I guess that either (a) regulation mandates security / poor conditions, or (b) nobody is quite crazy enough to try and make money by disrupting the private prison business :)
Prison guards in Norway are essentially university educated social workers. American prison guards from what I've read are essentially just guys with a stick. They just get a couple of weeks of training.
Guards in Norway work closely with prisoners and do activities with them and get to know them. This leads to lower levels of aggression. I've seen accounts of other European visiting Norwegian prisons remarking how much more calm the atmosphere is.
When you lock up people and treat them as animals you create anger, resentment and aggression which they take out on each other or the guards if given the opportunity.
I believe this is a principle which applies to all walks of life including how you raise children. Children who live under strict regimes which are heavily focused on punishment don't act well. They easily become violent and lack self control.
If there is always an overwhelming force present to punish every transgression you make, all you learn is to be behave when you are under threat. When that control is gone you have no ability to control yourself.
In other words, why isn't MS13 infiltrating Norway, if there's no competition for their illegal activities?
In the United States, for instance, there's a huge market for gang formation, and gangs thrive despite constant fighting for territory.
[0]: https://www.ssb.no/en/sosiale-forhold-og-kriminalitet/artikl... (mostly in Norwegian, but some parts in English)
I never claimed immigrants are somehow intrinsically more disposed to crime. In fact, the report doesn't make that claim either. It shows that crime rates vary greatly based on where immigrants/refugees come from.
It's not simple, there are many causes of such a effect. But offering free education and other opportunities that are substantially better than crimes is a good guess.
>“In Norway, people very much disapprove of inequalities that are due to bad luck,” Bertil Tungodden, a professor at the Norwegian School of Economics, and one of the paper’s authors, told me. “People in the U.S. are more willing to accept inequality, even if it reflects pure good luck for some and pure bad luck for others.”
Less of a problem because inequality is lower, and fewer people feel the need to join gangs for protection/to get by. Of course, it's also more homogeneous.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/inequal...
It's by no means perfect, but rehabilitation is a focus everywhere.
Why would it matter? Are you operating under the assumption that they would then pass those savings along to the government? That's not really how privatization works.
Private prisons don't care about saving the government money, they care about maximizing profit. They say they can save the government money by offering to perform an existing service at a lower cost, but not dramatically lower. They negotiate minimum prison populations, thus ensuring a baseline income. They then proceed to do the absolute minimum possible to fulfill the contract while cutting costs in every way imaginable. There's no long term consideration given to sustainability of their practices or benefit to the prison population. Everything they do is to maximize the margins until the contract runs out and they can renegotiate for higher rates.
Well, it would be if you imagine a perfectly competitive market for prisoner placement. That's not even approximately the current private prison situation, though.
That's a nearly impossible situation, the start up costs alone would be enough to dissuade most from entering the market. Most private prisons don't operate in their own facilities but instead manage or lease existing facilitates from the government.
You’re right that the barrier to entry and long term prospects of running private prisons isn’t lucrative enough for more competitors to enter into.
Regulation is an issue because the country is divided on how to view imprionsment and criminals in general.
I think you really need a federal inspector general and federal regulation combined with delegation to the states to run their own prison system. That may even extend to the local level in order to prevent prejudice and rights violations.
So yeah, I think private prisons combined with strict, public oversight would benefit everyone.