Private Prisons Are a Failed Experiment

[SummerMadness]

Private Prisons Are a Failed Experiment

The U.S. has stumbled on a particularly inefficient form of providing services. Instead of having government employees do the work, or leaving it to the private sector, the U.S. sometimes combines government funding with private execution. This sort of pseudo-privatization generally fails to control costs, even as it reduces oversight and provides low-quality service.

There are many examples of this. No-bid contracting in the health-care, defense and infrastructure industries drives up costs. Expensive mercenary contractors like Blackwater (now Academi) were notorious for human-rights abuses during the Iraq War.

But perhaps the most egregious example is private prisons. Implementing criminal justice is one of the most critical, central functions of a state. Prison privatization turns this function over to contractors with comparatively little accountability. That opens the door for both cost overruns and mistreating inmates.

 

[variant]

Who would have guessed that the state directly intervening to enrich some private industry that wants to provide private services that the state used to provide would go so wrong, over and over... and over again.

It's almost as if we know this sort of thing goes poorly often and don't care because corruption.

 

[SimplyMe]

I'm just waiting for those people who think the government can do no right, and private industry can do no wrong, to start chiming in. After all, the private sector always does it better (or at least that is what they tell us).

 

[Ana the Ist]

I'm just waiting for those people who think the government can do no right, and private industry can do no wrong, to start chiming in. After all, the private sector always does it better (or at least that is what they tell us).

Sadly, like healthcare, prisons are a public need...not a public want. As such, private prisons have zero incentive to be efficient or cost effective...because it's always going to be cheaper for the state to give them a little more money than to build an entirely new public prison.

 

[variant]

Sadly, like healthcare, prisons are a public need...not a public want.

Not really, America also has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, which is probably at least somewhat needless, and now at least somewhat driven via a corrupt profit motive of the prison industry.

Who benefits when a private prison comes to down? (article)
Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town?

Having an industry that benefits from imprisoning people gives you a special interest that wants to imprison more people.

We accomplished the graphs above in an era where crime fell precipitously worldwide.

 

[dgiharris]

WHen future historians look back and study how the late 20th century to present incarcerates people, we will be compared to the Salem Witch Trials and Spanish Inquisition. People will scratch their heads and say, "How on earth could that have happened in a so-called moral society?"

We will incarcerate someone for the most minor drug offense, yet when Wall St literally stole TRILLIONS out of the US and World Economy with the whole housing market scandal something like 3 people went to jail for that...