> I am very confident the type of people working in SV could make a huge impact, if only running prisons was like software development.
> But the goal of US prison is not to solve difficult problems. It is simply to benefit the US prison-police-state-complex.
See, that's why they couldn't make a real impact. The whole system is set up with the wrong incentives. From the SV/startup perspective, it's like one of your suppliers being the nephew of your biggest investor and a stipulation of the investment. Sucks to be you if they do a shitty job and cost you money, or make it hard to achieve goals. They know they have leverage over you, so you're stuck.
Prisons could kill large amounts of people that enter them, and release people as sexually molested PTSD wrecks that have little normal economic recourse and new ideas and connections about how to make money in extra-legal ways, and society still wouldn't care enough to change things. This is obvious, because that's what prisons do in the U.S. and we haven't changed jack-shit.
I don't have high hopes for change. A decade ago there was a lot of media attention and articles about how California used to be the shining example of the U.S. prison system (in the 1970's), with extremely low recidivism rates, and inmates leaving prison with a skill or craft they learned inside and able to find gainful employment. Nothing came from it during two terms of a Democrat president after that, I doubt we'll get change from a Republican one now, especially with his particular rhetoric on crime. Until we as a society get past "Justice == punishment" and focus quite a bit on rehabilitation, we're cutting off our nose to spite out face.