How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/

by bontoJR • 11 years ago

266 126 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

In the State of California, the very highest-paying job that can is within reach of most people who do not have college degrees is to be a State prison guard.

That can be unpleasant and dangerous work so I readily agree it should pay well however it has resulted in their union being one of the most-powerful political lobbies in the state. Dozens of new prisons have been built in the last few decades but only one new University of California campus.

Several years ago a Federal judge ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. It hasn't made much progress.

philwelch3• 11 years ago

Bingo. For-profit prisons exist, but they are a tiny minority. But even the state prisons come with a financial motive attached. And, because people are conditioned to see unions as good guys, this obvious lobbying bias is never checked.

danieltillett7• 11 years ago

Unions are in general a force for good for their members - the problem is there is no countervailing unions to oppose the interests of the prison guard union. If we had more union members in other industries then the interest of these other union members would act as a check on the power of the guards.

jeffmould9• 11 years ago

Actually about 15% of all state/federal prisons are owned or managed by for-profit corporations. There are really two classifications of "for-profit" prisons. One is where the company owns/operates the entire facility. These are the ones that receive the most attention even though they are the minority comparatively. The big for-profit companies usually try to buy first before moving to option 2.

The second option is where the state/county builds a prison or jail, owns the facility, possibly supplements some staffing, but contracts out the day-to-day operations to a for-profit company. This is what is more common as many states won't sell the actual facility and/or land. They just want someone to takeover the day-to-day operations so they don't have to worry about it.

Both are just as bad and both have occupancy based contracts.

bontoJR• 11 years ago

In the State of California, the very highest-paying job that can is within reach of most people who do not have college degrees is to be a State prison guard.

This is very interesting, this means there's a big business behind it. I don't know which are the requirements to be hired as prison guard, for sure is, as you said, an unpleasant and dangerous work, but I don't get why a prison guard should be paid higher than a cop, that is always facing criminals, but in more dangerous situations.

Several years ago a Federal judge ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding. It hasn't made much progress.

This would definitely cost a lot, prison overcrowding, in some countries, is a big issue. There's no real solution other than build new prisons, hire new people and transfer prisoners. I read in the past an article stating that the future of prisons will be mostly private, turned into a real business. I honestly laughed in a first instance, then reading a lot about the topic, I figured out that maybe that article wasn't so much wrong after all...

praptak• 11 years ago

"There's no real solution other than build new prisons, hire new people and transfer prisoners."

Changing idiotic laws that land harmless people in jail would help a lot.

wisty2• 11 years ago

I don't get why a prison guard should be paid higher than a cop

A quick web search shows cops making $100k, while guards make $70k.

I'd imagine the police are more selective though. It might not be "within reach" of a lot of people (low turnover, and higher requirements).

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

One real good way to reduce prison overcrowding would be to abide by court precedent.

Oregon Advocacy Center v. Mink, 9th Circuit, 1993 (IIRC) ruled that when a judge orders a defendant to a mental hospital, the state has seven days to get the defendant actually admitted to the hospital.

The 9th Circuit governs the Western United States, including California, but even so despite that the ruling was made in 1993, it is quite uncommon for the state to obey the law by getting inmates into psych hospitals despite being specifically ordered to do so by a judge.

I personally fault the defense attorneys for this. Every defense attorney should move for dismissal on day 8, but I myself am the only defendant that I am aware of that has had his case dismissed this way.

My attorney was completely unaware of the 9th circuit's ruling until I brought it to his attention. I learned it from a jailhouse lawyer who found it in the jail's law library.

ansible4• 11 years ago

There's no real solution other than build new prisons, hire new people and transfer prisoners.

There's a lot more solutions than that.

Decriminalizing drug use, and treating it like a public health issue (which it is) would drastically reduce incarceration rates. It would save the nation a lot of money too. Just tax and regulate it.

Spending time and money to help people not re-offend (and go back to jail) would also be cost-effective.

Unfortunately, there are big interests that want to keep the status quo.

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

I don't have any statistics readily at hand but I have reason to believe that it is more dangerous to be a guard than a police officer.

Consider the Attica prison riot in which roughly 250 died.

Guards generally do not carry firearms because they could be snatched by an inmate. They do carry Tazers these days but they have a very short range and are limited to two shots. If a bunch of inmates all gang up on a guard there's not a whole lot he can do to defend himself.

girvo• 11 years ago

I find it amazing that there is a guarantee of 90% occupancy or higher for these prisons, and if it falls below the taxpayers foot the bill. Of course, I find it amazing that "private prisons" are a thing at all.

gnopgnip• 11 years ago

Is it any different than private hospitals or electric companies?

ifdefdebug• 11 years ago

Yes. In none of those businesses you are allowed to restrict the fundamental rights of human beings. In private prisons that's the core business model.

danieltillett7• 11 years ago

I am not a supporter of private prisons, but in the public system little of the cost base is variable. If you did not have such guarantees in place then the state would use the private prisons as the provider of swing capacity and hence make it non-viable since private prisons have the same fixed cost structure.

spiritplumber• 11 years ago

So don't have private prisons.

Even Ayn Rand said that government should only be in the military and judicial business, how did we end up to the right of her?

arcadeparade• 11 years ago

If they were paid based on lowering recidivism rates, for-profit prisons could potentially work very well.

danieltillett7• 11 years ago

The likely outcome of such a system would be for the for-profit prisons to hire lawyers to get their past "clients" off on technicalities.

How about creating a system where we help people who have been to prison to avoid going there again - say training them for good jobs and treating them like human beings when in jail so they treat others the same way when they get out?

sitkack3• 11 years ago

What I don't understand is why the for profit prisons are even in the US at all? Why not put them in Vietnam, Mexico or the Philippines where all costs are cheaper. I'd halve their sentences or give them beach access for doing call center work or sewing laptop bags.

It would be interesting to see the unionization rates in the for profit prisons. I am sure the FPP would love to lower their staffing costs and influence while having a more opaque regime overseas.

tzs• 11 years ago

I find it amazing that people are amazed that what is essentially a lease of a venue is priced based on the capacity of the venue.

Suppose you have a private prison that is designed to reasonably hold up to 450 prisoners, and could be pushed up to 500. There is no real difference between the following two contracts:

1. The state pays $10.8m/year, plus $24k/year for each prisoner over 450.

2. The state pays $24k/year per prisoner, with a minimum payment based on 90% occupancy.

In both cases the state pays $10.8m/year if it puts 0-450 prisoners in the prison, and in both cases it pays ($10.8m + $24k (N-450))/year if it puts N prisoners, where N > 450, in the prison.

afarrell• 11 years ago

no one is talking about

Is there some way to actually determine what is in the public consciousness? Because I definitely see this brought up pretty frequently. I'm also pretty sure that folks know and talk about the internment of the Japanese as well as the prevalence of domestic violence.

FanaHOVA• 11 years ago

Yep. Especially since Kanye West released New Slaves 2 years ago:

See they'll confuse us with some bullshit Like the New World Order Meanwhile the DEA Teamed up with the CCA They tryna lock niggas up They tryna make new slaves See that's that privately owned prison Get your piece today They prolly all in the Hamptons Bragging 'bout what they made

The ACLU signed up on Genius to annotate this and sparked lots of conversations. I also see it regularly mentioned every time something such as Ferguson happens.

emehrkay• 11 years ago

I love how piece could also be peace in that line.

I am reading The New Jim Crow and it is fascinating. The author talks about how prisons were utilized as a means to get free labor after slavery ended and how laws in this country were/are designed to keep black people in jail. Good read so far

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595586431/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=...

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

among the reasons I use my hosts file to blackhole the web bugs from analytics services, is that one of the more-common applications of web and mobile analytics is to determine what is in the public consciousness.

Most webmasters and mobile developers regard analytics as a way to find out how people are using their sites and apps. While strictly speaking that's true, most analytics SDKs are provided free of charge.

The ones who actually pay for the analytics are commonly politicians and large companies.

During the last presidential campaign I discovered that each major candidate's website contained dozens of web bugs from several distinctly different analytics companies.

S4M• 11 years ago

Wrong thread?

hga5• 11 years ago

Here's one example where partisanship in the US media does the country a gross disservice. Unless we venture into Nazi level abuses, it's hard to top the Cash for Kids scandal mentioned in the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal). One judge arranged for a private juvenile prison to replace a state one (he claims the company bribed him, the official story goes with their claim he shook them down), another judge sent a lot of kids there, for "crimes" as trivial as saying bad things about a teacher (yeah, protected or at least not criminal speech), there was at least one suicide implicated, etc. There aren't many contemporary US injustices I've read about that made me this angry.

Then a Federal judge said to the prosecutors that, no, I'm not going to accept nothingburger tax evasion as I recall 7 years in prison plea bargain, eventually judge sending the children to the prison was convicted and sentenced to 28 years (Federal, so no parole), the other plea bargained for a more just 17.5 years.

Now, see that above Wikipedia link? You won't find out from it what political party these judges belonged to. Which tells you which one, if they'd been Republicans this would have been reported in screaming worldwide headlines, used in the 2010 and on elections, etc. But very few know about it, it's not much more than a local story.

ADDED: just really looked at the linked Washington Post article and it's clear this is part of the current effort to trash Rubio, who competes for the same local political campaign donor pool as Jeb Bush, whom you'll not be surprised is not well regarded by a large fraction of the Republican party.

rorykoehler2• 11 years ago

USA: 25% of the worlds prison population with 4.5% of worlds total population.

adventured• 11 years ago

Fortunately it has begun to decline.

The end of the war on drugs will see the prison population in the US cut in half in 20 years. Colorado has already seen a radical reduction in arrests for drug offenses.

leesalminen9• 11 years ago

Yet they've seen a large increase in marijuana related DUI arrests [0].

They're just shifting the crime around, not eliminating it.

[0] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/06/26/col...

vbezhenar• 11 years ago

21-st century slavery. Humanity never changes.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Correction Officers Benevolent Association are playing the same game and are not exactly private organizations and exert far more influence over individual politicians than either private corporation does. The first makes political donations across the country.

We also by no means blame the prison industry; public or private; for this outcome. Its a government industry through and through, from police, to prosecutors, public defenders, judges, and even the supply chain benefits.

* besides this is nothing but a Rubio hit piece which tells you it basically is pushed by operatives in the Democrat party, a party which basically does even more in most states to keep people in jail. They even fought Republicans in NY over a law to make it not criminal for a certain amount of pot

brohoolio• 11 years ago

It's a group who is lobbying for inefficiency in the recovery and rehabilitation of our citizens. That is not great. It goes against the long terms interests of society. I'm not against privatization of services, but this sort of service lends itself to lobbying for inefficiency which is what you are trying to squeeze out of the system by engaging the private sector.

jpetersonmn• 11 years ago

There should not be a profit motive involved with incarcerating people. That's just plain immoral.

rcarrigan87• 11 years ago

This article is very poorly balanced and reads like an attack on a politician rather than an honest investigation into what is clearly a very complicated issue.

I'd love to see some historical comparisons between the prison industry prior and the rise of their lobby. Does anyone know of a more in depth analysis?

jeffmould9• 11 years ago

The real issue, IMO, is not who owns or manages the prison, it is the laws we have on the books in the US that hinder or prevent individuals released from jails/prisons from becoming productive members of society. Often the easiest path for them is the path back to jail. For example, we expect an ex-offender to get out of jail, get a job, have a stable housing environment, pay taxes, and not break any more laws. Instead, we release individuals, hinder their ability to find gainful employment because of their arrest, deny them loans, deny access to public housing, tell them they can't go to some schools and deny them grants/scholarship opportunities for the ones they can, and then we tell them they can't vote in elections. While I am all for you do the crime you do the time, but when does that time end exactly? Do we tell someone that committed a non-violent petty felony at age 18, serves a year in jail, gets their HS diploma in that time, and is otherwise a decent person that even when they get out of jail they are no longer welcome in our society because of their crime? What do we as a society expect is going to happen to that person? And the cycle begins.

There's a group that did a short film highlighting these issues: https://vimeo.com/121718382

Ok, rant over :)

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

The majority of US states eventually restore the right to vote:

http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

Vermont and Maine allow prisoners to vote, 13 other states allow voting on release, and then some more restore the right after parole/probation.

Many of the remaining states allow petitioning of the governor to restore the right to vote.

(That felon voting is not particularly problematic in the states where it is allowed can be used as an argument against disenfranchisement, so I think it is good to try to accurately characterize the situation)

jeffmould9• 11 years ago

Yes, you are right in that most states do have a path to restoring voting rights.

But the fact that it is an issue at all is the problem. A non-violent ex-offender should not have to go through a process of petitioning, or even have to worry about having their voting rights restored at all, when their sentence is completed. Even automatic restoration is not always "sure thing". Florida for example used to have "automatic restoration" but it actually entailed filing with the clemency board and getting approved (although approval was pretty much a guarantee). Since then though, Florida, like some of the other states that have automatic restoration, has changed to add a waiting period and additional approvals. For non-violent felons that complete their sentence there should not be a wait. Using the Florida example, an 18 year old arrested for selling drugs on the street corner. Serves a year in jail. Gets out free/clear (meaning no parole or probation). Has to wait 5 years to have his right to vote restored. That is wrong in my opinion and only makes the situation worse. Disenfranchisement is a much bigger problem than people realize when it comes to elections. There are over 6 million adults in the US that are disenfranchised. Making the number worse is the hodgepodge of state laws across the country that lead to confusion. There are countless numbers above the 6 million that have no clue if they can vote at all, if their rights have been restored, or what is even required to get them restored. Yes, they can get lawyers to figure it out for them, but who is going to pay for that?

Sideloader• 11 years ago

Private prisons are profit making enterprises. Keeping that in mind, how convenient that America's penal system is for many offenders a revolving door that keeps them locked away for decades if not life. Oh! And the prison industry has an influential lobby advocating on its behalf. Do you not see the problem here? Who owns and operates prisons is a very real issue indeed.

I really wonder about this country and its dysfunctional and, frankly, dehumanizing institutions. We deny a significant minority of our citizens the most basic benefits of living in the world's most advanced society. And I'm not talking about the small minority of dangerous offenders that are justifiably kept in prison for life. We also have a difficult time admitting that the profit motive almost certainly guarantees a corrupt and unjust prison system.

osconfused• 11 years ago

We, as a nation, elected "tough on crime" politicians. As you already pointed out, the private prisons lobby. They lobby the politicians we as a nation elected. We have a democracy, we vote for tough on crime politicians. As a result, we imprison lots of people.

sorokod• 11 years ago

"private prisons are profit making enterprises"

Tautology surely

PythonicAlpha• 11 years ago

In the education/upbringing of children, it is a long known fact, that you will get what you expect.

Tell a child, that it will fail over and over again, you will most likely get a failure. Tell a similar child from its birth over and over again that it will be a winner, you will get a person that is much more likely a winner than the other person.

The US society today trains failures. It starts by being born in the wrong district of a city or belonging to the wrong race. When in such a case, you have no good family (eg. single mother), you have all odds against you. It goes on, by visiting the wrong school ...

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

While I was at Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Washington I puzzled over why so many of my fellow patients acted so childlike. For example when we waited in line for our meals, it was just like schoolchildren waiting in line, asking each other to hold their places while they stepped out, or saying "No cuts!"

This was even the case among aged grandmothers.

I very quickly realized that it was largely due to the way we were treated by the staff. For example if one refused to take one's medicine in the morning, one would not be permitted to smoke cigarettes in the exercise yard that day. If one refused in the evening, one would not be permitted a root beer float.

At no point did any of the hospital staff explain to any of use WHY we were taking that medicine.

It is far, far more important for the mentally ill to know why we take medicine, than it is for us to actually take it at all.

If you treat someone like a child they will act like a child.

downandout• 11 years ago

It's actually worse than that. Most states and the federal system impose periods of supervision after release - often lasting for years. During this time, they aren't just expected to not break the law. They must find a job that their probation officer approves of, with an employer that is willing to give reports to the PO, and must disclose their conviction to all potential employers. They often cannot travel outside the county in which they reside, even for work. They cannot drink alcohol (even socially) in most cases. Their constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure are null and void, and must submit to searches any time and at any place they are. Those that were accused of financial crimes often are not allowed to possess checking accounts or credit/debit cards. They often must attend expensive classes & counseling sessions, and pay supervision fees, along with making any applicable restitution or payments on fines. These are just the basics that apply to everyone....there is an infinite list of conditions that can be imposed based upon the specific crime(s) they committed.

If they violate any of these conditions, they are subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment, usually without any judicial review. This is one reason reincarceration rates are so high - it's incredibly easy for these people to be sent back to jail without even thinking of committing a new crime.

omegaham4• 11 years ago

Yep. It's gotten bad enough that people will actually take a longer period of incarceration if it doesn't involve probation afterward. And good luck finding an employer who will hire a felon. Hell, good luck finding a landlord who will rent to you.

jeffmould9• 11 years ago

You are 100% right. Parole and probation violations are a common misstep in our system, and account for an enormous amount of our prison population. I can speak from experience. I had a one-year probation sentence, on the very last day with only a few hours until my probation was set to expire (I even had a preliminary release letter from my probation officer with the date and time of expiration and had completed my final assessments), I was packing a moving truck preparing to move out of the state. I did not intend, nor was there any possible way I could have finished packing and had everything wrapped up in that time, to leave prior to my probation being expired. Instead an off-duty sheriff deputy who knew I was on probation just happened to see me packing decided he was going to stop and arrest me for on a violation for attempting to violate by moving. Although when I went before the judge 24 hours later he dropped it, the fact of the matter is that I was still violated, spent 24 hours in a holding cell waiting to see the judge, all because someone was a little overzealous in their job and had a zero-tolerance attitude.

Now I see and hear the stories every day of individuals who are violated for the dumbest reasons (i.e. bus crash in front of probation office, witnessed by probation officer, individual taken to hospital, violated for missing probation appointment by same officer that witnessed the accident in the first place. Given a 90-day sentence for violating their probation. And those were the facts as provided by the officer, not the individual. The officer essentially was laughing at how much control they have over someone's life in these incidents.).

leesalminen9• 11 years ago

In Colorado, misdemeanor probation has been "privatized" and is managed by a for-profit entity (Intervention, Inc. & Rocky Mountain Offender Management Services [RMOMS]).

I've been through their "system". I'm convinced it's a money making scheme. Their "case managers" (you don't even get a probation officer) are paid $12/hour and are implicitly instructed to find ways to charge you more money. I've had one lie to my face about a state statute (that I had memorized, word for word) to try to get me to pay them more money.

A first-offense, low BAC DWAI in Colorado set me back >$20,000 over 2.5 years and 3 lawyers.

dethstar• 11 years ago

we expect an ex-offender to get out of jail, get a job, have a stable housing environment, pay taxes, and not break any more laws

We expect an ex offender to be reformed, but that is not the role of prisons.

'Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves. For 200 years everybody has been saying, "Prisons are failing; all they do is produce new criminals." I would say on the other hand, "They are a success, since that is what has been asked of them." '

https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/foucault-pri...

task_queue2• 11 years ago

I agree with your point about how the law drops the ball when it comes to rehabilitation.

A real issue IS who owns or manages the prisons. If the profit motive is what drives prison expansion, then society will experience a form of regulatory capture in hyperacceleration.

Many of those programs and processes are being taken over by private entities. You are no long just paying out to your municipality, county, state or country. You're paying out to them and the private company who demands your payment or you go to back to prison for non-payment. They still profit and your debt racks up.

You are paying out fees to the private company for your detention, your lodging, your processing and probation on top of what the state is paying them to hold you. If you cannot pay them back, you are free to spend a day in jail for each $10-$40 of your debt owed to your captors. They get to collect from the state as well.

Then, with the money they've been collecting, the private entities go and lobby to make sure there is a steady stream of constant offenders to keep profits increasing every quarter.

Sometimes it makes sense to bribe judges to send innocent children to your private juvenile detention center to collect those fat state grants, a la Cash for Kids.

The profit motive perverts justice and seeks to turn everyone into customers of the private justice system.

baddox2• 11 years ago

A real issue IS who owns or manages the prisons. If the profit motive is what drives prison expansion, then society will experience a form of regulatory capture in hyperacceleration.

The thing is, profit motive is there regardless of whether you call the prisons "private" or "public," because the people constructing, supplying, and running the prisons are (presumably) getting paid, and those people don't suddenly stop having personal incentives if you start calling them government employees.

rayiner• 11 years ago

The real issue is that we put too many people in jail for two long. And that's a legacy of laws passed in the crime waves of the 80s and 90s, back when for-profit prisons were almost non-existent. E.g. three strikes laws passed in the early 1990s.

justin66• 11 years ago

There's an interesting political Rorschach test with articles like this. The article is unambiguously about prison companies lobbying the government but, invariably, people start ranting about the prison guard's union and their lobbying efforts.

I assume this is a flag for conservatism or libertarianism (or just a measure of the effectiveness of their rhetoric?) rather than a simple inability to stay on topic or to distinguish between a company and its workers' union. It is interesting because of how utterly consistent it is between conversations. It always seems to happen when this subject comes up.

istvan__• 11 years ago

We should just call lobbying the same way it is called in other countries: corruption. The problem with legalizing corruption that corporations gain way to much power.

hga5• 11 years ago

If it's corruption, its Constitutionally protected, in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law [respecting/or abridging] the right of the people ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

MichaelCrawford15• 11 years ago

In general, the Supreme Court regards commercial speech as far, far less protected than those of the press or of individuals.

MCRed• 11 years ago

If a prisoner is raped, the prison should incur liability, civil and criminal for allowing it to happen. When guards initiate violence against prisoners they should be liable as well. This should be the case for both private and "public" prisons.

If you have a legal system that actually enforces the law everywhere, rather than giving violent criminals running prisons free reign to brutalize their charges, you would find that private prisons are more efficient at operating successful prisons than government ones-- just as private entities are more efficient (and humane) everywhere else in the economy.

The problem is that we don't have the rule of law in this country. Cops are not indicted let alone prosecuted when they murder people or steal their life's savings. Politicians are held even less accountable.

Until this is resolved, fighting over lobbying and who runs the prisons is like debating who left the barn doors open after the cattle have left.

Prisons should be punishment, humanely, and rehabilitation. So long as they aren't they are corrupt. And they will continue to drive corruption-- whether it's a private entity or the warden of prisons building his own fiefdom, the incentive is to keep more people imprisoned longer for personal profit.

Hence the drug war and all the other corruption that brings.

Frankly, this alone proves that government cannot be trusted with the business of distributing justice. Which is why I'm an anarchist.

but all you government lovers-- where is the reform? why do you support the violent brutalization via anal rape and regular beatings that 22 year old kids whose only "Crime" was being caught with a dime bag of weed are getting?

omegaham4• 11 years ago

If a prisoner is raped, the prison should incur liability, civil and criminal for allowing it to happen. When guards initiate violence against prisoners they should be liable as well. This should be the case for both private and "public" prisons.

Here's the problem - you can have safe, large-scale, and cheap incarceration. Pick two.

You can have safe, large-scale incarceration by sticking everyone in solitary and never letting them out of their cells, after all, but I doubt many people would consider that to be acceptable.

If you want to treat prisoners with dignity and respect, you have to pay for it. The current model is the result of budget cuts upon budget cuts upon budget cuts coupled with vastly increased "demand" created by the War on Drugs. When you're incarcerating everyone for having a dime bag of weed, you're running a Walmart-style prison instead of a focused rehabilitation facility. If we, at the very least, decriminalized possession and only went after dealers, prisons would immediately improve. Fewer prisoners means safer conditions.

Frankly, this alone proves that government cannot be trusted with the business of distributing justice. Which is why I'm an anarchist.

I see this as misguided. Yes, the government sucks at distributing justice. But I don't see the absence of government doing any better. You'd effectively end up with mob rule, which is typically governed by the biggest asshole. At least with democracy, the asshole has to keep the electorate somewhat happy. The very first thing that people did after settling the American frontier was to set up government to deal with justice. It beat forming a posse to kill your enemies whenever they pissed you off.

leesalminen9• 11 years ago

I've always found the anarchist ideology confusing. There was a reason the early Americans (who were leaving tyrannical governments) formed a judicial system run by a government.

The people of today forgot how the people of yesterday lived and never learned why they made the choices that they did.

Unfortunately, I believe that history will continue to repeat itself until we learn from our ancestors in more meaningful ways.

yummyfajitas• 11 years ago

Notably absent is a comparison showing how large for-profit prison lobbying actually is. Glancing at Opensecret's top 20 lists doesn't actually suggest it's very large:

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i&showYe...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYe...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=u&showYe...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indus.php?id=W&year=2015

For the last one (by industry), note that the breakdown of subcategories is weird. The "Other" category includes "Education", "Civil Servants" and "Non-Profit", all of which would be large enough independently to show up in the top category.

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

CCA has had a few big years:

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00002194...

hga5• 11 years ago

Indeed. While I think this is a problem (see my comment on the Cash for Kids atrocity), I've never ever seen any sign it's a big problem, as in there being all that many private prisons. Between the political power issues noted by others that push for government prisons, and people's instinctive realization that this is dangerous, I see this at worst being a self-limiting problem. Especially after the first scandal like the Cash for Kids atrocity surfaces with Republican politicians to blame.

smutticus• 11 years ago

We should recognize that the constitution still allows slavery as a punishment for crime. This is as much about slave labor, as it is about the prison industry receiving money from the public purse.

13th amendment "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Good 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/

FrankenPC• 11 years ago

It's more like slave siphoning. Once someone is tagged as a criminal, there are seemingly endless ways to suck money from them, their families, the state, and the federal government. Each American indoctrinated into the criminal justice system in essence becomes that famous Duracell from the Matrix movie.

protomyth• 11 years ago

This keeps coming up, and the answer is still the same. People with profit motives that are not aligned with society tend make for bad actors. The same article can be written about the prison unions in California and many other states. It is also a major lobby affecting legislation and not many people talk about it. Their advocacy of jail time is just as bad as private companies. Both have a profit motive in the number of people that are in prison. Both benefit from laws that DO NOT allow alternate treatment. This is very predictable since both groups profit from the number of people in jail.

Unfortunately, I don't really see legislators changing the conditions so the profit motive for both groups will be something other than number of people currently in jail. So, both groups: unions and private companies, will continue to lobby for laws that are not fair.

My own suggestion is to pay based on capacity and not occupancy with a penalty (stick) or bonus payment (carrot) for individuals released from jail that do / do not commit another offense for at least 5 years.

On a second note, all these debtors >> prison schemes should be illegal.

leesalminen9• 11 years ago

I would like to know how our society expects people to follow laws that are incomprehensible to the average joe.

I (and most HNers, I'd presume) have the reading comprehension skills to navigate through legislature. Most do not.

When attempting to show people the actual legislation that is behind what they heard was a "law", they tend to get glossy eyed and shut down entirely.

IMHO, this is a problem worth solving.

jeffmould9• 11 years ago

You are 200% right! We are actually working on something remotely like this. There are so many collateral consequences associated with various laws. For example, some states require a waiting period of 1-5 years before you can even apply to get a barber license if you have certain misdemeanor or felony convictions. While the judge and society feels it is fair to say hey we caught you with an pound of marijuana, here's a fine and a year probation to serve. The true consequence is that you are now a convicted felon and lose many rights, including some job opportunities or at minimum the ability to obtain an occupational license as is the case for a barber.

In short, on top of several other services, we are building an overlay to job search for ex-offenders that will allow them to easily see if they qualify for a job/occupational license based on their offense. If they don't it will tell them the criteria if and when they can. It is a tedious process because sorting through laws and various legislation is not exactly the most exciting startup concept at 3am and can be open to a wide array of interpretation by design (criminal lawyers gotta make their money somehow). We don't intend for it to be the holy grail for information, but at least it will provide a guideline for job seekers with criminal records to be able to easily sort through and identify opportunities.

foolinaround• 11 years ago

the earliest form of justice was "eye for an eye" --> From there, it was noticed that the first person who lost that eye gained nothing when the criminal's eye was taken.

From there on it progressed to some variation of "pay for the eye or for the opportunity cost", in which the criminal had to barter his resources ( existing property, strength, time, etc ) to compensate the victim. This is the justice described in those voluminous biblical or other laws.

From there on, those criminals who were unable to compensate ( too poor, or cost too high ) were deprived of something till they were able to or forced to compensate. This started the concept of 'debtors prisons'

Now, when the concept of compensating the victim ( individual / society / government ) has been removed, this very act of putting a criminal in prison is itself a crime.

hellbanner2• 11 years ago

By "lobby" they mean.. bribe?

hellbanner2• 11 years ago

Linked from a related EFF link recently:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmat...

Prisoners denied access to social networking, in a state law & through Facebook's prisoner profile takedown forms (!)

How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about

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