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Comment by thatswrong0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to keep reiterating this: private prisons are not the problem. They are a problem, and a relatively small one at that compared to other systemic abuses.

> Far more influential are political benefits that elected officials of both political parties harvested over the decades by being tough on crime as well as the billions of dollars earned by government-run prisons’ employees and private contractors and vendors.

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2015/10/07/private_prisons_...

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Earlier this week a few hundred police chiefs around the country came out against overly harsh criminal penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. That leaves the private prison lobby as one of the few organizations campaigning against sensible reform of sentencing laws.

Old-style tough-on-crime rhetoric from voters and politicians isn't working as much anymore, because people realize that it doesn't work and are less worried about crime than they were 20 years ago.

[1] Anecdote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

[2] Data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...

I agree they are a symptom, not a root cause. That does not mean their use should not be attacked and fought against.

If you eliminate private prisons entirely and leave everything else alone, a pitifully small proportion of the people wronged by the criminal justice system would even notice, let alone receiving fair recompense. It's not so much that they "should not" be fought against, it's that it barely matters. It is simply poor allocation of attention.

Forest, trees, etc.

I'm pretty certain it matters to the 20% of federal prisoners, and 7 percent of state prisoners in those prisons.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/private-prisons-prof...

I take thatswrong0's point to be that you would likely find as much if not more corruption in the federal, state, and county prisons and jails as you do in private prisons. And I'm quite sure that's the case. Inmates are just too easy to take advantage of. They can't really complain to anyone and nobody (for the most part) cares.

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