[throw__away7391]

Serious question: does this come from real first hand experience of knowledge of the issue or are you simply repeating the NYT/the Atlantic/Vox etc.?

My understanding is that about 8% of US prisons are privately owned. Perhaps that's not a good thing, but I don't think it is at all correct to say that "prisons in the USA are for-profit enterprise" when the actual number is so low.

I have also heard this narrative for a long time that the prisons were filled mostly with non-violent drug offenders, only to learn that this description only applies to about 3.5% of the prison population. Maybe that's not a good thing either, but again I feel like I have been intentionally deceived after reading supposedly high-minded journalism into believing a fundamentally false understanding of what is going on.

[k1ns]

Yes, my introduction to the world of commercial software development was an internship at a company that built products for prisons.

To be clear, I said "prisons...are for-profit enterprises", not "all prisons are privately owned". Even state-owned prisons are cash cows for the prison industry. I'm not interested in what narrative you identify with, I'm stating a fact.

[throw__away7391]

Well that's true of literally every thing that is made and every service delivered. There's an absolutely huge industry build around primary education that dwarfs the prison industry by a significant margin.

Actually prisons and schools have quite a lot in common so maybe you're onto something.

[k1ns]

I'm glad you brought up the public education system. One is designed to instill knowledge and nurture young minds (public schools) while the other is designed to make sure you come back (prisons).

[lyu07282]

The criticism of private prisons (or the prison industrial complex) in general is more than just referring to privately owned and run prisons, its referring to prisons, jails, detention facilities, psychiatric hospitals, private security and guards, transportation and logistics, health care services, surveillance and other technology providers, food/commissary/library services, communication/phone services, cash bail creditors, etc. etc. all run for-profit.

The other issue is more in general about having incarceration rates that are "four to six times that of its high-income peers in Europe and Asia". So you might recognize that as an issue too and think perhaps its the privatized prison system, the root causes for crime like inequality, disenfranchisement, homelessness, the reasons for drug use in the first place, or even just perhaps switching to an evidence-based rehabilitation system.

But now imagine you are a liberal, you need a way to acknowledge and talk about these problems without ever actually having to change anything. So that's why liberal journalists are talking about non-violent drug offenders and the 8.41% private prison population and so Biden stopped the justice department from renewing contracts for federal private prisons and he pardoned all prisoners of federal non-violent marijuana possession charges. Of course it doesn't actually do anything, but that was the point. And that's what liberalism is.