| ▲ | terminalshort 15 hours ago |
| Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. They are a massive cost to the government. Incarceration is expensive (Google gives me a median of $65K per prisoner per year), and the percentage of prisoners that are able to earn more money through labor than the cost to lock them up is probably very low. |
|
| ▲ | superb_dev 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It might cost the government $65k to imprison someone, but that money isn’t disappearing. It’s going into the pockets of all the private businesses running the prisons who take a hefty profit |
| |
| ▲ | chii 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Money spent on a prison is unproductive for society, so it might as well have just disappeared as far as tax payers are concerned. It's the same as paying someone to dig a hole, then paying someone to fill it back up. The money might as well have disappeared, as there's nothing to show for it (for the taxpayers that is - the hole digger is happy to have been paid) | | |
| ▲ | DeWilde 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have you considered the impact to the society if people destructive to it are not incarcerated? | | |
| ▲ | chii 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | my comment was in relation to the grandparent post's: > cost the government $65k to imprison someone, but that money isn’t disappearing which is wrong, because it _is_ disappearing. Your argument is unrelated - it sure would be good if people didnt commit crimes for which incarceration is required, but it doesn't mean the cost has benefits. It simply has to be done; i would liken it to getting sick, and the healthcare costing money. That money, as far as you are concerned, disappeared, as it brought you no lasting benefit, even tho you must spend it. |
|
| |
| ▲ | jacobr1 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There seems to be a presumption that private prisons are widespread. And while not rare, they are only 8% of prisons. There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. I only bring this up because it seems like the mental model most people have is that 50--90% of prisons are private - mainly because it gets discussed so much. But the problems with prisons by-and-large involve government administration, not for-profit companies running the amok (despite that also happening in a much smaller number of cases). | | |
| ▲ | wsatb 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 8% is 8% too much. They’re also currently housing 90% of detained immigrants. [1] [1] https://truthout.org/articles/immigration-detention-has-beco... | |
| ▲ | citizenpaul 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >private prisons Are a red herring to distract from the real issue. The industrialist complex around prisons that do in fact profit from prisons. Like all gov contracts are also highly inefficient by design. | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 8%, or 1 in 12, prisons being private isn't that encouraging when blowing up the statistic to the scale of a country. That's still thousands of facilities with perverse incentives. But yes, the ones really profiting are those making deals to service the prison. Those who bring food, or repair the infrastructure, or custodial duties. A lot of seemingly unrelated industries have every reason to lobby in the background to focus on "hard on crime". | |
| ▲ | t-3 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though. Yep. Everyone's heard about private prisons and their pet judges, but few know anything about Bob Barker or VitaPro. Their are deep and very murky waters here. | |
| ▲ | defrost 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | However, currently only 8.5% of people who are incarcerated are held in private facilities.
Despite the significant amount of economic and political power held by private prison corporations, it is imperative to understand that private prisons are not the only force at work in the Prison Industrial Complex.
Exclusive focus on private prison corporations as the lynchpin of the PIC ignores and overlooks the variety of other players and systems at work.
For example, there are thousands of companies and a wide range of contracts in both private and public prisons: it is a whole network of parties with vested interests.
In Are Prisons Obsolete, Angela Davis explains that,
“…even if private prison companies were prohibited – an unlikely prospect, indeed-the prison industrial complex and its many strategies for profit would remain relatively intact.
Private prisons are direct sources of profit for the companies that run them, but public prisons have become so thoroughly saturated with the profit-producing products and services of private corporations that the distinction is not as meaningful as one might suspect”
(Davis, 2003, 99-100).
~ https://sites.tufts.edu/prisondivestment/prison-contracts/ |
|
|
|
| ▲ | httpsoverdns 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Prisons cost the taxpayers quite a lot of money, yes. But private prisons make enormous profits from the burden you and I shoulder. More than a quarter billion dollars every year, goes into the pockets of private prison operators. Many consider the way that they extract these profits to be cruel and inhumane to those that are supposed to be under their care. https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/the-economic-impact-of-pr... |
|
| ▲ | bryanrasmussen 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. private prisons make money for their corporations. Look up Wackenhut. |
|
| ▲ | defrost 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Top private prison companies see profits amid administration's immigration crackdown ~ https://abcnews.go.com/US/top-private-prison-companies-profi... Prison Contracts: Profits & Politics Two corporations, GEO Group, Inc. and CoreCivic, Inc. (CCA), manage over half of the private prison contracts in the US.
These contracts are extremely lucrative; in the 2017 fiscal year, GEO Group and CoreCivic earned a combined revenue of more than 4 billion dollars.
Corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic are invested in mass incarceration because incarceration is profitable for them.
Such corporations ensure that correctional facilities are in demand through a variety of techniques, including minimum occupancy clauses and political lobbying efforts.
~ https://sites.tufts.edu/prisondivestment/prison-contracts/ |
| |
