The public sector isn't any better.
The Price of Prison Guard Unions https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-price-of-prison-guar...
PORAC's contribution to California's prison crisis http://www.cjcj.org/news/5423
The Price of Prison Guard Unions https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-price-of-prison-guar...
PORAC's contribution to California's prison crisis http://www.cjcj.org/news/5423
If anyone's interested in actually learning about the causes of mass incarceration, I'd strongly recommend John Pfaff's _Locked In_: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L6SLKK8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
In short: a) It's not the war on drugs. b) It's not private prisons. c) It's not sentencing laws.
You could get rid of all of those and America would still lead the "free" world in incarceration.
Pfaff is convinced that aggressive prosecution is the biggest cause of over-incarceration. His argument here is compelling. He notes that while incarceration rates began to climb in the 1980s as a response to rising crime, those trend lines continued through the Nineties, even though crime was steadily falling. Why did that happen? Examining all the relevant variables (crime reports, arrests, charges filed, and convictions), Pfaff found himself looking squarely at the prosecutor’s office. As less crime was reported, arrests dropped proportionately, and among those who were charged with a crime, conviction rates held steady. But prisons continued to fill, because prosecutors were filing felony charges against ever-growing percentages of their dwindling arrestees.
From https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/02/20/john-pfaf...
https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/in...
PS. Don't downvote me if you don't know economics morons.
It is a feature of our system that is only accelerated by income inequality and labor price suppression.
The motivations are better. No one is saying it's going to solve world hunger, but it's a good first step.
The government won't lobby itself; the prison guards unions may, however.
Next you need to find good people that strongly want to accomplish the organization's goals. And who are smart enough to actually do that.
And you need to make sure those leaders have adequate funding and time to make the necessary changes. As well as having a legal system that is at least half-way working correctly.
Outlawing private prisons is probably a good step, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to eliminate the vested interest in mass incarceration.
Thing is, private prisons are 10% of prisons. Which means public prisons are 90% of prisons, and so public-sector prison guards are at least 90% of prison guards (maybe 100% if they get the state to require collective bargaining in private prisons). That means a majority of the special interests are there either way. There is a conflict of interest with private prisons, but private prison owners are a small and not-very-powerful special interest compared to others.
Like, let’s talk marijuana legalization. I’m pretty sure fast food franchise owners are already a bigger special interest than private prison operators. They probably would be even if 100% of prisons were privatized.
On the other hand, the prison guard union has some real power. If they go on strike, you have to call up the National Guard and panic to get the prisons in working order before the prisoners start rioting and/or starving to death. If a private prison owner pulled that shit, it’s just one private prison owner, and regardless, they’re ruined for life. It only even becomes a remotely comparable risk if there was a single private prison monopoly across the whole state, whereas public prisons already have a prison guard monopoly in the form of the union.
That there are things we also need to fix with public prisons is an orthogonal issue. private prisons are clearly a problem. The idea of commercializing the locking up of human beings is horrifying from a moral perspective.
Although the root fault is that a "guilty" plea costs the court less resources than a "not guilty" plea. If you wanted to solve this properly, you'd require that even if the defendant pleads guilty, there still has to be the full process of jury selection, presenting evidence and arguments (even if the defence's argument is "yeah, I did it") and deliberation (which, by design, gives twelve opportunities for someone to say "what the hell are we doing; this is clearly bunk" without that person being under threat of twenty-five-to-life for contempt of cop).
Edit: oh right, and you also need to make offering plea bargains (outside of state's-evidence cases) a twenty-five-to-life felony for the prosecutor.
"a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony charges against arrestees about twice as often as they had before"
For all of its faults, I can't agree with you that the public sector is just as bad as the private sector.
Private prisons aren't always worse: Florida study showing lower recividism in private prisons https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249718665_A_Compara...
When you see "Private Prisons Are The Worst!!!" check the studies to see if the groups are comparable; I know someone in the industry years ago and when they opened the first private prison in the state they were sent the worst offenders in order to try and break them, yet they ended up performing better than average for the state.
Prison lobbying comes from both.