I suspect that is true but here is the difference: organizations that benefit from fewer prisons have a multitude of other things they benefit from (and can lobby for). Private prison operators on the other hand really only have one thing that can improve their bottom line at the end of the day - more prisons.
Outside of a few non-profit orgs I suspect there aren't a lot of dollars lobbying for fewer prisons, it's not a great look and it's easily to spin as "company X doesn't want to lock up violent criminals!
On the other hand that's really the only agenda item private prison operators put their lobbying dollars toward.
and a lot overestimate the percentage private prison systems greatly. However, I think systems like Alabama that abuse prisoners to output widgets for corporations should be dealt with by the Feds as well. It's clearly cruel and unusual punishment. It's a complicated issue but calling prisoners "slaves" is a far left talking point that they continuously use with no nuance allowed.
that labor is not compelled and is in fact a privilege; they are given absurdly low wages, but the jobs are still desirable vs sitting in a cell. misbehavior results in privilege revocation.
The labor is compelled; the statute law, regulations, and executive orders prohibit the incarcerated from refusing the work and authorize punishment for them doing so (including for refusing assignments to unpaid labor), despite Alabama finally abolishing involuntary servitude in its Constitution in 2022.
The main difference I've seen, though, is that private prisons will sell you a lot more stuff for your cell. They generally take a more measured approach to security risks and allow you to buy steel-stringed guitars and PlayStations because there is enormous profit in those. The public jails and prisons won't allow as much stuff like that as it makes their employees' lives a lot harder from a security perspective.
As I've gotten farther in my career as a product manager, I have to do more and more slicing and dicing of markets to understand who I'm building something for, identify opportunity.
It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.
> It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.
This is the top comment in a chain of siblings that are dogpiling on the parent for no good reason. I'm replying because I think it's a case of pointing out a distinction without difference, which is a low value response up there with "But correlation isn't causation!"
In this case there are many different groups that benefit from a higher prison population. Private prisons are perhaps the most commonly cited, but they hold a tiny percent of the total prison population.
But there are many, many private businesses that sell to prisons. Sudexo-Marriott makes millions selling services to private and public prisons. I once toured a "super max" prison in Ohio and saw that they had tens of thousands of dollars in commercial Hobart restaurant equipment.
The knee jerk response here is, "Of course a prison pays for commercial dining services and equipment! That's not surprising, it's inevitable!" But that's my point. It's inevitable that there's billions of dollars being made off the US's prison population. And that's not including industries based specifically on exploiting prisoners, like prison phone and teleconferencing services that overcharged the incarcerated and their families by billions of dollars.
There are many utterly conventional businesses that use slave labor from prisons. This is not hyperbole -- prisoners are often forced to work for $1 a day or less. They are punished with solitary confinement or even additional prison time if they refuse.
The final rebuttal would be, "Well not everyone in America benefits from a large prison population!" But if you read carefully, that's exactly what the parent comment is saying. But enough different and powerful stakeholders do benefit from a large and growing prison population that it's difficult to enact reforms to make that number smaller.
It’s completely fair to say that private prisons have too much pull and that there are bad incentives like you point out.
It’s completely unfair to express surprise that Americans would come up with a way to reduce their prison population because of the notion that they’ve all been captured by the private prison industry.
> they’ve all been captured by the private prison industry
This is a straw man argument, which is also discouraged on HN. Literally no one -- besides you and the sibling comments below -- has suggested that everyone has been captured by private prisons.
Instead there are businesses all along the spectrum of those that incidentally do businesses with prisons to those that exclusively do business with prisons to those that are (private) prisons. And that doesn't even include police and sheriffs departments or politicians who benefit from prisons.
I sincerely suggest that you engage with the discourse at hand rather than dismissing it with straw manning and other logical fallacies.
> “I'm surprised at this concept spreading in the US, since the system would generally benefit from having perpetual perpetrators percolating through the prison slavery system.”
A sweeping statement about the entire conceptual space of a huge country based on ideas about the private prison system manipulating an entire country.
“the system” here is specifically referencing the web of government and corporate interests that benefit from a large and growing prison population. There is no reasonable reading of this which implies the author naively believes EVERYONE supports prisons.
Please do a better job of close reading and critical thinking. Especially with “now you’re strawmanning,” the rhetorical equivalent of “I know you are but what am I?”
Outside of a few non-profit orgs I suspect there aren't a lot of dollars lobbying for fewer prisons, it's not a great look and it's easily to spin as "company X doesn't want to lock up violent criminals!
On the other hand that's really the only agenda item private prison operators put their lobbying dollars toward.