[FredPret]

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.

[teachrdan]

> 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.

[FredPret]

Now you’re strawmanning. Read the thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42596079 says:

> “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.

[teachrdan]

“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?”