Hacker News Reader

Comment by grivescorbett | Hacker News Reader

There is such a thing as for profit for good. Perhaps they believe they can be both better and cheaper than prisons at the same time. That allows them to provide a compelling pitch to governments and convince them to direct funds to Promise instead of prisons. The government wins because it's cheaper, their users win because they are not incarcerated, and they win because they have cash flow. These types of businesses are not impossible to create.

View on HN

> There is such a thing as for profit for good.

Their association with Y Combinator doesn't help with that impression. How many other venture funded start ups exist to provide a societal benefit while making only a modest return? Isn't the goal a big exit?

They might not be venture funded yet, but they aren't at Y Combinator for the coffee, right? I know this sounds super cynical, so please tell me why I'm wrong. Why is this a good thing?

> How many other venture funded start ups exist to provide a societal benefit while making only a modest return?

YC has a non-profits program. https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/

I don't see any indication that Promise is going non-profit, though.

Who says anything about a modest return? How much does the U.S. spend on prisons? How much does the world spend on prisons? Say they operate at a 30% discount, how much revenue is that? Off the top of my head, a lot.

>These types of businesses are not impossible to create.

This is amazingly uninformed. Let’s stop pretending private businesses were born yesterday and just consult history. Privatization of human rights is despicable and this is not a lesson that needs to be learned again. Do you know why we never had private prisons before? They incentivize corruption of the most vulnerable fabric of our society. No excuse.

I agree that for-profit prisons are not good for society. But does this one (granted, massive) mistake mean that we can no longer try to innovate in this space? Does it mean that the only model is publicly funded rehabilitation? That's obviously not worked either.

Exactly. I think there's a lot of things to consider around it all, for-profit prisons have a LOT of problems. But if we found that microwaving food for prisoners saved a lot of time cooking and thus also the amount of time we had to pay for people to cook for prisons that would be a good thing...at least it would be if that money gets funneled back to the point that a taxpayer is paying less. As it is I assume it just goes into the pocket of whoever runs the for-profit prison.

> does this one (granted, massive) mistake mean that we can no longer try to innovate in this space?

No, but we should learn from those mistakes, right?

When a company makes money from prisoners and more prisoners mean more money, then the incentives are a problem.

> Do you know why we never had private prisons before?

You mean, before 1852?

A profit motive can lead to perverse and unforeseen incentives, even despite the best intentions of the founders, who someday will not be running the company.

The private prison industry routinely lobbies for higher fines & longer sentences because it is to their benefit to have more people go to prison. Promise appears to have a similar incentive.

This aims to be much closer: http://benefitcorp.net/faq. Companies with the ability to operate for-profit, but without the obligation for maximizing shareholder profit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com