I think there is a lot of confusion around private prisons in the US. I can't understand why this is such a talking point for people who want prison reform.
For-profit companies operating carceral facilities is just not the main reason things are so bad.
There is an easy way to see this: lots of public, government run jails & prisons are also brutally awful and evil places. For example, Rikers Island is not a private prison. On top of this, private facilities incarcerate only a small percentage.
You could turn all the private prisons over to be operated by government employees and not much would improve.
On the other hand, it is true that many problems in the carceral system are created by profit-seeking companies. Mainly they look like what we see here: contractors operating a single service possibly winning the contract through kickbacks, and then providing a bad service. You see this in food and healthcare too not just telecom.
I guess it is true that private prison operators will want to do the same thing. But it's a problem for all facilities, not just the small number of private facilities. And even if you could solve these issues via regulation or competition, it wouldn't change the many other evils that are inflicted on incarcerated people.
So I can't understand why "the US has private prisons" appears to be everybody's primary talking point about why the US carceral system is so awful.
The uncomfortable resemblance to slavery and other obviously problematic aspects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal) of it probably has a lot to do with it getting such disproportionate attention. (The vast majority of prisons are still public.) That and it offers an easy, feel-good solution that unfortunately doesn't address systematic problems: just ban private prisons.
even if one is concerned with remarkable similarity of prison labor to slavery, implications of 13th amendment clause, etc., most of the prison labor is for wholly-government-owned enterprises, frequently manufacturing things for other government departments.
As another example, Louisiana is phasing out private prisons. That should be great! Meanwhile Angola (state-run) continues to have prisoners picking cotton.
I know people know about this because they always bring up prisoners picking cotton in these conversations, but then the talking point remains "private prisons" somehow. So I still don't get why this idea is so sticky.
I think it has to do with the fact that this is not only about prisons. Those private prisons, doesn't matter their number, also represent a risk to other aspects of society. You are only measuring effects on prisons themselves.
For-profit companies operating carceral facilities is just not the main reason things are so bad.
There is an easy way to see this: lots of public, government run jails & prisons are also brutally awful and evil places. For example, Rikers Island is not a private prison. On top of this, private facilities incarcerate only a small percentage.
You could turn all the private prisons over to be operated by government employees and not much would improve.
On the other hand, it is true that many problems in the carceral system are created by profit-seeking companies. Mainly they look like what we see here: contractors operating a single service possibly winning the contract through kickbacks, and then providing a bad service. You see this in food and healthcare too not just telecom.
I guess it is true that private prison operators will want to do the same thing. But it's a problem for all facilities, not just the small number of private facilities. And even if you could solve these issues via regulation or competition, it wouldn't change the many other evils that are inflicted on incarcerated people.
So I can't understand why "the US has private prisons" appears to be everybody's primary talking point about why the US carceral system is so awful.