The problem is that they are being rewarded for doing the wrong things, there's no problem with rewarding them in general.
The market works when individual people take decisions: because there are many of them, some take risks, and they all talk to eachother.
There's no more to it than that. They can attack these people for personal gain. They, in this case, of course is the government. The people that make up the law, the government, the police.
If you think this is bad, wait until you see what child services or mental care departments do to people, which is a much worse example of how governments attacks the weak and hopeless. It doesn't matter which governments. It only matters that some people get power over others.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/...
But no worries, this whole thread is discussing how we can fix this with a few more laws.
I agree with this part. I disagree, however, with your implicit suggestion that fewer laws will help.
The purpose of the government is to protect people, and it's obviously failing at that in the current prison system. But simply punting the problem to the "free market" won't help either - corporations are arguably even worse offenders of exploiting unfair power dynamics.
The real answer, in my opinion, is fixing the broken power structure. After all, the government gets its power from us, and it's one of the few ways people can affect positive change.
Maybe if we all voted responsibly, prisons wouldn't have the power to exploit prisoners like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
The video has 2 sections. First, the professor explains the reasoning behind the 5th amendment ... and then a police officer points out how he does it.
Despite that I would agree that this officer is a pretty correct cop. Certainly you cannot call this guy bad or corrupt, and equally certain: he is a pretty smart guy.
He states pretty bluntly what the goal of a police officer is, in criminal cases. You probably think the goal is to arrest the perpetrator, but listen to the guy, it's not. The goal is a confession, the goal is maximizing convictions. Seriously, that's the metric they're judged on: number of convictions. Regardless of any other factor, and frankly using highly illegal tactics (though compared to European police I must say he is a saint). On top of that he has self-control that rivals the best monks.
The average cop, I am sorry to say, is not like this guy. The average cop is much more like Kelso from "that 70s show". The average cop became a cop because he could not get another job, but got accepted in the entrance exam, or (worse) because they enjoy having power over others. Or, like Kelso, a combination of both. They're morons, dumb to the point that people who know them wouldn't leave them alone with a lighter. They're interested in proving their power over others directly by humiliating them (generally in pretty benign ways, but ... like a high school bully that isn't an 8 year old anymore). They regularly screw up badly, and they desperately want to hide those screwups, at almost any cost.
This isn't controversial: everybody who knows a few cops knows this.
Can you imagine what interrogations tactics are when the cop is NOT a 20 year old military veteran with a strong sense of honor and very good observational skills, without good self control ? Oh wait, no need to imagine, just search it on youtube. Warning: actually doing that will not be pretty. Moron police officers shooting people for completely absurd misunderstandings, in scenarios that certainly look like a strong racism, sexism, and just general bullying component is at play.
Doing the same lookups for other forces, like for instance, searching youtube for videos of the UN's "blue helmets" in action ... is far worse. European police forces ... outright disgusting.
The problem is not law. You cannot reasonably argue that the problem is that we just need a few more laws and all will be fine.
This isn't very true. I am OK with people getting rich providing non-essential but much liked X to those with the spare resources.
I am not OK with people getting rich by rent-seeking limited essential resources or perverse incentives.
The societal goal of imprisonment should be minimizing population and cost to society. The financial goal would be maximizing population and minimizing cost to imprison. The societal and financial goals are very much in conflict.
I mean if we're gonna bring up this anology we've gotta figure out what a "best failer in the world" even means? What is the value the jailer creates? How do define a high performance jailer over just a nominal performant jailer? If there is no extra value produced by the best jailer in the world then we are over paying the best jailer in the world.
People don't fear being sent to the hospital over an off-color remark. Thieves don't hold honest folk at their mercy. Arsonists haven't done an exact recreation of Sherman's March, or anything similar. Serial murderers haven't killed off any non-negligible part of the population.
That's the value jailers create.
On this point, without looking it up, what do you estimate the overall recidivism rate to be? Just in a general conversational sense.
I have a new life goal
Building dungeons and trapping villagers inside was one of the first things my daughters set out to do in Minecraft. You're facing some stiff competition.
Says who? How does anyone make that kind of value judgment?
Here’s a value judgment for you: rent-seeking is evil.
But in other circumstances, the more general forms of rent-seeking can be a way to re-internalize an externality (e.g. a quantum of atmosphere that a factory could pollute), and is thereby critical to preventing "tragedy-of-the-commons"-style scenarios without violence such as rationing.
Don't you want to be able to protect the environment better than the EPA's incompetence and corruption could possibly hope to?