My guess would be that most developed countries see prison not as a revenge but as the start to learn to function in society. America's system is more or less all about revenge.
There isn’t enough profit there though for that to be the driving force. Prisons as an industry make far less than industries with little to no political sway for even trivial protectionist policies.
Some private prison corporations and judges both felt it was profitable enough.
Two Pennsylvania judges received $2.8M in bribes from private prisons to send 4,000 kids to the private prisons with long sentences; apparently ruining 4,000 kids lives was profitable enough to justify $2.8M in bribes. One of the judges has managed to get released early.
Right, you’ll see pockets of individual corruption but that doesn’t account for why there is a systemic overpopulation. Unless you are suggesting every judge is on the take, in which case no amount of law reform will matter without first removing all of the judges.
I am suggesting that this example of corruption is evidence that there is sufficient profit in private prisons to motivate efforts (legal and illegal) to affect policy.
E.g., private prisons likely spend at least as much in legal lobbying efforts to maintain high prison populations as they do in bribes.
I believe you are wrong about for-profit prisons. It is 100% the reason that the US has so many incarcerated. Any time you can get government to foot the bill for something cottage industries will spring up around it.
> It is 100% the reason that the US has so many incarcerated. Any time you can get government to foot the bill for something cottage industries will spring up around it.
That doesn’t make sense. Building a prison in itself doesn’t induce crime nor does it induce prison sentences. Judges and juries have no quotas to fill based on vacancy.
Prisons serve more than on purpose: reinsertion and punishment are two of them, but another one I think is the most important is that it limits the ability for dangerous individuals to do harm. I would rather have murderers and rapists behind bars than next door.
If you accept the idea of the "war on drugs", it also goes for drug offenses: by putting drug dealers behind bars, you prevent people from buying drugs and harming themselves.
I don’t think it’s a right way of framing it. It’s not about acceptance. If you look at the statistics on consumption, harm suffered from abuse or how the illegal trade is doing between highly repressive countries and countries which have legalised drugs or don’t jail consumers but try to help them kick their addiction, you can factually say that the “war on drugs” is an abject failure leading to more harm than good like prohibition before it.
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is probably the most harmful thing the USA ever did to the world.