I think private prisons could be a good thing if the right people had the right incentives.
Imagine if there were something like recidivism bonds or cooperatively owned prisons, with healthy start-up culture behind it.
Imagine if there were something like recidivism bonds or cooperatively owned prisons, with healthy start-up culture behind it.
Meaning that with for profit, there is at least a pathway to new ways of doing prison.
This naive view that incentives engineering could somehow fix the fact that a profit oriented creature means that any other value become subjugated to profit. Ppl are amazing at optimizing for stuff, especially stuff you can measure. If you throw away the non tangible values of decency truth fairness freedom, in favor of the very tangible value of money you'll get corporations working hard to maximize their profit in any way imaginable, including twisted lobbying to rewrite the incentives and outright kickbacks.
We see this happen again and again and again, and still the "incentive engineers" want to try one more time.
…not that it’s done properly or humanely though, or that the incentives are commensurate with those ideals. It seems we can’t agree on whether people who have ever shown an ounce of imperfection get to retain their rights. Ah, politics…