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Comment by llarsson | Hacker News Reader

Good riddance.

The whole premise of private, for-profit, prisons has always seemed deeply troubling to me. The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society. That can take years of hard work by the individual, and require assistance from professionals (therapists, teachers, ...).

A for-profit company by definition seeks to maximize profits. Expensive rehabilitation is therefore immediately off the table, or given at the minimum allowable level. That is just not in the best interest of neither the individuals in the prison system, nor the rest of society.

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The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate

The operative word you used is should. You hold the view that the purpose of justice is rehabilitation, which is one theory of justice. Other popular views are deterrence and retribution.

From what I've observed about the United States, preferences for these competing theories of justice tend to fall along well-trodden political lines. That's why it can be so hard to make the legislative changes that California has just made.

The only indisputable effect of imprisonment is that it prevents preying upon the general public for the duration. Since criminal behavior markedly decreases with age, there is a rational argument to be made that persons who prey on others should be removed from society until such time as they are old enough to knock it off.

Unless prison radializes them and conditions them to integrate even less with society. Then it would have the opposite effect you desire, even if statistics painted the picture you want to see.

The purpose of imprisonment is to punish criminals by depriving them of their liberty. As a side-effect, society benefits because a criminal has been forcibly removed from visiting further misery on law-abiding people.

Imprisonment is and should be a deterrent punishment - it is not a support group.

One can both be in favor of abolishing for-profit prisons and also in favor of severe deterrent sentences for law-breakers. Profiteering private corporations naturally seek to maximise the number of prisoners in their facilities, because they are paid per inmate - so they have every incentive to ensure future "custom". This motive naturally conflicts with deterrent imprisonment - the whole idea is to forcibly prevent criminals from breaking the law again.

The purpose of prison certainly depends on the socity the prison is in. In Germany for example prison is certainly seen as a institution whose top-most goal it is to reform the inmate. Just punishing them and showing them that society doesn't care about them will in many cases achieve the polar opposite: it hardens them, makes them more dangerous and is therfore a punishment for the rest of society too.

And frankly if I had to choose between a reformed inmate who won't do it again but wasn't punished with cruelty and a hardened inmate who thinks he owes nothing to society I will always go for the former out of pure egoism.

It takes a certain transactional mindset to believe that harsher punishment result in less crime or that the suffering of the criminal will make up for the crimes commited. The lack of effectiveness for punishment to prevent future crimes is a well researched topic.

> the whole idea is to forcibly prevent criminals from breaking the law again

Unless you kill them, permanently incarcerate them, or lobotomize them, this is impossible.

The support group's intent is to help prevent re-offending after they are released.

It's not just supposed to be a punishment and it's obviously not a deterrent. Rehabilitation and allowing for proper reintegration into society needs to happen or you end up with a former felon being stuck in a cycle of crime that they are forced into.

While I agree with your assessment of private prisons, I think we've begun to use the legal sure and imprisonment for things it wasn't intended for, such as minor vice crimes, based on flawed broken window thinking and making police terrified of the communities that they serve.

Exactly. Statements like the commenter above are not universal truths. Certainly, some people believe the purpose of prison is rehabilitation. That is neither a universal belief however, nor the focus of our legal system. Many people believe the point of prison is punishment, just as the point of fines (like a speeding ticket, for example) are to make someone hurt financially, not to recoup costs (one person speeding typically costs the state nothing).

It can be both at the same time. A step of the reformation process is for the inmate to understand the need for the punishment. It doesn't mean that there is no punishment, just that blind retribution is insufficient to form a perspective for the inmate and society. Most inmates are not going to stay in prison for their whole life, so of obviously you try to maximize rehabilitation.

I do believe it to be a universal truth that a reformist approach is superior. Treating it as opposed solution is certainly short sighted.

> I do believe it to be a universal truth that a reformist approach is superior.

Exactly. This is your belief, and clearly not everyone believes it.

It sure could be both at the same time. Many people believe that too. It could also only be one or the other. Lots think those ways. There is no universally accepted truth here, and pretending like there is is not fruitful.

I thought the imprisonment was to make society safer? Forcefully removing criminals and using deterrent punishment is one way to try to do this, but it's not the only way.

Crime rates in the U.S. vs other developed countries, where rehabilitation is the focus, suggests rehabilitation is a much more efficient solution. See for example the crime rates in the Nordic countries.

> The purpose of imprisonment is to punish criminals by depriving them of their liberty.

This is an opinion, not a fact. And you don't even back up your opinion with any data to support it.

I guess this cannot be backed up by data. It's a moral belief.

Even in a lot of the more mainstream libertarian literature [1] most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons.

Besides, most of these sorts of private/public relationships are unlike other true markets anyway with very little competition and only one customer to appease. We end up with a system with even more opaque responsibility/liability chains and encourage crony business deals.

Without any discernible benefit for the private nature and creating negative incentives that encourage more violence by correlating the success of an industry on the greater imprisonment of people, I can’t see any net-benefit for them to exist.

I tend to be a fan of markets in a practical sense but I wish we had clearer distinctions between these public/private operations that are spun as being more “efficient”. Plus a ton of people use these failures of public/private organizations to disparage markets. So it’s not doing anyone any favours to support these half baked pseudo market arrangements, even if you are pro market. In most situations we need purely public or market solutions. I’ve seen few examples of mixing the two that left us better off (the US health insurance ‘market’ is the shining example).

[1] as opposed to the more fringe absolutist anarcho-capitalist stuff ala Mises which does push for private everything

Just to note, "libertarian literature" is a very broad phrase, and there is certainly plenty of reasonably prominent literature from both the left and the right that describes itself as "libertarian" and would also oppose the idea of centralized state law enforcement and justice systems.

On the right you've got some varieties of anarcho-capitalism that support systems of polycentric law that emerge from markets for law enforcement and criminal justice. On the left you've got anarchist movements like anarcho-syndicalism which propose a decentralized or federated system of social institutions that would be determined by direct action and direct democracy.

Yep, that’s another distinction I wish would enter public perception. Much like how socialism vs communism distinction was made to try to separate some of their better ideas from a long legacy of negative baggage.

I think libertarians would benefit from creating a clearer spectrum within their own community between the more practical (and popular) small government/minarchist side and the more extreme anarcho-capitalist privatize everything group. Too often they seem to be happy having these lines blurred. Plus I don’t think there is any contradictions or significant compromises in doing so. If anything pushing for pipe dream imaginary economic systems or half solution public/private stop gaps isn’t helping anyone.

I'm not attempting to prescribe a definition or usage of any terms. I'm simply describing a very common way in this these terms are already being used, and pointing out that your usage should probably be further clarified. If you wish to use "libertarian" to refer to something very specific, like perhaps the Libertarian Party in the USA, you're free to do so. I just think you should make that clarification, because people will understandably be confused by an unqualified usage of the term "libertarian." It is a term that is used very broadly by many different groups.

I also made no claims regarding the viability or merits of any of the viewpoints I was describing. That's not a conversation I'm interested in having in this context.

I don’t think I was disagreeing with you...

I agree, I've been thinking more and more that we need to spend some serious time on defining what is and isn't best handled by markets and drawing clear bounds around those areas. I'm positive that there are enough real world examples out there to draw up the general structure of a system that would incorporate what we've learnt over the past few hundred years. I feel like most attempts to do so so far have been rather dishonest, naive, and/or biased in one direction or another.

Creating the public/private distinction would also help solve some legitimate political issues and provide a much more consistent framework. Politics is mostly a game of compromise. You could give in on already gutted half markets, such as public health insurance, while using the leverage to push harder to keep most other industries open.

Ideology often gets in the way of providing the best solution to the greatest amount of people. I personally don't see much value in keeping a broken half-market like health insurance putting along in the name of "free markets". That just makes people blame markets for the failures of the public/private arrangements, which hurts them in other areas where it does make sense, where markets should be the default.

Others like private prisons and private military contractors makes the public lose trust in public institutions. Having a trustworthy justice and government system is critical for all markets to succeed.

Additionally a harder public/private distinction will put greater weight in these decisions and more responsibility. It's very easy for a politician to grab the half-measure public/private mix while pretending to appease both sides.

most law enforcement and the justice systems are treated as exactly the type of stuff that doesn’t make sense for a market and should be handled by the government. This should apply to prisons for much of the same reasons.

FWIW, one should also consider that in a Libertarian system FAR fewer people would be in jail in the first place - perhaps as few as none, since Libertarian ideology is not big on forced imprisonment in the first place. The typical Libertarian view of justice is rooted more in the idea of restitution for damages caused (where applicable) than "punishment".

Does Libertarian idea of a penal system not rely on the idea of discipline? I'm curious as the western world has moved on from the previous system where a crime was considered a personal offence to the sovereign. In which case, criminals were displayed in public and tortured. To a system where criminals are to be reformed and disciplined into a normalized individual. An eye for an eye seems to be a regression back to the systems before we had a state and where the penal institution was no longer a extension of politics.

At best, describing the (common) Libertarian approach to justice as "an eye for an eye" is over simplified to the point of absurdity. For example, the vast majority of Libertarians are opposed to State sanctioned executions for crimes, even in the case of murder or a crime where financial restitution isn't obviously applicable. Of course there are debates in Libertarian circles about exactly what the nature of restitution should be in cases like that.

Are they against capital punishment? That's different from rejecting disciplinary and penal institutions as a whole. Is there a reason why restitution is considered the only mechanism for punishment? How do Libertarians disagree with the idea that a penal institution can be a source of social reform as well as political stability?

> The focus of a healthy prison system should be to rehabilitate people and help them turn their lives around so that they contribute positively to society.

Compare with this statement: "A well-run private prison system would be given financial rewards based on recidivism rates and internal violence, and could do so at less cost than state-run prisons". I suspect your response will probably be along the lines of "that's nice dear, but that's not the system we actually ended up with".

The alternative to privately-run prisons that actually exists in CA is not the healthy prison system that you have described, but is the state-run prison system: a revolving door into criminal training centres, with all the abuses you could expect from a system in which certain sets of people have near-arbitrary power over other sets of people.

> A for-profit company by definition seeks to maximize profits.

Yep, people who make money from a thing have an incentive for that thing to continue happening. Now, I challenge you to take a less narrow view of "profit", one that would include (say) a secure job that pays a good wage and comes with a cushy pension (and power over others for those that relish that sort of thing), and apply your reasoning to the state prison system.

Profit incentive is still there, but apparently it is only OK when it is California who profits. Also please do not forget who puts people in those prisons.

That's charitable. The incentive isn't just to get rid of rehabilitation, it's for the private prison to do everything in their power to ensure that their inmates are trapped in a never-ending cycle of crime and recidivism.

What is even scarier is an entity NOT motivated by profits that spends endlessly into a pit sucking resources away from solving bigger issues such as Climate Change, creating a high speed rail network, or educating children.

Lets not be against efficiency for the sake of political orthodoxy.

What is efficient for society is to focus on rehabilitation, which is not a "pit sucking resources".

That is a separate issue.

>A for-profit company by definition seeks to maximize profits. Expensive rehabilitation is therefore immediately off the table, or given at the minimum allowable level.

There's no reason a for-profit company wouldn't be able to provide a high quality service here if the customer actually insisted on (and paid for) such.

...and had some means to determine that it was happening.

I don't see a way where the incentives to cut corners vs the cost and effort of monitoring to deny the effects those incentives would actually work out.

Competitive capitalism is good at being efficient. It is NOT good at avoiding examples of negative results. Even if we say "here's the desirable target" and enforce it, the incentives will be that a large number of the participants will go below that desire in their efforts to maximize profits.

If we want them to be exceeding the targets for things like safety, recidivism, and humane treatment, we can't set incentives that are "profit = how little can you do", even WITH a minimum required.

I would recommend you do some research on this topic. Your giving talking points produced by mainstream talking heads.

When in fact, research points to private prisons being better at dropping incarceration rates through the programs offered at them. Therefore increasing ones chance at correct rehabilitation.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249718665_A_Compara...

That paper is older than 20 years, and takes place during a short period of time in Florida, from a very small number of private prisons. A lot has changed since then, and the paper makes assumptions that are invalid with the current discussion, specifically the extremely small sample of private prisons (n=2?).

I don't think it's valid to draw concrete conclusions about the current crisis from the study you linked. There are far more variables at play than were studied in the paper, and those variables - such as racism, increasing societal inequality, etc - matter.

Also, reasons cited in that paper for the reduced recidivism are to do with the programs offered by the private prison. Are private prisons in all states / California allowed or incentived to offer similar programs? Do they choose not to?

These things affect the statistics, and drawing strong conclusions from that paper about private prisons in California today may lead you to invalid conclusions.

I'm not sure one 20 year old study of 200 inmates from one state is representative of the population.

Besides that, it's inarguable that for-profit entities need profit to exist. You could claim that some for-profit prisons have lower recidivism but a non-profit entity will, on average, have more incentive to help inmates than one who's lifeblood comes from profits.

Interesting, literally every single link on the first page of the Google search for "private prison recidivism" appears to say the exact opposite.

- https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/may/5/report-says-...

- https://news.wisc.edu/study-finds-private-prisons-keep-inmat...

- https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/how-create-more-humane-pr...

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