[throwaway1967]

Please. There are no private prisons.

A private enterprise receives 100% of its income from its clients.

No prisoner is paying to be incarcerated.

What you mean to say is that the Government gives taxpayer money to some prisons, and some private persons end up pocketing this taxpayer money.

There is no private business going on in prisons.

[DennisP]

We have prisons which are run by the government, and we have prisons which are run by private companies that sell their services to the government. Call the latter what you like. The companies that run them do a poor job with prisoner safety, and lobby the government to keep the prisoner supply high. In some cases states have signed contracts that require them to supply a minimum number of prisoners regardless of crime rates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/aclu-la...

[thaumasiotes]

> The companies that run [private prisons] ... lobby the government to keep the prisoner supply high.

To be fair, this is just as much of a problem with government-run prisons as it is with private ones.

[throwaway1967]

> run by private companies that sell their services to the government

If a company's sole paying client is the government (i.e. the public at large through government coercion) then that isn't a private company.

A private company is one where if all the potential voluntary clients give up on, it goes under.

Is a spy a (foreign) private company since it also sells its services to the government? Is a saboteur a private company? Is a privateer?

This service (keeping prisoners) only exists for one type of client, clients that have a monopoly on force, also known as governments. A private business may indeed sell solely to the government, but it can only be private if the service it offers exists for more than that one type of client. Failing that, such "company" is a Government Agency, whether the government admits and/or makes it official or not.

In days of yore the UK would also call privateers private. Do you see the pattern of governments trying to distance themselves from the evil they're doing by labeling unofficial government agencies "private companies"?

This is not about a person's preference for calling things a certain way. In a proper discussion we have to settle the meaning of words and phrases. And the phrase "private company" in no way encompass the work of government agencies whose product could not be sold to the general public directly.

Sorry DennisP, you're just wrong. "Call it what you want" is not an argument, much less a counter-argument to my arguments. You could have taken the normal route and just said "you're right", but instead you're choosing to keep pushing the "call it whatever" non-argument button. Be a good loser and admit you're wrong, or refute my arguments.

I can also tell you went through all my recent past comments and voted them all down, as I went from 0 to -10 immediately after our interaction. Very childish of you, but not surprising.

How do you hope to solve problems and disagreements if you're not willing to abide by the code of conduct that those who argue seeking to learn follow?

If you believe what Socialist Bernie Sanders thinks is "private" then you'll believe anything.

[DennisP]

I have not downvoted any of your comments. Whoever did that was someone else.

My point was just that there are two ways we run prisons and Sanders proposed shutting down one of them, for various good reasons mentioned in my links. Many people call that type "private," including major news organizations. I actually agree with you that it may not be the best term, but it's the only one I've seen in common use. The basic facts are the same regardless of nomenclature.