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Comment by pasttense01 | Hacker News Reader

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Prison-for-profit, either privately-run, with slave labor, or both, creates perverse incentives to convict more people of crimes and to keep them incarcerated longer.

This is not just hypothetical. The notorious Pennsylvania 'kids-for-cash' case was particularly egregious.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-ma...

Another great article when a reporter went undercover. Private prisons are a vicious cycle of depravity.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-pri...

But then shouldn't the government get the profits instead of a private entity?

Privatize profits.

Subsidize losses.

So you are cool with private industry making millions on the back of “captive” slave labor markets for $1 an hour?

I can hear the companies complaining now … no one wants to be an inmate anymore.

Or less - see Texas, where inmates receive no pay for work.

yes

UNICOR is a wholly owned government corporation not a private company. Average cost to taxpayers per incarcerated person is about $100K. So let them work for free up until that amount.

But even if it were private, how ethically is this worse than private companies making billions building weapons of mass destruction? Or platforms of mass surveillance?

Unless you actually use a WMD, the moral cost of simply having it in storage is nothing.

I disapprove of my government using WMDs and I also disapprove of my government enslaving murderers. Whom benefits is besides the point.

> Average cost to taxpayers per incarcerated person is about $100K

Seems to he false? For Federal inmates anyway..

It was just $35k back in 2019. So it can’t be much more than half of what you’re claiming these days.

* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/01/2021-18...

> how ethically is this worse than private companies making billions building weapons of mass destruction? Or platforms of mass surveillance?

Doesn’t seem to be even tangentially related?

Who said it was worse? They can all be unethical.

So they all should venture into software to recapture the value as fast as possible?

If the financial costs of holding an inmate are unjustified, the government is of course free to evict them.

I agree with you but then the proceeds should go back to the government to pay for those things.

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