US announces the end of federal use of private prisons!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37124183

This has long been a political change that I have hoped would pass. In the US private companies are allowed to build and staff prisons. Despite claims that these prisons would be safer and more efficient (because capitalism), they have seen increased rates of violence and lower standards of care.

Corporations have long influenced legislation and those in charge of private prisons are no exception. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is a major backer of the American Legislative Exchange Council - a group that has drafted legislation that it sent to politicians who in turn enacted laws such as mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, three strike laws and truth in sentencing laws. These predictably have swollen the American prison system.

If this weren't enough, ALEC led the charge on drafting legislation that allowed corporations to both require work from prison inmates and dock their wages to offset the cost of incarceration.

https://www.thenation.com/article/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor/

I think and hope that this is the first step in dismantling the prison industrial complex.

 

I'd like a world in which prisons don't exist, but simultaneously recognize the need for them. I think they're overused, under-regulated, and drastically in need of reform though. I remember having a discussion with someone about human rights violations in prisons and someone chimed in that they hadn't seen anything like that in Florida. So out of curiosity I googled "'human rights violation' + Florida + prison" and sure enough in that year a mentally handicapped man had been boiled alive by three guards. The nature of capitalism, encouraging expansion and profit, makes prisons something incredibly unsuited for that uhh... paradigm of system.

 

Actually after having read over the course of a week a long piece of investigative journalism on a Louisiana private prison, I think it'll be a good thing in that regard as well. Low pay and bad working conditions aren't good for anybody. This way not only will you not have prisoners treated as subhuman but if you want to maintain the current incarceration rate you'll have to have properly paid, properly staffed prisons as well.

I invite anyone to read all five chapters. As entertaining as it is you have to periodically remind yourself that this is not fiction, it was not written as comedy, this is real. I'm also fairly certain this had a big impact on the decision.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics...tions-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer

 

The concept of running a prison for profit...just...erm...I mean...does that sound anything like a good idea?

 

It's made some people a lot of money. Think about it - the government contracts you to put prisoners away, allows you to put them to work, then after all that you can dock 40% of their wages to pay for the privilege of being incarcerated. After that you can help politicians get elected to pass laws further criminalizing people!

 

Would you be happy enough to go to something like in Norway? Prisoners are better rehabilitated but that may be a cultural thing difficult to pull off in the USA.

LFD

http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/

 

Some of those Norwegian prisoners earn more an hour than the CO's in the article Ben posted!

I've always found the Bolivian prison run by inmates very interesting: http://blog.independent.org/2011/08/23/bolivia’s-san-pedro-prison-a-model-for-reform/

I was re-watching Louis Theroux's Miami Mega Jail on Netflix last night, and it's no wonder that recidivism is so high. Environments like that can't help but turn people into brutal sociopaths, because that's the only way you can survive in there.

 

Yeah, I think if the US were seriously committed towards reducing crime and rehabilitating prisoners, something like this would be the model to follow. Can't say it sits right with me though, thinking about people like Breivik or Dahmer in a prison like this - I think that a lot more people are choosing to support 'tough on crime' measures as a gut response to just that sort of thing rather than practicality.

 

Reminds me of a subplot in Billions (Paul Giamatti/Damian Lewis series) where a judge is on the board of a prisons owner. Send person to prison, prisoner has to work and spend money on things that the company make profit on, buy house in the Carribean.

I'm not up on how the prison system works in the US but surely those working for the companies running the prisons will be able to be absorbed into the government/state/whatever run prison rather than be made redundant? The prison will have been built because of the demand so the prison and staff will still be needed rather than the government/state/whatever having to pay for a new prison to be built to house the inmates when the contract ends.

 

That's because they want prison to be a punishment, rather than pragmatic institutions that consider the wider societal cost/benefit.

 

They should do a 10 year prison experiment.
Randomly send prisoners to an American style punishment type prison and some to a Norwegian style rehabilitate them style prison.
See which results in less re-offending.

Although personally I'd favour creating "Escape from New York" style prison villages for criminals that are unreachable. Not just for murderers but for those sorts of people that do 200 burglaries and re-offend as soon as they are released. Career criminals basically that every police force knows and know will never reform.

 

Mix in a bit of Running Man style reality show and you could turn a profit from them.

 

I think it's not just the style of prisons, but the markers that prisoners bear forever afterwards. Having to disclose a felony or something can be a big problem for jobs, with the exception of illegal activities, so you just wind up recycling people into the system. I'm not sure how well it would do to completely do away with that - I wouldn't want sex offenders applying to teach at schools or something. But once you enter into the criminal justice system, forever will it dominate your destiny.

See, but then you gotta ask yourself why are they career criminals?

 

This is where some people will come out with nonsensical reasons like "bad blood" or whatever.

There's a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy to it. Even thinking about the kids I grew up with who turned to crime; at the age of 5 they were already doomed because they came from "bad families" so were treated as if they were going to end up being bad people that were never going to do well in school... and what do you know? That's exactly what happened.

That's not to discount the effect of culture and environment outside of school, but I would hope that institutions should try to combat those expectations, not reinforce them.

 

Yeah, there's actually a term for that, the school to prison pipeline. Increasingly US kids are coming into contact with law enforcement at schools and placed into the juvenile justice system. From there it's only a short jump to prison itself.

 

I'd put sex offenders away forever. Not mistreat them or anything. Give 'em a life. Just hived off away from everyone else. I don't think you can rehabilitate sex criminals.

Oh sure. My main motivation would be "cut crime and treat people humanely".
Sadly if someone is so disfunctional they literally can't live without committing crime then I'd be in favour of just separating them. The equivalent of how people used to be "banished".

 

What do you base that assertion on?

I have an emotional reaction to sex offenders, but I don't believe policy should be dictated by emotional reactions.

'"If we really want to make the world a safer place, far from understandably wanting to shun these people, you might want to get closer to them," Wilson adds.'

- http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/can-we-judge-whether-convicted-sex-offender-will-reoffend-1485611

 

It's interesting you should say that, Michel Foucault discussed that prisons were created for just such a thing - to separate certain people from society at large. I think the stereotype of the criminal who is simply so dysfunctional that they cannot do anything but commit crimes is one that should be looked at critically - my guess is that sure, they exist, but is that a life course that given either opportunity or mental health assistance they could abandon? The more barriers we erect between prisoners and reentering society, the more career criminals we will create.

Oh, that's another thing we use prisons for in the US: housing the mentally ill.

 

I don't think anyone truly controls what turns them on. I know I don't.
People can control themselves (I'm sure there are plenty of paedophiles that don't act on their impulses for example...either through fear of repercussions or because they recognise what they feel is wrong) but once someone has shown they have certain urges AND can't (or won't) control those urges then I'd say, without some massive amounts of Clockwork Orange style re-conditioning, that ain't gonna change.

But I'm not exactly a psychologist or anything.