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…

Why would a union want more prisons? Surely the whole point of a union is to lobby for better pay and conditions for its individual members, I don't see what the incentive is for the union to create more prisons, to get more union members? Why?
Post reply on HN