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Comment by metrix | Hacker News Reader

Profitable? It costs the state a lot to hold a prisoner.

Yes, profitable. For example, prison guard unions lobby ferociously against relaxing drug laws, in order to protect prison guards' jobs and salaries:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/

http://mic.com/articles/41531/union-of-the-snake-how-califor...

EDIT: Here's a cute quote from Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies:

"any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." [0]

[0] - http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9N...

It's true they have a financial incentive to maintain current drug laws, but those same incentives exist for many important roles.

If someone comes up with a cure for cancer, a lot of oncologists are going to be out of a job. Does that mean that oncologists are actively suppressing cancer cures?

Many uninformed people honestly do believe that, yes.

This might be the most useless analogy I have ever encountered. I'm sorry, I don't mean to attack you but I honestly have no idea what your point is.

Corrections Corporation of America and other private prison companies openly fight efforts to relax drugs laws. Same for prison guard unions; In 2008 the CCPoA, California's largest prison guard union, was the most active opponent of Prop 5, which would have expanded treatment for non-violent drug offenders, and reduced criminal penalties for non-violent drug crimes [1].

As far as I know, oncologists are not fighting cancer research in order to protect their careers.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_5_%2820...

I guess I'm questioning why the assumption is that they support drug laws because it makes them money. They may be supporting it for other reasons (strongly support law and order).

They have a duty to their shareholders to grow revenue and stay in business. If something threatens that, they will fight it. Like many other commercial enterprise they will spend money on lobbying to protect profits, in this case it is just particularly sickening how big the problem has become.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBDvxy5qQY

You just proved my point! Doctors who work in a group practice have a fiduciary duty to grow revenue. Does that mean doctors cut corners to make more money? I'm sure some do.

Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.

> Do private prisons fight relaxing laws to make more money? I'm sure some do, but most don't.

Corrections Corporation of America does, and they account for more than 80,000 of the 133,000 private prison beds in the US. GEO Group does, and they account for about 49,000. Together they thus represents the vast majority of private prisons in the US.

Both of them are part of ALEC - a DC base lobbying group that develops model legislation that it then pushes as a means for state legislators to be "tough on crime".

But are they doing it to make more money? Or because they believe in the legislation?

I believe they're referring to the private prison industry, which makes a pretty penny off locking up non-violent drug offenders. Their trade organization listed liberalizing drug laws as a potential threat to their bottom line in their last annual report, so we can expect that they will fiercely lobby against anything happening at a federal level.

I feel like this situation is overstated a lot. Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.

That's still 8% too much.

That still means there are millionaires out there lobbying to keep drug laws as is so they can keep filling their prisons. And the other 92% of prisons probably have a ton of people behind bars due to drug laws because of the 8% of prisons that lobby for & profit from them.

As though the 92% isn't attempting to hold onto its massive profit system. There's vastly more money flowing into pockets in the 92% than in the 8%, that's logically obvious.

Jobs, graft, construction, maintenance, slave labor, etc. - huge sums of profit derived from the government prison system, far more than in the corporate system.

As though the 92% of that equation is looking to give up its jobs and tax dollars. Because we just know how much the government likes to give up its spending.

> Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons

For the other 92%, how much work does that state-run prison contract out to private companies?

People do often overestimate how many prisoners are in privately-run prisons, but at the same time, if the US suddenly had 10% fewer prisoners, those privately-run prisons would likely be the first to go.

As far as lobbying, the other 92% of prisoners are guarded by very powerful public sector unions, whose incentives are the same.

It's not just the privately run prison complexes, but also suppliers, consultancies, police equipment manufacturers, arms manufacturers, and so. That's the 'industrial' in prison industrial complex.

That's true, but 8% of anything in the US is a lot. There's roughly 2.2 million prisoners so maybe 200k of them are held in private prisons. And as someone points out upthread, when you add in all that prison-building, the firms that deliver services tot he corrections market and so on, it adds up to a lot of economic activity.

About 133,000 as of 2013. And two companies (CCA and GEO Group), both of whom are aggressively fighting for tougher laws as a matter of course have about 129,000 bed capacity.

It's absolutely massive when you consider that locking up humans in cages is perhaps not the sort of thing we ought to encourage by making the practice lucrative.

The existence of even a single for-profit prison provides a perverse incentive to put the marginal criminal into a private, profit-generating cage rather than a public, tax-draining, politically-risky rehabilitation or diversion program.

Furthermore, it is an invitation to corruption. Remember the judge that was sending juvenile defendants to a reform camp, often regardless of the merits of their cases, because he was getting kickbacks from the camp?

Something like 8% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons, which could be a problem, but it's not the massive number that is often implied.

Quick, off the top of your head: do you have any idea just how many people are incarcerated in this country, in both absolute and per-capita terms, and how those figures compare to, say, every other country on Earth?

8% of the US prison population is a HELL of a lot of people.

The government makes a lot more money locking people up than the private prison industry does.

It's 11 times larger. That's a lot of tax money to roll around in, and generates a ton of profit in the form of slave labor manufacturing, graft, jobs that politicians use as platforms, labor unions that get kickbacks and get to dole out well paying jobs.

What's the difference, when we're speaking of "profit" when it comes to whether the corporate prison generates a 7% margin, or whether that 7% goes to a union at a government prison? There is no real difference, it's just a matter of whose pocket the cash ends up in.

Yes but you're forgetting that there's a private prison industry. A lot of states have outsourced it. I feel that's what Shivetya was alluding to.

As with most politics, decisions aren't made by the people who actually incur the costs.

Exactly. That means there's a whole industry / sector of government trying to make it look like a lot of people should be prisoners to protect their jobs and expand their departments.

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