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by protomyth 4702 days ago
The concern isn't the privatization[1], it is the profit motive of the contract does not align with the a just system. If the contract was based on potential cells as opposed to the actual number[2], then bribing to get more profit couldn't happen. The minute any groups profit incentive doesn't match your goal is going to give you problems.

1) do some reading on prison worker unions and you'll see the perversity isn't restricted to private enterprise

2) we will pay you a fixed X for your Y number of cell facility
1 comments
digikata 4702 days ago
Really the thing incentivized should be pushing down the recidivism rate (maybe in an x year period after release).
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protomyth 4702 days ago
Not going to disagree with the intent, but that would make it very worth the effort to get as many children who shouldn't be in prison incarcerated since they likely wouldn't be prone to going back. In fact, it might lead to no prison time for hard cases since that would affect he prison's profits.
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digikata 4701 days ago
Absolutely agree with you. It's a general problem with using any performance metric as a sole-focus driver for optimization. You'll find the optimizations may drive behavior beyond where the metric has direct value. That's a truism if you're talking about performance of prison contracts, computer systems, factory throughput, or even capitalism as a whole.

And really, that's what a well-running oversight function should be doing in the case of prison management, adjusting metrics to drive the system toward good whole-society outcomes. Public vs private prisons theoretically doesn't matter, except that introducing private prisons introduces a dynamic where corruption of the oversight function and metrics is used for optimization of profits.

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protomyth 4701 days ago
Agreed, incentives are fun problems everywhere.

> Public vs private prisons theoretically doesn't matter, except that introducing private prisons introduces a dynamic where corruption of the oversight function and metrics is used for optimization of profits.

Read up on some of the campaigning done by the prison worker's union in California and you will see public has its own profit motives that are just as bad.

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