states want private prisons. prisons should be to rehabilitate. so pay the prison business only if it delivers. i.e. pay private prisons on a rehabilitation rate instead of simply the number of inmates.
it's not like you're expected to pay for damaged goods in a regular business transaction, so simply stop doing so with private prisons.
A lot of people, regardless of political persuasion, believe that the purpose of prisons is to punish those inside. No more, no less, and any "rehabilitation" is just something that happens alongside (and often in spite of) the real purpose.
The (US) Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishments in sentencing, but in my mind, losing years of one's life, which one will never get back, is significantly more cruel than, say, fifty lashes.
SCOTUS has said about the death penalty specifically that it is without a doubt cruel; however, it is pervasive, and therefore not an unusual punishment. Therefore there is no Constitutional violation. I suspect a similar argument in the inverse rules out corporal punishment. Fifty lashes, even if less cruel than decades in prison, is certainly a cruel punishment. It's also very unusual for 2017 America.
Prisons are a dumping ground for people with personality disorders. You can't fix a personality disorder with rehabilitation, or with punishment. (Arguably you can't fix a personality disorder at all.)
Some people are relatively rational. They commit crimes for a variety of reasons, a good proportion of which are a direct outcome of poverty and/or economic abuse and/or racism.
The best way to rehabilitate them is to rehabilitate society so it doesn't push them into a corner, or create subcultures where crime is a reasonable survival option.
The people with psychological issues are much harder to deal with. Keeping them locked and away and occupied is more humane than trying to "punish" them, because the punishment is pointless and will have exactly zero effect.
Running prisons as a for-profit industry instead of a social service is barbarism, and ultimately just puts more criminals on the streets.
If punishment is rehabilitating, in average, the harder the prisons the nicer the people that come from them. We could check for instance, I don't know, Russia vs. Sweden or something like that.
What I personally appreciate the most is the simple fact of having dangerous people confined so that the danger to others (including myself) is no longer there.
I'll agree that it's nice having them off the streets, though I hate knowing that we release people knowing that on average, over 40% for reoffend within their first year.
When we place all those people together, in a setting where violent assaults are shockingly common -- and, in particular, the constant threat of rape -- we are definitely making you less safe, not more safe. One might argue that at least the "dangerous people" are preying on other "criminals" while they are inside, but how many of those victims end up becoming MORE dangerous to you and your family due to years of state-supervised abuse?
Why do you think this?
It's hard to precisely quantify the violent versus non-violent crimes, so I'll be making some assumptions in my summary based on some educated guesses about the kinds of crimes that land you in each category:
Non-violent: 70%
Violent: 30%
Violent: 47%
Property: 17%
Weapons: 5%
It's not obvious to me that the "vast majority" of prisoners are not dangerous.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/oecd-homicide-rates-chart-201... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_S...
I did a quick calculation based on probably obsolete numbers, but I got a homicide rate of around 4.8 per 100000 of which 2.7 are with guns, leaving 2.1 without which is still higher than most European countries. (check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... )
>Americans stab, beat, and bludgeon more people to death that most countries entire murder rate. The US is a violent country even without counting the guns.
Which is still not backed up. However, I am surprised to see the stats on the murder rate and gun violence all the same.
how about: prisons turns thousands of lowly offenders into hardened, violent criminals that will be out in innefective parole a few months down the road?
doesnt that make you more scared than "but at least 5 of them will be back in prision before commiting any seriously violent crime"
If prisons had to refund the state when there was an instance of recidivism, they'd have an incentive to insure former prisoners were able to integrate back into society again.