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California bans private prisons

theguardian.com

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Re: California bans private prisons

#461

Post by dang »

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…

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: California bans private prisons

#462

Post by okonomiyaki3000 »

civilian wrote: post #440
the-pigeon wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If "gaming" the system means less recidivism, that sounds good to me. Prison ships to Australia were originally paid per passenger that boarded in Britain. The death rates were horrible, in the double-digit percentages. When the transport ships were instead paid per passenger that _arrived_ the death rates went down phenomenally. And someone like you might say: "omg these prison ships gamed the system by saving lives…

What we want is not just less recidivism but fewer people going to prison in the first place. If you're getting paid for lower recidivism rates, you'll want to increase the rate of people going to prison one time, not zero times. It means you might lobby for the kinds of laws that would make that happen or you might bribe judges to get the kind of inmates you want (which might mean people who are possibly innocent or would really be better off with probation or house arrest).

Re: California bans private prisons

#463

Post by nwallin »

jorblumesea wrote: post #427
nwallin wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Can you elaborate on why Tricare and the VA aren't government run healthcare? I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government.

The fact that it's poorly run is actually the point. Few Americans want to replace their experience at the doctor's office with the experience from the government run Post Office or DMV. The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system, and association with government run systems correlates strongly with lack of faith in the government to operate smoothly.

Note that my position, not that it really ought to matter, is as a proponent of universal basic income. Cut everybody in the country a check for $1500 a month, keep the ACA requirements that everyone buys health insurance and that insurance companies can't reject coverage on preexisting conditions, and let the market solve the problem. The problem is that healthcare is too expensive, not that it's bad. The government, for everything it sucks at, is really good at sending a check every month.

Re: California bans private prisons

#464

Post by abathur »

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…

It's not that far afield (and yes, I'm certain we could; and I would love to), because the mandate is to make money. We can expect that, on average, they will do everything people do to make money.

Some of that will be corrupt.

It's not that I don't think incentives can play a role; I just wanted to emphasize how incentives, profit, and creativity can go awry.

Re: California bans private prisons

#465

Post by wwweston »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #446
wwweston wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a fully general counterargument to any incentive structure. A general counterargument is worth considering. Any incentive sufficiently powerful to draw forth extra resourcefulness in its legitimate pursuit is quite likely to also draw forth extra resourcefulness in its illegitimate pursuit. > It's what businesses use for their leadership teams. This is may help your case considerably less than you think if you look…

How exactly can a private prison "illegitimately pursue" having a lower recidivism rate? Simply handwaving it away with incentives being gamed seems to complete ignore that you are suggesting that there will be widespread systemic corruption of the entire nation's judicial system. Perhaps the general counterargument could really take a moment to focus on the details. Prisoners not being convicted of more crimes down…

> How exactly can a private prison "illegitimately pursue" having a lower recidivism rate?

Picking prisoners would be one obvious way.

Now, you can say "well, we'll just make sure they can't do that." That's fine; the overarching point here is that you can't simply set up an incentive system without thinking about the ways it can be gamed, among other unintended consequences.

Though: do you know that you can make sure prisons can't do that? Is it legal to forbid them a choice? Can you set up a system for distributing prisoners that's resistant to capture or influence? It's a little bit like saying "we'll just make sure our software is secure."

> you are suggesting that there will be widespread systemic corruption of the entire nation's judicial system.

I'm far from the only person suggesting that private prisons corrupt the criminal justice system, but yes, that's part of the argument.

Some people concerned about the issue believe that industry lobbyists work to back criminal code changes requiring more prison sentencing. Others believe in milder phenomena like judges internalizing lower costs of imprisonment and therefore using more of it in sentencing. The former could be described as corruption without being even slightly illegal. The latter might not even be recognized as a form of corruption, but it'd be a systemic issue unless you think imprisonment is underused in the US.

Re: California bans private prisons

#466

Post by jorblumesea »

nwallin wrote: post #463
jorblumesea wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Can you elaborate on why Tricare and the VA aren't government run healthcare? I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government. The fact that it's poorly run is actually the point. Few Americans want to replace their experience at the doctor's office with the experience from the government run Post Office or DMV. The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the govern…

> Can you elaborate on why Tricare and the VA aren't government run healthcare

They are in the technical sense that the US govt "runs it". They are not socialized medicine as every Western country has implemented. They hardly have the scale, participation or political pull.

> I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government.

This is a bit naive, because the VA and DoD have a strong vested interests in short term solutions to keep soldiers going and back on the field. Also, many of the VA's problems stem from the fact that only a small % of Americans actually use the VA and care about its performance. So politically, it's hardly something that anyone focuses on, despite many promises to the contrary.

> experience from the government run Post Office

The post office is actually really efficient and is an example of a very well run government service. They're on par with any private company, easily, in both price and service. If anything, cuts to the post office have hurt it more than any operational problems or mismanagement.

> The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system

This is because many Americans actively vote against their best interest and elect politicians whose sole purpose is to hamstring the government from doing anything effectively. It's the classic conservative self fulfilling prophecy: cripple the government, point to the fact that the "government doesn't work", then privatize and reap the rewards. It's just a political game to make rich voters richer.

Re: California bans private prisons

#467

Post by _qbjt »

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…

No no no. This is exactly the mindset we need to avoid when addressing problems in our justice system. I am sorry but the entrepreneurial / venture capitalist mindset is not suitable here. Private prisons should not exist. Public prisons should be focused on rehabilitation, not retribution. As pro-capitalism as I am, the only future I see in your idea is abject market failure. We’re not talking about product here, we’re talking about human life. The market hasn’t been able to solve health care so what makes you think it’s going to be able to solve mass incarceration?

Further, this hypothetical system is ripe for exploitation. Aside from the potential exploits others have raised, have you considered the parallels to other industries such as defense contractors? Your idea creates an incentive and profit motive for crime. It’s the type of thinking that could literally result in corporations creating artificial mass shooters in pursuit of all the easy money that could be made. Sorry, but I think this is an extremely bad take and I actually worry about a dystopian future where this takes place. Pull on this thread at your own peril.

Re: California bans private prisons

#468

Post by not_a_cop75 »

voxl wrote: post #458
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…

Your claims require evidence.

All claims require evidence. You need to troll all the threads equally, or just stop making people feel like crap for sharing articles.

Re: California bans private prisons

#469

Post by anigbrowl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
anigbrowl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. The California Correctional and Peace Officer's Association is one of the largest unions in the state and exercises a good deal of political power, albeit less than it used to. Part of the problem is the division into trade unions, in which different economic sectors have their own unions and can then be rolled over or pandered to as is convenient for business or state interests. Syndicalism is an idea of…

> The California Correctional and Peace Officer's Association There is no “and”, just “California Correctional Peace Officers Association” (and, as the absence of the “and” suggests, it is just prison guards, and not other law enforcement.)

A careless mistake on my part. Thanks for the correction.
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