The Dickensian Conditions of Life in a For-Profit Lockup
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
John Kenneth Galbraith
Here in Europe, if your income is about average or even a bit less, you might have some small trouble at some point of your life, but for the vast majority of people there will never be a single incident that sinks you into deep shit, financially speaking.
Compare to the US, where a sudden accident or illness might suck your savings dry. Even worse, a lot of people will start their careers with a lot of debt because of the overinflated tuition costs and student debt.
My point is: it seems there is a real incentive to accumulate a lot of money in the USA (which happens at both individual and collective level), and in order to remove those incentives, many things need to change. Private prisons may just be a particularly twisted product of those incentives.
We privatize prisons and say the cost per prisoner should go down. This comes in the form of lower services for prisoners, lower pay for staff, and cheap food, and skimping on amenities and on rehabilitation programs. All in the name of getting a low cost on housing the prisoner. We Americans tend not to look at long term costs or on external costs.
We thus end up in situations in which large numbers of poor voters rely on things like Obamacare and vote for people who actively want to dismantle it in the name of lower taxes. We are a money obsessed people always seeking the best deal. The most food for the cheapest price and that kind of thinking. It's weird that this is so because we have so many religious people and they seem to overlook or deliberately forget the Biblical admonition that the love of money is the root of all evil.
As you say, the vast majority of the country is one illness away from penury.
Whether the government performs the work itself or contracts it out, it must do so competently, exercising appropriate oversight and regulation. In this case, the government failed to properly oversee their contractor, which isn't that different than failing to oversee government employees doing the same thing.
So, yes, a private company failed to perform the job. But, so too did the government, on whose behalf the company was operating.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
I know it was a joke to make a point but the fact is that I've never heard anyone expound that government does everything right. I've never heard anyone expound that cost never matters. Such a statement would be profoundly dumb and foolish. Yet I've heard prominent politicians expound the equally dumb and foolish belief that lowering taxes is always right and that more government is never the answer.
I suggest to you that you have never actually heard anyone say that government does everything right. I suggest this is a bogeyman whose existence you've been sold on but one which doesn't actually exist. I further suggest you contemplate how it is that you have come to believe such a thing.
Of course I could be wrong. I don't think I am but I recognize that I haven't experienced everything you have and it's possible you've encountered a fanatic who actually said that government is always the answer. You've never heard such a thing from a prominent politician in the U.S. though.
> The notion that government can’t do anything right is a destructive one and it needs to die quickly. Privatization in industries that ought not be profit driven is a bad thing.
In the cited case of the article, the government was at least as at fault as the contractor. Just because the government contracts something out, doesn't mean that less quality should be expected.
In many cases, the government may have the responsibility to do something, but lack the expertise to do it. Should the government go ahead and try to do it anyway? Or, should they try to contract it out? These are not always easy decisions, but in either case, the government is still in charge and is responsible.
Your original response doesn't really make much sense, since it seems to be responding to an argument that wasn't made.
There is nothing hyperbolic in this statement. That you think it is hyperbole is evidence to me that we have a long way to go. There are areas that ought not to be privatized. It's pretty extreme to think that everything government does ought to be privatized. It's equally extreme to think that privatization never works. Government can and has done things right. To believe otherwise is foolish and extreme. It is equally foolish and extreme to think government is always the answer. There was no hyperbole in what I wrote. And you've completely sidestepped the points I raised. I gather I was correct in stating that you've never actually heard someone say that government is always the answer.
At the same time, the government hasn’t proven to be any more “humane.” Most US prisons are public. Are prisoners treated humanely in Illinois, where private prisons have been banned since 1990? New York, another state that has long banned private prisons, is famous for the abuses in its pre-trial system, where non-convicts are sometimes held for years.
Prisoners are generally not treated humanely in the U.S. They tend to be treated better in government run prisons than in for profit prisons. If your point is that since prisoners are not humanely treated in government run prisons then it is OK for them to be treated the way described in the article then I think your position is morally repugnant.
Did the GP say that?
Statements have implications and a part of communication is that both parties end up making assumptions/deductions about what the other party is truly saying. This is why communication is hard. This is especially true for written communication. So it's possible for a person to mean something without explicitly stating so. For instance if I make the two statements:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Then one can deduce that I'm saying Socrates is mortal (and edit on my part here) even though I didn't make that explicit claim. Of course, if I'm illogical - and this frequently happens - I may or may not intend to imply this.
EDIT: Yes, I need to change a word. Thank you.
BTW, the logical fallacy I was referring to is this version (which is definitely not what you wrote or intended, it just came to mind reading it):
All men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is a man.
India is not a single example.
You didn't have the same objection to comment agreeing with your point that used
> Here in Europe
> If your point is that since prisoners are not humanely treated in government run prisons then it is OK for them to be treated the way described in the article then I think your position is morally repugnant.
I dont' think he said that, I read it as refuting your analysis by giving you a counter example where removing the culprit you idientified as cause didn't solve the original problem
You don't count India switching to a capitalist system from a socialist system and improving as a single example of the profit motive making things better. Great. What is your point? Let's say it is x number of examples. The claim that was made can only be shown to be true if it is demonstrated that it works in every single example and not some small subset of examples. So pointing out that you think the example given counts as many instances of the claim being true is not relevant.
> you think the example given counts as many instances of the claim being true is not relevant.
> claim that was made can only be shown to be true if it is demonstrated that it works in every single example and not some small subset of examples.
Your claim that govt run prisons are more humane doesn't "works in every single example" either, as pointed out by GP.
The article presents no evidence of that (much less the actual relevant comparison, which is whether government-run prisons in those same states would be better).
> If your point is that since prisoners are not humanely treated in government run prisons then it is OK for them to be treated the way described in the article then I think your position is morally repugnant.
The question in this sub-thread isn't whether prisoners should be treated humanely, but whether its the for-profit nature of prisons that makes then inhumane. The fact that government-run prisons in the U.S. also are inhumane is highly relevant to that question.
My evidence is not limited to the NYT article. Your original comment indicated that the profit motive always improves things. If true then for profit prisons ought to be an improvement to government run prisons. My belief based on working at prison and knowing some people who work at jails and having read a bit about the topic is that for profit prisons are not better than government prisons.
You further asked if prisoners are humanely treated in government run prisons in Illinois.
Are prisoners treated humanely in Illinois, where private prisons have been banned since 1990?
Prisoners in the U.S. are not humanely treated by either government run prisons or for profit prisons. Prisons are generally better run and more humane when run by government. It appeared your argument was that since government run prisons are still inhumane then for profit prisons are OK. I think that logic is bad. But I gather from what you wrote above that to you the question is whether or not the profit motive is what makes for profit prisons bad. My answer is yes given that the voting public in general does not want to fund humane prisons and that a for profit enterprise ought to run it cheaper than what government run prisons cost.
To me the question is one of betterment. Which system is better? Both are bad but one is worse than the other. That is what is germane to me. Pointing out government run prisons are bad is not relevant to the discussion if despite them being bad they are better than for profit prisons.
I seriously doubt it.
Let's just take one simple example: the software boom centered in Bangalore and other (primarily) South Indian cities. Do you know why those booms happened there? It's because there was a large, educated workforce stemming from government investment in public sector firms - i.e., state enterprises. It's the children of government and public sector employees who set up most of the now famous software firms.
In other words, the private sector boom is unimaginable without two generations of public investment in industry and education and the first Indian prime minister, Nehru was acutely aware of the state's responsibility to make that happen because at the time of independence, there was no private industry that could invest in the kind of infrastructure - whether human or material - that led to the sort of development you are now claiming was unshackling India from suffering under central planning policies.
If you want to bring your ideology to work go right ahead, but please don't quote examples or historical precedents of which you know nothing.
> the private sector boom is unimaginable without two generations of public investment
Neither of these are relevant to the point GP made.
Which neglects the superstructure on which the current growth story is based and also neglects the huge human and environmental cost of privatization even when it enables growth as [1] will tell you.
And that's why it's a terrible example to illustrate the value of private prisons in the US since those prisons also prey upon the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in that country.
In other words, GP's main point was to use India as an example for praising the merits of privatization vis-a-vis central planning there and then mapping that to the US to praise the privatization of prisons in comparison to state run prisons.
What, in fact, it shows is the exact opposite, that when it comes to services that need to put human welfare first and where money presents conflicts of interest, it's best done under the state umbrella or with strict supervision.
[1]: https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/a-long-march-of-the-di...
The economics profession itself is in crisis for capture, dubious theories, bad data and unrealistic assumptions. These are then used to spread baseless narratives of 'wealth creators', 'trickle down', 'financial wizards' all disconnected from reality. There are always economists on hand to scaremonger or justify any decision that benefits the wealthy, notice their behavior during Bernie Sanders Amazon bill. It's naked propaganda.
A corporation is centrally planned but when it comes to a country we are supposed to believe a market will sort it out? How? This is fantasy. A country is not a corporation. This childish demonizing of government at the core is really about disenfranchising citizens and democracy so the wealthy can operate unimpeded.
The problem is that the specification is WAY wrong. Treating the criminal justice system as infallible is a huge mistake, many people in prison are wrongfully convicted or were bullied into a guilty plea. Treating it as a place to punish people for their crimes has no long-term value. They get out, don't know how to interact with the real world, and end up back in prison (hey, more profit!).
Ultimately society is shortchanged because these people have value even though they can't necessarily be trusted in their current state in free society. (Some of this is society's fault, of course, which we take no responsibility for, because taking responsibility is expensive and if we spent our tax dollars on that, we couldn't have as many sports stadiums or wars.) I look at prison as a place where people who can't be trusted in free society to be more closely monitored. A case I always think about is Hans Reiser. Clearly he cannot be trusted to be alone with people that he wants to murder, because he'll murder them. Fair enough. But I don't see why he can't write filesystem code anymore. You can have a laptop with the Linux kernel on it and submit patches without being able to freely murder people. Why doesn't the prison system provide that? We as a society lose out on that possible value, and the prisoner loses out on the ability to be human. (The conflict here is always that that's unfair to people who haven't murdered anyone. And that's true, which is why the concept of basic income comes up again and again. If everyone is equal in their ability to have their basic human needs met, the world can be a much better place. That costs $$$ though and we must not spend money on boring things like meeting society's basic needs. Me, me, me! That's the most important thing.)
Anyway, the TLDR is that right now the criminal justice system is severely fucked, and private prisons are a way of getting absolutely terrible results for a lower price. If we want to get good results, we will have to change things dramatically, and that will cost money. Nobody wants to pay the money, or necessarily even knows how to fix the problem with money, so here we are.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/07/10/premature-baby-born-at-d...
Wanting to see criminals suffer horribly is exactly as wrong, or exactly as right, as wanting to see them locked up for years and eventually possibly rehabilitate and rejoin greater society.
In other words, it really doesn't matter.
I agree. Dehumanizing the "other" is profoundly human.
But rising above bloodthirst through rationality and empathy, and crafting institutions (such as laws) which better us all, together... is also profoundly human.
> In other words, it really doesn't matter.
The universe may be indifferent, but human actions are meaningful to other humans.
If the privately run prison is not meeting spec, then at the very least the regulating authority (the state government) shares at least half of the blame. They are contracting for a service, and perhaps not screening bids that are unrealistic, and are not monitoring the contractor for compliance, or possibly not competently putting together the contract so that adequate oversight is possible.
Whether run by the state or a company, the state is ultimately responsible for the activities at these institutions. There are plenty of examples of state run prisons that compare to these privately run examples.
As an aside, I will be happily posting away here then suddenly I will get a message "you're posting too fast, please slow down". I immediately know that one of my comments has been downvoted, because that's what triggers that.
The 13th didn't make prison slavery legal, it made non-prison slavery illegal.
That interpretation makes no sense, why would he want that?