We could reassign money to do community outreach, pay for jobs that provide mental health services, etc. But there are a lot of people who currently have a financial interest in maintaining the status quo.
No, they are economically inefficient the same way slavery is inefficient or how tying HIB to employers is inefficient. By putting a "leash" on people you prevent them from doing the most productive work they could have done without the leash. Paying a ward to reduce the economic output of an individual who merely needs rehabilitation is a pure waste of money. It's a net loss for the economy.
Did you just say that owning people to perform labor is inefficient? I can’t think of a more efficient system. Apologies if I misinterpreted.
"Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2013, there were 133,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.4% of the overall U.S. prison population. Broken down to prison type, 19.1% of the federal prison population in the United States is housed in private prisons and 6.8% of the U.S. state prison population is housed in private prisons. While 2013 represented a slight decline in private prison population over 2012, the overall trend over the preceding decade had been a slow increase." [0]
[0] https://prisonstudies.org/country/china [1] https://prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america