[freehorse]

At this point, I am not sure if we can exclude that lobbying from private prisons does not affect the way bureaucracy runs, from the stage of legislation to the point of how said legislation is executed. Thus I am not sure that these two are in truly independent.

But otherwise I agree; even in places where detention facilities are not privatised, bureaucracy can still pose a lot of issues because, as you say, "who cares about criminals", or because certain traits are overrepresented in the group of people who take up these jobs.

[ethbr1]

The "I don't know"s in the article smack of bureaucratic ineffectiveness more than deliberate obsfuscation.

To wit, that no one actually cares about doing anything.

And granted, that's long been a consequence of low morale in the prison and ICE employee pool, but now it's coupled with a removal of even the least pressure from above to do the job well.

In short, I don't think "Be cruel to people" needs to be messaged from above: "We don't care about anyone you're holding" is sufficient for low-level employees to be their worst selves.

[csa]

> The "I don't know"s in the article smack of bureaucratic ineffectiveness more than deliberate obsfuscation.

I’m pretty sure it’s not either.

In situations like this, it’s simply conflict avoidance and sticking to the responsibilities of your pay grade. Any given ICE employee may have a good idea where someone is likely to go or not go, but they almost certainly don’t know enough about any specific case to make a comment about it in a way that may have legal ramifications.

This may sound like punting responsibility, but if an ICE employee says something incorrect to someone being held, that could come back to haunt them via legal consequences. As such, if it’s not their job to answer questions about a detainee’s status, it’s probably prudent for them not to answer.

Let me be clear, I think that this is a racket. I also think that any person with decent morals and ethics should consider not working at these places.

That said, I don’t think it’s necessarily reasonable to criticize the ICE folks for staying in their lane when on the job.