Special report: Profiting from prison | Hacker News Reader

Special report: Profiting from prison

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80 pointshoward94119 comments

The entire concept of a private prison kind of disgusts me. We sh. In most states we purposefully strip away their right to vote after this, so the people who have to experience these terrors first-hand don't even have any kind of say in regards to changing this.

You can read horror stories of prison companies only having one underpaid doctor for multiple prisons forcing inmates to wait weeks to get treatment for basic injuries, leading to broken bones healing incorrectly, or dying from appendicitis.

I realize that it's easy to have the mentality of "if you can't do the time don't do the crime", and I guess at some visceral level I can agree, but it feels like, no matter who you are, there should be some minimal level of humanity.

> The entire concept of a private prison kind of disgusts me.

It matters a lot less whether the prison is privately-run or run by the state, because in the end, the same abuses happen, and in fact the same exact entities still end up profiting.

> You can read horror stories of prison companies only having one underpaid doctor for multiple prisons forcing inmates to wait weeks to get treatment for basic injuries, leading to broken bones healing incorrectly, or dying from appendicitis.

This is appalling, yes! But it's not unique to privately-run prisons. Prisons run by the state have these exact same problems.

(It actually goes much worse than the examples you've described, but I'll avoid getting sucked into a soliloquy on the state of healthcare for prisoners for today).

The important difference is motivation. For-profit prisons, and services for them, have short-term capitalist goals: make as much money as possible in the near term, and preserve your advantage in the long term. Divorced of ethics, clearly lobbying for hasher criminal penalties is in their interests. From their perspective, the more people in prison for longer the better, especially since that will increase the recidivism rate, thus feeding the whole machine.

Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way. Rather, government should be motivated by the welfare of the entire population, and by reducing all of the costs of crime or undesirable behavior. This would likely lead to shorter sentences, or non-custodial penalties, for non-violent or non-dangerous offenders; automatic restoration of voting rights; humane prison environments with good and timely healthcare; etc.

Those solutions would directly harm for-profit prison companies. Which IMO is an excellent thing. Capitalism does nothing more than afford concentration of capital, and increasing skill and specialization in keeping people in a box just to serve those ends strikes me as deeply unethical.

>Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way.

Should? Why are we talking about should instead of what actually happens? Politicians are motivated by getting more votes. Government employees are motivated by other factors, but generally by getting the most money with the least amount of investment (same as most humans). The end result is pretty nasty abuses still happening.

> Our government, on the other hand, should not be motivated this way. Rather, government should be motivated by the welfare of the entire population, and by reducing all of the costs of crime or undesirable behavior.

Except... it's not. That is literally what people are referring to when we talk about the prison-industrial complex. The government absolutely does have a profit motive (and it turns out, it's the same profit motive shared by private industry, just captured or executed by the state instead).

There are 12 states that are hard to get your voting rights back after serving time for a felony.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-v...

I do agree we need a major overhaul of what we do with those who do not adhere to society and the the rules within.

We need to separate violent/nonviolent crimes better than we do now. When someone who gets busted for growing a plant repeatedly gets thrown into a prison with child molesters/rapists there is an issue.

I believe they already do try to separate this out but the way in which we try to rehabilitate those who have been convicted should change as well.

For non-violent offenders we should rehabilitate them more like Norway https://www.businessinsider.com/why-norways-prison-system-is...

And for those who are nothing but a total net loss on society, someone who has no inner morals and has raped, killed, hurt children type - having them go to 'prison' where they are exploited for profit (modern day labor camps?) I see no harm with it, as long as that profit doesn't line pockets of individuals (which it does currently guaranteed)- but rather pays back the operating costs/society itself for the negative strain the individual creates.

The idea that all people can be 'saved' or shown the light is garbage, there are monsters in the world who will always be monsters and should be treated as such.

I agreed with you until the last line.

Can all people be "saved"? Probably not, but I don't know that that's a valid excuse to get into this scary nightmare of "we can do whatever we want with these people".

First off, people are wrongly convicted of crimes, even heinous ones like rape and murder. Fortunately, it's not as common nowadays since DNA is pretty cool, but it still happens, and I don't know that I feel comfortable doing something like waterboarding to someone that might be innocent.

But honestly, even if we could somehow guarantee that we never have an innocent person in jail, I still think it's wrong to mistreat a human more than a certain level of punishment. Whether or not we can "save" them is sort of irrelevant in my mind.

Admittedly this is a more "feels-based" argument, but I think that the more dignity that we treat our prisoners with, the less apologetics we'll have to deal with to future generations. I genuinely can't see history looking kindly on the conditions of current private prisons.

You are a better person than I (empathetically).

I do agree that the last option (forced labor camps for 'monsters') - should only be used as an utter last resort to help be a relief on the local population financially from having to pay for it all via taxes.

If someone does murder a fellow human but has done nothing wrong prior, everyone does deserve a second chance and should go to the Norway style of rehabilitation.

Only after someone fails this path say 3 times (3 strikes and your out seems to be common) then they are stuck paying off their debt to society via being a work horse.

Warning - beyond this point there is graphic wording.

Also for clarification when I mention 'monsters' are unable to be saved this is referring to the extreme of the extreme. An example would be a video in which a cartel member cut open an individual while they were still alive, nailed their intestines to a tree and forced them to run around the tree or various other groups who practice extreme terror in this manner. (although I realize these groups tend to go back and forth attacking each other and rarely do this to innocent people)

I like to think more in terms of wasted money. Imprisonment is a waste. For the murderers take a hand or arm. If they repeat take the other, eventually they won't have the physical apertures to commit the crime in the first place. Maybe also exile them to Mexico or something. Make them not our problem. For everyone else who's non-violent I think community service and house arrest plus the public shame of being a convict should be enough.

Maybe forced education along-side community service, so they are forced to become better via becoming smarter...

I say this tongue in cheek (a little) as a staunch progressive and bleeding heart liberal. I know it's not humane to 'take an appendage', and I'm against the death penalty, but also as a pragmatist that would much rather see tax-payer dollars spent on single-payer healthcare than incarceration - we need to ensure public safety from those who may not be able to be fixed. I'd like to honestly find something that is streamlined, cost effective, and has zero incarceration time involved, is humane as possible and benefits the most people in society. Murderers and violent thieves (with a deadly weapon) lose varying 'lengths' of their appendages. There should be a line drawn at things like bar fights, and maybe leniency for first-timers. Could be as small as 'take a pinky'.

If we could completely end private prisons, and insurance in the country we'd save a ton of money per capita to use for other much more worthy endeavors.

I'm not against the idea of private prisons, but I do think the economic incentives are badly setup. If you look at the public prisons of various states with a powerful (in a political sense like CCPOA) prison guard union, you will see them advocating for laws that put more people behind bars.

It really comes down to how you write the contracts just as how it comes down to how you write the regulations, and a hope the politicians don't short money to private or public prisons.

I've thought that private prisons should be paid on safe capacity and not prisoner count. Beyond that, stiff fines and actual prosecution of people when negligence in staffing need to be an item. I've been served by IHS and lack of money in public health care with poor staffing can be a true killer. Plus, actual monetary incentives for after the release of a prisoner. A decent bounty for prisoners who do not commit further felonies for a period of time (5 years?) would incentivize some proper thought on what happens after the sentence.

>You can read horror stories of prison companies only having one underpaid doctor for multiple prisons forcing inmates to wait weeks to get treatment for basic injuries, leading to broken bones healing incorrectly, or dying from appendicitis.

In federal prison, we used to joke that the most dangerous gang was Medical. A guy I knew got a brown recluse bite on his foot and medical mis-diagnosed it as a broken bone. They put a cast on his foot and three weeks later had to amputate right below his knee.

Jail overpopulation is the real problem.

Legalization of all drugs seems the way to go. There is no reason why the government should be enforcing what you can and can't put in your own body. Even if it's bad for you.

I'll give you a good reason, healthcare costs. You think all that life saving medical care after an overdose is free or cheap? It's the same reason why motorcycle helmets are required by the government in many states. The public doesn't want to pay for the un/under-insured comatose rider's prolonged stay in the hospital after an accident.

Does it cost more to treat an overdose than it does to hold someone full-time in prison?

Undeniably, yes, it costs more to treat a patient on a per/day basis.

US Federal inmates cost ~$38,000 per year or ~$107/day. (approx based on previous years' info) [0] Just the ambulance ride alone is going cost much more than that. Add in hospital admission and treatment for all those nasty needle shared diseases and maybe an organ failure or two (livers can only put up with so much abuse) and the cost skyrockets.

[0]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09...

You forget all the people dying from overdoses, those people don't cost a cent, and save money because that's less drain in your hypothetical scenario because they're no longer around to drain the system. I don't know many drug users who wast 30k per year on medical, most probably don't even go to the E.R. unless someone else takes them. Many are dying just because they are not too big on self-care in the first place.

Also 38,000 seems a little low, but I guess averages. It's more than that though, you're taking away any tax dollars that person could be spending assuming they would make enough and if they're missing out on crucial years to get an education and could be higher contributors to society but aren't then you miss out on that as well.

Prison also often creates career criminals from those who maybe otherwise wouldn't have been. Legalizing all drugs (possession - not sales), the sex trade, and other crimes of 'morality' that harms nobody but the perpetrator would go along way to cut costs. After we do that we can look at ways to replace those societal habits and issues with something better.

Not saying they need be set completely free, but drug use isn't a criminal act. Often it is one of mental issues. It's more a mental medical issue than a criminal one and should be seen as such. Nobody with a mental illness should be in prison because of their illness and because they can't get treatment elsewhere.

If they have no mental issues, they should be required to do community service, as well as get an education. Let's not only make community college free, let's make it a replacement for prison for non-violent offenders so that would be career criminals can become professionals in another much more redeeming career.

Isn't this a false dichotomy? By putting people in prison, are we meaningfully reducing the frequency of drug use that may lead to overdose?

Serious question.

The principle at stake is that no one must benefit from someone's imprisonment. There can be no financial incentive to hold someone in confinement. There should be no attempt to offset the costs of incarceration or exploit the labor of inmates.

I would just like to state for the record that not all companies in the rehabilitation-space are scummy and greedy. While there are other companies in our field (I won't mention any names as we work with some of them) that fall under that umbrella there are other companies, like mine, dedicated to improving the lives of people once they get out of jail or in some cases keeping them out of jail in the first place.

As far as I know we were the first ones to release a very low-profile ankle bracelet [0] and give participant's a phone they can use to keep in contact with their supervisors. If you don't know much about the rehabilitation-space then you might not understand how big of a deal that is but understand that before us the only monitoring systems in existence were bulky ankle bracelets that could barely last a full day on a charge and provided no more than beep/buzz as a form of communication.

The ability to reach out and talk to a participant is huge deal as we can steer someone back from doing something like violating parole/areas they aren't allowed to be in. Before this the "solution" was to just dispatch an officer to the location the ankle bracelet reported. Now we can proactively call them when they are going somewhere they shouldn't be and give them a chance to reconsider. You have to remember that a number of people on our program either can't afford a phone and/or the service for it so it's not as easy as just "call the participant". Using our program we insure there is a stable line of communication at all times.

We also work to provide a spectrum of options for our agencies to use from Ankle Bracelet+Phone, to just Phone, to just an app on their own phone. Agencies can use this move participants between our offerings as they move between perceived risk levels. You might put someone right out of jail on a Bracelet+Phone and then graduate them to just the Phone after a few weeks. You might just use our Check-In app to periodically check in with the participant. You might use our video chat app built into our phone (we do NOT charge by the minute or anything scummy like that) to avoid having to have them come into the office (in a lot of jurisdictions a video chat can be legally equivalent to a face-to-face visit, either at the station or at a participant's house).

I could talk about this for hours but I'll leave you with this, our mission statement:

> Corrisoft’s mission is to deliver advanced technology services that enable community supervision agencies to engage with their clients more effectively, drive better outcomes, and reduce recidivism.

I'm sure other companies might use similar language but from the inside I can tell you we really mean it.

[0] https://corrisoft.com/air-smartphone-supervision-solutions/

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