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Comment by nacs | Hacker News Reader

With the privatized prison system in the US, it's more commercially viable to have people stay in that loop than not.

I'm not sure that there is any incentive to help people out of that loop with so much profit for everyone in the chain (police departments, lawyers, judges and most of all, the private company that runs the prison). The only net loss in this loop are the taxpayers who pay for all of it.

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It is misleading to refer to the US prison system as privatized, when the percentage of the total inmates that are in private prisons is only around 3% [1].

Privatized prisons do create a huge moral hazard, but currently the pro-prison groups with the biggest scope and influence are probably police/guard unions [2] and the "tough on crime" crowd.

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/15580530

Those two groups still profit from prisons, regardless of whether the prisons themselves are privatized. Perhaps it's best to speak of prison profits and interests which exist in every prison and lead to the same problems as privatized prisons. Not to mention other profiting industries like the phone company who handles all the collect calls, equipment manufacturers, etc.

Bottom line is, it pays to send and keep people in prison regardless if the prisons themselves are privatized.

So the phone companies are in on it too? Maybe the problem is people commit crimes? Most crimes go unsolved. How many crimes happen before they are actually caught.

So, comparing US incarceration stats with other countries, would you then say the average US citizen is more likely to commit crime than other nationalities?

Crime rates are about the same. Sentences in US are way higher then elsewhere.

The homicide rate is more than 50% higher than the european average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

If by "in on it too," you mean have an interest in keeping the current prison status quo, then yes, absolutely. The rest of your rant is irrelevant.

The percentage of private prisoners is single digits. The policies that lead to high incarceration rates today, namely long drug sentences and three strikes laws, were promulgated in the 1980's and early 1990's, when the industry was essentially nonexistent.

Are drugs as big a component of incarceration rates as the C.W. suggests? The overwhelming majority of IL inmates were sentenced for property crimes (which in the uniform crime classification do not include drug crimes of any sort). Certainly the C.W. on the impact of marijuana legalization isn't accurate; cannabis accounts for a tiny fraction of all incarcerations (significantly less than 1%). I checked a few months back, and a plurality of Cook County incarcerations were due to domestic violence.

Three strike laws and Kafka-esque probation policies could definitely be a big part of the problem.

(N.B.: I'm a strong supporter of cannabis legalization, and of decriminalization of all but a few of the rest of the recreational drugs).

Drug convictions are 20% of the national prison population. That said, you can link many of the other crimes to the drug trade or drug abuse.

Cannabis to drug dealers is like ground beef to your butcher -- it's often the base of the business. Harder drugs attract more profit and police attention.

Where are you getting the number 20% from?

From a summary of federal survey data: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

Note than many cannabis associated crimes are misdemeanors that don't call for jail time. In a "tough" state like New York, possession of very small quantities of cocaine or heroin often result in felony conviction. But at the same time, drug distributors move a lot of weed (hence the ground beef analogy).

I think the CW overestimates drug crimes, and also overestimates what those sentenced for drug crimes would be doing with their lives otherwise. Having read through quite a few criminal files, I can think of only a single example of someone that made me think: "gee, he's in jail solely because drugs are illegal."

I support legalization and oppose three strikes laws because they fuck over a small minority of people who don't deserve it. But it's a small minority.

Some property crimes are caused by people trying to fund their addiction to hard drugs.

So if we just legalized drugs, people who are so fully addicted to them that they'll burglarize houses to pay for them will, presumably because drugs will be so much cheaper, get a job at McDonalds instead?

Also, if drugs are something that cause otherwise law-abiding people to burglarize houses, isn't that a strong argument for making them illegal?

It's part of a strong argument for making them illegal. You'd also need to show that making them illegal actually decreases the rate at which that happens.

It is the price. Not many people addicted to cheap legal drugs become criminals. To buy cigarettes or grog, it is enough to work a low-paying job or just beg for money. Personally, i don't believe you should be able to buy hard drugs in the supermarket, but there should be a cheap legal way to buy them from a doctor and get help at the same time.

Probably. Decriminalization and being able to get hard drugs from a doctor would go a long way in reducing drug-related crime. I don't think society is ready for hard drugs in the supermarket aisle. At least i'm not ready for it.

Everything you have said is false. Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay. There is no evidence for anything you have claimed, you simply use "privatized" as if it were a dirty word and we should knowingly nod our heads in assent.

> I'm not sure

The way to resolve an information need is to engage in an objective search of facts, not speculate endlessly and make unsubstantiated claims of criminal behavior of others without some kind of evidence to base it on.

If you want people to spend less time in prison, you'll want the laws changed because that's where all this come from. Some of the laws in California are the result of ballots.

"Private prisons are not colluding to keep prisoners in prison or lobbying the state or doing any kind of action to increase the number of people that become imprisoned nor increase their length of stay."

You sure about that? http://www.dailypaul.com/312217/pennsylvania-judge-sentenced...

If that was your best link, then it kinda proves his point and not yours.

A PA judge was sentenced to 28 years for getting paid to put children behind bars and you're bitching about me picking the first link to an article on the subject I found from a quick google search?

It's a terrible link. It shows an outlier, not the normal situation.

If that's the best you can do then you have proved his point, not yours.

He said "private prisons are not colluding" I produce a link to a case that very clearly demonstrates collusion. You claim this proves there is no collusion. Yeah, we're done here.

Yes we are done because you can not seem to distinguish the singular and the plural.

Here is a bit more info on Ciavarella. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/books/review/kids-for-cash...

If I read the parent comment you seem to be saying that legal lobbying is the problem. However, the Ciavarella story concerns illegal corruption.

I'm not a fan of the American prison system, mainly because it promotes forced labour, or slavery. The 13tm amendment explicitly contains an exemption for prison labour, something which has historically been abused in America.

Quick general overview of prison labor: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/04/04/prison-labor...

More detailed account of prison labor in Nevada regarding casinos and construction. http://vltp.net/casinos-prison-labor-strange-bedfellows/

The slave market: http://www.unicor.gov/

You can even get slave labor to operate your call center: http://www.unicor.gov/services/contact_helpdesk/

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/15/america_on_lockdown_why_the_...

"Arizona is one of four states (along with Virginia, Oklahoma and Louisiana) in which state governments are bound to contracts guaranteeing a 95%-100% occupancy in facilities leased by private prisons."

Are you actually insane enough to believe that the (tiny number, 3% quoted below) of privately run prisons are managed by companies who are somehow colluding to ensure that the prisoners all re-offend once they finish their sentences? Because there isn't enough crime to keep them in profit currently?

I doubt the companies running the prisons are actively doing anything to 'make' prisoners recommit crimes after they leave. They can just not spend more than legally required to house, educate, care, and support them though...

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