[throwaway0a5e]

>Is there anything redeeming about “for profit” prison?

No. But there's nothing redeeming about state prisons either. The whole system is broken regardless of who's letterhead the warden's pay stubs are on.

The typical argument for "for profit" prisons is that it provides a motive to keep costs under control, a motive that is very obviously in too short supply in most other government endeavors. Furthermore, the government is far more willing to screw its contractors to satiate public outrage (when the prisons are inevitable caught abusing prisoners and failing to deliver the services the state is paying for) than it is to screw its own departments. In my observation this breaks down in practice because of the revolving door and the government's willingness to absolve itself of responsibility for actions of its contractors and people's willingness to entertain that.

I think 3rd party contractor prisons could work in a state where the people both have high expectations of ethical behavior in both government and business AND strongly care about controlling the costs of government. The catch is that no state satisfies both those criteria as far as I can tell and state operated prisons would work just fine in any state that did so IMO it's a wash.

The reason we hear so much about for profit prisons and not the abuses within state prisons and jails is mostly one of ideological convenience. It's harder to get the people who care about prison reform to get angry at the .gov for mismanaging prisons than it is to get them angry at private contractors doing the same thing.

[hinkley]

A few years ago I attended a presentation by a social justice evangelist. She was unmarried, black, and from LA. Some of her observations about the intersection of being all four were eye watering.

I no longer recall the statistics she cited but if you want to date a black man in LA, you first have to find one that is not in jail, which diminishes the dating pool substantially.

I'm glad that decriminalization is also including early release and voiding of criminal records but once you start down that path it's hard to walk that back. Recidivism is high not just because the same conditions exist post-incarceration, but also because finding a good job with a record is difficult. We are only really fixing things for people who were recently convicted/released and haven't had to make those kinds of choices yet.