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Comment by mozman | Hacker News Reader

It also puts a lot of money in the pockets of those who run private prisons. The incentives are perverse.

It’s also not about rehabilitation, it’s about penance but that rarely materializes.

Once you go to prison you learn how to be a better criminal. You can’t get a job because of your record. Far too easy to turn back to crime and land right back inside.

It’s cruel. It has nothing to do with reflection. Inhumane at best.

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It's also about keeping violent people off the streets.

This guy killed someone. He mentions it so briefly it's as though he thinks it's a minor detail. That person he killed was a real human. They were someone's kid, someone's sibling, someone's parent perhaps, someone's friend.

He also seems to behave poorly in prison, still, after 30 years. He flippantly notes a "riot" as though it was something that happened to him. He brags about his abs. I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

For many people (including myself), it's not about rehab, it's not about penance, it's not about vengeance, it's about keeping someone like this away from everyone else.

That's reading quite a lot into an article which I don't believe supports those positions. We know nothing about the circumstances of the murder, nor of the riot, nor of his upbringing. There's absolutely nothing in this article to even suggest he's a psychopath.

For all we know, he was in the wrong hood at the wrong time, and had to adapt to "prison life" because that is the culture that is foist upon him.

I'm not saying he's not a psychopath, but that's not an evidence-based assertion here.

>> I'm not a psychologist but this guy reads like a stock standard psychopath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

This isn't a strong assertion and hence doesn't need a water tight argument or strong evidence. It notes I'm not an expert in the field, and that I'm basing the judgement on the writing only. Not everything is an academic paper or a judgement from a jury.

That being said, read the section on "core traits" in that link and read the article again. Lack of remorse... arrogance (the abs section?) and impulsive behavior (he murdered someone and is in and out of the hole for 30 years....).

Agreed. The article displays a "me vs. the world" attitude and the whole thing aims to evoke admiration and sympathy in the reader. There's no evidence of any true human empathy. Who gives a flying f__k about his abdominal muscles?

For many people (including myself), it's not about rehab, it's not about penance, it's about keeping someone like this away from everyone else. He's a killer - he doesn't care about anyone's rights but his own.

I would put harm prevention above penance. Penance is just a tool that promotes caring, ideally before said harms become permanent.

What we ultimately want is that people who don't murder. Also, as someone noted, you probably reading too much into it.

"keeping someone like this away" = harm prevention.

You just state it more concisely :)

It's about preventing someone from becoming a person who harm people.

Prison isn't something we should want in a society, but actively reduce, even if we never realistically achieve it.

There aren't endless resources. Actively reducing would take a lot of effort from a lot of smart people and I'd rather spend those big brains on improving math and reading skills amongst children, or cancer research, or diabetes research, or dementia research.

Believe it or not, a society with 300 million plus people can do many things at once.

Human resources aren't really fungible. Big brains spent on improving education of children can't really be reallocated to spend on cancer research or other part of medical science, not without extensive training at least.

So too we can spend on psychological, social services, and welfare which is what we probably need to reduce crime and overall human suffering to a more manageable level. Hopefully, the improvement to societal health means more resources are available that can be then reallocated to tackle the remainder of human caused suffering.

On the surface this appears to say "we don't need to make tradeoffs", or "there are endless resources". Both are obviously wrong, but perhaps the intended message is something different?

I actually felt some sympathy for the prisoner. He went into Prison at 19. Perhaps he was even younger when he committed murder. WTF does a teenager know about themselves or the world to kill someone?! What kind of awful childhood and upbringing environment did he experience, if any?

Of course he could be a psychopath. Or who knows. I wouldn't presume anything. But I wouldn't be so righteous feeling good about myself for not doing what he did. We're all lucky we didn't have it so bad, be it nature or nurture, or both.

Agree with all of this - but the comment states that it's about keeping people like this away, not punishing them or feeling smug or anything of the sort. This guy causes real harm everywhere he goes.

And psychopaths are often quite charismatic, so plenty of people are taken in by them.

Case in point!

Private prisons are a problem, but as other posters mention, a sub-double-digit percent of our prisoners are in them. One of the real problems, it seems to me, is that pesky little clause in the 13th amendment allowing slavery as punishment for crimes. The government leases out prisons full of people as a work force to private industry. There are many industries and companies in the US that are now dependent on what is essentially slave labor - and no, 16 cents an hour doesn't somehow morally absolve us of the problem.

Yeah, they use the GEO facilities mainly for illegals now, because illegals have less ability to hold GEO accountable and navigate the overlycomplicated prison systems required to access your rights (and you must exhaust local administrative remedies through the Warden and then the BOP before you have access to the Courts). And that is considered progress in the eyes of the American system because it's all about appearances, not about actually following the Constitution.

https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-93-number-5/juris....

I always felt that private prisons could work great, if specific incentive laws are passed. First, give the inmate a choice of which prison to attend, so they are competing against each other based on reputation. Second, if someone re-offends and ends back in prison, then the original prison housing them would be on the hook paying for their stay at the new prison. This gives private prisons an incentive to properly rehabilitate by making sure the prisoner comes out in a better situation than they went in (education, therapy, etc).

The private prison argument is mostly nonsense; between state and federal, only 8% of prisoners are incarcerated in private facilities. [1]

[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...

How is this the first time I hear this stat? I feel like my angst toward the system has been misallocated for a very long time.

It's like quite a few "horrible injustices"; they get piggybacked onto a few smaller and real issues, and then taken as gospel.

Private prison services like phone and email systems are still able to take advantage of prisoners, even in public prisons.

Because this is a recent development happening in part because it was a major agenda item for Biden. But note that they didn't close the private prisons, they just switched them to be used for ICE/Immigration incarceration because it's harder for those in that incarceration class to exercise their rights. https://www.geogroup.com/LOCATIONS

This is provably false. The private prison population has increased by 14% since 2000. [1]

[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...

Harmful viewpoint. If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely.

That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons. I encourage everyone to go volunteer and talk to inmates.

Look at unicore. Total scam.

> If true - that’s still 8% of inmates living sub humanely.

There's no objective measures showing that private prisons are somehow more 'inhumane' than government-run facilities.

> That report is on the first page results of private vs public prisons

It is, so there's no excuse to not have some actual data to go by, compared to anecdotal experiences.

> Look at unicore. Total scam.

UNICOR is ran by the BOP. It has nothing to do with private vs public prisons.

Far more than 8% of inmates live subhumanly because public prisons are awful too. Focusing on private prisons distracts us from how much of the problem is systemic and political—cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency, being "tough on crime" and pure historical momentum. It's not a "follow the money" problem, it's a "politicians and voters" problem.

> cruelty is built into the justice system top-down in the name of efficiency

And you would instead promote.. what? 'Rehabilition'? These arguments always show an absurd amount of empathy for the criminal, and little-to-none for the victims and (statistically extremely likely) future victims.

There is a large number of people that simply cannot function in society. If they aren't violent, cool: I have no problem with anyone living how they like. If they are violent, then they need to be removed from potential victims.

While there is some proportion of people that simply cannot function in society, the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

That's a common retort, and it's complete nonsense.

> the experience of other societies which incarcerate a much, much smaller part of the population indicates that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

This does not track. People like to point to Norway as a model for rehabilition and low incarceration rates, while completely ignoring the fact that their crime rate is one of the lowest on the planet.

So, yes, if your crime rate (and anti-sociality) is near zero, I would expect the incarceration rate to be much lower, as well.

I did not mention Norway, or low crime countries, because the same applies for literally every country in the world.

Out of large countries except USA the ones with the highest incarceration rate are Brazil, Turkey and Russia, which definitely do not have "crime rate (and anti-sociality) near zero" but have literally twice as few per capita incarcerated people than USA, and all the moderate-but-still-high-crime countries like Morocco or Mexico or Malaysia have three times smaller incarceration rates than USA.

Unless you can make a good argument why USA has a twice larger proportion of people that simply cannot function in society than the abovementioned countries, I'll repeat my assertion that most people in USA prisons are not there because of this reason.

"only"? That 8% is enough to make very wealthy owners successfully lobby politicians.

Not to mention all the private services revolving around public prisons.

Private prisons had 3.9B in revenue, and private prison services had 2.9B in revenue in 2021 [1].

In contrast, this is:

- Half of what the Car Wash Illuminati makes [2]

- About the same as the Evil Door Handle Lobby [3]

- Only 80% of the Portable Fire Extinguisher Cartel [4]

- Only 4% of the Yoga Tourism Cabal [5]

This is just nonsense.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html

[2] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-car-w...

[3] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/door-han...

[4] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/portable...

[5] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/yoga-tou...

Private prisons should be abolished. I cannot understand how we as a society accept the notion of a system that financially incentivizes incarcerating people. It's abhorrent. Does any other developed country do this?

private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons. The issue you implicitly refer to is prison contracts state "minimum payments when populations drop below [some] threshold". Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books.

The real issue is the concept of imprisonment ought be about putting people who truly can not be trusted to be "at large". Prison shouldn't be a punishment. There are other alternatives.

Private prisons shift the burden onto the inmates and often have subpar services such as food and cell hygiene.

There’s a lot of hyperbole and incentives for the narrative to sound better than it is.

Unfortunately I have experience from a family member. See it for yourself if this is an issue you care about.

Private prisons only have lower costs if you exclude the eventual, and inevitable, intervention by the Justice dept to fix their inhumane conditions.

> Its not the private prisons arresting people, trying people, and funneling them into their pocket books.

Have you heard of the "Kids For Cash" scandal? Private prisons actively try to get more people incarcerated by bribing judges. The judges are complicit too, but the private prisons are absolutely trying to "funnel them into their pocket books"

Any evidence that this continues to happen?

Any system with any amount of scale will have bad actors. It’s one very bad data point, but certainly not enough evidence that the whole system is corrupt

I know of at least one case where a judge was being paid by a private prison system to send people to them. I suspect that was not and is not the only case of that happening. Big money has a way of worming itself into other systems and manipulating them for its own benefit.

One case is the definition of 'not systemic'.

I would find it very unlikely if the one case I know about off the top of my head is the only case. Tip of the iceberg.

> private prisons maintain costs far better than public prisons

possibly, but the issue is not cost conservation; the problem is that there are shareholders who benefit the more people are sent to prison. This creates perverse incentives (lobbying for stricter/longer sentencing, bribing officials, etc.).

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