> remember private prison is big business in America with lots of money to be made from returning people to prison (and sending them there in the first place).

Less than 10% of U.S. prisoners are in privately-managed prisons, and it's a very recent phenomenon (the number was negligible in the 1990's).

For profit-prisons are an opportunistic reaction to the pettiness and vindictiveness of the prison culture that grew out of the "tough on crime" movements of the 1980's and 1990's. They aren't responsible for the culture.