Myths of the private prison industry | Hacker News Reader

Myths of the private prison industry

muckrock.com

35 pointsallanlasser36 comments

I really don't think prisons should be run by private corporations. I was already kind of leery about it, but the whole "kids for cash" scandal in Pennsylvania was the last straw. There's no way I can be convinced that we can ever trust a for-profit corporation to manage a prison. There are just too many opportunities for corruption.

  They speak roughly once a week in a 15-minute phone call, 
  and speak for another 25 minutes on a video chat. Jones 
  says she’d travel to Texas to visit her son in person, 
  but Hays County Jail, where he is locked up, banned 
  visitations in November 2013. That happened shortly after 
  the county jail entered into a contract with Securus.
   

  Since then, all family communication with inmates at Hays 
  County goes through Securus, which charges Jones about 
  $10 for a phone call and about $8 for a video visit.

http://atavist.ibtimes.com/fcc-prison-telecom-industry

Apparently a large amount of those fees are paid back to the prisons via "commissions", so it's basically governments auctioning off the right to take advantage of prisoners and their families.

It's essentially the same thing that has happened across many other areas of the economy - it's impractical to own slaves, so they're rented instead.

The problem is that state-funded prisons have the same potential for corruption. The unions that represent the correctional officers play the same role and lobby for the same laws as the private prions do.

The CCOA even lists marijuana legalization as a potential risk factor that could impact their future financial targets:

> Our ability to secure new contracts to develop and manage correctional and detention facilities depends on many factors outside our control. Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. This possible growth depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates and sentencing patterns in various jurisdictions and acceptance of privatization. The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1070985/0000950144060...

You are right, they have the same potential.

But there are different organizational issues. Companies can keep more of their operating details private. This makes it harder for the public to investigate a privately run prison than a publicly run prison.

Private jails also add an extra level of finger-pointing, which makes it hard to determine who is ultimately responsible for operational policies. In a locally run prison, it's easy to figure out who is responsible. But if the jail is run by a large company, then "it's policy" becomes a disturbingly frustrating answer, as any follow-up question will be answered with "take it up with corporate".

Some of these organization issues make it more difficult for a publicly run organization than a private on to achieve the same level of corruption.

I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea.

The root cause problem is entities that have a monopoly on defining what is initiation of violence.

This incentives the criminalization of non-violent acts which provide both financial and political advantages.

> There's no way I can be convinced that we can ever trust a for-profit corporation to manage a prison.

I don't think they should be trusted to run anything that constitutes a public service, be it prisons, transport, utilities, health and education.

'For-profit' is the MO of private companies. Service takes a very distant position at the back.

Right, you can't have an incentive structure that encourages corruption.

I know someone who stayed in a GEO prison. Based on everything I heard about it, I have to imagine that there's some mid-level accountant who knows exactly, down to the penny, how much money they make per inmate per day.

One example: when you're given a spork with your first meal, you might think that was the spork for just that meal, and toss it out with your meal tray. Wrong move. That was your prison-issue spork. Enjoy eating with your hands for the remainder of your incarceration.

That gives me an idea: prison vouchers.

Give each prisoner a voucher for a certain amount and let them choose where they want to serve out their sentence. Prisons will compete to offer tolerably humane conditions to inmates while still keeping under budget. (Prison escapes will be punished by huge fines so there's no incentive to cheap out on security.)

Flaws with this system: do prisons have to take a given inmate? If not, there will be troublesome inmates nobody is willing to imprison. If so, there will be a lot of incentives to try to get rid of these troublesome prisoners as soon as they arrive. Also, there's potential for cosy arrangements between gangs and prison operators to direct business towards them in exchange for favourable treatment.

And now I can't stop imagining how a free market economy for prisons would work out. Fascinating thought, especially in relation to the idea of gangs using the system in such a way!

EDIT: I wonder what would happen the the idea of jurisdiction under such a system, would prisons within a certain locality get preference or would it be nation wide?

You're not supposed to like prison. It's a punishment for serious misdeeds. If your suggestion was implemented, the result would be despicable. Prisons would be competing to have the most plush accommodations. The guy who was raping little kids in his van shouldn't serve his time in a nice hotel.

> It's a punishment for serious misdeeds.

That's one view.

The other is that prisons are for correction and rehabilitation.

> The guy who was raping little kids in his van shouldn't serve his time in a nice hotel

And there's a myth about prison right there. Spoken by someone who clearly has no idea how horrible prisons really are. And how dangerous and deadly they are for anyone even accused of offenses against children.

I'm talking about hugh4's suggestion for "prison choice" with vouchers. I said nothing at all about the current prison system.

> The guy who was raping little kids in his van shouldn't serve his time in a nice hotel.

He shouldn't live, period: he should go straight from the jail where he was waiting trial, to the gallows. Prison should be for those who are bad enough to remove from society for a time, but not bad enough to execute; and since they will be returned to society, we should try to make sure that when they re-enter it they do so as productive, mentally-well members of society, rather than as beaten, brutalised future recidivists.

It's a matter of personal opinion, but I don't think anyone has the right to give out a death sentence. Yes, even to a child rapist. As a society we are so rich we can easily keep those people in prison for life, and spare ourselves the moral implications of actually killing people.

> As a society we are so rich we can easily keep those people in prison for life, and spare ourselves the moral implications of actually killing people.

But not the moral implications of keeping someone caged like an animal for the remainder of his life. What's worse: to die in a week, or to spend decades in prison?

What's worse - finding out an innocent man spent 20 years in prison before being exonerated, or that he was killed? I know it's an extreme minority if cases - but there really is no reason to kill people. We are perfectly capable of keeping people locked for life, and that's what we should do for the worst offenders. Is it horrible? Of course. But the alternative is much worse.

and they should televise the whole thing, so that the public can get the blood they're all so clearly thirsty for.

I bet if televised, public executions would be the biggest PPV draw in Oklahoma and Kansas. It could fund schools, lower taxes, and most importantly, fund bigger gallows for executing more of the people we decide shouldn't live anymore.

I think you just give less vouchers to the kid rapist than you do to say someone in on involuntary manslaughter, who in turn gets less than someone in on GTA, who in turn gets less than a coke dealer, who in turn gets less than someone in on coke possession, etc.

I'd like to ignore everything you ever do on this website hereinafter. Is there a feature for that?

The ultimate goal of prisons is (or should be) to reduce crime. Why not directly incentivise prisons to reduce recidivism? Pay big bonuses if the ex-inmates aren't arrested/convicted/etc in the 3-5 years after they're released.

Yes, that's probably a better way of aligning incentives.

Plus it could be trialled on a small scale at first with just a few prisons. The main thing you'd need to watch out for is that prisons didnt just start working hard to offload their worst prisoners elsewhere.

Or use the money that would go to such a system and instead direct it towards increased social services, to help reduce the number of people who commit crimes and enter the prison system in the first place.

I laughed really hard at this post. I've long compared schools to prisons, but never with this much flair. People thought you were serious, to the point of wanting to ignore your future posts. That's some good satire right there. kudos to you, sir.

...I think this is satire... Right? Poe's Law is really kicking my ass here. The fact that it's so hard to tell is the scary part.

In any case, I alternately applaud/decry this hilarious/appalling idea.

C'mon man, I at least critiqued my own wild-ass idea, you can do the same instead of dismissing it.

> American correctional standards have been a sort of standard for policing and punishment abroad

I don't see much support for that statement, fortunately. There may be countries for which this is true but for the vast majority of countries in the developed world this is not the case.

Not only that, but some country's citizens would be appalled if their prison system started mimicking the American system.

While I'm not sympathetic to prison operators or the mass-incarceration system in general, this is a weak article with little substance. Declaring an assertion to be myth requires a substantial investment in disproving it. Indeed, there is not a single fact presented in opposition to what is perhaps the most important myth #1. It is possible (or damned well ought to be, and if it isn't, then that's a cause of action by itself) to account for exactly what the government and inmates are paying. Someone who makes a concerted effort to figure out what that is would be a top-notch investigative reporter. Someone who writes "Does anyone actually have proof of this? Seriously, is anyone sure that this happens?" is either ranting or a hack. When you write an article asserting that a political opponent's views are myths, you take on the burden of proof. Simply asserting (without even a reference) that no one has proven the opposite doesn't cut it, even if that's true.

There are similar problems with the other "myths", such as attempting to rebut the notion that private prison operations have limited influence by showing a graph of private prison populations (one that, I might add, doesn't exactly bolster the case). So what? If 8% (or 20% or X%) of prisoners are in private prisons, how does that affect their influence on incarceration as a policy? If that rate is different in various states, can you connect the differences with the kind of policy influence you expect to find? That's legwork. That's investigative reporting.

Anyone who would like to see significant prison reform deserves, and needs, much better than this. If this were truly a reflection of the prison reform movement's best arguments, it's small wonder it's not having much success.

I agree hundred percent. A very bad piece that does not clarify or enlighten.

Pretty clickbaity.

It's just '5 things wrong with the private prison industry'

All of them are pretty well known possible issues.

I certainly don't know anyone who thinks the 'myth' is true, some people at best might be 'I don't know' or 'I'm pretty sure it's complicated.'

For more: https://www.muckrock.com/project/the-private-prison-project-...

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